A recording of the Beatles performing live in April 1963, which lasts for an hour, has recently emerged, making it the earliest complete recording of the band. The recording was made by John Bloomfield, a 15-year-old student at the all-boys boarding school Stowe in Buckinghamshire, UK.
The Beatles had been invited to perform at the school’s theater on April 4, 1963, after a student named David Moores wrote to the band’s manager, Brian Epstein. To cover the £100 fee, Moores sold tickets to his fellow students.
During the hour-long performance at Stowe all-boys boarding school in Buckinghamshire on April 4, 1963, The Beatles played some of their popular club covers such as “Too Much Monkey Business” by Chuck Berry, and a few tracks from their newly released debut album, Please Please Me. Despite being late for the show due to a recording session at the BBC Paris Studios, the band managed to play 22 songs and even fulfilled some requests from the audience.
“I would say I grew up at that very instant,” Bloomfield, who recorded the Beatles’ live performance, revealed in an interview with the BBC that a portion of the tape was played on the Front Row program. “It sounds a bit of an exaggeration, but I realized this was something from a different planet.”
A snippet from the recording can be heard in the video provided below. The tape carries significant historical value, as it captures the Beatles in April 1963, a time when they were still building their reputation with their album Please Please Me. It would be another 10 months before they traveled to the United States.
“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,” On the broadcast, Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn commented. “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.”
Keep going for the video below: