Monday, November 19, 2012

Howard Smith's Interviews With Legendary Rockers To Be Released

From New York Times.com

John and Yoko are there, talking for hours and hours — during a bed-in, at a “happening,” listening to the Beatles at home. Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda, just back from Cannes in June 1969, rap about their new movie, “Easy Rider.” Eric Clapton, between shows at the Fillmore East in 1970, struggles with a sense of responsibility for his new band, Derek and the Dominos.

Image from NewYorkTimes.com
Those are among more than 100 interviews with rock stars, artists and assorted radicals recorded from 1969 to 1972 by Howard Smith, a longtime writer for The Village Voice. They have now been cataloged and packaged for the digital era as “The Smith Tapes” and will be released in monthly batches over the next year. The first, with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Lou Reed, Frank Zappa, Mr. Clapton and others, comes out Tuesday through Amazon’s MP3 store and next week on iTunes.

At a time when rock ’n’ roll, the sexual revolution and the antiwar counterculture all intersected, Mr. Smith spoke to seemingly every boldface name for “Scenes,” his influential column in The Voice. He also had a knack for being in precisely the right place at the right time...

Copy of Beatles' Rejected Audition Tape To Be Auctioned

From Examiner.com

A tape of the recordings made by the Beatles' at their audition session for Decca Records on January 1, 1962 will be auctioned Nov. 27, UK auctioneer the Fame Bureau announced [November 16].

The 10-track tape, described as a mono master safety copy, features the songs “Like Dreamers Do,” “Money,” “Take Good Care of My Baby,” “Sure to Fall,” “Three Cool Cats,” “Love of The Loved,” “Memphis,” “Crying Waiting Hoping,” “Till There Was You” and “Searchin'.” The tape was rejected by Decca before the group was signed to Parlophone Records.
Image from Examiner.com

“We've been told it's a safety master," Ted Owen of the Fame Bureau told Beatles Examiner. "It came out of Capitol Records in Los Angeles.”

Owen said, "The great thing for me is the quality,” which he described as “pristine.” The value of the tape is estimated at between £18,000/20,000 ($28,600 to $31,770 USD).


The auction takes place at 5 p.m. GMT November 27 at the London Playboy Club. Other Beatles items in the auction include an RIAA gold record award for “The Beatles Anthology 3” and unreleased cover proofs for the Beatles' “Yesterday and Today” album, including a proof of the Butcher cover picture...

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