FEATURE:
Paul McCartney at Eighty
Twenty-Eight: The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl
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ON 4th May, 1977…
IN THIS PHOTO: The Beatles perform at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, California on 23rd August, 1964/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images
the world received The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl. It is a live album (in the U.S.; 6th May in the U.K.) by the iconic band, featuring songs compiled from three performances recorded at the Hollywood Bowl in August 1964 and August 1965. It was the band's first official live recording. I am including this as part of my run of Paul McCartney features ahead of his eightieth birthday in June. One reason I am doing so is because the forty-fifth anniversary of the live album is coming. The album does have a reputation as being the black sheep of the band’s catalogue by some. I think it is an important album that contains some of the band’s best live performances. Such a historic set of gigs and live album, I think Paul McCartney was pivotal. Not only in terms of his musicianship and singing. His showmanship and crowd interaction were incredible! Before rounding off, I am going to come to a great insight from the Beatles Bible. They tell the story of The Beatles’ gigs at The Hollywood Bowl:
“The Beatles’ first official live album was recorded over three nights at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, in 1964 and 1965.
George Martin had originally wanted to record The Beatles’ concerts at New York’s Carnegie Hall on 12 February 1964, during their first US visit. Although Capitol Records agreed, he was denied permission by the American Federation of Musicians.
As the effects of Beatlemania became all pervasive, the label decided to release a live album to capitalise on The Beatles’ US success. During their first full American tour Capitol agreed to record the group’s concert at the Hollywood Bowl on 23 August 1964.
George Martin was at the venue, working with Capitol Records’ producer Voyle Gilmore on the recording. The concert was seen by 18,700 people.
George Martin made such a speech. It sounds like he changed it but I doubt it. There’s not much he could do. It was recorded on three-track machines with half-inch tapes. The Hollywood Bowl has a pretty good stereo sound system so we plugged our mikes right in there. I didn’t do an awful lot. There wasn’t much we could do. They just played their usual show and we recorded it. It wasn’t that bad. I kept thinking, ‘Maybe we’ll get permission to release the tapes.’ So I took them back to the studio and worked on it a while. I worked on the applause, edited it down, made it play and EQd it quite a bit.
The Beatles heard it and they all wanted tape copies. I had five or six copies made and sent over. That’s where the bootlegs must have come from. We had a system at Capitol and we knew where all our copies were. The Beatles said they liked the tapes, that it sounded pretty good, that they were surprised but they still didn’t want to release it.
I thought the first concert was a little better than the second. I don’t know if I would have put them together like they did because doing it that way they have sacrificed an album. They really could have made two albums.
Voyle Gilmore
The Beatles performed 12 songs at the concert: ‘Twist And Shout’, ‘You Can’t Do That’, ‘All My Loving’, ‘She Loves You’, ‘Things We Said Today’, ‘Roll Over Beethoven’, ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’, ‘If I Fell’, ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’, ‘Boys’, ‘A Hard Day’s Night’, and ‘Long Tall Sally’.
The Hollywood Bowl was marvellous. It was the one we all enjoyed most, I think, even though it wasn’t the largest crowd – because it seemed so important, and everybody was saying things. We got on, and it was a big stage, and it was great. We could be heard in a place like the Hollywood Bowl, even though the crowds was wild: good acoustics.
John Lennon, 1964
Anthology
George Martin was initially reluctant to tape the concert, and after mixing the tracks on 27 August Capitol decided the quality of the recording was not suitable for release. They did, however, include a 48-second extract from ‘Twist And Shout’ on the 1964 documentary album The Beatles’ Story.
We recorded it on three-track tape, which was standard US format then. You would record the band in stereo on two tracks and keep the voice separated on the third, so that you could bring it up or down in the mix. But at the Hollywood Bowl they didn’t use three-track in quite the right way. I didn’t have too much say in things because I was a foreigner, but they did some very bizarre mixing. In 1977, when I was asked to make an album from the tapes, I found guitars and voices mixed on the same track. And the recording seemed to concentrate more on the wild screaming of 18,700 kids than on the Beatles on stage.
George Martin
The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, Mark Lewisohn
The Beatles returned to the Hollywood Bowl the following year, playing two further sell-out concerts on 29 and 30 August 1965. Capitol Records again recorded the two shows.
They played the same set on both nights: a truncated version of ‘Twist And Shout’, followed by ‘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’.
The album
Although they had hoped the 1965 recordings would be better than the previous year’s, Capitol decided that the quality was insufficient for release. The tapes remained in the record company vaults for several years, and in 1971 were given to Phil Spector to see if an album could be prepared. However, Spector’s work came to nothing, and the tapes remained unreleased for several more years.
Capitol called me a few months back and asked if I could help find the tapes in the library and, of course, I knew right where they were. They wanted to get permission to put them out and thought it would be useful if George Martin was involved, since he knew the boys and had made all their other records.
Voyle Gilmore, 1977
In the mid-1970s Capitol president Bhaskar Menon gave George Martin the tapes and asked him to compile an official live album. Although impressed with The Beatles’ performances, he found the sound quality disappointing. Nonetheless, in January 1977 he began working with studio engineer Geoff Emerick to clean up the master tapes and assemble a set of songs for release.
Bhaskar Menon, the president of Capitol Records, is an old friend of mine. He mentioned these tapes to me and asked whether I would listen to them because capitol was thinking of releasing an album. My immediate reaction was, as far as I could remember, the original tapes had a rotten sound. So I said to Bhaskar, ‘I don’t think you’ve got anything here at all.’
There have been an awful lot of bootleg recordings made of Beatles concerts around the world and they’ve been in wide circulation. But when I listened to the Hollywood Bowl tapes, I was amazed at the rawness and vitality of The Beatles’ singing. So I told Bhaskar that I’d see if I could bring the tapes into line with today’s recordings. I enlisted the technical expertise of Geoff Emerick and we transferred the recordings from three-track to 24-track tapes. The two tapes combined 22 songs and we whittled these down to 13. Some tracks had to be discarded because the music was obliterated by the screams.
George Martin
The recordings were transferred to 24-track tapes to be edited, filtered and equalised. No redubbing of voices or instruments took place. Eventually an album was assembled consisting of recordings from all three Hollywood Bowl concerts.
Six songs were included from the 23 August 1964 concert tapes: ‘Things We Said Today’, ‘Roll Over Beethoven’, ‘Boys’, ‘All My Loving’, ‘She Loves You’, and ‘Long Tall Sally’.
Due to an error, the tracklisting for The Beatles At The Hollywood Bowl lists all the recordings as dating from 1964 or 30 August 1965. However, three of the songs – ‘Ticket To Ride’, ‘Dizzy Miss Lizzy’, and ‘Help!’ – originated from 29 August 1965. Unfortunately a technical fault left Paul McCartney’s vocals and introductions inaudible during the first four songs of the first 1965 show, rendering a substantial portion of the recordings unusable.
Five songs from 30 August 1965 appeared on The Beatles At The Hollywood Bowl: ‘Twist And Shout’, ‘She’s A Woman’, ‘Dizzy Miss Lizzy’, ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’, and ‘A Hard Day’s Night’. The album version of ‘Dizzy Miss Lizzy’ was a composite edit incorporating parts of the 29 and 30 August performances.
Some of The Beatles’ on-stage announcements were inconsistent when presented in album form. A Hard Day’s Night and Help! are both referred to as their latest albums, owing to the different recording dates.
“The release
The Beatles At The Hollywood Bowl was released in May 1977, at a time when Beatlemania was a far cry from current musical fashions. Nonetheless, the public appetite for live Beatles recordings was proven when a set of bootleg recordings from Hamburg’s Star-Club was released in 1977.
Once the technical work had been completed, EMI needed approval from the four Beatles before the album could be released. I had to go to New York anyway, so I rang John Lennon and told him about the recordings. I told him that I had been very sceptical at first but now I was very enthusiastic because I thought the album would be a piece of history which should be preserved.
I said to John, ‘I want you to hear it after I’ve gone. You can be as rude as you like, but if you don’t like it, give me a yell.’ I spoke to him the following day and he was delighted with it. The reaction of George and Ringo was much cooler.
The Hollywood Bowl recordings were issued with a gatefold sleeve, inside which was a selection of live photography and memorabilia. The back cover featured sleeve notes written by George Martin.
I have an acetate of it, right from ’64 and I had the tapes in the studio in England a few years ago. The thing is, it’s only important historically, but as a record it’s not very good.
While each of The Beatles was on EMI/Capitol, the LP wouldn’t have been released because we didn’t like it. But as soon as we left, and we lost control of our material, it was released. The sound quality on the album sounds just like a bootleg, but because Capitol is bootlegging it, it’s legitimate.
George Harrison
The album was a commercial success, selling more than a million copies worldwide. It topped the New Musical Express chart in the UK and reached number two on the Billboard chart in the US.
The Beatles At The Hollywood Bowl was reissued in the UK in September 1984 on EMI’s budget label Music For Pleasure. However, it was given minimal promotion and failed to chart, and was deleted the following year.
I haven’t heard it. Geoff [Emerick] keeps telling me to, because he did it. He thinks it’s good, but I’m just not that bothered. I’ve got a lot of those tapes anyway in my private collection. I’ve got original demos and original tapes so I’ve heard a lot of them. But I must have heard it, because I’m on it.
Paul McCartney, 1977
Despite the warm public reception, the album is yet to be reissued digitally. Needle-drop transfers from original pressings of the album have been traders by bootleggers, although the complete recordings from all three concerts are also in circulation.
Other releases
The Hollywood Bowl recordings were also used to bulk up the sound of the film The Beatles At Shea Stadium, and were incorporated into the soundtrack on 5 January 1966.
John Lennon’s spoken introduction to ‘Baby’s In Black’ from 29 August 1965 was also included on the 1996 single ‘Real Love’, along with the full version from the 30 August performance.
In 2006 the Love album included a version of ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ which combined the studio version with the live recording from 23 August 1964.
A new album, Live At The Hollywood Bowl, was released in September 2016 to coincide with the Ron Howard documentary The Beatles: Eight Days A Week – The Touring Years. The audio had been remixed by George Martin’s son Giles.
The album contained 17 songs: eight from the 1964 show, two from the first 1965 show, six from the second 1965 show, and a composite version of ‘Dizzy Miss Lizzy’ from the two 1965 recordings (similar to the 1977 album).
Sleevenotes
Over twelve years ago the Beatles appeared for the first time at The Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. It was not long after they had made their first impact on the United States, but already two years after I had signed them to a recording contract for EMI. Frankly, I was not in favor of taping their performance. I knew the quality of recording could not equal what we could do in the studio, but we thought we would try anyhow. Technically, the results were disappointing; the conditions for the engineers were arduous in the extreme. The chaos, I might almost say panic, that reigned at these concerts was unbelievable unless you were there. Only three track recording was possible; the Beatles had no “fold back” speakers, so they could not hear what they were singing, and the eternal shriek from 17,000 healthy, young lungs made even a jet plane inaudible.
A year later, in 1965, John, Paul, George and Ringo appeared again at The Hollywood Bowl and again Capitol taped the show for posterity, and there the tapes remained for over a decade. Neither the boys nor I considered they should be used because they consisted of titles that had already been issued as studio recordings, we often spoke of making a live recording, and in fact the ill-fated Let It Be album began as an attempt to make a live record of new material.
It was with some misgivings therefore that I agreed to listen to those early tapes at the request of Bhaskar Menon, Capitol’s president. The fact that they were the only live recordings of the Beatles in existence (if you discount inferior bootlegs) did not impress me. What did impress me, however, was the electric atmosphere and raw energy that came over.
And so, together with my recording engineer, Geoff Emerick, I set to work to bring the performance back to life. It was a labor of love, for we did not know if we could make them good enough for the world to hear – let alone John, Paul, George and Ringo.
We transferred the vintage three track tapes to modern multi-track, remixed, filtered, equalized and generally polished the tapes. Then, by careful editing from the two performances, we produced the performance that you hear now, obviously there has been no overdubbing. All the voices and instruments are the original performance (some of the vocal balances, with three singers on one track are evidence enough). But it is a piece of history that will not occur again.
Those of us who were lucky enough to be present at a live Beatle concert – be it in Liverpool, London, New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Sydney or wherever – will know how amazing, how unique those performances were. It was not just the voice of the Beatles: it was expression of the young people of the world.
And for the others who wondered what on Earth all the fuss was about, this album may give a little clue. It may be a poor substitute for the reality of those times, but it is now all there is.
In the multiplatinum, sophisticated world we live in today, it is difficult to appreciate the excitement of the Beatles breakthrough. My youngest daughter, Lucy, now nine years old, once asked me about them, “You used to record them, didn’t you, Daddy?” she asked, “Were they as great as the Bay City Rollers?’ “Probably not,” I replied. Some day she will find out”.
Ahead of its forty-fifth anniversary, I wanted to investigate and spotlight one of the most important live albums ever. From the iconic The Beatles, I think Paul McCartney was a big reason as to why the shows and songs are so thrilling and tight. It must have been so daunting performing at such a large venue with a huge crowd, even though The Beatles had performed to huge audiences long before 1964. Playing to such a wild American audience relatively new in their careers is quite a task. They handled it expertly and delivered some sensational shows! As part of this run of forty features ahead of Paul McCartney’s eightieth birthday in June, I am highlighting various aspects of his career. Key moments, albums and parts of his personality. As The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl is forty-five on 4th May, I wanted to spend a bit of time with it now. All of the band were tremendous during the gigs, but I think there was something that extra bit magic about…
PAUL McCartney’s performances.