A piece of rock history has just surfaced online – the earliest known live recording of The Beatles.
The tape is from an April 4th, 1963 performance at Stowe School in Buckinghamshire, recorded by a 15-year-old student named John Bloomfield.
Bloomfield, now 70, kept the recording safe since 1963 but only revealed it existed now.
The show took place just two weeks after the release of the Beatles’ debut album Please Please Me, right on the verge of the band exploding into worldwide fame.
Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn commented on the significance of the recording. “The opportunity that this tape presents, which is completely out of the blue, is fantastic because we hear them just on the cusp of the breakthrough into complete world fame,” he told the BBC. “And at that point, all audience recordings become blanketed in screams.”
“I think it’s an incredibly important recording, and I hope something good and constructive and creative eventually happens to it,” Lewisohn continues.
A clip of the recording has been uploaded to youtube.