On this day in 1963, The Beatles performed at Stowe School in Buckingham.
https://youtu.be/5FU5AfeUDGc?si=uPhJX8hCQGEmjKcl For the backstory: in spring 1963, the group had two hit singles ("Love Me Do" and "Please Please Me") and a hit album (their debut, just two weeks out) in release. In one week from this day, their third single and first official number one, "From Me To You"/"Thank You Girl" would be issued. So the full blown mania was months away, but to those paying attention, they were up-and-comers who were building a national following.
Stowe School was a prestigious prep school for boys; what's termed "public" in the UK but what in the states would be called a "private school." David Moores, 17 at the time, was a student whose well-heeled family had made their fortune with Littlewoods, a Liverpool-based football betting company. Perhaps through being a Liverpudlian he'd glommed onto the group and, with an eye for both creating something sure to impress his peers as well as turn a profit for himself, he wrote a letter to Brian Epstein, making the case for a private gig to be played at the school.
Epstein was impressed with the appeal and duly agreed to the booking for a fee of £100; Moores then sold 240 tickets for 50p each, turning a small profit which he then splurged on dinner with The Beatles and some friends.
Mark Lewisohn, well before a recording of the gig surfaced, called it, “Probably the most unusual concert appearance of all." It caught the group just before they became a full-blown national phenomenon, still flexing their club muscle when the days of hearing themselves perform were quickly coming to an end. Further, this being a boys school and not a club, the audience disposition, while appreciative - enthusiastic even - was far more reserved and sedate than such events would be going forward.
So when word came earlier this year that another student, John Bloomfield, had actually run tape on the show, it was a jaw-dropping disclosure, both for the documentation of the unique performance and for another surfacing of an important artifact, just when you think in the post-Anthology world that everything important has been uncovered. (If not akin to the tape recording made of The Quarry Men on the day that John and Paul were introduced, it must be pretty close.) As it happened, the visit was also well-documented in photos by David Magnus, an assistant to photographer Dezo Hoffman.
Bloomfield, 15 at the time, was the stage manager. He used a Butoba MT5 (see
http://www.butoba.net/homepage/mt5.html ), a battery-powered reel-to-reel machine. Because The Beatles had arrived late for the gig, they sought to satisfy their audience by playing an extended set (including a repeat of "I Saw Her Standing There," recently issued as the opening track on their debut).
The setlist included nine songs from the Please Please Me album, plus both sides of their unreleased third single. It was fleshed out with a pair of covers tracked for their second long-player later that year, as well as two more covers ("Matchbox" and "Long Tall Sally") that would be recorded for an EMI EP in 1964. The remainder of the material was comprised of covers that ultimately would be captured in superior quality for the BBC (including the ubiquitous at the time "Some Other Guy").
Conspicuously, there are no George Harrison lead vocals at a time when he was still getting more space during the cover-heavy sets. It's possible that he was suffering from a cold or sore throat or somesuch, limiting his abilities.
But the band was on fire, blasting the auditorium with their powerful Vox amplifiers. (Years later when playing the recording, the volume was pushed up to simulate the bone-rattling level of the performance, never forgotten by anyone who witnessed it.) Said Bloomfield of the experience, "It was like something from a different planet had arrived.”
Bloomfield didn't tout his recording, mainly because he thought it wasn't very good: documenting songs that (for most of them anyway) were already well-captured on vinyl. So it sat, all but forgotten, for sixty years.
Luckily for everyone, it has surfaced at exactly the right time in history: beyond the date of copyright (in case EMI/Apple wanted to do their usual thing: claim ownership and then suppress it) as well as when AI technology enables recordings thought to be inferior/unusable to be salvaged. Posted at the YouTube link above is the Lord Reith upgrade - possibly the optimum quality currently available.
In addition to the music, the recording is a wonderful document of their stage banter at the time. It should also be noted: the group was late in getting there partly because they'd spent the hours before at BBC studios, knocking out songs for a broadcast on the Side By Side show. In addition to several songs they'd repeat at Stowe, this was the day that they recorded for the one and only time the Lennon-McCartney tune, "I'll Be On My Way," earmarked for Billy J. Kramer.
Here's a terrific write-up about the tape's recovery:
https://tinyurl.com/phw67u2u
