User:Meaigs/Forthlin Road Tapes

The Forthlin Road Tapes (also known as The Braun-Kirchherr Tapes) are private recordings by The Beatles, performed at Paul McCartney's childhood home on Forthlin Road, Liverpool, in April and June/July 1960. These are the only known recordings with their bassist Stuart Sutcliffe at the time. At the beginning of 1960 Stuart Sutcliffe joined the group, a permanent drummer was not found until August 1960 with Pete Best. In April 1960 the group called itself the Silver Beetles, in July 1960 they renamed themselves The Silver Beatles. From August 1960, the group removed the Silver suffix in the name and henceforth called themselves The Beatles.

In April 1960, The Beatles, consisting of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Stuart Sutcliffe, recorded several tracks on a Grundig TK 20 tape recorder at the McCartney family home at 20 Forthlin Road in Liverpool. The tape recorder was borrowed from a neighbor of the McCartneys, Charles Hodgson. Some sources mention that Paul McCartney's brother, Michael McCartney, contributed some percussion by banging on a guitar case. According to Paul McCartney's recollection, the recordings took place in April 1960 in the McCartney family bathroom.

Paul McCartney said of this in a 1994 interview with Mark Lewisohn: "Sometimes I would borrow a tape recorder, a Grundig with a little green eye, and we would kind of go to my house and try to record things [...] But they were very much home demos. Very bad quality."

Further recordings were made in June or July 1960, again at McCartney's family home. Several copies were made of the tapes. A friend of the Beatles from Hamburg - Hans-Walther Braun -, Astrid Kirchherr and Charles Hodgson received tapes. It is not clear which songs were on Charles Hodgson's tape. The Hodgson tape is believed to have contained three songs from Kirchherr's and eleven songs from Braun's tape. In addition, there are said to be recordings of the songs Ask Me Why, When I'm Sixty-Four and Winston's Walk on Hodgson's tape, but these were not released legally or on bootleg. So it remains speculative whether the recordings exist. On January 6, 1967, part of I'll Follow the Sun was played on German television in the program "The Beatles Zeiten in Hamburg". The source came from Hans-Walther Braun's tape. According to Braun, after the song had been broadcast on television, he was offered 10,000 marks (adjusted for purchasing power in today's currency: around €20,280). In the mid-1970s, Astrid Kirchherr was offered 50,000 marks (adjusted for purchasing power in today's currency: around €73,160) by a recording company, which she rejected. In 1994 Astrid Kirchherr gave her tape to George Harrison.

In the late 1970s, probably in 1977, Kirchherr and Braun gave their tapes to Frank Dostal, a former member of the Rattles and Beatles acquaintance. Dostal technically revised both tapes in the Teldec studios in Hamburg and made three copies of the entire recordings, which he gave to Braun and Kirchherr; he kept a copy for himself. In 1977, EMI offered Frank Dostal 200,000 marks (adjusted for purchasing power in today's currency: around €264,950) for his tape, and he too rejected the offer.

The existence of the tapes became known to a wider audience when Philip Norman published them in his 1981 book Shout! The Beatles in Their Generation. Norman wrote in his book, "The beats rise, their voices blend, and for a moment they are recognized for what they have become."

At the end of the 1980s, the recordings were first released on bootlegs and became available for purchase. The bootleg vinyl album The Quarrymen at Home was released in Germany in 1987, followed by the double vinyl album Liverpool May 1960. The bootlegs contain all of the recordings from the tapes held by Astrid Kirchherr and Hans-Walther Braun. With the bootleg release, it was now audible that the sound quality was poor and that the individual songs were partly improvised. Because the Beatles recorded the recordings in mono, the individual instruments "smudged" into one another. In addition, some songs were recorded with clipping and background noise can be heard. The songs of the bootlegs were underlaid with reverb, among other things, the speed is too high, and some of the instrumental versions were artificially lengthened. Bootlegs with unedited material were released only in 2007.

Charles Hodgson's grandson, Peter Hodgson, found the Beatles tapes in his grandfather's estate and sold them to Paul McCartney in March 1995. These recording tapes are intended to be the basis for release on the Anthology 1 compilation album.

Publication
The following tracks were officially released on the album Anthology 1 in November 1995:

Hallelujah, I Love Her So
Hallelujah, I Love Her So is a 1956 composition by Ray Charles, released as a single A-side that same year. The song was part of the Beatles' live repertoire between 1960 and 1962. In April 1977 the live album Live! at the Star Club in Hamburg, Germany; 1962, which includes a version sung by Horst Fascher.

The bootleg version of the song is 2 min 26 s long, the anthology version was cut to 1 min 13 s.

You’ll Be Mine
You'll Be Mine is a short song by Lennon/McCartney from the early days of The Beatles. It's a humorous parody of vocal jazz group The Ink Spots. Paul McCartney sings in a deep baritone, interspersed with shrill falsetto backing vocals from John Lennon. The text cannot be fully understood due to the poor sound quality.

The bootleg version of the song is 1min 45s long, the anthology version was edited to 1min 38s.

Cayenne
Cayenne is an instrumental song composed by Paul McCartney alone. In the booklet accompanying the compilation album Anthology 1, the time of composition is identified as the end of the 1950s. The bootleg version of the song is 2min 20s long, the anthology version was cut to 1min 14s.

Entire track list of recorded songs
The following list of tracks is arbitrary and does not reflect the exact chronology of the recordings.

Weblinks

 * You’ll Be Mine at www.beatlesbible.com
 * Cayennne at www.beatlesbible.com
 * Hallelujah, I Love Her So at www.beatlesbible.com
 * https://earlybeatlessongs.weebly.com/forthlin-road-tapes.html/
 * Bootlegs at www.the-paulmcartney-project.com