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.
“Talks are under way to get [the tape] cleaned up and for a permanent home in a national cultural institution,” Ahmed has told the Observer. “John feels strongly that it should not end up, as so many Beatles relics have, in the vault of a private individual.”
Bloomfield was the teenage stage manager for the concert in the Stowe school theatre on 4 April and he had the foresight to place a microphone at the front of the stage, that fed into his new Butoba MT5 recording machine. Fearing later that its poor quality made it worthless, he simply stored it away in his home while the band’s worldwide fame grew and grew, enduring even now, more than half a century after they last played together in public.
Most striking among the revelations on the tape, and revealed in full below for the first time, is the set list. Details such as these shed fresh light on the musical progression of the band at a point when they were on the cusp of stardom.
That list includes some American rhythm and blues standards – including I Just Don’t Understand and Matchbox – honed by the young band members during late-night stints at clubs in Hamburg’s red light district in the previous three years. But the running order that evening was also peppered with their own compositions, including From Me to You, which would go to No 1 in the UK charts the following week, and tunes from their recently released album, Please Please Me, that were soon to become recognisable around the world.
Rumours of the tape’s existence had persisted down the decades and the current headmaster, Dr Anthony Wallersteiner, suggested to Ahmed and Bloomfield, who both visited the school this March with the BBC, that perhaps it might be time to find it.
Hearing the sound of the tape played, initially over the video call, immediately persuaded Ahmed that her news story was about more than just marking the anniversary of an extraordinary event at the school. Instead she felt that she was able to finally imagine the power of the moment that the Beatles sound first really began to be appreciated by British audiences.
“I felt my whole body vibrate with the sheer raw power of the Beatles,” Ahmed recalled. Other revelations include suggestions that John, Paul, George and Ringo were all fuelled by more than just adrenaline and beer on that night. After all, they have since admitted that their gruelling German gigs were only possible with the help of a stimulant called Preludin. It has also emerged that after the concert at Stowe, Ringo, then 22, made a jokey lewd approach to one of the teenage girls who had been watching from the back of the hall, the daughters of school staff members.
“It must have been like a hurricane hitting that school,” writes Ahmed in the Observer. “They wolfed down chicken and chips in the school tuck shop, and on the walk back to the car, Ringo suggested a quick fumble in the bushes to one of the girls (politely declined).”
Stowe concert set list: 4 April 1963
• I Saw Her Standing There
• Too Much Monkey Business
• Love Me Do
• Some Other Guy
• Misery
• I Just Don’t Understand
• A Shot of Rhythm and Blues
• Boys!
• Matchbox
• From Me To You
• Thank You Girl
• Memphis Tennessee
• A Taste of Honey
• Twist and Shout
• Anna
• Please Please Me
• Hippy Hippy Shake
• I’m Talking About You
• Ask Me Why
• Till There Was You
• Money
• I Saw Her Standing There (reprise)
The tape runs out at this point, but speculation, based on a set list written from memory by one of the Stowe pupils, suggests two more tracks: Sweet Little Sixteen and Long Tall Sally
• This article was amended on 9 April 2023. The tape recorder used to record the Beatles at Stowe was a Butoba MT5, not a Nagra III as an earlier version said. And it has been clarified that Samira Ahmed first heard the tape via a video call, rather than a telephone call.
