The Beatles, “Great Scott! It’s… The Beatles” (MasterJedi MJ1502 – 1/2)
DISC 1
How Do You Do It / There’s A Place, take 1/ There’s A Place, take 2 / There’s A Place, takes 3-4 / There’s A Place, take 5-6 / There’s A Place, take 7-8 / There’s A Place, take 9 / There’s A Place, take 10 / I Saw Her Standing There, take 1 / I Saw Her Standing There, take 2 / I Saw Her Standing There, takes 3-5 / I Saw Her Standing There, takes 6-8 / I Saw Her Standing There, take 9 / Do You Want To Know A Secret, take 7 / Do You Want To Know A Secret, take 8 / A Taste Of Honey, take 6 / A Taste Of Honey, take 7 / There’s A Place, take 11 / There’s A Place, takes 12-13 / I Saw Her Standing There, take 10 (S2S) / I Saw Her Standing There, takes 11-12 / Misery, take 1 / Misery, takes 2-5 / Misery, take 6 / Misery, take 7 / Misery, takes 8-9 – Bonus – Do You Want To Know A Secret, takes 7-8 in stereo. (66:39)
DISC 2
From Me To You, takes 1-2 / From Me To You, take 3 / From Me To You, take 4 / From Me To You, take 5 / From Me To You, takes 6-7 / Thank You Girl, take 1 / Thank You Girl, takes 2-4 / Thank You Girl, take 5 / Thank You Girl, take 6 / Thank You Girl, takes 7-13 / From Me To You, take 8 announcement and master edit / From Me To You, remnants of takes 8-13 / One After 909, takes 1-2 / One After 909, take 3 / One After 909, takes 4-5 / Messages To Australia / Hold Me Tight, takes 20-21 / Hold Me Tight, takes 22-24 / Hold Me Tight, takes 25-26 / Hold Me Tight, takes 27-28 / Hold Me Tight, take 29 / Don’t Bother Me, take 10 / Don’t Bother Me, takes 11-13 – Bonus tracks – From Me To You, mono version in stereo / Thank You Girl, mono version in stereo (S2S + Mono) (66:45)
Besides all the demos, acetates, control room monitor mixes, etc that have sneaked out under the Beatles unofficial cannon there is always another annex to be explored and – taking his lead from a general discussion question on the Beatles bootleg boards on the internet – Masterjedi (or at least that’s the labels name) have produced an exceptional set covering the the released out put from the stash of the Roger Scott tapes. Mr. Scott an unwitting accomplice to the bootleg industry (Some may disagree however) after his Beatles recordings – Roger was a big friend to the band along with fellow DJ Kenny Everett and also narrated the Abbey Road Video Tour in 1983 – found their way in to unofficial hands. The Author John C. Winn has a brilliant write up on the Roger Scott tapes in his book ‘Lifting Latches’ which is still available from www.multiplusbooks.com.
The Masterjedi label have done their full research from the information available that pieces together the recordings and presented us with the audio. A multitude of recordings have been used from the most famous sources to come from the vaults and it shows.
Volume 1 centres around the earliest studio recordings by the Beatles – from their abortive take on Mitch Murry’s “How Do You Do It?”, scrapped from being their first single after the Beatles decided that the song didn’t really fit their sound – reaching through the sessions for their debut LP, their second single, messages to promote themselves in Australia and through to their second album sessions. the bonus tracks on disk one are not from the original Roger Scott tapes but are neatly annexed in.
The tracks here have been expertly spliced and stitched together to form the longest versions of these outtakes and they sound great as you might expect – clapper boards and clicks, take announcements and stray studio chat all complete for that real fly on the wall experience and as Apple and the Beatles’ and their respective estates have now negotiated new contracts for the Beatles songs resulting in the cessation of their official bootleg series downloads, the best place to catch up with these outtakes in this beautiful studio quality.
All of the works on here, it goes without saying, you’ll have heard before but this is a great anthology of the tracks that were captured by the Roger Scott tapes and the effort made by Scott and John Barrett to catalogue them.
These CDs are silver pressed disks but they feature the original artwork that was produced for this series – a handsome hard days night pastiche in various different colours featuring Roger’s image alongside the fabs and getting an almost equal footing along side the lads who recorded those tracks. Props also to the great disk art – Almost secondary to the sleeve itself sometimes, this one is basic but very, very nice! The only thing that the liner notes is missing is a run down of the sources that the songs are taken from – I’ve reproduced the sources below this review.
An excellently produced collection, similar in style to the Barrett tapes set that MasterJedi have previously produced (‘Bare It All’) and because of this being the first time that the pieces have all appeared in the same jigsaw, a great set to own.
Sources used;
URT: Ultra Rare Tracks (Swingin’ Pig)
TIO: Take It Off (HMC)
S2S: Studio 2 Sessions at Abbey Road (Yellow Dog)
FAAB: Free As A Bird CD Single (Apple)*
Boot63: The Beatles Bootleg Recordings 1963 (Apple)
Mono: Beatles in Mono CD Box Set (Apple)*
SS: Studio Sessions (Tobe Milo)
Anthology: The Beatles Anthology CDs (Apple)*
MTA: Message to Australia (Yellow Dog 2004)
TM: True Masters (Geritol)*
AHDNBlu: A Hard Day’s Night Blu Ray 5.1 soundtrack*
UM: Unsurpassed Masters (Yellow Dog)
Red: The Beatles 1962-1966 UK Red Vinyl (Pbthal)*
CCC: Complete Christmas Collection (Yellow Dog)
UCC: The Ultimate Christmas Collection (Yellow Dog 2003)
AHOTBY: Sgt Pepper: A History Of The Beatle Years (RMW)
Audifon: Anthology (Audifon)
UT: Unsurpassed Masters (Unique Tracks)
ADITL: A Day In The Life (Yellow Dog 2001)
MM: More Masters (Roaring Mouse)*
MT’05: Miscellaneous Tracks (Yellow Dog 2005)
USB: The Beatles USB Box Set (Apple)*
RT: Rare Tracks (Red Square)
MT(UC): Ultimate Collection Miscellaneous Tracks (Yellow Dog)
PST: The Peter Sellers Tape (Masterdisc)*
RB: Rockband Multitracks*
* indicates non-Scott sources used for short augmentation only
