Live! at the Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany; 1962
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| Live! at the Star Club in Hamburg, Germany; 1962 | ||
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| Live album by The Beatles | ||
| Released | May 2, 1977 | |
| Recorded | Star-Club, Hamburg 31 December 1962 | |
| Genre | Rock and roll | |
| Length | 72:54 | |
| Label | Lingasong/CBS | |
| Producer(s) | Larry Grossberg | |
| Professional reviews | ||
|---|---|---|
| The Beatles chronology | ||
| The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl (1977) |
Live at the Star Club: 1962 (1977) |
Love Songs (1977) |
Live! at the Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany; 1962. is a live album featuring a performance by The Beatles at the Star-Club in Hamburg on New Year's Eve, 31 December 1962, during their fifth and final Hamburg residency.
While their previous trips had included Pete Best on drums, Ringo Starr was by now a member of the band, and appears on the album. Beatles manager Brian Epstein and friend Klaus Voormann reportedly attended the show, though neither appear on the recordings.
Contents |
[edit] History
The original tape had been crudely recorded on a Philips home tape recorder, by fellow musician Ted "Kingsize" Taylor, and was considered as a possible live album "cash-in" release after Beatlemania had begun. The sound quality was so poor, however, that the idea was abandoned, and the tape languished in a Liverpool music office for over a decade.
Original Beatles manager Allan Williams claimed in his autobiography, The Man who Gave The Beatles Away, that in the late 1970s he was salvaging materials from condemned buildings due to be torn down; learning of the recording, and with the office they were stored in now abandoned, he obtained permission to enter the building and recover the tape. Lingasong Records bought the rights to the tape, and invested $125,000 in a thorough remix of the recordings.
All Music Guide, "awarding" a reissue one out of five, wrote: "The results were very low-fidelity, and despite The Beatles' enormous success, it took Taylor fifteen years to find someone greedy and shameless enough to release them as a record".[1] Nonetheless, the album gives valuable insight into The Beatles's early stage act. Q Magazine, for example, describing the album as of "certain historical interest", said "The show seems like a riot but the sound itself is terrible - like one hell of a great party going on next door but one."[2]
The recordings have been reissued numerous times in various forms and formats, often mislabelled as being made in "Spring 1962" (conveniently prior to The Beatles' signing with Parlophone), leading to confusion over the band's lineup on the album.
In 1979 Pickwick Records released this album as First Live Recordings Vol. One and First Live Recordings Vol. Two.
In 1981 Audio Fidelity Enterprises released this album as Historic Sessions (cat. AFELD 1018) with all the 30 tracks, while both the German Bellaphone/UK Lingasong release and the US Lingasong release were not complete: "I'm gonna Sit Right Down And Cry Over You", "Till There Was You", "Sheila", "Where Have You Been All my Life" were left out from the former and "I saw Her Standing There", "Ask me Why", "Twist and Shout", "Reminiscing" from the latter.
Another track that frequently turns up on bootlegs of this material is "Hully Gully" (Fred Smith/Cliff Goldsmith). This is thought not to be the Beatles, but the band's true identity is unknown.
[edit] Track listing
- "Introduction/I Saw Her Standing There" (Lennon/McCartney) – 3:01
- "Roll Over Beethoven" (Chuck Berry) – 2:15
- "Hippy Hippy Shake" (Chan Romero) – 1:52
- "Sweet Little Sixteen" (Chuck Berry) – 3:20
- "Lend Me Your Comb" (Wise/Weisman) – 2:00
- "Your Feets Too Big" (Benson/Fisher) – 2:24
- "Twist and Shout" (Medley/Russell) – 2:20
- "Mr. Moonlight" (Johnson) – 2:23
- "A Taste of Honey" (Scott/Marlow) – 2:10
- "Bésame Mucho" (Velázquez/Skylar) – 2:46
- "Reminiscing" (King Curtis) – 2:05
- "Kansas City/Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey (Leiber/Stoller) – 2:56
- "Nothin' Shakin' (But the Leaves on a Tree)" Colocrai/Fontaine/Gluck/Lampert – 1:24
- "To Know Her Is to Love Her" (Phil Spector) – 3:23
- "Little Queenie" (Chuck Berry) – 3:57
- "Falling in Love Again" (Hollander/Lerner) – 2:14
- "Ask Me Why" (Lennon/McCartney) – 2:33
- "Be-Bop-A-Lula" (Vincent/Davis) – 2:29
- "Hallelujah, I Love Her So" (Ray Charles) – 2:08
- Track 18 featuring Fred Fascher and track 19 featuring Horst Fascher on lead vocal.
- "Red Sails in the Sunset" (Kennedy/Williams) – 2:11
- "Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby" (Carl Perkins) – 3:04
- "Matchbox" (Carl Perkins) – 2:37
- "I'm Talking about You" (Chuck Berry) – 2:06
- "Shimmy Shimmy" (Massey/Schubert) – 2:20
- "Long Tall Sally" (Johnson/Penniman/Blackwell) – 1:47
- "I Remember You" (Schertzinger/Metter) – 1:56
- "Where Have You Been All My Life?" (Weill/Mann) – 2:09
- "Till There Was You" (Meredith Willson) – 2:02
- "Sheila" (Tommy Roe) – 2:00
- "I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Cry (Over You)" (Thomas/Biggs) – 2:43
[edit] References
- ^ http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:et7uak6k5m3k
- ^ http://www.q4music.com/nav?page=q4music.artist.review&fixture_review=118180&fixture_artist=144975
[edit] External links
- Beatles-discography.com writeup
- Live at the Star Club: 1962 Maccafan.net site
- www.starclub-hamburg.com
- JPGR's Live at the Star Club: 1962 site
