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Author Topic: The Bizarre Beatle Mystery Story  (Read 80974 times)

neve1073

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Re: The Bizarre Beatle Mystery Story
« Reply #60 on: March 04, 2005, 03:18:47 PM »

but if it was a beatle prank, it was a classic.


At Abbey Road, George Martin receives a transatlantic phonecall.

GEORGE
Hallo, George Martin here

TERRY
Uh, I'm TM calling from Memphis. Um, I work at Ardent, uh, and I found this acetate--I have no idea how it got here--and I've listened to it and it IS the beatles but it's unreleased stuff and I don't understand....

GEORGE (cupping his hand over the receiver)
Boys, we have another one from the colonies calling about the acetate.

(Riotous laughter)

GEORGE (feigning concern)
Well, sir, I do believe you MUST be mistaken. How does the song go?

TERRY
Well, it goes..

I read the news today ooooh booy  (Terry sings with feeling)


Cupping his hand over the receiver, Sir Martin and the four beatles, who are all huddled around the phone, are laughing hysterically.

GEORGE (to the boys)
Shhhhh, would you be QUIET!


GEORGE (to Terry)
Well, Sir it seems you have in your possession a track off our next record. Will you be a good man and send it back expeditiously?

TERRY
Of course, Mr Martin. You can trust me......




Smile









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compasspnt

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Re: The Bizarre Beatle Mystery Story
« Reply #61 on: March 04, 2005, 03:58:40 PM »

I had no idea anyone was listening in to the call!

Actually, our tech genius at the time, one Rick Ireland, was feverishly trying to hook up a patch to record the call, but I just couldn't wait long enough.  Naturally, I've always wished I had.  That would have been a GREAT tape to have today!

(Similar to the "...wish I had taken a camera and recorder with me when I went to the.....OOPS, CAN NOT tell that one!)
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Jose Mrochek

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Re: The Bizarre Beatle Mystery Story
« Reply #62 on: March 04, 2005, 05:01:26 PM »

neve1073 wrote on Fri, 04 March 2005 20:18

TERRY
Well, it goes..

I read the news today ooooh booy  (Terry sings with feeling)






This cracked me up



Laughing
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Radd 47

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Re: The Bizarre Beatle Mystery Story
« Reply #63 on: March 04, 2005, 07:13:22 PM »

I think Yoko planted the discs. No wait, I mean Brian Wilson.
Or was it Phil Spector?
Smile
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JGreenslade

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Re: The Bizarre Beatle Mystery Story
« Reply #64 on: March 05, 2005, 06:38:25 AM »

I just want to publicly apologise for bringing Purdie into the conversation, I won't do it again, honest.

JJ: hope it didn't look as if I patronised you, I had a mad day yesterday (gear pimps, or should that be gear pillocks grrr) and too much caffeine was imbibed.

Justin
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J.J. Blair

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Re: The Bizarre Beatle Mystery Story
« Reply #65 on: March 07, 2005, 11:19:45 PM »

Then there is this Beatles' gem:

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They say the heart of Rock & Roll is still beating, which is amazing if you consider all the blow it's done over the years.

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neve1073

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Re: The Bizarre Beatle Mystery Story
« Reply #66 on: March 08, 2005, 12:04:24 AM »

Thanks for posting that one! That's genius. What is that from?
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David Kulka

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Re: The Bizarre Beatle Mystery Story
« Reply #67 on: March 20, 2005, 09:32:53 AM »

Over the last couple of weeks I did some web searches and had a chance to hear Mike McLean's disk-to-disk copy of the version that landed at Motown.  Unfortunately I didn't come away with much in the way of answers, but here is what I can report.

It seems that many acetate versions of "A Day In The Life" circulated.

Brian Epstein played one at a get-together in New York.  http://64.177.126.79/articles_epstein.htm

Paui McCartney visited Brian Wilson during the recording of the Smile album, and played one for him.  http://earcandy_mag.tripod.com/rrcase-1.htm

Jackson Browne recalls hearing an acetate on the radio, before the album was released.  http://www.superseventies.com/ssjacksonbrowne.html

I saw many references to "A Day In The Life" acetate versions that wound up on bootleg records -- particularly, a bootleg called "Acetates" on the Yellow Dog label.  http://www.geetarz.org/reviews/beatles/acetates.htm.

From the descriptions I read, most of the bootleg versions differ substantially from the commercial release, although Mike's is very close.  When I A/B'd his recording against the album I couldn't hear any differences in the performance or the mix (which is mono), except for the beginning and end.

The beginning doesn't segue from sound effects like album version does.  (Terry said the same about his recording.)

The end is much shorter.  Mike's disk times out at 4:33, compared to 5:33 on the CD.  The song itself is the same, but the decay of the orchestral climax is only a few seconds long, versus half a minute or more on the release.  The ending on the CD has a few seconds of 15 KHz tone ("especially to annoy your dog - at the request of John Lennon", per the liner notes) followed by a few seconds of chatter and nonsense.  My Capital LP has neither.

As a further step in all this scientific testing I brought my dog into the shop and played the end of the CD, rather loud.  During the HF tone (which I measured at 15,038 Hz) the dog yawned, not interested or annoyed in the least.  My wife heard it though, and was annoyed.  Actually, she found this whole project annoying, and suggested that my time could be better spent on something else, like helping with yard work.  Oh well.

Google had several hundred hits to sites that mention bootlegs and acetates of "A Day In The Life", and I'd hoped to find something that specifically answered this, but the most intriguing links just pointed to this thread.  (Google is fast.)   If Terry has a chance, maybe he can play his tape copy and see whether it agrees with my description of Mike's recording.  If there's an answer out there to this mystery, I wasn't able to find it!
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rankus

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Re: The Bizarre Beatle Mystery Story
« Reply #68 on: March 20, 2005, 02:38:32 PM »



Wow,  Yet another amazing thread!

Thanks Terry!
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M36LINZ

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Re: The Bizarre Beatle Mystery Story
« Reply #69 on: March 23, 2005, 08:01:58 AM »

Regarding: ...had a chance to hear Mike McLean's disk-to-disk copy...

David,

You did a very nice job on that report. I am sure that my girlfriend would think I was wasting my time as well.

I believe that the acetate that I have was made by playing the original acetate on an Empire turntable equipped with a Stanton eliptical stylus cartridge, and making a 15 IPS tape copy. This tape was then used to cut my acetate.

It is unknown if Brian Hollands's "original" was an original cut from the first generation mix tape, or if additional generations were involved.
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David Kulka

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Re: The Bizarre Beatle Mystery Story
« Reply #70 on: March 23, 2005, 06:08:36 PM »

Mike, thanks for contributing to the thread.

It wasn't just Cholada who thought this exercise a bit absurd -- before we listened to the disk, you said "Why are you so worried about a 40 year old acetate", or words to that effect.  While Terry's story is quite amazing, and it's stranger still that you guys had a similar disk at Motown, the recording itself is really no big deal, as you forewarned.  No undiscovered vocal tracks or lyrics, no Jew's harp played by George Martin, no backwards masking, no Morse code, no Romanian propaganda speeches, nothing special -- just a scratchy, shorter, mono version of the album cut.

Still, I'm glad you held on to the disk all these years.  I'm sure that readers of this thread would enjoy seeing a picture of it, should you care to post one here...

David
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J.J. Blair

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Re: The Bizarre Beatle Mystery Story
« Reply #71 on: March 23, 2005, 08:29:28 PM »

Ahem ... that's "juice harp".  LOL.
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They say the heart of Rock & Roll is still beating, which is amazing if you consider all the blow it's done over the years.

"The Internet enables pompous blowhards to interact with other pompous blowhards in a big circle jerk of pomposity." - Bill Maher

"The negative aspects of this business, not only will continue to prevail, but will continue to accelerate in madness. Conditions aren't going to get better, because the economics of rock and roll are getting closer and closer to the economics of Big Business America." - Bill Graham

David Kulka

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Re: The Bizarre Beatle Mystery Story
« Reply #72 on: March 23, 2005, 08:45:12 PM »

Ahem...tell it to these guys...

http://www.jewsharpguild.org/
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Tomás Mulcahy

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Re: The Bizarre Beatle Mystery Story
« Reply #73 on: March 23, 2005, 09:53:46 PM »

Ah! Like Duct tape/ Duck tape...

The 15kHz tone was added originally at the disc cutting stage, and the seques and SFX were achieved by mixing down onto four track.

There is a version of "A day in the life" on the "Lennon Legend" soundtrack CD. There are no segue/sfx and it sounds a helluva lot clearer than the Pepper CD.

Which leads me to wonder if they mixed to stereo, then laid them all back to four track for the segues... so I can't wait for a Sgt.Pepper remix with sund quality as good as what they've done with "Let it Be (Naked)".

Mr. W.Whitman refers in another thread to Help being remixed for CD from a copy on Mitsu X850. That would explain why the CDs sound crap. I am amazed that they had the audacity to actually remix!

Thanks for the research David.

natpub

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Re: The Bizarre Beatle Mystery Story
« Reply #74 on: March 23, 2005, 11:20:39 PM »

Tom
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