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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Vanessa Thorpe Arts and media correspondent

Please Please Us: Lost tape of Beatles school gig could be saved for the nation

Black and white photo from the back of a school auditorium showing the Beatles on stage with a young audience listening, some with their arms raised
The Beatles play Stowe school in 1963. Photograph: @BeatlesPlaces

It was a sweet slice of cultural history and, at the same time, evidence of an unlikely clash of English social classes. The discovery of a tape recording of an early Beatles concert made in 1963 at a Buckinghamshire private school last week has astonished music experts and fans alike.

And now the crackling, hissing 60-year-old tape, complete with audible banter from the Fab Four, is to be restored for wider listening, according to the BBC journalist who uncovered the story, Samira Ahmed. The former student who made the tape, John Bloomfield, hopes to have it enhanced with the same kind of technology that has recently improved other early Beatles demo tapes and first studio takes.

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