Several books have been devoted to comprehensively documenting Beatles bootlegs; the following is a list of some of the most common or notable bootlegged recordings by the Beatles.
The Quarrymen / Silver Beatles era (1957–1960) Other than the commercially released songs with
Tony Sheridan issued on
In the Beginning (Circa 1960), only three recordings made by the group prior to 1962 have become public. •
The Quarrymen show, 6 July 1957. The Quarrymen played a show for the
Woolton fête at St Peter's Parish Church, notable as the day that
Paul McCartney was first introduced to Lennon by a mutual friend,
Ivan Vaughan. In 1994, Bob Molyneux, a retired policeman, rediscovered a reel-to-reel tape he had made of the show while experimenting with a
Grundig portable tape recorder. The tape contained a poor quality recording of the Quarrymen performances of
Lonnie Donegan's "
Puttin' On the Style" and
Elvis Presley's "
Baby, Let's Play House". A thirty-second excerpt of "Putting on the Style" was released to promote the tape's auction at
Sotheby's later that year; the tape was bought by EMI for £78,500, becoming the most expensive recording ever sold at auction. EMI decided the recording was not of sufficient quality to include in
Anthology. After extensive audio restoration, excerpts from both songs were included in the BBC radio documentary
The Day John Met Paul, broadcast on 26 June 2007. •
The Quarrymen acetate, 1958. on 12 July 1958, The Quarrymen paid to record themselves at
Phillips' Sound Recording Services in Liverpool, performing "
That'll Be the Day" and "
In Spite of All the Danger". These were included on
Anthology 1, although the latter song was edited. the recording may also originate from two separate sessions a few months apart. Three of the songs were included on
Anthology 1. The recording also featured early versions of songs that the Beatles would later record in the studio ("
Matchbox", "
One After 909", "
I'll Follow the Sun"). Other songs that were recorded during these rehearsals include "Well, Darlin'", "
Hello Little Girl", "That's When Your Heartaches Begin", "Wildcat", "I'll Always Be in Love with You", "Some Days", "
Hallelujah I Love Her So", "
The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise", "You Must Write Every Day", "Movin' and Groovin'", and "Ramrod". A collection of all these recordings were released on the bootleg recording
Lapis Lazuli, featuring a longer version of "Puttin' on the Style" and all of the Beatles home recordings made in early 1960.
Decca audition (1962) The Beatles performed fifteen songs that were recorded at their audition for
Decca Records on 1 January 1962 (three
Lennon–McCartney compositions and twelve
cover versions). Five of these songs were included on
Anthology 1. Fourteen of the fifteen tracks appeared on a series of coloured vinyl singles with picture sleeves, released in 1978 on the Deccagone label through
Strawberry Fields Forever, Joe Pope's
fanzine. The following year, all fifteen tracks appeared on the Circuit Records bootleg album
The Decca Tapes. Due to the questionable copyright status of these performances (recorded prior to the group's EMI contract), the Decca audition was commercially distributed in various configurations starting in 1981; some of these "
grey market" albums omitted the three Lennon–McCartney songs. By the late 1980s, legal action by the Beatles had halted commercial availability of the albums. In addition to continued inclusion on bootlegs, a small US record label issued the songs on CD through mail order in 2007 as
The Lost Decca Sessions, which it described as legal and licensed.
Cavern Club rehearsals and TV shoot (1962) Sometime between August and December 1962, the Beatles recorded themselves rehearsing at
the Cavern Club, performing "
I Saw Her Standing There", "
One After 909" (two versions), and "Catswalk" (two versions). On 22 August 1962, a crew from
Granada Television shot footage of the band performing live at the Cavern for use in the television show
Scene at 6:30; the crew filmed two takes of the band performing "
Some Other Guy." The following month, on 5 September, a Granada sound crew returned to capture better audio of the band to sync to the film footage, as they felt the audio from the original shoot was not of satisfactory quality. A new recording of "Some Other Guy" and a recording of "Kansas City/Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey!" come from this performance. The shoot constitutes the earliest professional film footage of the Beatles, and would have been the Beatles' first appearance on television, but the footage was shelved for over a year, and was first broadcast after the Beatles had achieved nationwide success. Instead, Grenada booked the group for a live, in-studio performance on 17 October 1962. The Cavern footage has been seen on
The Beatles Anthology and other documentary sources, and audio from both dates have circulated amongst bootleggers.
Star-Club performances (1962) As the Beatles were concluding their final two-week
Hamburg engagement in late December 1962, portions of their performances were taped by
Star-Club stage manager Adrian Barber; the tapes were acquired by Ted "Kingsize" Taylor, the leader of KingsizeTaylor and The Dominoes at the club. Eventually Taylor sold the tapes, which formed the basis of the double album
Live! at the Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany; 1962, released in 1977 by
Lingasong Records. The liner notes for the initial release falsely implied that the recordings had been made in the spring of 1962, prior to the Beatles' EMI contract, on a night when
Ringo Starr happened to be sitting in for
Pete Best. In commentary for a lawsuit to block the album's release,
John Lennon wrote, "the sleeve note, apart from being inaccurate, seems to have been written with a court case in mind." The Beatles lost their case, so the album was viewed as a legitimate release. The thirty songs contained on the initial releases were re-licensed over the following two decades to multiple record labels, most notably
Sony Music, which packaged the songs in CD form in 1991 (although the product was withdrawn the following year as legal action was pending from the Beatles). After another lawsuit by the Beatles, Lingasong agreed in 1998 to hand over the original tapes and stop all sales. Compared with a properly recorded live concert, the sound quality of the tape is poor, with the vocals in particular sounding "muffled and distant" at best. Increasingly comprehensive collections of the BBC performances were bootlegged in the 1980s and early 1990s. The most notable of these was
The Complete BBC Sessions, a nine CD box set released in 1993 by Great Dane in Italy, where copyright protection for the broadcasts had expired; The widespread availability of good quality bootlegs prompted Apple's own release of BBC performances in 1994, the two CD set
Live at the BBC. The set included 30 of the 36 songs that the Beatles never performed on their studio albums, plus 26 other songs and dialogue among the group members and the radio hosts. In 1999, a 10-CD box set
The Complete BBC Sessions 1962-1966 was released in Japan by Secret Trax which was soon followed by 3-CD set
Attack of the Filler BEEBS! on the same label featuring additions to the box set. Starting in the 2000s, the popularity of digital downloads through BitTorrent made it possible to replace physical media with virtual box sets of BBC material provided by fans for fans made available free of charge. In 2004, Purple Chick released
The Complete BBC Sessions Upgraded as a digital set of ten audio CDs plus one multimedia CD. After the Beatles' EMI contract expired in 1976, the company began assessing the band's unreleased material for a future release. The first batch of songs to leak came from an in-house compilation cassette that contained "
Leave My Kitten Alone", "
One After 909" (from 1963), "
If You've Got Trouble", "
Christmas Time (Is Here Again)", "
That Means a Lot", "
Come and Get It", "
Dig a Pony" (unedited version), and two medleys from the
Get Back /
Let It Be sessions: "
Rip It Up /
Shake, Rattle and Roll" and "
Not Fade Away /
Bo Diddley". In 1981, in-house engineer John Barrett was given the task of cataloguing the complete collection of tapes from the band's seven-year career with EMI. This led to two projects: a public audio-visual presentation at
Abbey Road Studios called
The Beatles Live at Abbey Road (which opened on 18 July 1983) and a planned outtakes album which was to be called
Sessions. In addition to some of the songs included on the previously leaked compilation tape,
Sessions added "
Not Guilty", "What's the New Mary Jane", "
How Do You Do It?", "
Bésame Mucho", "Mailman, Bring Me No More Blues", "
While My Guitar Gently Weeps" (demo), and early takes of "
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" and "
I'm Looking Through You".
Live concerts (1963–1966) Many of the Beatles' concert performances have appeared on bootleg albums. The earliest relatively complete concert recording is from the 7 December 1963 show at the
Liverpool Empire Theatre.
The Beatles Anthology contained video clips from several concerts, some of which are available in complete form on bootleg video. The following are some of the most notable concerts on bootleg releases. •
Washington Coliseum, 1964. The Beatles' first US concert, on 11 February 1964 in Washington, D.C., was captured on black-and-white video for later closed-circuit presentations in cinemas. Some of the video was included in
Anthology and in
The Beatles: The First US Visit, and most of it was included in the 2003 DVD
The Beatles in Washington D.C. from Passport Video. The entire video was released on the grey market DVD
Beatles Around the World. In 2010 the Beatles at last came to
iTunes and along with their back catalogue they brought with them a video of this show. The video was made available with the purchase of the iTunes version of
The Beatles Stereo Box Set simply called
The Beatles Box Set where all albums were released as
iTunes LP's featuring on-screen album artwork and the Mini Documentaries from the DVD in the physical release. •
Hollywood Bowl, 1964 and 1965. The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl, an official release by EMI in 1977, contained selections from the Beatles' three Hollywood Bowl shows professionally recorded in August 1964 and August 1965. An authorized CD of the remixed 1977 album with 4 bonus tracks was released in September 2016. Bootleg
needle drop copies are available, as well as bootleg compilations of the three performances in their entirety. •
Palais des Sports, 1965. The Beatles performed two shows on 20 June 1965 at the
Palais des Sports in Paris. Both were broadcast over French radio, resulting in bootleg recordings of decent quality; video of the second show also exists. •
Shea Stadium, 1965. The Beatles' concert at
Shea Stadium on 15 August 1965 was filmed for a television special,
The Beatles at Shea Stadium. The programme and its soundtrack have been bootlegged in various formats. One song, "
Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby", was officially released on
Anthology 2. A thirty-minute reissue of the footage of the concert was remastered and issued simultaneously with the release of the
Ron Howard film
The Beatles: Eight Days a Week on 15 September 2016. •
Budokan, 1966. The Beatles performed for three days at the
Nippon Budokan in Tokyo beginning 30 June 1966, with the first two concerts (30 June 1966 and the afternoon show on 1 July) filmed in colour for Japanese television. The first night's concert video was officially released by Apple in Japan only as
Beatles Concert at Budokan 1966. Excerpts from both shows (along with silent colour footage of the first show on 2 July) were included in
The Beatles Anthology. •
Candlestick Park, 1966. Notable as the Beatles' final paid concert performance, the 29 August 1966 show at
Candlestick Park in San Francisco was taped by press officer Tony Barrow on a portable recorder at the request of McCartney; the tape ran out before the last few minutes of the show.
Television performances (1963–1968) The Beatles performed on various television programmes; excerpts from many of these were shown in the
Anthology documentary, and bootleg video exists of many of the shows in their entirety. The most famous of these were the four appearances on
The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 and 1965; after many years circulating on bootlegs, these received official DVD release in 2003 as
The Four Complete Historic Ed Sullivan Shows Featuring The Beatles. Other notable television performances that have appeared on bootleg video include the Swedish show
Drop In from October 1963 (four songs); the April 1964 UK special
Around the Beatles (six songs mimed to new recordings); the June 1964 Australian special
The Beatles Sing for Shell (seven songs survived in complete form, plus fragments of two others); and a September 1968 appearance on
Frost on Sunday (new vocals for "
Hey Jude" and "
Revolution" over studio backing tracks, plus brief improvisations), for which multiple takes are available.
Home demos (1963–1969) The individual Beatles sometimes recorded basic performances at home of their new compositions, either for copyright purposes (to be sent to
Dick James Music publishing affiliate
Northern Songs), to later play for the other Beatles, or to give to other artists who would be recording the songs. Many of Lennon's demos that appeared on bootlegs were first heard on the radio series
The Lost Lennon Tapes. Some of the Lennon demos available include "
Bad to Me" (1963, given to
Billy J. Kramer), "
I'm in Love" (1963, given to
The Fourmost [although some scholars date this as a late seventies piano rendition]), "
If I Fell" (1964), and "Everyone Had A Hard Year" (1968, later incorporated into "
I've Got a Feeling"). There are also Lennon demos available of songs that would develop into "
She Said She Said", "
Strawberry Fields Forever", "
Good Morning Good Morning", "
Across the Universe", "
You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)", "
Don't Let Me Down", and two songs he would later record after the Beatles, "
Oh My Love" and "
Cold Turkey". Lennon's home recordings of "Bad to Me" and "I'm in Love" were briefly released on iTunes in December 2013 in order to extend the copyright terms of the tracks. McCartney's demos include "
One and One Is Two" (1964, eventually an uncharted single for The Strangers with Mike Shannon), "
Step Inside Love" (1968, given to
Cilla Black), "
Spiritual Regeneration Song" from India, "
Goodbye" (1969, given to
Mary Hopkin), "
Come and Get it" (1969, given to
Badfinger), and early versions of "
We Can Work It Out" (partially taped over by Lennon) and "
Michelle". Harrison's 1963 demo for "
Don't Bother Me" has also been bootlegged.
Christmas recordings (1963–1969) Every year from 1963 through to 1969, the Beatles recorded a
flexi disc of comedy and music that was sent to members of their
fan club. In 1970, these recordings were compiled onto an LP released via their fan club called
From Then to You (US title: ''The Beatles' Christmas Album
). Since these singles or compilation album had no official general-public release prior to 2017, all have been frequently bootlegged, some with additional outtakes from Christmas recording sessions, and some supplemented with Christmas themed BBC recordings. A portion of one song recorded for the 1967 Christmas flexi disc, "Christmas Time (Is Here Again)", was officially released as an additional track on the 1995 "Free as a Bird" single. Part of the 1963 track is featured as an unlockable special feature on The Beatles: Rock Band. In 2017, Apple released The Christmas Records'' as a box set of seven 7" 45 rpm records pressed on coloured vinyl in replica sleeves.
The Beatles (Esher) demos (1968) In May 1968, the Beatles met at
Kinfauns, the
Esher home of
George Harrison, to review and record demos of songs under consideration for their next album; 27 songs, mostly acoustic, have become public from this session. Seven of these songs were released on
Anthology 3, including "
Junk", a song McCartney would later record for
his first solo album. Of the 20 demo songs not officially released, 15 would be recorded and released on
The Beatles, while "Not Guilty" and "What's the New Mary Jane" would be recorded for the album but not make the final line-up. The recordings included on the Anthology series were of a significantly higher fidelity (they came from George's original stereo reels of the demo sessions, and processed at Abbey Road Studios) than the bootlegged recordings (which probably came from John's mono copy of the tapes), raising the possibility that there were higher-quality versions of all 27 songs. In 2018, all 27 original Esher demos were released in high-quality as part of the deluxe
50th Anniversary reissue of The Beatles, taken from Harrison's original 4-track master tapes.
Giles Martin described the tapes as: "To me, it is like the Beatles unplugged. These are demos but they are good: they double-tracked themselves". Three additional songs would never be recorded in the studio by the Beatles: • "Child of Nature", later released by Lennon, with different lyrics, as "
Jealous Guy" on
Imagine. • "
Circles", released by Harrison on his 1982 album
Gone Troppo. • "
Sour Milk Sea", a Harrison song given to
Jackie Lomax and released in August 1968 as one of the first
Apple Records singles. Also not the same version from bootlegs.
Get Back / Let It Be sessions (1969) In January 1969, the Beatles got together with director
Michael Lindsay-Hogg to film the rehearsals for the group's proposed first live concert since 1966. This project would concentrate on new material, and was intended to form the basis for both a television documentary and a new album, which were given the title of
Get Back. But disagreements and a general lack of enthusiasm within the group led to much of the project never being fully completed. However, a one-off live performance was filmed and recorded on the rooftop of
Apple Records on 30 January 1969, and the title song "
Get Back" was released as a single in April 1969. After essentially being abandoned by the Beatles for more than a year, the project was eventually renamed and released in May 1970; with the film footage now becoming a feature film,
Let It Be, and the new songs becoming an album of the same name. The rehearsals and recordings took place at
Twickenham Film Studios (2–16 January) and then at Apple (20–31 January), with more than one hundred hours captured on film and the corresponding
Nagra tape recorders used for the film's audio track. These Nagra tapes are the source for most, but not all, of the bootlegs from these sessions. Johns started working in earnest on compiling an album in March 1969, and a test acetate from this period eventually surfaced on a poor quality bootleg called "O.P.D".. Johns later made two "official" attempts at compiling the
Get Back album, with both versions widely bootlegged. The 28 May 1969 compilation by Johns contained the following line-up: "One After 909", "Rocker", "Save the Last Dance for Me", "Don't Let Me Down", "Dig a Pony", "I've Got a Feeling", "Get Back", "For You Blue", "Teddy Boy", "Two of Us", "Maggie Mae", "Dig It", "Let It Be", "The Long and Winding Road", and "Get Back (Reprise)". The main changes made for the 5 January 1970 compilation were the removal of "Teddy Boy" and the additions of "
I Me Mine" and "Across the Universe". One of the myriad
Get Back session compilation bootlegs was
The Black Album, a three-LP set from the 1980s in a memorable package (although the material has since been bootlegged in superior sound quality). Even after the raid, bootlegging of the material continued. In 2004, the Purple Chick label released
A/B Road, an 81-CD set compiling all of the Nagra material leaked by that time (albeit with a few flaws), and by 2008, every available Nagra tape recording was shared in one way or another.
Studio album needle drops Starting in 1987, Apple began officially reissuing the Beatles catalogue on CD. However, as digital remastering was still in its infancy, many fans and
audiophiles were disappointed with the sound quality of the official reissues, preferring the "warmth" of the vinyl releases. Many fans also clamoured for the digital release of the original Beatles
Capitol albums as they contained many unique mixes different from the UK releases. Several bootleggers stepped in to fill this void by offering digital copies of their own
needle drops of the entire Beatles catalogue, typically using premium vinyl pressings played and digitised with high-end audio equipment. While these unauthorized copies are not bootlegs as commonly defined, their creation and distribution channels overlap with bootleg products. Some of the widely distributed collections are the
BEAT/Red Robin,
Dr. Ebbetts, and
Millennium Remasters series and the Beatles' remasters on "DLH Records." The official remastering of the Beatles' catalogue in
stereo and
mono, released by Apple in September 2009 on both CD and vinyl, has largely made these bootleg remasters obsolete; however, collectors in search of authentic original (and in some cases unique) mixes still find them of historical interest. The Beatles' official catalogue of their original stereo studio albums has since been issued via digital download through
iTunes. ==Material not bootlegged==