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There may be no happier man on the planet right now than Piers Hemmingsen.
In a story that broke a few weeks ago in Billboard magazine, the Toronto-based Beatles expert announced that he had a reel-to-reel recording of the Fab Four’s entire afternoon Maple Leaf Gardens concert from Aug. 17, 1965, and was looking to sell it.
But it wasn’t until he entered a city studio with his friend and business adviser John Brower and sound engineer Doug McClement on Sept. 12 that Hemmingsen realized he was sitting on a potential pot of gold.
“It sounds amazing,” Hemmingsen, 69, told the Star in an interview the next day. “The tape was recorded in a professional format called half-track and it’s in great condition.”
Translation: he’s feeling extremely optimistic because the tape containing the 30-minute headlining set in front of an estimated 17,000 screaming fans was recorded directly from the soundboard with an Ampex reel-to-reel tape recorder and a six-channel Altec Lansing mixer.
“For 1965, it was pretty much state of the art,” Hemmingsen said.
And what that means is that the tape — two of them, actually, because he also has another reel featuring the four opening acts — is technically sound enough to be released for public consumption, should the Beatles’ business venture Apple Corps, which owns the commercial rights to the band’s recordings, decide to do so.
The irony is that both Apple Corps and Universal Music, parent company of the band’s original label, EMI Records, knew about the existence of the Beatles tape and passed when Hemmingsen first brought it to their attention in 2015.
“They flew me to London and I went to the Abbey Road Studios to play the tape to Giles Martin — son of producer George Martin — to see if they could include some that material in the authorized documentary ‘The Beatles: Eight Days a Week — The Touring Years,’ for director Ron Howard,” recalled Hemmingsen, who has either written or contributed to 20 books about the band and other acts from the British Invasion.
“But they deemed it wasn’t good enough quality.”
Martin and crew also apparently didn’t think to take the type of tape or the speed into account, because when McClement played the recording to produce one-minute clips for potential buyers, Hemmingsen said the difference from previous playbacks was “night and day.”
“My head was spinning,” said Hemmingsen, who added that except for the Abbey Road experience, he had only previously heard the tapes on inferior equipment.
The Beatles tape (which includes “Twist and Shout,” “She’s a Woman,” “I Feel Fine,” “Dizzy Miss Lizzy,” “Ticket to Ride,” “Everybody’s Trying to Be My Baby,” “Can’t Buy Me Love,” “Baby’s in Black,” “I Wanna Be Your Man,” “A Hard Day’s Night,” “Help!” and “I’m Down”) and the second tape (including Brenda Holloway, Cannibal & the Headhunters and King Curtis), came into Hemmingsen’s possession in 2010, when they were thrown in as a bonus when he bought video of silent 1964 concert footage.
“I knew it was from Maple Leaf Gardens and I knew it was recorded in 1965,” he recalled, “but that’s all I knew.”
Six months later, he purchased a reel-to-reel tape recorder to listen to the contents, only to be shocked by what he heard.
“Out of the nine concerts the Beatles played in Canada, it’s the only one that was recorded that way.”
The fact that this recording exists outside the normal Beatles business channels is something of a mystery. Brian Epstein, the Beatles’ manager at the time, was a shrewd individual who accompanied his charges to Toronto for the first time that year (they had previously played Canada in 1964), and usually exercised full control.
Somehow, this got missed.
“The way the Gardens was set up, as I’ve been told, is that all of this equipment was set up behind the scenes,” Hemmingsen said. “I’m pretty sure (Epstein) was unaware that this recording was being made.”
Hemmingsen said he sat on the tapes for so long because he figured there had to be another copy of the Gardens show out in the world.
Now he feels differently.
“I’m pretty sure this is the only one,” he said.
Hemmingsen was born in England, where his Canadian father worked with the British Army during the Second World War. His love of the Beatles began when as a schoolboy he first saw them perform “Please Please Me” on TV in early 1963.
Upon his family’s move to Canada that year, Hemmingsen’s fascination grew.
“They influenced me,” he said. “I became interested in singing. I joined a choir, and we had some success. And that was because I just loved singing along to Beatles records. Every time they came out with a new record, I couldn’t believe how much better it was than the last one. They just knew how to move things forward.
“I kept going with the Beatles from the start until the finish. That was just my entertainment, my thing.”
As an adult, he became a programmer, helping to develop the first computerized passport system for the Government of Canada in the late ‘70s. His reputation as a Beatles expert prompted EMI to enlist him for archival research during the ‘90s.
When he retired in 2009, Hemmingsen decided to devote most of his time to researching the Canadian aspect of the band’s success.
In 2016, he published “The Beatles in Canada: The Origins of Beatlemania,” a comprehensive 476-page reference work that covers the band’s 1963-64 introduction to Canadian audiences, largely facilitated by Paul White, the Capitol Records Canada A&R executive who released Beatles albums here at least a year before the band broke in the U.S.
One of the chief reasons Hemmingsen wants to sell the Beatles concert tapes is to finance the printing of the second volume of “The Beatles in Canada,” subtitled “The Evolution 1964-1970,” which will be published in 2025.
“It covers everything: media coverage, TV appearances, radio specials, charts, the launch of ‘Sgt. Pepper’ and the bed-ins and the Peace Festival,” Hemmingsen said. “It includes all the sales figures.”
In the 61 years since the Beatles first landed in Canadian record stores, the band’s popularity has hardly waned: Apple Corps generated more than $33 million in 2019 alone; in November Universal Music will release an eight-LP box set of the band’s 1964 albums in monophonic sound; and the National Music Centre in Calgary has an exhibit running until Jan. 5 called “From Me to You: The Beatles in Canada 1964-1966” that was curated by Hemmingsen.
As for this newly validated Beatles live recording, Hemmingsen said he’ll be reaching out to Apple Corps again to see if there’s interest, but added that since the Billboard article was published, “We’ve received significant interest from around the world.”
If Apple passes, then whoever purchases the master recording won’t be able to distribute or reproduce it without the company’s permission.
Hemmingsen refused to speculate how much the recordings are worth, but considering the quality and the rarity, he believes the eventual price could be substantial.
“This is an artifact and it’s historical,” Hemmingsen said.
And although he’s hoping for a big payout, he said listening to the high quality of the concert recording was already a huge reward.
“It’s made everything I’ve done over the years worth it.”
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