News

Update: one online LP seller claims the set will be on four LPs not two. That would be good (but probably costly), but until there's label confirmation it should not be taken as fact. After all, another vendor claimed that Nick Drake's Five Leaves Left was cut from analog. We posted that as fact and were left with an egged face. So four LPs is "what we've heard" until we find out for sure.

The original The Beatles Live at the BBC (a/k/a the "Beeb") issued on both CD and vinyl back in 1994 quickly sold more than five million copies, reaching number one in the UK and number three in America. This new set will be released by Universal Music Enterprises (UMe) on Monday, November 11th on double CD and "vinyl."

The release includes 63 tracks, none of which overlap the first BBC set and features thirty seven previously unreleased performances and twenty three bits of banter between the boys and the BBC hosts.

How all of this will fit on two LPs remains a mystery at this point as we seek clarification from UMe/Apple Corp. Perhaps the LPs will only include the "forty" musical performances headlined in the press release, but that puts ten songs on each side. Unless they are very short, or very dynamically compressed, it doesn't seem possible.

From the press release: "Thrilled to hear these exciting recordings again, Paul McCartney said, 'There’s a lot of energy and spirit. We are going for it, not holding back at all, trying to put in the best performance of our lifetimes.'"

Ten of On Air’s songs were never recorded by the group for EMI in the 1960s, including two making their debuts with the new release: The Beatles’ direct-to-air performance of Chuck Berry’s “I’m Talking About You” and a rocking cover of the standard “Beautiful Dreamer.” On Air also includes different versions of six rarities heard on the 1994 BBC collection: Little Richard’s “Lucille,” Chuck Berry’s “Memphis, Tennessee,” Chan Romero’s “The Hippy Hippy Shake,” Ray Charles’ “I Got A Woman,” and two songs they learned from records by Carl Perkins, “Glad All Over” and “Sure To Fall.”

Between March 1962 and June 1965, no fewer than 275 unique musical performances by The Beatles were broadcast by the BBC in the U.K. The group played songs on 39 radio shows in 1963 alone. Ringo Starr said in 1994, “You tend to forget that we were a working band. It’s that mono sound. There were usually no overdubs. We were in at the count-in and that was it. I get excited listening to them.” On their busiest BBC day, July 16, 1963, The Beatles recorded 18 songs for three editions of their "Pop Go The Beatles" series in fewer than seven hours.

On Air also features BBC recordings of 30 well-loved songs from The Beatles’ catalogue, including five number ones and other favorites such as: “I Saw Her Standing There,” “Twist And Shout,” “Do You Want To Know A Secret,” “Boys,” “Please Mister Postman,” “Money,” “And I Love Her,” and “If I Fell.”

The first volume is also being reissued and "sounding better than ever", though the press release did not state whether or not it too will be issued on vinyl, nor did it state who mastered the new set's vinyl or where it will be pressed.