The Beatles' bootleg recordings are recordings of performances by the Beatles that have attained some level of public circulation without being available as a legal release. The term most often refers to audio recordings, but also includes video performances. Starting with vinyl releases in the 1970s, through CD issues in the late 1980s, and continuing with digital downloads starting in the mid-1990s, the Beatles have been, and continue to be, among the most bootlegged artists.
Bootleg recordings arise from a multitude of sources, including radio and TV broadcast performances, live shows, studio outtakes and session tapes, alternate mixes, test discs, and home demos. The largest single source of Beatles bootleg material is the set of Nagra audio tapes from the 1969 filming of the Get Back / Let It Be rehearsal and recording sessions.
Historical overview The first notable Beatles bootleg was Kum Back, issued around January 1970 in a plain white sleeve with plain white labels and no mention of a record company. This vinyl bootleg was based on an acetate of one of the early rough mixes by Glyn Johns of the Get Back album (which would later become Let It Be).Unterberger (2006), pp. 282–283. John Lennon may have been the unintentional source for one of the Get Back bootlegs; Lennon said: "They say it came from an acetate that I gave to someone who then went and broadcast it as being an advance pressing or something."Unterberger (2006), p. 371.
Other notable bootlegs to appear in the early 1970s were Yellow Matter Custard, containing 14 BBC Radio performances from 1963, (originally these tracks were thought to be from the Decca audition of January 1962, and Lennon himself told McCartney about the album)Unterberger (2006), pp. 26–29. and Sweet Apple Trax, a two-volume four-disc collection of songs and jams from the Get Back rehearsal sessions first issued in 1974.Heylin (2004), p. 207. In 1977, a copy of the Beatles' Decca audition tape was bought by a collector, who released the songs over a series of seven 45 rpm singles pressed on coloured vinyl with full colour picture sleeves. Bootleggers of this era often copied and repackaged each other's releases, so popular titles often appeared from more than one bootleg label. The biggest labels for Beatles material in the 1970s were Kornyfone (TAKRL), ContraBand, Trademark of Quality and Wizardo.Reinhart (1981), pp. xix–xxi.
EMI had planned to release an album of alternate takes and previously unreleased songs by the Beatles in 1985 called Sessions, but the Beatles objected after it had been compiled; by the end of the year, bootleg copies were widely available.Unterberger (2006), pp. 365–366. During the cataloguing and review of the EMI archives in the early 1980s in preparation for the Sessions album and a multimedia show given at Abbey Road Studios, it is suspected that high quality copies of some of the material were surreptitiously made. This may have been the source for the Ultra Rare Trax CD series from Swingin' Pig that started appearing in 1988, which provided takes never previously bootlegged in clarity that rivalled official releases.Heylin (2004), p. 209.
The late 1980s also saw the emergence of Yellow Dog, a label specialising in Beatles studio outtakes, who released the CD series Unsurpassed Masters in quality similar to Ultra Rare Trax; Yellow Dog, like Swingin' Pig's parent company Perfect Beat, was registered in Luxembourg, which had the most liberal copyright laws among EU countries.Heylin (2004), pp. 229–231. Yellow Dog released Unsurpassed Demos in 1991, featuring 22 songs from the 1968 Kinfauns (Esher) demos, only some of which had been previously made public during the radio series The Lost Lennon Tapes that debuted in 1988.
In 1993, a nine CD box set of the Beatles' BBC radio performances was released in Italy by Great Dane. The official Live at the BBC and Anthology releases in 1994–1996 covered much of the highlights of previously bootlegged material, in sound quality that most bootlegs could not match. However, new bootlegs continued to appear, with bootleggers including the word "anthology" in the title of many of their collections. Starting in 1999, Silent Sea issued a series of CD-Rs, featuring recompiled studio outtakes with commercial-quality packaging and liner notes.Heylin (2004), pp. 309–310. In 2000, the Vigotone label followed up their earlier eight-CD package of Get Back session recordings with a seventeen-CD collection called Thirty Days.Heylin (2004), p. 277. In the early 2000s, the DVD format enhanced the availability of Beatles bootleg videos, covering filmed concerts, TV appearances, promotional films, and even rare clips and outtakes.Unterberger (2006), p. 368. The six-volume The Lost Album series, published between 2017 and 2025, was an attempt to bring together almost all of the Beatles' unpublished or never officially released recordings.
The availability of high-speed Internet has transformed the bootlegging industry. The Purple Chick label has assembled and digitally fine-tuned many comprehensive themed packages, including individual studio album sessions, the Get Back sessions, and the BBC performances, all distributed free through various fan trading sites online. Author Richie Unterberger noted that it is "now theoretically possible to assemble a complete collection of the circulating unreleased Beatles recordings without ever buying a bootleg."
Commonly bootlegged material Several books have been devoted to comprehensively documenting Beatles bootlegs; the following is a list of some of the most common or notable bootlegged recordings by the Beatles.
The Quarrymen / Silver Beatles era (1957–1960) Other than the commercially released songs with Tony Sheridan issued on In the Beginning (Circa 1960), only three recordings made by the group prior to 1962 have become public.Unterberger (2006), pp. 4–10.
The Quarrymen show, 6 July 1957. The Quarrymen played a show for the Woolton fête at St Peter's Parish Church, notable as the day that Paul McCartney was first introduced to Lennon by a mutual friend, Ivan Vaughan. In 1994, Bob Molyneux, a retired policeman, rediscovered a reel-to-reel tape he had made of the show while experimenting with a Grundig portable tape recorder. The tape contained a poor quality recording of the Quarrymen performances of Lonnie Donegan's "Puttin' On the Style" and Elvis Presley's "Baby, Let's Play House". A thirty-second excerpt of "Putting on the Style" was released to promote the tape's auction at Sotheby's later that year; the tape was bought by EMI for £78,500, becoming the most expensive recording ever sold at auction. EMI decided the recording was not of sufficient quality to include in Anthology. After extensive audio restoration, excerpts from both songs were included in the BBC radio documentary The Day John Met Paul, broadcast on 26 June 2007. The Quarrymen acetate, 1958. on 12 July 1958, The Quarrymen paid to record themselves at Phillips' Sound Recording Services in Liverpool, performing "That'll Be the Day" and "In Spite of All the Danger". These were included on Anthology 1, although the latter song was edited. Home rehearsals, 1960. More than one hour of the band's home rehearsals from 1960 have appeared on bootlegs, although the recording's date and location are uncertain. McCartney once said that it was taped at his home in April 1960;Unterberger (2006), p. 7. the recording may also originate from two separate sessions a few months apart.Winn (2008), pp. 2–4. Three of the songs were included on Anthology 1. The recording also featured early versions of songs that the Beatles would later record in the studio ("Matchbox", "One After 909", "I'll Follow the Sun"). Other songs that were recorded during these rehearsals include "Well, Darlin'", "Hello Little Girl", "That's When Your Heartaches Begin", "Wildcat", "I'll Always Be in Love with You", "Some Days", "Hallelujah I Love Her So", "The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise", "You Must Write Every Day", "Movin' and Groovin'", and "Ramrod".
A collection of all these recordings were released on the bootleg recording Lapis Lazuli, featuring a longer version of "Puttin' on the Style" and all of the Beatles home recordings made in early 1960.
Decca audition (1962)
The Beatles performed fifteen songs that were recorded at their audition for Decca Records on 1 January 1962 (three Lennon–McCartney compositions and twelve cover versions). Five of these songs were included on Anthology 1.
Fourteen of the fifteen tracks appeared on a series of coloured vinyl singles with picture sleeves, released in 1978 on the Deccagone label through Strawberry Fields Forever, Joe Pope's fanzine. The following year, all fifteen tracks appeared on the Circuit Records bootleg album The Decca Tapes.
Due to the questionable copyright status of these performances (recorded prior to the group's EMI contract), the Decca audition was commercially distributed in various configurations starting in 1981; some of these "grey market" albums omitted the three Lennon–McCartney songs. By the late 1980s, legal action by the Beatles had halted commercial availability of the albums. In addition to continued inclusion on bootlegs, a small US record label issued the songs on CD through mail order in 2007 as The Lost Decca Sessions, which it described as legal and licensed.
Cavern Club rehearsals and TV shoot (1962) Sometime between August and December 1962, the Beatles recorded themselves rehearsing at the Cavern Club, performing "I Saw Her Standing There", "One After 909" (two versions), and "Catswalk" (two versions).Unterberger (2006), pp. 36–37.
On 22 August 1962, a crew from Granada Television shot footage of the band performing live at the Cavern for use in the television show Scene at 6:30; the crew filmed two takes of the band performing "Some Other Guy." The following month, on 5 September, a Granada sound crew returned to capture better audio of the band to sync to the film footage, as they felt the audio from the original shoot was not of satisfactory quality. A new recording of "Some Other Guy" and a recording of "Kansas City/Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey!" come from this performance. The shoot constitutes the earliest professional film footage of the Beatles, and would have been the Beatles' first appearance on television, but the footage was shelved for over a year, and was first broadcast after the Beatles had achieved nationwide success. Instead, Grenada booked the group for a live, in-studio performance on 17 October 1962. The Cavern footage has been seen on The Beatles Anthology and other documentary sources, and audio from both dates have circulated amongst bootleggers.
Star-Club performances (1962)
As the Beatles were concluding their final two-week Hamburg engagement in late December 1962, portions of their performances were taped by Star-Club stage manager Adrian Barber; the tapes were acquired by Ted "Kingsize" Taylor, the leader of KingsizeTaylor and The Dominoes at the club.Unterberger (2006), pp. 37–42. Eventually Taylor sold the tapes, which formed the basis of the double album Live! at the Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany; 1962, released in 1977 by Lingasong Records.