THE COMPLETE SILVER BEATLES

I don`t have this album, but I have listened to all the songs from this album from other sources. in fact, they were broadcasted in a FM radio station in my city in a series of programmes dedicated to the history of the band. It was in late 1982, I think.

This album has 12 of the 15 songs that THE BEATLES (George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and then drummer Pete Best) recorded at the Decca Studios in London on the first day of January 1962. These recordings are as a whole also known as "The Decca Audition Tape". and as the very known old story says, they were rejected by Decca Records after this audition. But manager Brian Epstein anyway paid for the audition tapes to be owned by them, and he spent some months trying to get a recording contract for the band using these tapes with several record labels, until one day he was lucky and met a person who suggested to him to visit Parlophone Records to meet Producer George Martin, a then small record label which was part of the EMI Records label and that was mostly dedicated to the release of Comedy albums (which were also produced by Martin) . In fact, EMI also have rejected the band before that, but despite this Epstein tried again with Parlophone, and was lucky enough to find that Martin was interested to give the band a chance for an audition in June 1962. The rest is history.

These mono recordings from this "Decca Audition Tape" are well recorded and mixed but they sound really old, still showing the band playing well but not very well. In fact, they travelled all night from Liverpool to London for the audition with Decca. So, they sound a bit tired and maybe more after the New Year`s party (even the Decca producer and record executives arrived late to the audition). But anyway, the band tried to sound well. It is also known that Epstein selected the songs for the audition to try to show "their musical versatility". So, the songs show a variety of music styles, from ballads ("Till There Was You"), rockers ("Money", "Memphis"), Country and Western music ("Sure To Fall"), music more appropiate for Night Clubs ("Besame Mucho", a song which they also played in Hamburg in places like the "Star Club"), and even some theatre music ("Three Cool Cats", "The Sheik of Araby"). The band also recorded that day three original Lennon-McCartney songs (the unreleased "Love of the Loved", plus "Like Dreamers Do" and "Hello, Little Girl", with both of them being released in their "Anthology 1" two CD set compilation in 1995). It seems that these three Lennon-McCartney songs were not released in albums like this "The Complete Silver Beatles" compilation for some legal considerations. But these three original songs are the best from this "Decca Audition Tape". I think that due to his lack of experience managing bands Brian Epstein did not have the right vision to promote the band in the right way. He did it the best he could then, but obviously most of the material from this "Decca Audition Tape" did not show the real potential of the band as songwriters. Maybe it could have been better to include more songs from Lennon and McCartney as part of the repertoire for the audition. Also the lack of a better drummer showed the band still with some limitations. Pete Best was not the right drummer for the band, but fortunately the band later met Ringo Starr and the band became a much better band with him on the drums.

The title of this album "The Complete Silver Beatles" is not really good. The band at that time did no use that name. They were known then as The Beatles in Liverpool and in Hamburg. I don`t know why the record label used a title like that for this album. Maybe the rights for the use of the recordings were not very clear then, but I really don`t know the whole story behind the release of this album. But I saw it being sold in well established record shops and in supermarkets in my city in the early eighties, being sold with reduced prices.

For collectors and fans of the band.