Bootlegs, foreign and unusual releases | Page 3 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

It was a post in a thread that I moved over here. Start reading at post 36 in this thread. You were responding to that conversation, @Expert Textpert.

Those posts are in exactly the same order they were in the other thread. When I move the posts, I noted what posts go together.

^Hopefully that will mean that people who are interested in this topic will read through this thread and learn something interesting.

Stolen, leaked by people who work in the studios/with the recordings, recordings given to others by the artists themselves or people close to them (Ringo gave Peter Sellers early mixes of tracks from the ‘White Album ‘ that eventually were bootlegged and I’m pretty sure the first Get Back bootlegs found their way to the radio station that aired them thru members of the the Beatles camp), from acetates that turn up auctions (many early mixes of Beatles songs were copied for the Beatles themselves or others to take home for multiple reasons), found in the collections of the artists. John had a lot of material which found it’s way out after he died due to being stolen – his copy of the Esher demos is the one that was bootlegged years ago, George’s copy is the one they used for the official releases. Yoko made available a whole bunch of material for the Westwood Radio shows that became the Lost Lennon Tapes series and these were for the source for upgrades years later. Reels of outtakes have even been found in skips having been thrown out by the recording studios. I remember reading that reels of Beatles tapes were borrowed from EMI, taken away to be copied and then returned a day or so later; I think that is how the John Barrett tapes got out (Barrett was given the job of going thru the archives when he was seriously ill in the early 80’s and some of his mixes were used in 1982(?) when EMI opened their doors to the public to hear Beatles outtakes. Not that Barrett was the one who did the copying). ‘Sessions’, an EMI compilation of Beatles outtakes prepared in the mid-80’s that was ultimately rejected by Apple, found it’s way out as limited numbers of LP’s were printed. Much of the BBC material was taped off the radio when aired in the 60’s.

It’s different nowadays due to the internet and anything can be put online with little chance of being traced back. Today bootlegs are done by people putting it online (most often for free) and it’s these that are later pressed onto CD’s and sold by others who had nothing to do with the process at all (recording, compiling, uploading etc). That’s why the advice is almost always never pay for bootleg recordings. As always tho this is not a blanket rule nor that simple. Some labels have sources for all new never-before-bootlegged material but they have to pay large sums of money for the songs/films and therefore they rely on the fans paying as this raises the funds. 

There is also a ton of Beatles material (demo’s, outtakes, concerts, rehearsals etc) not circulating that is in the hands of and available to very few others (and I don’t mean people like Paul). Presumably they take it out having ensured the room is not bugged and no one has their phones on record mode.