The Beatles – Live In Stockholm, Sweden, 1964 (Misterclaudel mccd 45)
Original Version – I Saw Her Standing There / You Can’t Do That / She Loves You / All My Loving / Roll Over Beethoven / Can’t Buy Me Love / I Wanna Be Your Man – Remastered version – I Saw Her Standing There / You Can’t Do That / She Loves You / All My Loving / Roll Over Beethoven / Can’t Buy Me Love / I Wanna Be Your Man – Opening Theme / A Hard Day’s Night / Things We Said Today / You Can’t Do That / If I Fell / Long Tall Sally.
Tracks 1 – 14; Johnneshov Isstadion, Stockholm, 28th July, 1964 Tracks 15 – 20; ABC Theatre, Blackpool, UK 19th July, 1964 – Source A + B edited (47:50)
Released from out of the blue, late July 2014 was a hitherto unheard Beatles stage recording from the bands trip to tour Europe in 1964. To say we were all amazed is certainly an understatement – this was the second biggest find in a few months to come from the Beatles archives (See also HMC’s release of the mastered Shea! show) although, the Shea show was noted as being remastered for the Anthology film and thought to be held by Apple independently, then at least one of the tracks from this show had already been broadcast on Swedish radio in 2012.
It was then a shock that the near complete soundboard emerged, missing some of “I Saw Her Standing There” and having lost the track for the feed from both John and Ringo’s microphones (Shades of the fault that marred the Hollywood Bowl shows when they appeared in Midnight Beat’s boxed set c.1997.) meaning that John is barely audible when he introduces tracks or sings through his own mic (That goes for George too when he uses John’s mic) and while Ringo’s drums are a shade lower in the mix, his voice is almost inaudible through his own song.
The band played 4 dates in Sweden through this time, A matinee and an evening show on July the 28th with two the day after. It has been assumed that the recording comes from the evening of the 29th as the concert was cut short after “I Wanna Be Your Man” due to the audience rushing the stage and this is where the tape cuts off. I’d like to offer my own terms, as Misterclaudel thinks that the tape is actually from one of the shows on the 28th – As usually happens the owner of the tape has given up a half completed version as he might be seeking a few more krona for his full tape hence the missing John track, the tape could be of any of the 4 shows.
That it cuts short straight after “I Wanna Be Your Man” isn’t specifically a result of the stage storming, it could very well be a result of premise number one. That there’s only 7 tracks that are being given away. The rest will reveal themselves once the highest purchaser chips in.
The show itself is, as you’ve guessed by now, very good quality. A little crunchy on the louder parts of the songs however but a very clear balance between band and audience between the tracks. The upside of John’s vocal mic not working is that you hear a little more Paul and George and it’s Macca that’s doing most of the ad-libbing between the songs, They were as excited for being there as the crowd were so mugging about and acting silly was all part of the show.
Due to the brevity of the show that was liberated, the label have also included a remaster version that they must have patched up in-house – the point being to make the show a little less noisy but as it does it just dulls the sound and tips up the bass a little, John is no more audible, Ringo’s drums either. It sounds a little less energetic than the original too so ends up sounding more like filler.
As an extra incentive to buy, Misterclaudel have added the Beatles show played just over a week earlier back in Britain at the ABC Theatre in Blackpool on the 19th of July – a show that has previously appeared on Misterclaudel’s multi disk set, “Blackpool Night Out 1963/64/65” as reviewed by gsparco. A two source mix where only the final couple of seconds are from the ‘B’ source, completing the part of ‘Long Tall Sally’ that was missing. As this seems to be the source from the multi disk set it’s only reason for including it is if you hadn’t picked up the boxed set or the Unicorn CD that first featured the audio. For my money, they might have been better including the Swedish radio show first and most famously included on Swingin’ Pig’s “Stars Of ’63” but, again, that has been booted many times. At least the Blackpool show is more or less chronologically correct.
The Misterclaudel label were first out of the tracks with their Johnneshov Isstadion release, it’s nicely packaged with the photo on the cover that everyone else has used too. You might be worth reading the reviews of the rest of the releases as they arrive but if you want to add this to your collection before it sells out, it’s a good, economical way of grabbing it on silver disk.
