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Title	Liverpool May 1960 　John Paul George and Stu
Released date
Front Cover	Back Cover	Label
Catalog Number	Label	Form
M5-6001 (mono)	Indra Record	12inch black vinyl 2records set

　Every rock band has a genesis. None are excempted from the routine of the constant periods of rehearsals, annoying the neighbours. Even the Beatles.
　This double-album allow us a chance to hear the Beatles not just before they became the biggest band in the history of rock, but before they were even the Beatles. Probabry before the Silver Beatles.
　John Lennon was 19, Paul McCartney 18, George Harrison 17, Stuart Sutcliffe 19. The time was May 1960, and for the embryo Beatles a band name was not the only thing lacking. There was not a drummer in sight. The band was raw, but they rehearsed day and night. They were still strict amateurs, and what is more they played like; mateurs. But their day would come.
　On page 89 of Shout : The Beatles In Their Genereation (Simon and Schuster, 1981) auther Philip Norman wrote about a private tape of a rehearsal session.
　'They still practiced for hours on end, at George's or Paul's houses, using a tape recorder of the old-fashioned sort that grew gently warm after a couple of hours' use. They had no idea of the what they wanted to be. They knew only that they wanted to be nothing like Cliff Richrd's neat, smiling, step-dancing Shadows. [A top Great British band of the day.] A tape has survived of a long rambling blues sequence with George on lead guitar, his fingers stumbling frequently over half-learned phrase; John and Paul strummingin a hollow chorus; Stu sutcliffe keeping up on bass by playing as few note as posible. at one point, Paul's voice breaks in impatiently with a kind of impromptu jazz scat singing. Later there are attempts at various rhythms, first rockabily, then Latain American, then a note-for-note copy of the Eddie Cochran song, "Hallelujah, I Love Her So." Suddenly they break into a song which was among the first ever written by John Lennon - "The One After 909." The beat lifts; their voices coalesce, and for moment they are recognizable as what they were to become. Then they go back to sitting around while George, painfully, tries to learn the blues.'
　You've probably read that before. You probably never thought you'd hear the tape. Well prepare yourself for a shock. THIS IS THAT TAPE. Philip Norman obviously heard it some years ago. The rest of us have had to wait till now. Norman's account is a fairly accurate one, though what he describes as 'blues' would be better called untitled, instrumental jams. It's an interesting thought that some of them may be extremely early Lennon-McCartney tunes. Songs like 'Thinking of Linking' and 'Winston's Walk' were always believed to be instrumentals, after all. Norman was certainly accurate when he described George's guitar work as stumbling. No offence meant George, but you kinda improved a little later on! Here his work is pretty dire, full of mistakes, spending too long near the neck of the guitar, too much tripping over himself.
　Paul was not yet on bass. What bass notes you hear - and they are few - comes from Stuart Sutcliffe. In fact there's just too few towork out just how bad 9or good) he was on the instrument. Then again. if he was good to be surely would have taken a more active role in the session. Paul and John provide fair but unspectacular rhythem on the tape. A lot of room for improvement there too.
　But drummer. This tape was made pre-Pete Best, right around the time when they hired guys like Norman Chapman and Thomas Moore, neither of whome lasted very long. Lack of beat is probably the main reason the tape does ramble a little.
　If you've read this far ypu might be wondering what is so special about the tape, if the music is not that grand. Simply this. They vinyl you are holding is a copy of the earliest existing tape of the Beatles. It predates by more than a year the band's Hamburg sessions with Tony Sheridan.It predates by two the band's audiyion for Decca and EMI/Capitol recordings. This tape is also the only existing recording of the Beatles with Stuart Sutcliffe, the Beatles soon to leave the band and then die a tragic death aged 21.It all ads up a kinda historic tape, right?
　In close on one and on-half hours you hear the embryo Beatles as just a few people have heard them before. According to Shout, the gigs they played around this time were not too promising. They might even be thrown off stage long before the scheduled end of their act. Here you get ninety precious minutes of material, probably as much stage time as the band had in many month!
　Most important of all, in occasionally lifting themselves above the jammingthere are clear and concise versions of songs which would later thrill the world. Right at the start Paul sings I'll Follow the Sun, an eventual Beatles '65 track. It has never before been revealed just how early this song was written ny John and Paul. It'll surely comes as a shock to hear them singing it May 1960.
　Later on Paul (he sings all the songs on this 2-LP set) moves the band into Hallelujah I Love Her So, just as Philip Norman said. Compare this to the Star Club tapes to hear how they progressed between 1960 and 1962. Then there's a couple of songs which defy labelling because the titles cannnot be distinguished. If you can decipher them you deserve a Beatles Booster button!
　Then it's back to one we do know, The One After 909. In the Let It Be movie we see and hear Paul explaining to someone the the song was a very early composition. Now we hear how early. May 1960, at latest. Probably much earlier besides, seeing as how good the band was at playing it. Funnyily enough, this version is more like the band's Let It Be LP version. 1969, than the 1963 cut to be found on Sessions.
　There are other songs too. One of them has the distinct riff of our dear Chuck Berry's "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man", but no vocal follow. Here George's guitar suddenly takes on a joyous quality. Then it slips back into the morass of bum notes and mistakes.
　The words of one song are started offby Paul and then pickes up by Stu before John comes in right at the end of finish off. Again, title unknown. The tape ends abruptly. Tapes always do, don't they? So we are left to ponder on how quickly the band was to improve so sson after, and on what chances there are of finding similar tapes of later rehearsals, showing that improvement clear and bright.
　Shortly after this tape was made the band bacame, for the first time, the Silver Beatles. Then they went off to Scotland backing Johnny Gentle. Then they went home to Liverpool for a while, found Pete Best and went off to Germany. Zooooooom. They left school behind them and took on the world. The rest was history.
　Treasure this record as a historical moment. There may never be another like it.

by ANDY LAAKSO