Two reel-to-reel audio tapes featuring a soundboard recording of a Toronto Beatles concert may soon be up for sale.
Billboard reports the owner, Piers Hemmingsen, a Toronto-based Beatles historian and author of The Beatles in Canada, is looking to sell the recordings, which were made at Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens on Aug. 17, 1965.
“I have never offered it for sale before,” Hemmingsen shares. “This is the best recording of any Beatles concert in Canada, if not North America, other than what was professionally recorded for The Beatles themselves.”
The reels include The Beatles’ full half-hour set, including performances of “Twist and Shout,” “Ticket To Ride,” “Help!” and “A Hard Day’s Night,” along with recordings of the day’s opening acts and venue announcements.
Hemmingsen says he has a copy of the concert on cassette, strictly for listening purposes, and while he’d like to keep it, he’s willing to sell it, as well. He didn’t say how much he wants for the recording, but Dan Muscatelli-Hampson, of U.K.-based music memorabilia and vinyl specialists Omega Auctions Ltd., estimated to Billboard it could be worth between $60,000 and $80,000.
So far Hemmingsen hasn’t put the reels on the market and says he’d prefer to sell it to Apple Corps, so Beatles fans may one day hear it.
“You can’t sit on a thing like this,” he says. “You want to share it with the world. On the other hand, there’s a commercial value to it and the only people that can release it are Apple.”
Hemmingsen plans to use the money toward printing his next two Beatles books, The Beatles in Canada: The Evolution 1964-1970, due out in September, and a follow-up, The Beatles In Canada: The Origins of Beatlemania!
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