Saturday, March 15, 2014

"From Us To You" For The Fourth and Final Time

On July 17 1964, The Beatles appeared at BBC Paris Studios in London to record a performance for the last "From Us To You" radio show broadcast a couple of weeks later on August 03 1964. This is a very unique BBC broadcast in the sense that we have the performance as well as having the rehearsal tape as well on bootleg.
Starting with the rehearsal tape, this can be found on the 10 inch vinyl record entitled "From Us To You, A Parlophone (sic) Rehearsal Session". The record contains two versions of "From Us to You" (the theme song), "Kansas City/Hey Hey Hey Hey", "Long Tall Sally", "If I Fell", "Boys", two takes of "I'm Happy Just To Dance With You" with George Harrison overdubbing vocals on the second version, three takes of "I Should Have Known Better" with a false start, harmonica and vocals overdubbed, "Things We Said Today" and "A Hard Day's Night". My copy is a green wax copy on an unknown blank label.
The actual broadcast featured all of the above tunes and the host was Don Wardell. The show starts with the theme song "From Us To You" with the introduction, a bit of Happy Bank Holiday wishes and the second tune performed is "Long Tall Sally" from the Beatles' new EP in the UK and the title song. Next up is a tune from the first movie soundtrack LP; a nice version of "If I Fell" with John and Paul harmonizing throughout. Three more songs from the first movie soundtrack LP are also performed: "I'm Happy Just To Dance With You" featuring the great George Harrison on vocals; Paul McCartney's haunting composition "Things We Said Today" is then performed after his own introduction,  and we have John's turn with "I Should Have Known Better". Ringo also gets his turn on vocals with a performance of "Boys" from the first LP in the UK and the first Vee-Jay LP in the United States. A cover tune is played as well; an early rendition of Little Richard's "Kansas City/ Hey Hey Hey Hey" with Paul on vocals. This song would eventually be released at the end of 1964 for the Beatles' fourth LP on Parlophone. The Beatles finish up this show with the title from the film, the single and the LP title "A Hard Day's Night" and then the theme is once again played as an outro and the credits are read out as narration by John Lennon.
The show (as broadcast) is available on the vinyl bootleg LP "The Beatles At The Beeb, Volume Eleven" as well as being available on the Great Dane box set "The Complete BBC Sessions" on disc 08. The box set also contains highlights from the rehearsal session. As far as I can see, nothing from this session has been released commercially.

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