Friday 27 December 2013

Lennon's bootleg



The story of how John Lennon was presented with the early bootleg "Yellow Matter Custard". Believed to be songs from the Beatles' Decca audition tape, the record really contained recordings from the BBC radio shows. For Christmas 1971, John and Yoko sent a tape of the album to Paul and Linda, together with this tape label.


The text of John and Yoko's message on the box of the recording read: "Happy Xmas! (war is over if you want it.....) Dear Paul Linda et al. this is THE DECCA AUDITION!! I found the bootleg not the tape: They were a good group fancy turning THIS down! Love John+Yoko".

This is one of the very first bootlegs of Beatles at the BBC. Released circa 1971, by the legendary "Trademark Of Quality", a company that tried to release the best quality product possible. All the tracks on this LP were later released on the official Beatles 3LP "Live at the BBC", released in 1994, remastered and rereleased in November 2013. After acquiring this album, Lennon kept on collecting bootleg records of the Beatles.

1 comment:

  1. The lack of accurate information is amazing-and makes realize how lucky we are now. Also amazing is that John couldn't remember the songs recorded for Decca. Is there any record of Paul's response? Was his memory as bad as John's, or did he realize this bootleg was not the Decca audition?

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