Live! at the Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany; 1962

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Live! at the Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany; 1962
Live! at the Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany; 1962 cover
Live album by The Beatles
Released 2 May 1977
Recorded Star-Club, Hamburg, 31 December 1962
Genre Rock and roll
Length 72:54
Label Lingasong/CBS
Producer Larry Grossberg
Professional reviews
The Beatles chronology
The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl
(1977)		 Live! at the Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany; 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 Grundig home tape recorder, by 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 stated in his memoirs, 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."[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 thirty tracks, while both the German Bellaphon/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", and "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", and "Reminiscing" from the latter.

Another track that frequently turns up on bootlegs of this material is "Hully Gully" (Fred Smith/Cliff Goldsmith). This is not the Beatles, and the true identity of the band performing the song is unknown.

[edit] Track listing

  1. "Introduction/I Saw Her Standing There" (Lennon/McCartney) – 3:01
  2. "Roll Over Beethoven" (Chuck Berry) – 2:15
  3. "Hippy Hippy Shake" (Chan Romero) – 1:52
  4. "Sweet Little Sixteen" (Chuck Berry) – 3:20
  5. "Lend Me Your Comb" (Wise/Weisman) – 2:00
  6. "Your Feets too Big" (Benson/Fisher) – 2:24
  7. "Twist and Shout" (Medley/Russell) – 2:20
  8. "Mr. Moonlight" (Johnson) – 2:23
  9. "A Taste of Honey" (Scott/Marlow) – 2:10
  10. "Bésame Mucho" (Velázquez/Skylar) – 2:46
  11. "Reminiscing" (King Curtis) – 2:05
  12. "Kansas City/Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey (Leiber/Stoller) – 2:56
  13. "Nothin' Shakin' (But the Leaves on a Tree)" Colocrai/Fontaine/Gluck/Lampert – 1:24
  14. "To Know Her Is to Love Her" (Phil Spector) – 3:23
  15. "Little Queenie" (Chuck Berry) – 3:57
  16. "Falling in Love Again" (Hollander/Lerner) – 2:14
  17. "Ask Me Why" (Lennon/McCartney) – 2:33
  18. "Be-Bop-A-Lula" (Vincent/Davis) – 2:29
    • Featuring Fred Fascher on lead vocal.
  19. "Hallelujah, I Love Her So" (Ray Charles) – 2:08
  20. "Red Sails in the Sunset" (Kennedy/Williams) – 2:11
  21. "Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby" (Carl Perkins) – 3:04
  22. "Matchbox" (Carl Perkins) – 2:37
  23. "I'm Talking about You" (Chuck Berry) – 2:06
  24. "Shimmy Shimmy" (Massey/Schubert) – 2:20
  25. "Long Tall Sally" (Johnson/Penniman/Blackwell) – 1:47
  26. "I Remember You" (Schertzinger/Metter) – 1:56
  27. "Where Have You Been All My Life?" (Weill/Mann) – 2:09
  28. "Till There Was You" (Meredith Willson) – 2:02
  29. "Sheila" (Tommy Roe) – 2:00
  30. "I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Cry (Over You)" (Thomas/Biggs) – 2:43

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ allmusic ((( Live at Star Club 1962, Vol. 1 > Overview )))
  2. ^ Q4music.com - The official website of Q Magazine

[edit] External links

v • d • e
The Beatles' compilations
Bert Kaempfert recordings
(Polydor/Bear Family)
My Bonnie (Tony Sheridan and the Beat Brothers, Germany, 1962) • The Beatles' First (Germany, 1964 / UK, 1967) • In the Beginning (Circa 1960) (1970) • The Early Tapes of The Beatles (1984) • Beatles Bop - Hamburg Days (2001)
1962–1970 (Parlophone/
Apple/Capitol)
Hits: A Collection of Beatles Oldies (1966) • 1962–1966 (1973) • 1967–1970 (1973) • 20 Greatest Hits (1982) • 1 (2000)

Themes: Rock 'n' Roll Music (1976) • Love Songs (1977) • The Beatles' Ballads (1980) • Reel Music (1982)
Non-album tracks: Hey Jude (US, 1970 / UK, 1979) • Rarities (UK, 1978) • Rarities (US, 1980) • Past Masters, Volume One (1988) • Past Masters, Volume Two (1988)
Alternate versions: Yellow Submarine Songtrack (1999) • Let It Be… Naked (2003)
Other: The Beatles' Christmas Album (US) / From Then to You (UK) (1970) • Love (2006)

Unreleased: Sessions (due date 1985)
Live albums (Parlophone/
Capitol/Lingasong)
The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl (1977) • Live! at the Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany; 1962 (1977) • Live at the BBC (1994)
Anthology (Parlophone/
Apple/Capitol)
Anthology 1 (1995) • Anthology 2 (1996) • Anthology 3 (1996)
Box sets (Parlophone/
Apple/Capitol)
v • d • e
The Beatles
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Pete Best · Stuart Sutcliffe
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