THE CASE OF THE BELITTLED BEATLES TAPES:
Perry Mason would have known just how to handle it.
THE CASE OF THE BELITTLED BEATLES TAPES ... IN WHICH THE SUBJECT OF THE CONTROVERSY ITSELF BECOMES THE MOST PROVOCATIVE WITNESS
By Harry Castleman & Wally Podrazik
TELEVISION producer, hitting pay dirt after numerous flops, once complained that failure brings the balm of anonymity while success brings lawsuits. Nowhere has this been more apparent than in rock music. Rock musicians have spent so much time in court lately that it's only a matter of time before albums like "Bruce Springsteen Alive and Well at District Appeals Court 263" top the charts.
Oddly enough, the Beatles, the most popular rock group ever, were some how able to ward off the bulk of such lawsuits during the Sixties, even while they were leading the gravy train of profit. Since their break-up in 1969, however, they have joined the Seventies litany of suits and counter-suits; they sued each other, Allen Klein sued them, they sued Allen Klein, the U.S. Government tried to deport John and Yoko, George was accused of stealing My Sweet Lord from He's So Fine, John was accused of stealing Come Together from You Can't Catch Me, an independent record producer was accused of stealing the tracks from John's "Rock 'n' Roll" album, and on and on. Unfortunately, most of these court cases, though involving sums up to $1 million, are usually steeped in extremely technical claims and counter claims. Not very exciting to a fan of the legal process, weaned on reruns of Perry Mason.
One case with a better-than-average plot has been that of the Hamburg Beatles tapes. These Hamburg tapes were made at the behest of Ted "King-size" Taylor, who was performing at Hamburg's Star Club in 1962 along with the Beatles.
Taylor had a friend record a few nights' shows on a mono Grundig tape recorder with a low-fl mono handheld micro phone. Along with Taylor's group, the Dominoes, the tape featured the Beatles' performance. A few years later, when the Beatles were well on the way to topping Jesus Christ in the world's popularity poll, Taylor realized he was sitting on a possible windfall. While other equally crude recordings existed of live Beatles performances, Taylor's was one of the earliest, and, more important, was the only known recording of the group in a club as opposed to an outdoor concert. Beatles scripture tells of their club days as being the true molding era, when the staid Liverpool beat group was transformed into a hat, tight powerhouse band. A tape of such a performance would be an invaluable look at history in the making.
Taylor offered the tapes to Beatles manager Brian Epstein, who turned him down, feeling they were of no commercial value, and that was the end of it for years. By the early 1970's, when the group had split up, interest in the Beatles as history (not just a regular act) picked up noticeably, and the market was ready for a "documentary" package like the Hamburg tapes. Allan Williams, who had briefly managed the Beatles around the time of the Ham burg performances, became the main driving force urging issuance of the old tapes. Finally, in 1976, a deal was made with Lingasong records in London and the Double H Licensing Corporation in New York City to release them as a double LP. Months of painstaking work followed to bring the sound on the muddy tapes as close to "modern" quality as possible. Earlier this year, just before the scheduled release, lawyers for the Beatles filed a dramatic last-minute claim to halt the tapes' issuance, but the judge ruled that Lingasong clearly marked the tapes for what they were, old tapes, and the Beatles had months to complain before, and didn't. So, in April, "The Beatles Live! At the Star Club in Hamburg, Germany, 1962" finally made it to the eager hands of Beatles aficionados around the world.
IT seems, however, as if a major error was made by the legal eagles of EMI/ Parlophone. Now, if Perry Mason had been handling their case, no doubt he would have realized that the prime question was when the tapes were re corded, and he would have tried to claim that Lingasong had no right to is sue the LP because the Beatles were under exclusive contract to EMI when they were made. Far be it from us, who haven't even applied to law school, to bring this up now, but the question of BEATLES TAPES when the tapes were recorded has never, apparently, been answered. It seems everybody's assumed the Star Club tapes were made before the Beatles signed with EMI. The liner notes on the LP say as much, being quite vague as to an exact recording date.
"Sometime" in 1962 is all one is led to assume. But since the Beatles signed with EMI in August of 1962, exactly when in 1962 is far from irrelevant.
A brief historical investigation (the sort of thing Perry Mason franchised out to his flunky, Paul Drake) would turn up an easily traceable pattern. The Star Club opened in April of 1962 (so the tapes obviously were recorded no earlier). Ringo Starr did not officially replace Pete Best as the Beatles' drummer until August 1962, but Ringo had met the group almost two years earlier during early visits to Hamburg. In fact, Ringo "stood in" for Best every now and again. The Star Club liner notes say that Ringo just "happened" to be doing just that the night the tapes were made. So far, it all seems believable.
The Beatles made three visits to the Star Club during 1962. They played there from about April 23 to June 4, from November 1-14, and from December 18, 1962, to January 1, 1963.
Since the Beatles' first EMI/Parlophone release (Love Me Do/P.S. I Love You) came out on October 4, 1962, Taylor obviously would have to have recorded the group sometime between April and June if the tapes were made before signing with EMI. Fine. Or is it? Take a look at the songs played on the record. At the time, the Beatles did do some original numbers, but their stage act, like that of any bar band, was mostly made up of other people's hits (Chuck Berry's Sweet Little Sixteen, Little Richard's Long Tall Sally, etc.).
The Beatles prided themselves on being able to pick up on the latest sounds that were big in the States, but if the Hamburg tape was made before June 4, John and Paul would have to have spent a lot of time monitoring a short wave set. Three songs they performed on the LP (the Isley Brothers' Twist and Shout, Tommy Roe's Sheila, and Arthur Alexander's Where Have You Been All My Life?) were only released in May of 1962.
Now if this were Perry Mason, Perry would begin pounding away at these inconsistencies:
"Do you mean to say that the Beatles besieged record shops in Hamburg, asking for import singles, and then spent hours listening to discs on record players they didn't own? Learning to mimic them, when they barely had enough time, after playing for hours, to eat and sleep? No, that seems unlikely.
It's equally doubtful that they were prescient enough to know exactly how Frank Ifield would adapt I Remember You (an old hit from the war film The Fleet's In), which he didn't release until June 20. The Beatles' version was a complete copy of Ifield's, even down to Lennon's exaggerating the harmonica riff perfectly!"
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THE BEATLES: Live! at the Star Club in Hamburg, Germany, 1962.
The Beatles (vocals and instrumentals). I Saw Her Standing There; Roll Over Beethoven; Hippy Hippy Shake; Sweet Little Sixteen; Lend Me Your Comb; Your Feet's Too Big; Red Sails in the Sunset; Every body's Trying to Be My Baby; Matchbox; Talkin ‘Bout You; Shimmy Shake; Long Tall Sally; Remember You; Twist and Shout; Mr. Moonlight; A Taste of Honey; Besame Mucho; Reminiscing; Kansas City; Ain't Nothing Shaldn' Like the Leaves on a Tree; To Know Her Is to Love Her; Little Queenie; Falling in Love Again; Ask Me Why; Be Bop a Lula; Hallelujah, I Love Her So. LINOASONO LS-2-7001 two discs $13.98, or BELLAPHON BLS 5560 two discs $11.98.
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At this point in our Mason script it would now be five minutes before the hour. Perry would suddenly pull a copy of a Buddy Holly single from a bag de livered by Paul Drake moments earlier.
"No," Perry would say, "I doubt the Beatles were that farsighted. In fact. . . ." Whereupon (there's only a minute or so left in the show) a record-company executive would jump up from the audience and yell:
"Yes, it's true. That's a copy of the Buddy Holly single Reminiscing-Coral Q 72455-which wasn't released until September 7, 1962. Since the Beatles were in England then, and didn't return to Hamburg until two months later, the Hamburg tapes couldn't have been re corded before November of 1962, well after the Beatles were signed to EMI.
In fact, after they released their first single! I admit it! Take me away!" Here, Hamilton Burger would leap up, "But your honor, we are all familiar with Don McLean's American Pie.
We all know Buddy Holly died in a plane crash in 1959. How could Reminiscing not have been released until 1962?" Perry, with a slightly disdainful look, would respond: "Simple. Although Reminiscing was recorded in 1958, it was never released, while legal rights to it and other Buddy Holly songs were contested. In 1962, Norman Petty finally won the right to issue these songs.
The first of the group, Reminiscing, was released in the United States on August 14, 1962, and in Britain three weeks later, on September 7. This was a full two months after the Beatles re turned from Hamburg, almost on the very day they were in my client's studio, recording Love Me Do." Judge bangs gavel, "Case closed." Burger is seen sulking as scene fades to commercial.
Sixty seconds later, in the postscript back at the office, as Della brings in sandwiches, Paul asks:
"But Perry, how did you suspect Buddy Holly?" Perry, ignoring the sandwiches while leafing through some Law Review digest, looks up and smiles.
"I didn't. I just listened to the album and heard two references to 'the Holiday season' and 'Christmas.' Obviously, it had to be in November or December." Fade to credit roll and to black.
IF only life could imitate art, even old Perry Mason art, then it would be much easier to be a lawyer, and news reports of these suits would be a lot more fun to read. Needless to say, EMI didn't use our proposed scenario with our very own "smoking gun." The Hamburg tapes were released on Lingasong.
Perhaps EMI decided a lawsuit just wasn't worth it, what with their own "Hollywood Bowl" live LP doing better in sales. Of course, there's still time. Some budding legal wizard at EMI could study our script, memorize his lines, and come bounding into court with a nice, retroactive lawsuit demanding lost royalties. Lawyers cringe from ever really closing the book on any case, and this one, which began a full fifteen years ago, is truly ripe for a new addendum. A lawsuit, like a case of poison ivy, festers long after you've forgotten where it came from.
Excerpted from the book The Beatles Again, by Harry Castleman and Wally Podrazik, to be published this month by Pierian Press, P.O. Box 1808, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106, $7.95. (Copyright 1977 by Walter J. Podrazik and Harry Castleman.)
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