STAR CLUB TAPES SET TO FETCH £200,000

The historic lost recordings of the Beatles’ concerts at a tiny club in Germany that set them on the road to stardom are tipped to sell for £200,000 after being found.

The vintage Phillips tape machine used to record the fledgling Fab Four with a microphone attached to the ceiling above the stage has also survived and is being sold for an estimated £35,000.

The unedited recordings cover 300 minutes of the Beatles performing 33 songs which were mostly cover tracks.

The warts-and-all tapes also pick up lots of on-stage banter and crude chatter among the band in between songs.

Although the group were third on the bill at the series of concerts at the Star Club, their legendary performances proved to be a major turning point in their development, turning them from the musical equivalent of boys to men.

The BASF reel-to-reel tape was originally the property of Ted Taylor of the Liverpudlian band Kingsize Taylor and the Dominoes which performed with the Beatles in Hamburg in December 1962.

The singer asked John Lennon for permission to record the up-and-coming group and the murdered songwriter is said to have agreed as long as Taylor got the beers in.

Taylor kept hold of the seven inch tape and gave it to a recording engineer. They were lost until 1973 when Taylor found them on the floor of an abandoned studio formerly used by the engineer.

They were later bought by the music company Lingasong which teamed up with US music producer Larry Grossberg and $100,000 was spent on editing and converting them from mono to stereo sound.

The 26 song double album ‘The Beatles; ‘Live! at the Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany; 1962’ was produced from them and released in 1977 against the wishes of the Beatles who tried to block it.

Mr Grossberg kept the master tape and has recently re-discovered it in storage after forgetting he had it. He also found three unedited safety masters from the original tape and two edited master stereo matrix masters used to cut the LP.

They will now be sold at auction in London next month.

Mr Grossberg, the business manager of Andy Warhol and Muhammad Ali, has a letter from the Beatles’ record label, Apple, confirming it will not contest the sale of the tapes as long as they are sold as memorabilia and not for commercial use.

Auctioneer Ted Owen has placed a pre-sale estimate of £150,000 on the tapes but believes they could go for more.

The Phillips mono tape recorder is being sold by a separate vendor who learned of the sale of the master tapes and decided to cash-in as well. The anonymous owner bought the recorder from Taylor several years ago.

Mr Owen said: “As far as Beatles’ fans and collectors go, these tapes are pure gold.

“They the most significant and most important set of tapes ever to come up for auction because they represent a time when the Beatles were unknown and before they became famous.

“They provide a crucial glimpse into the Beatles’ development. They really cut their teeth in Germany and went from being three chord wonders to superstars playing to massive audiences.

“Lennon and Harrison later asserted that their best days as a live band were in their Liverpool and Hamburg days, and these recordings document that time period, flaws and all. There is all the banter and fooling around and lots of chatter.

“Larry Grossberg didn’t realise he had the master recordings. He was going through a lot of his old tapes and he found these tapes and played them and realised they were the original masters.

“They had just been lying around one of his studios for years and years since 1977.

“He thinks he got them from Paul Murphy, who set up Lingasong, and who is no longer with us. He has approached Apple which has given permission for the tapes to be sold as memorabilia. There is no copyright being sold with them.”

Although the Beatles had their first UK number one hit with ‘Love Me Do’ in October 1962, they were still relatively unknown around the world by the time they took up their fifth and final residency at the Star Club in December that year.

The only two original songs they played were I saw Her Standing There and Ask Me Why. The rest of the tracks were covers and they included Twist and Shout, Roll Over Beethoven and To Know Her is To Love Her.

Two months later the Beatles released their debut album Please Please Me and then in May 1963 their second UK number one ‘From Me to You’ gave way to Beatlemania.

The tapes are being sold by Ted Owen and Co Auctioneers in London on April 1.