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Beatles bootlegs have been around for over 50 years. In this video we look back at how they began and how the coming of the CD in the late 1980s saw an explosion of high quality releases by pirates who serviced a gap in the market which Apple has still to completely fill.
Whilst it is illegal to make or sell bootleg material, showing and discussing it is not.
Link to videos mentioned in or related to this presentation:
The Beatles 'Sessions' album: • How The Beatles CANCEL...
The Making of the Beatles at the BBC: • The Making of The Beat...
The Peter Sellers Tape: • The Tragic Tale of Pet...
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I’m a first generation Beatles follower & I used to find great bootlegs on the boardwalk in Ocean City, NJ; also at a local headshop where, as legend had it, Stephen Stills walked in & took all the CSN&Y boots claiming ‘these are mine’…apparently John Lennon enjoyed Beatle bootlegs and when I met him in 1975 he asked me a few questions about the Live In Japan 1966 album he signed for me; I also asked him if he wanted to jam (with my high school band; I was 16) he laughed & said ‘me record company wouldn’t like that’ …I was working in a small, funky record shop in Ardmore, PA (MADS records) when all those ‘80s bootleg CDs…I picked up an incredible 5 disc box set titled Artifacts with material Anthology did not contain
Great story about Stephen Stills taking the boots from the headshop! LOL! I also remember reading somewhere that a country singer (I forget who) saw a table full of bootleg 8-tracks in a truck stop. He went to his truck and got an axe, went back to the truck stop and smashed the table and the tapes to smithereens. The owner said "What am I supposed to tell the rack jobber who owns that table?" The singer said "Tell him the Masked Marauder was here."
Andrew, in the mid 70’s a record shop in New Haven, CT was busted by the FBI after brazenly selling racks of these gems in the front of the store. Not just Beatles but Dylan, Led Zep, Springsteen and more. Even as a teenager, I thought it not wise to advertise “bootlegs” on the large rack containing hundreds of these titles. This was the beginning of the craze. I was not so surprised a few months later when there was a front page story on my local newspaper about the bust.
There was a record convention in Waterbury CT in the 1980’s and I was leaving the parking lot with some “rarities” when a bunch of police cars and a box truck passed me by on my way out.
There was a record convention in Waterbury CT in the 1980’s and I was leaving the parking lot with some “rarities” when a bunch of police cars and a box truck passed me by on my way out.
There was a record convention in Waterbury CT in the 1980’s and I was leaving the parking lot with some “rarities” when a bunch of police cars and a box truck passed me by on my way out.
There was a record convention in Waterbury CT in the 1980’s and I was leaving the parking lot with some “rarities” when a bunch of police cars and a box truck passed me by on my way out.
Had to be Cutlers!
I got a few Beach Boys Unsurpassed Masters bootleg CDs in the very early 2000s. I wish I’d known how rare they’d get quickly and bought as many as I could find.
I listened to all 96 hours of the Nagra tapes over a few days because I could.
I'm in awe. It took me almost two years.....
Mind you I once listened to a 20 CD series on the Byrds in the studio recording their second LP. I look back and wonder about activities like that.....
i plan on doing the same thing
Please teach us how to listen to 96 hours of music in 48 hours (few days)
I always hated the synchronicity-beeps!
I definitely consider myself a connoisseur of these unreleased recordings. As a young child of 6 in 1970, I purchased (with help of my mom) the Kum Back lp at the same time I purchased The Beatles Again (as it was still known at that point). In it's plain white sleeve, I was convinced it was The White Album. Once I got over the disappointment of it not being what I thought it would be, I grew to love it for what it was. Fast forward to Autumn of 1977, when I found the Three Cool Cats/Hello Little Girl 45 (on pink vinyl). That was the moment that changed my status from a Beatles fan to Pleasantly Obsessed collector! This video was very much enjoyed and helped me relive the journey 😊
I own an original Kum Back too! Believe it or not, I found it in a flea market, the week before the Peter Jackson show was released! Apparently nobody knew what they had.
My first bootleg was a 3 album set called "The Copenhagen Warm-ups" by Led Zeppelin. I got it home and LOVED it...and yes, my Mom helped me buy it (We were at the local flea market). I asked the gentleman how often will he here - he said, just about every Saturday as long I keep buying. I started bringing my friends and he loved that. I still HAVE all my old vinyl boots and play them at least once a year. Then CD's came around.....damn...and soundboards!.....and yes, I have a Beatles BBC session 3 album vinyl box set which I still LOVE. As far as Beatle boot CD's..I must have at least 20 or so by now.
i heard some bootleg tapes back in ussr around 80s. not sure if they were banned but rolling stones were banned. stones music was deemed antisocialist propaganda.
beatles tapes sounded like outdated music, when techno was starting. im thinking apple computers for some reason.
oh yeah, the song yesterday is the most memorable from the tapes. they ended up with a collector.
I was lucky enough to be on Ebbetts list and received CD's over many years. A really nice guy who put so much work into these recordings. The time involved must have been immense. Although we paid a contribution, he must have operated at a loss. All upgrades were always issued full of charge. The presentations and artwork were of a high quality.
I have been collecting Beatles bootlegs since 1974. I have a huge collection of vinyl bootlegs, just like what “Francis” has done with commercial releases. First it was listening to what I never heard before, and then later the thrill of the hunt, as it is with any collector. The CD releases staring in the 80’s brought out fantastic material. I think that the bootleg releases of not just the Beatles, but other bands as well, is why the record companies started putting alternate takes and outtakes as bonus tracks on reissues of various LPs. They understood that fans want to hear these gems. As for the Beatles, there are tapes around that we would love to hear. Just one example is the demo tape recorded at the Cavern with Love of the Loved, Want Goes On and the version of Misery with the words meant for Helen Shapiro that Mark Lewisohn played an excerpt of during one of his shows. Fascinating! Why do these things sit in Limbo! For What! The 1963 Gaumont show, Shea Stadium, the BBC tapes they are sitting on. They buy these things up and then do nothing with them. Thank goodness that the Stowe School tape that turned up last year wasn’t sold to Apple. Instead of this highly interesting document being enjoyed by thousands of fans, they would have locked it away.
Buying bootlegs in head shops and basements of record stores was so cool in the 70's.
Also, ordering them from various ads was thrilling also. Had to wait an average of 2 weeks to receive them.
I remember the anticipation!
Great times!
I hate to sound like an old lame hippie talking about the groovy old days, but you're right about that. This was the first bootleg I ever heard or even heard of. People knew it was kinda/sorta illegal or something, and it got passed around sneakily like it was drugs or something, and it was exciting. This one really knocked me out. I was (and still am) a Beatles obsessive, starved for something, anything, from the band that I hadn't heard before. I think they had already broken up by the time I heard it, and I was in serious denial, and worried to death it was true.
I stumbled onto Ultra Rare Trax CDs at a record store. "I Saw Her Standing There" was playing and sounded great and...different. I quickly realized that it was directly from the recording session. I snapped it up, along with BackTrack. The best part was being able to hear both versions of "Strawberry Fields Forever". These behind-the-scenes albums (along with Anthology) are mostly curiosity pieces, but it's interesting to hear the process of making music.
We listeners never know all the work it takes to make records. There are songs like "One After 909" which was dull and lifeless in 1962, but a great rocker in 1969. Same song, just done a different way. I've made a collection of songs which were similarly improved. Herb Alpert did "Close To You" as a nice uptempo song but the Carpenters slowed it down and took it to the moon.
Hi Andrew
Thanks for a great video. I’ve commented about the Purple Chick bootlegs in response to an earlier video, briefly:
I downloaded the FLAC files and artwork for pretty well all their Beatles releases years ago, and burnt them to CD-R. So, that is:
83 CDs of the Nagra tapes, edited together as A/B road;
All their UK albums, with contemporaneous EPs, & singles, mono & stereo, with outtakes etc;
Most of the live concerts, although I’ve been selective as they range from awful to excellent sound;
and various other bits and pieces.
What I like about them is their incredibly detailed listing of source materials, their cleaning up to the extent possible, the inclusion of every mix of every song officially released, plus bootleg mixes not released;
and their insistence on all their artwork that their work is fan-created and “never for sale!” Although it is actually, from unscrupulous third parties.
I love these bootlegs dearly. Even with the officially released anniversary albums of remixes and outtakes sitting alongside them, they have a place in my Beatles-obsessed heart.
Apple could release the Melbourne Festival Hall concert pretty easily. It has excellent sound and it’s a great performance, as good as those you mentioned in the video.
Cheers!
Fascinating. I've got most of the Dr Ebbett CDs (from back in the day) - do you know if the Purple Chick 'Deluxe Editions' of the Beatles catalogue are essentially Dr Ebbett repackaged...or something different?
Totally agree re the Festival Hall concert - an excellent recording of the Beatles when they were still an excellent live band - something that was obviously not the case a year later. And the video that exists for 80% of the concert is also probably the best footage re directions, camera angles, editing etc - certainly better than the USA equivalents from that period.
Andrew, they credit Dr Ebbetts (as DESS) for most of the original UK albums, singles and EPs, both stereo and mono if that’s how they were released. They do sound excellent. I do not have the original Dr Ebbetts releases myself, my assumption being they are direct digital copies of his work. US mixes are included if sufficiently different (not just reverbed), usually Dr Ebbetts remasters as well. Purple Chick also include Anthology DVD mixes, YS Songtrack mixes, film mixes etc with the relevant albums.
However, the true joy is that they have rounded up every previously released bootleg they could find for outtakes, rehearsals, unused mixes, jams etc. Purple Chick credit themselves with cleaning up, speed-correcting, de-clicking and so on for the bootleg material. They’ve also created full tracks by editing together different incomplete boot sources of the same takes. Every source is credited by name. Some are marked as “unbooted”, so not circulated before.
For example, the White Album set is 12 CD-Rs worth, 2 stereo plus singles, 2 mono plus singles, then 8 of extras, both excellent and terrible (which PC warn about, they’re very honest.
Richie Unterberger’s rather excellent “The Unreleased Beatles” book from 2006 relies heavily on the incredible work PC did. I was able to match every track he discussed with a PC bootleg. We know other stuff’s come out since, including on Giles Martin’s releases.
The artwork credits are quirky - simulating old-school type-written notes, but highly professional and attractive. They make no attempt to pass the artwork off as official. Even the front album covers have the PC logo prominently displayed, so you know what you’re getting.
It’s an extremely comprehensive set, perhaps even exhausting to the faint-hearted (83 CD-Rs of Nagra Tapes!, 10 BBC Sessions!) and can still be found by the determined in FLAC quality.
Thank you for posting...I always wondered why more widely recorded star groups and record companies didn't follow the Bob Dylan path of "If you can't beat them, join them" and cash in on unreleased, live and alternate tracks. As a Dylan fan, I still eagerly await the next Dylan Bootlegs volume's (now up to 17!) release. I realize that Dylan's approach of hammering out multiple variations of most songs as he records really lends itself to this approach but I am still surprised that the Beatles camp hasn't done more.
Because record companies or artists have to legally buy or license the rights to use the tape recordings from their owners, and the rarer, meaningful or better the quality of the recording, the more expensive the prices and fees are.
The same goes for video clip licensing for documentaries, the whole Sam Loomis leaks of "forever lost" pro shot Kiss shows recorded through the decades that happened on TH-cam in 2022 and the Van Halen at Donington 1984 show leaked last year from the Noel Monk's video archive enlighted the reasons why many recordings haven't and probably will never be published or released at all.
EXACTLY......and frankly, Dylan is smart....he knows the fans are HUNGRY....so....FEED THEM. Duh....no rocket science here.
Dylan has a 60 year recording career, with nearly consistent touring for the last 50 years. Also, Dylan had a tendency to leave some of his best recordings on the cutting room floor, and better his studio recordings on the stage. This can't be said of The Beatles.
The Beatles unearthed treasures may be great fun to listen to and historically important, but almost without exception (I can't think of one), the best Beatles takes were the released takes and they chose the best songs to be on the albums. As someone who owns every circulating Beatles bootleg recording, I think that between the Anthology and Super Deluxe, much of the best stuff is out there now. I don't know if there is a huge audience who wants to hear every take of "I Saw Her Standing There." I think a Jackson-enhanced Star Club would be epic.
In the late 80’s/early 90’s I was able to purchase all 5 volumes of the “Unsurpassed Maters”. Essentially, IMHO, they sound amazing. Volume 3 has 2 versions of “Strawberry Fields” that have yet to see an official release. One version is fast & the other slow. The slow version is my all time favorite, as it has back ground harmonies, that rival anything that has been released by the record company. Right up there with “Here, There and Everywhere” and “Because”. Loved the video by the way! Brought back a lot of great treasure hunting memories!
Apple was extremely slow in catching up! I had most of these bootlegs 40 to 50 years ago, but was extremely glad to see an official release of some of them. The sound quality of most of mine were slightly inferior, to say the least. I did have good quality Shea Stadium and Buddakan recordings, of which when VHS came out I had videos for both shows, Ed Sullivan as well. WBCN played How Do You Do It in the early 70s, which I taped on an 8-track tape. I had the London Palladium concert, which I remixed myself in the early 80s, with what little technology we had at the time. I didn't do anything illegal with any of this stuff, I just tried to improve the quality and made copies for my friends. Good memories. As always, great upload!
I will never forget hearing Unsurpassed Masters and Ultra Rare Trax for the first time and being completely blown away by the clarity of the recordings. It sounded so much better than what was available and the rarity of the alternate tracks (most especially the very different Strawberry Fields Forever) made the whole experience surreal. Even the album covers were gorgeous, my favorite being "The Beatles at the BEEB" with The Beatles walking down a inner city back alley, Paul looking with interest at a "Nonstop Striptease" sign. As always another great segment, thanks for the memory jog Andrew.
Same. Found the Ultra Rare series at a mall record store and still recall the excitement of hearing I Saw Her Standing There in superb quality!
Can you believe it? Just a few months away from 60, and I've never heard of the "Ebbett" series of CDs. Other things, like the Yellow Dog series of discs, I just attributed to a leak among the researchers helping out with the first Lewisham book. Thanks for another amazing video!!
John Barrett of Abbey Rd studios, allegedly.
For me, this is very eye-opening. I am 58, and have bought every official CD release, since 1987. I just wasn't a fan, before.
I was so busy buying the official releases, I wasn't aware of the bootlegs. TH-cam has started my interest. Apple isn't satisfying my needs. I absolutely need a friend to guide me.
Isn't there anyone out there, who has assembled a 100 CD-R set of the best Beatles bootlegs? At this point, Apple obviously doesn't want my money. So where else can I turn? If I am 58 now, how much longer could I be expected to wait, to buy this material from Apple? How much longer will I retain my full range of hearing? I feel as if I want more stuff, right now.
The information in this video is a great lesson to me. I honestly haven't ever seen even one of the CDs shown here.
Andrew, you're hitting it again with me.❤ Call me a completist, however only on some of the bootleg labels. I've got all of yellow dog, all of swingin pig, HMC and their sub labels orange and strawberry, yellow cat...
Dr. Ebbetts never did it for me.
But I can still recall the endless hours I spent, to hunt the other labels. I literally took decades (yes, plural!) to get my yellow dogs complete.
Thanks for doing this video. Hope you'll do more of this...
I was a latecomer to the bootleg world, beginning to trade CDs only in the early 2000s. But the "trading community" was great, and I developed a good-sized collection. I loved hearing demos and earlier takes of familiar music. And I also became a direct customer of Dr. Ebbetts late in his career. I had many friendly e-mail exchanges with him, but I still have no clue who he is.
"KCOK, Stereo OK! With the best rock from The Beatles!" ...this was a bumper I heard constantly in the back of my parents' Trans Am (think Smokey & The Bandit but red) when I knew a Beatles triple play was coming on as a child (born 73). Often it was some combination of Beatles & Fab 4 played consecutively so during my early years I thought it was all the same thing lol (I asked my parents why Something was not on All Things Must Pass, they explained). Love your channel & fun to remember that highly influential radio station in my super young life that introduced me to the Beatleverse.
I also recognize the Deccagone 45s. Back in the mid 1970s, I used to subscribe to a fanzine called, "Strawberry Fields Forever." It was written by a Beatles fan named Joe Pope. If I remember correctly, Joe announced he made a special purchase of the Decca master tapes. He was also closing up his fanzine. But as a present to his subscribers, he was releasing the songs on 45s with picture sleeves. These singles would come out every few months. Then he put all the songs on an album.
All the singles were pressed on colored vinyl with color picture sleeves. The album just came in a blank jacket. I remember wondering just how this guy was able to press his own records? It's not like every city had a record plant.
Although I still have the singles and album, I regret not keeping any of the fanzines or the special flexidisc Christmas editions.
I remember in the late 80's discovering bootlegs. I was so pleased getting my photocopied booklet of bootlegs offered by some gentleman on the east coast. I still have them. Or faxing Japanese shops for their latest offerings and having to send bank payments to them. I was more a Led Zeppelin collector (still am kind of) but Beatles Yellow Dog CD's will always have a special place in my heart. These I could only find at a record shop in a college town about an hour from me or at record shows. Some say the Yellow Dog releases are a bit too fast but it was amazing hearing these outtakes back then knowing that most people never knew these things were out there. In college people would hear me playing these CD's and they'd ask me where did I get such stuff. I made cassette copies for them. Truly a special time.
Except for Think For Yourself Studio Talk which is much too slow :)
@@aisle_of_view Are you saying only that is the slow part and the rest of the CD's are at the correct speed?
The “Back-Track” series was fantastic (circa 1988). The complete Feb/March 1963 session reels on Yellow Dog’s “Ultimate Collection” were unbelievable, even though they ran a little slow. (Recently that material has been speed corrected and mastered beautifully by Eternal Grooves). “Acetates” from Yellow Dog also provided some essential rarities
Thanks, Andrew, for doing the research on this!
I have the Swinging Pig Ultra Rare Trax, vol.1-4, pressed on wonderful translucent colored vinyl, with everything mint.
They did a fantastic job with the jackets, custom inner sleeves and labels, and rare cover photos!
Thanks for explaining why the sound quality is so good.
Several of the Trax are my favorite versions of those Beatles tunes, and think the fans should hear them in their best possible way.
Those sounds, for the most part, have an immediacy, verve and air, that seems to have been polished away, somewhat, in their journey to becoming the official releases.
BTW, I bought them, for $19.99 ea., at “Blue Meanie Records” in San Diego, Ca.
The store is no longer, but I think Blue Meanies still exist🙃
I started collecting Beatles bootlegs in 1979. I have a massive collection of them, and to this day, I still seek them out. Some of the better labels were Yellow Dog, who first introduced us to gems like the full, nearly 9-minutes long version of "It's All Too Much," as well as several impromptu skits The Beatles did in 1967 for Magical Mystery Tour. The Strawberry label gave us George's 15 tracks of his "All Things Must Pass" demos that he played live for Phil Spector, which included 5 songs left off the album. He plays them on acoustic or electric, and nothing else. The standout is a version of him playing "Apple Scruffs," where he's clearly playing guitar, harmonica and a foot tap, (which made it onto the album) all while singing! So much great stuff that provides an equally rich tapestry to their output, but in far more quantity.
A great episode, Andrew. CHUM-FM in Toronto had a copy of the Glyn Johns tape and played parts of it a few times in '69 and '70. I recorded a fair bit of it on reel-to-reel when I could.
My mom bought me my first bootleg, unknowingly. She came home one day with a Japanese Apple copy of A Hard Day's Night and a bootleg, one of those fancy ones with a plain white cover with a photocopied piece of paper. Way to go mom!
A guy used to sell bootlegs from a suitcase at the local freak pub back in the 70s.
They could also be found in head shops and of course, Richard Branson's first Virgin record shop above a boutique in Oxford St London.
I still have a few from those times.
Later I collected quite a few of the Beatle bootlegs when they started coming out on cd.
Nice one Andrew. One of my favourite Beatles subjects.
Great memories there Andrew. Thanks. I went thru the whole scene from the early blank label warped vinyl LPs with poor b/w xeroxed covers thru to the CD era. In the early days, even very bad recordings were priceless and studied hours on end. Then, the revelation of the Ultra Rare Trax, Aritfacts box sets, BBC and GB Nagras was exhilarating. As a consequence, the official releases then of the BBC, Hollywood Bowl, etc. was a bit ho-hum, as we already heard those tracks years before and actually might have felt a little short-changed as we knew how much more there was available. Great episode as always. Any chance of a part 2 about the videos? Thanks again. :- )
Love the Artifacts series...I have all 3 of the Beatles (one being solo works..as you KNOW). I also have an Artifact Led Zep box set or something like that. I love it because it's a sampler of SO many shows!
I remember two Beatles bootlegs that I had... over 50 years ago! One was the 'Get Back To Toronto' album which contained recordings from the 'Get Back' sessions along with the 'John and Yoko 1970 peace message'... which I usually skipped playing. When 'Let It Be' first came out, I was definitely of the opinion that its official tracks did not sound as good as my bootleg.
I also had 'Yellow Matter Custard' which contained 20 or so tracks from the Beatles BBC broadcasts... though I didn't know that at the time because it wasn't mentioned anywhere on the cheap cover. I just thought the cuts were early recordings never officially released by the group. Not only that, all the tracks had been mastered slightly sped up.
I still liked owning the thing!
Great video. I've been waiting for one on the bootlegs for a while now. I have a lot of them and would love to know what is in your archives. Thanks for putting this one together for us. Cheers !!!!
Among the most interesting and elaborate bootlegs I have are from Empress Valley Supreme Disk (EVSD) in Japan, who seem to specialize in Zeppelin boots. Just for fun I've purchased three Beatles bootleg CD box sets: 'The Collection' (10 CDs), a boot of the MFSL vinyl box from the early '80s that includes (possibly) needle drops and digital dubs from MFSL cassettes; 'The Beatles Original Mono-Record Box' (6 CDs), a similar take on the red vinyl mono box from the early '80s; and 'Hours of Darkness: Edited Highlights from the Let it Be Sessions' (12 CDs). IMO these are far better packaged than most legtimate CD box sets. Some years ago I acquired two boots in mainland China that mimic the look of the 'Red' and 'Blue' sets, but come in tin boxes and have chronologically random tracklistings. While the EVSD sets sound good, these are on the shrill side...
Great video, as always! I have several Dr. Ebbetts cds and still love & listen to them quite often.
Back in the 90s, there was a monthly "Zine" called The 910 which covered new Beatles bootleg releases. Doug Sulpy was the editor and it was an exciting read.
Thanks for another great video Andrew. I spent at least one weekend a month scouring downtown Toronto, hunting for these bootleg treasures. There were tons of record shops. I'd spend hours flipping through vinyl records. I remember finding copies of "The Beatles at the Beeb" series long before the official releases. Finally 'Some other Guy', 'I'll Be On My Way" & Soldier Of Love" were mine. All mine!!!
The first two i bought were called Rarer than Rare & Vancouver '64.
Favorites would be the Ultra Rare Trax, Beatles Not For Sale and a repress of Spicy Beatle Songs on Splatter vinyl that i believe is kind of rare.
It wasn't just the music, it was the thrill of the hunt. In the vinyl years you had to wait to get home to hear what "secrets" awaited in those grooves. Awesome times.
There's an excellent book called Black Market Beatles, circa 1995. It is one of the best resources on the subject of Beatle bootlegs. It includes a 30 page "Underground" discography, something like 1500 entries and a lot of photographs.
Now, I must admit your video and reading all the comments has got me all revved up and inspired me to pull a few of these out and have a listen. Cheers to all
Glad you enjoyed it. Have fun listening!
Another excellent video Andrew!!
Thanks again, Tiger!
I always enjoyed the Dr. Ebbett bootlegs from year ago. Great video, thanks for sharing.
This brings back some fond memories. I got some bootlegs in the 1970s on cassette made copies and used to sell schoolmates cassette copies of them. Some of the pieces were the early version of "Teddy Boy", and "I Am the Walrus" with an extra bar in it that was cut out on the final. "What's the New Mary Jane" and some chatter in between takes was on these bootlegs, also. Still a huge Beatles fan. Thanks for your great You Tube series!
Great topic and should be explored further and deeper- very educational!!
We will be returning to this subject again soon.
Great video. I knew the boots were and had been out there. Your historical presentation of them is excellent. Thanks.
Many thanks!
Cool!!! I’m was waiting for this!!!
My curiosity was peaked and so I tracked down some digital copies of Dr. Ebbett’s stuff. Full uk mono and stereo. Went through a laborious, tedious, mind numbing process of transferring them to my Apple Music library, without them being auto-replaced by the official ones. I have to say, I’m very much happy with them. What they may lack in sharp detail and dynamics, they more than make up for in drive and mix, especially the mono stuff. They are my go-to for when I want to listen to the Beatles, at least anything before Abbey Road/Let it Be.
0:34 Andrew, fantastic information as always. I wondered how and when beatles bootleg recordings started. Thank you.
My pleasure, Chris!
A great topic for a video, Andrew! I really enjoyed seeing all the different LPs on various labels such as the Dr Ebbett ones. Such a shame that some of those recordings weren't released officially but maybe some will see the light of day in the future!
Glad you enjoyed it, Nick!
The funny thing about "Dr. Ebbett" was that he spent more time, and was generally more interested in getting the cover art correct than in the audio. He just happened to have great equipment which made for great transfers of the audio. This is directly out of his mouth, as I met him at a Beatles Memorabilia show many years ago.
Are you certain it was the real Dr. Ebbetts? He was careful about revealing his actual identity as little as possible.
@@eblackadder3 Yes, we were introduced by a mutual friend at Beatlefest.
One thing I must admit that has me cheering the invention of the computer; the fact that many bootleg CDs are just so easy to copy. That gave the newer class of bootleggers the keys to the kingdom, and prices on the CDs went from $25 and up to as low as $5. Needless to say, I grabbed for all I was worth. And they’re largely AMAZING.
Thanks for covering this topic, one dear to my heart for sure. I owned sooooo many of these. Years ago I bought a hard drive, digitized and copied all of them, and started putting them in chronological order, using the two Sulpy books and other reference materials (surely something has supplanted those books now?), and I still add to it to this day every once in a while. It's very handy!
I remember discovering bootlegs for sale in record fairs in the 80s. They definitely appeared rather enticing with the contents although they were about twice the price of most regular albums plus you never really knew what you were going to get - bootleggers didn't always get things right. Being a teenager, funds were limited so I tended to stick to collecting the official releases or solo albums. I remember being at a massive record fair at the Birmingham NEC in the early 90s when it got raided, there were wheelie bins absolutely brimming with confiscated CDs and box sets. I think bootlegs have played a massive part over the years as they've demonstrated to the record companies that there is significant interest in outtakes and live recordings. We would probably have never had the Anthology CDs otherwise or the deluxe box sets. Also amazing to think that Bob Dylan's official bootleg series has produced 17 volumes!
Yes, when I bought my copy of "Kum Back" in 1970 it was double the going price for a single LP. LP's went for $3.50 then, but "Kum Back" was $7. Still well worth it. I wanted to buy the Dylan bootleg "Great White Wonder" but it was a double LP and prohibitively expensive. I think they were going for $30 in 1970, which was ridiculously pricey at the time.
100% correct. Bootlegs opened a door for the industry to make more money, lol. But I love those bootleggers. Cool guys.
If you bought the Hotwacks catalogs then you'd be pretty up to date on the sound quality before you bought them.
When I was young my cousin had Sweet Apple Trax record and I was always fascinated with it and the Let it Be album. About 5 years ago I found a mint gatefold copy of it in a record shop and scooped it up. It brings back so many great memories listening to it even though the sound quality isn't the greatest. The cover is really cool.
The finding is half the fun. Like finding buried treasure.
Great deal of entertainment here! Fantastic video. Thank you. Never ever stop doing this.
Thank you. Glad you enjoyed it!
Another great episode. I'll have to look into some bootleg CDs. The only somewhat related one I have is Traveling WilburrysVol 2 (Live in Japan?)
The Ultra Rare Trax and Unsurpassed Masters series were so good. I still prefer them to the Anthology discs as a listening experience. But it was the BBC 9-disc box set from Great Dane Records that really established the gold standard for what bootlegs are capable of. I remember wiring money to an account in Singapore to purchase my copy, holding my breath that I would actually receive it. And while Lord Reith (and others) have expanded and improved the BBC collection, I still keep my Great Dane box prominently displayed on my shelf.
10:03 I made that album cover and that bootleg stole it!
I’m a typical fan from the 90s. All these beatlegs (yes, that’s what they were called!) popped up online on some sites, forums or some p2p file sharing program. Every once in a while bootleg CDs appeared in local stores as well. My iTunes and my iPod was loaded with beatlegs. I proudly looked at how I had all 14, 29? takes of certain songs and listened to them while appreciating how the Beatles carved their songs to perfection.
Back then, Yellow Submarine song track was the only remix there was and we wanted anthology 4! Surely there were more cool outtakes in their vaults, no? Collecting beatlegs kept the Beatles flame alive during these times. Apple corpse didn’t give us much until 2009. We wanted remixes (not lousy EQ experiments), more outtakes, more unseen footage of let it be sessions….. some fans started doing mashups of the songs. Yeah, of course the Beatles won’t do an official mashup, would they?? it’s a fun concept… It’s amazing how all of this actually became true.
it’s impossible to satisfy a Beatles fan, but I must say, I love the amount of the stuff they’re giving us these days! Thank god for these bootlegs! Indeed they are important part of Beatles history, no doubt.
love your vids man real interesting always!
Glad you like them!
I bought tons of bootleg Beatles CDs in the late eighties through about 1995. Mostly they were on the "Yellow Dog" label. A local record store in Atlanta Georgia, whose owner was a Beatles nut, sold them out in the open. I got to hear the Esher Demos decades before they were officially released. My other favorite was the full rooftop concert. The last one I bought was called "Beatles Over Atlanta & Shea Stadium," which I think was made locally. The CD inserts were photocopied and the CD was a CD-R, unlike the highly polished Yellow Dog CDs. When the Beatles Anthologies came out, I stopped buying Beatles bootlegs all together. By the mid to late 90s, pretty much every bootleg out there could be found in file form on the Internet.
I had a bootleg with most of the Get Back album (including "The Walk") called Renaissance Minstrels when I was a teenager in the early 2000s. It had a xerox'd copy of the original art meant for the white album with a rubber stamp of the title.
I have a lot of them, but the one that is a (magical) mystery to me is one called, "30 Days". Clearly it is from the "Get Back" sessions, and, when I made it into CD's, it came out to 50 CD's. Yet I NEVER hear anything mentioned about it.
They did release the Rooftop Concert officially, in full, in really fantastic quality, in January of last year i think. It's on vinyl, CD, and all streaming platforms.
You're right. Unfortunately not on physical media. But yes, you can still stream it, officially....
@@pastmastersfool oh! I swear I thought I saw a vinyl for record store day, but could've been a bootleg or I'm just misremembering all together. Thank you!
@@johnyboytrack29 Yeah. That vinyl is a bootleg. It looks really great. I bought it at the Beatlesweek convention in Liverpool... and of course, ya olde record shoppe still might sneak it into the crate...
Another great video! Thanks!
When I first got into The Beatles in the late 80's, I wasn't interested in bootlegs at all. Then, in the 90's, I picked up a Nirvana bootleg cd with songs I'd never heard before and my interest in bootlegs was sparked. I hunted down and downloaded every Beatles bootleg I could find without even listening to them! I just wanted to gather as much material as I could and I would sort it out later. I still have most of them.
Thanks again for another fun and informative video!
Glad you enjoyed it, Aaron!
I had that Boot leg Kum Back in the 70's , of course someone 'borroweed' it and I never got it back. Fast Forward to 2023 I found one on eBay for about $20 . It plays perfectly 👍🏻
Kum Back was my first Beatles album. Actually, not mine. It belonged to my brother, and I knew nothing much about the Beatles. It was a curious looking album and I loved the songs on it. I just realized all these years later that it was the first Beatles bootleg.
Great video Andrew. I remember buying Ultra Rare Tracks 1 & 2 as a 2LP at a record fair in in 1987-8…….game-changer
The legacy of Dr. Ebbett until this day lives on among bootlegers since until this day many of them work their asses of on the pacakge presentation or their discs mimicking official albums or products as much as they can, to the point that even band members fell into the impression of their products being official ones such as text font, art style, photos from an specific era, and this on covers, disc label and even inner booklets.
My take is if you want to buy bootlegs in general do it on CD due to the price factor, even more so if it's a bootleg box set that is being on sale on both CD and vinyl set because many bootleg vinyl box sets despite being cool looking coloured pressings and their packaging as superb as they can is much eye candy as the Star Wars Special Editions CGI changes, due to the poor sound quality of the audio sources that are used 90% of the times bootlegs on vinyl ends up sounding like vegetables being fried underwater.
Thanks a lot, that was truly fantastic, as always. I got aware of bootleg albums in my early teens at the beginning of the 90s, when there was that incredible wave of CDs which by then, were legally tolerated in France and thus quite easily available. Yet I couldn't afford them and instead of buying them, I used to make friends with records and hi-fi equipment sellers, just to have them played. That's how I got the opportunity to hear one of the volumes of the Ultra Rare Trax series, on a Bang & Olufsen stereo, that was such an incredible experience I'll never forget. Later on, I got a few second hands CDs such as Hodge Podge on Yellow Dog Records or All You Need Is This (featuring my very favourite live version of Twist And Shout) on Living Legend. But my true treasures still are those digipacks of mono albums on a fake Odeon label, I think these were made in Germany and I could easily find them in the mid to late 2000s. They had alternate artworks and bonus tracks (most of which being already well-known thru Unsurpassed Masters and Ultra Rare Trax) and sometimes odd pairings such as the Yesterday & Today comp b/w the US Revolver. Now I'm just longing for a release of Carnival Of Light, I just hope it'll surface someday, I've been waiting for it since 1995 when Mark Herstgaard's book was published and brought me my first solid documentation about unreleased material by The Beatles. Thanks again, you do such a fantastic job, such a pleasure to follow your work !
Thanks Julien. Glad you enjoyed it!
@@Parlogram My pleasure, you're welcome !
Thanks again for this video Andrew. I have a lot of boots and I think at that time (80's en 90's) I was very pleased with these. I love the Ultra Rare Trax and Unsurpassed Masters cd's. Take care and looking forward to you're next video. Cheers Fred.
Hi! There is an interesting Beatles bootleg book! Beatles not for sale. By Belmo. And another one is Black Market Beatles by Berkenstadt and Belmo. Thank you Andrew and all of you out there! Ciao
Great video as usual! I think if there's ever a case to be made for bootlegs is in terms of availability. When I discovered the Beatles for the first time when I was 10, the only reason I was able to listen to their catalogue was because of bootleg cds. The official material was not only too expensive for my parents to afford, but also nowhere to be found in my hometown. Even today, the official releases are way too expensive for me. The same goes for the movies and documentaries. I wanted to watch Yellow Submarine with my nephew, but found that none of the movies are available on any of the streaming platforms (at least not in Mexico). I had to import a blu-ray to be able to watch it. There's an interview with Argentinian singer Ale Sergi where he talks about how he's been given bootleg cds to autograph and when the interviewer asks if he autographed them he responds that the problem is the prices and availability, which is something the label has to work on, and that he's not going to be offended by people wanting to listen to his music.
Another gem. Thanks Andrew!
Glad you enjoyed it, Tommy!
Good video Andrew. Well I started buying Beatle boots back in 85 my brother and I collected them together so we have them at his place. The unsurpassed masters, and ultra rare tracks. I have on hard drive now. Tons of Beatles shows and outtakes on two hard drives. Plus with the other official releases.
Being in the Boston area, I heard the WBCN broadcast, and got my copy of Kum Back when it came out, within the next few weeks. I've been collecting Beatle boots since then. At this point, I think over 150 lps, and easily over 500 cds. Been a great hobby, needless to say. Agree with your assessment of the Ebbett's cds: I have a number of them, and they were really nice at the time. He did create some unique titles, which Apple would be well served to duplicate. Thanks for another great video, Andrew.
I love that when talking about the Hamburg tapes you showed the cover from the Lord himself. :)
The Shea concert isn’t even the audio from the show itself. Although there does seem to be a brief clip of Ringo singing ‘Act Naturally’ that sounds live and not just of the record they overdubbed onto the footage.
I understand that to be true about the Shea Stadium concert. Yet, the film and the audio look well matched. @Parlogram , do you have any more detail on how they matched the post concert recording to the film?
Andrew,as always a great video,I remember back in the 80's I got all my bootlegs from dealers in the USA, they were for nothing even with 'Airmail Postage' one of my favourite live albums is 'Live at The Sam Houston Colleseum' in Texas,it was broadcast live on local FM radio,so the sound is pretty good compered with the earlier live stuff,also for good studio outtakes dont forget 'The John Barrett Tapes.
The Paris concert cd bootleg I have has near pristine sound quality and with today’s technology would be an outstanding release.
I had most of these (except the ebbets). The first was "sessions" which i got when i was around 16 in 1990. I was ecstatic.
Cheers Andrew for this excellent video I grew up in the 70s and took a fleeting interest in the beatles since john lennon passed I was a big fan of the beatles and love these bootlegs, I missed out on the bootlegs so after a few years ago I got really into them and now with modern technology I am able to source them on different websites, keep up the good work would love a follow up to this video.
Thanks! I will be doing more on this subject in the future.
I collected a large number of LP bootlegs from about 1980 to '88. Some were merely blank white album sleeves with a photocopied cover glued on. Among my singles was the "How Do You Do It?" displayed at the end of this video. By luck, I unwittingly bought a "Butcher Cover" album at a swap meet for 25 cents. I didn't realize what I had until I read Nicholas Shaffner's book.
This video was interesting. Any plans on doing a deeper dive into the individuals who made the discs, or giving more details about a particular Beatles' bootleg series?
I'll always prefer high quality sounding bootlegs over whatever McCartney and Apple release because they're not edited, remixed or remastered. They're as nature intended, they way they were recorded and mixed. Whey the Anthology albums came out in the mid 1990's it left me disappointed, specifically for songs such as 12-Bar Original, While My Guitar Gently Weeps acoustic demo, What's the New Mary Jane, and Teddy Boy.
Great episode, thanks!
Glad you enjoyed it!
The Star Club would be great to have in stereo 😊
I've got a CD of Get Back which has the Blue Album front cover picture that is the second Glyn Johns mix. It's easy to see (well, hear actually) why it was rejected. Not in any way due to the production quality but more to the overall lack of enthusiasm by the group in the music. The other bootleg I have is a needle drop of the German Magical Mystery Tour with the true stereo mixes of the side 2 tracks. It sounds great. I have a vinyl copy of the German MMT that is in mint condition. I bought it as an import from a record store in Atlanta, GA called Peaches in 1981. I paid all of $15 for it. Try getting one for that price today! Peaches was a great store with two locations one near down town Atlanta and one south of town. They were huge stores that were the size of supermarkets. Best of all they had a HUGE import section which stocked all of the Beatles EMI/Paralophone albums from England as well as the reissued EPs. That's when I stocked up on all the UK albums and never played my Capitol albums again. They never stocked bootlegs as I remember. Like Andrew mentioned, those were hard finds back in those days unless you went to a record and tape show where they were available in abundance.
Where do you start? Since there are so many bootlegs, I’d like to hear a curated album of like the 20 best essential bootleg tracks.
For what concerns the BBC sessions, there is also a 9 CD box set from the early 1990s titled "The complete BBC sessions" and produced by the famous Great Dain Records. There is also a Christmas bootleg obtained from the official fan club's 45rpm vinyls that were sent to the members every year at Christmas.
I found Ultra Rare Tracks on vinyl in a record store in Virginia Beach, Va. around 1989. 2 records in a slightly larger single sleeve that were volumes 1 and 2. I love the sound of this set. my bootleg of the Decca sessions is slightly muddy, but good. white vinyl and part of a 2 record set, with one record being a picture disc with a 1982 Pete Best interview on one side, and 1965/65 Beatle press conferences on the other. around 1991, or so, I came across a bootleg of one of Paul's concerts from his '89-'90 world tour. it was a show performed in The Netherlands and even started out with the audio from the 20 minute film that began the concert. it's an excellent soundboard recording. since I saw him perform at RFK Stadium during that tour I considered this a nice souvenir of the concert.
This was very informative and entertaining as always! Well done!
I cherish the Dr Ebbets albums and have them added to my personal Apple Music library. Good stuff!
I also adore the ‘Peter Sellers album’ 😎
Thanks Nate! Glad you enjoyed it! 😎
this was great to watch
Glad you enjoyed it!
I'd like to see a run down of the top ten most elaborately packaged albums. Comes to mind are the full sized inner photo package for the who's quadrophenia and the gorgeous klaus voorman illustrations for Ringo.
Went to a couple of Beatles conventions in London in '97 and acquired a few bootleg CD's. Still have them and the sound is great. My favourites are Anthology's 4,5,6. They're similar to the EMI issues or seem to be in the same collection. Another good one is The Alternate Revolver.
Beatles bootlegs are still needed and appreciated these days especially with the anemic lacklustre choices that Apple sprinkles in with the Beatles Super Deluxe series.
I remember the "Deccagone" colored-vinyl 45's from the late 1970's, when they were on sale at Rather Ripped Records in Berkeley, California. I bought one: Buddy Holly's "Crying, Waiting, Hoping" b/w Meredith Willson's "'Til There Was You." I gnashed my teeth in frustration until I was able to buy a bootleg LP copy of the complete Decca audition tape … well, 15 songs from it, anyway. (The Beatles are known to have recorded two more songs than were on that bootleg LP, "Mr. Moonlight" and "Red Sails in the Sunset," but other Beatles performances of those were available, "Red Sails" on the Star Club tape and "Mr. Moonlight" on an official LP.) I remember my then-girlfriend and I listened to the Decca audition, and both of us were thinking, "If THAT was what we'd had to go on, we wouldn't have signed them either!" I remember buying a copy of "Get Back to Toronto," a bootleg LP of the "Get Back"/Let It Be" sessions, without a cover for 25 cents at a record store in San Francisco. I also remember buying a copy of "Yellow Matter Custard" with two additional tracks, the Hamburg recordings of "My Bonnie" and "When the Saints Go Marching In," on the start of each side, both of which were mastered louder and in considerably better sound than the BBC broadcasts contained on the rest of the LP. And in a local record store in San Diego I just spotted a batch of Japanese CD's that purported to contain alternate takes of the official LP's in covers duplicating the official CD's.
I was reading this list online back in 2009 or so, and I believe it may have been either in Wikipedia or some other website, about the most bootlegged famous or popular bands and musicians in the world. That is, it was a list of the most famous, popular, or well known bands and musicians whose unreleased or unofficial content have been passed around unbeknownst to the copyright holders the most. The Beatles ranked Number 1 on that list, with Nirvana ranking in as a pretty close Number 2. I was so fascinated!
I discovered bootlegs when searching for TH-cam uploads of tracks from the Anthology 1 and 3 albums, as I only had access to my father’s CD copy of Anthology 2. That’s when I discovered uploads of tracks from bootleg recordings on TH-cam, and dove right into it. I’m a lot like you, Andrew, not only in that we share the same first name, but also in that the demos, outtakes, rehearsals, and songs that were never released entirely were the bootlegged material I found the most fascinating. Demos of songs I’ve already heard several times before, in particular, were my favorite, as to me, they had a tendency to breathe new life into said songs.
The Braun-Kircherr tapes (featuring Stu Suttcliffe) and the Esher demos were what inspired me to pick up the guitar, which I had my first lesson in how to play it just one week before I turned 13. Late last year, I turned 27, and now is now. HA!
Cheers.
The Get Back.sessions were heavily bootlegged in the 70s I had several including the Glyn Johns mix which was pretty good
For me, the most fascinating thing I've heard is the evolution of the song "Strawberry Fields Forever." Every take or remix I've heard has been fascinating. I know they've released several takes, but I think it would be cool if they released the entire evolution of the song, all 26 takes (or whatever).
I was collecting Beatles bootlegs on vinyl way back. Studio outtakes etc. They were around way before the ones you mention.
Me too - but most of them (that I had/have) sounded terrible. As Andrew points out, bootleg CDs lifted their audio quality game considerably.
I have a lovely collection of all of the Pear Records CD Bootlegs that i picked up over various years and from Camden Market in 2007
I bought a bunch of vinyl bootlegs in the early 80s, the kind with a plain white cover, blank labels, and a photocopied sheet that had the contents on it. I did manage to find one Beatles bootleg on colored vinyl, but as I recall it also contained a lot of non-Beatles material like Peter Sellers' L S Bumble Bee.
Nowadays I know of one store that specializes in used vinyl and CDs. A bit more than half of the CDs in the shop are bootlegs, there being virtually no market for "legit" CDs anymore.
Oh I have so many Beatles Bootlegs! I inherited loads from my parents, on vinyl. Live at Washing DC and Japan, Yellow Matter Custard (BBC sessions) are what I can remember off hand.
I also have a couple of CDs under a Pear Label. Obviously a parody of Apple. Alternate Sgt Pepper (mainly the mono mix) & Alternate Magical Mystery Tour are the titles.
One of the main stories on Bootlegs, is that I don't live far from Liverpool at all, and years ago the Cavern Walks,, a mini shopping centre type place in the actual location of the original Cavern, had a Beatles/Liverpool tourist shop and they had a couple of early era bootleg CD, Live at the Star Club, Decca record and Tony Sheridan recordings. I think I got the Tony Sheridan ones. I find it funny that it was so close to official Beatles shops and locations.
Hi Andrew my first boot was kum back. Back in 1972 in Brooklyn I went to that store every week
.ihave dozens of boots paul john George and ringo. I think there great some better than others I love em.