Friday, July 18, 2014

Another Beatles Christmas Record Outtakes

On October 26 1964, The Beatles entered EMI studio two in order to complete two things: one was the completion of their fourth official LP - eventually titled "Beatles For Sale" by finishing the last song recorded for the LP; a re-make of "What You're Doing" after nineteen takes.
The second task was to make their annual Christmas record. As this was the last studio session of the year, it made sense to complete the Christmas record using the available studio time (although I'm sure at this point EMI would have probably let the Beatles record endlessly due to the sales of their music all over the world).
The interesting this about this session is that there are available outtakes to the speech used for the eventual release of "Another Beatles Christmas Record" on flexi-disc (LYN 757) in December 1964.
The outtakes are available on various bootleg CDs and were first broadcast on the radio documentary "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band: A History of the Beatle Years 1962-1970. This included a rendition of "Hello Dolly" with John on Harmonica, Paul on the piano and George on the Kazoo. There is also some speech by all four Beatles reading off the script supplied by them with points of interest although on the outtakes they sound a little lifeless compared to the official release put out a couple of months after the recording.
The "Hello Dolly" segment and take one can be found on the CD: "Complete Christmas Collection 1963-1969" of which I have included a youtube recording below. Takes 2, 3 and 4 are contained on the bootleg CD " The Seven Years of Christmas" although only take two seems to be complete while 3 and 4 are false starts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=it7n63biUBQ


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