Rob Frith, operator of Vancouver institution Neptoon Records, has discovered a rare Beatles audition tape sitting around unplayed in the store.
The reel-to-reel tape was labelled "Beatles 60s demos," and Frith hadn't listened to it because he assumed "it was just a reel-to-reel tape that somebody had put bootleg things on," he told the CBC.
It turned out to be a rare audition tape captured in London's Decca Studios on January 1, 1962. Decca rejected the Beatles based on the tape, and the recording became available as a bootleg in the '70s.
"It seemed like the Beatles were in the room," Frith said of the crisp recording. "We could not believe the quality of this thing."
Frith had owned the tape for a while and couldn't remember where he got it from. "I actually feel really stupid now, because this tape's been just sitting around for all these years," he admitted.
After Frith shared a snippet on Instagram, someone eventually tracked down the source: record exec Jack Herschorn, who owned Mushroom Records in the '70s and was given the tape for a possible North American bootleg release. Herschorn didn't release it, believing it was unethical to put out the tape without the band's permission; when he left the business, he forgot to bring the tape with him.
Frith has offered to make a clean copy for Decca, and he's willing to hand it over to Paul McCartney if the Beatles were to come to Neptoon in person.