Artist of the Month: Beatles

England got a lot more of the Beatles than Americans did during the groups formative years, between  1962 and 1965 the Beatles were featured on 53 BBC radio programs including their own series, “POP goes the Beatles”.
Although the BBC’s written archives was a place where they kept every single piece of paper relating to the Beatles performances finding the music on tape was a whole different story.
The BBC usually didn’t keep such recordings, most tapes were erased to be re-used for other artists. Some producers kept some Beatles copies thinking that maybe some day they would be worth something and in some cases recordings were taken from listeners who taped of the radio. Also remember that at this time there really wasn’t any business for “Rock’N’Roll as we know it.
All sorts of other acts would perform at the BBC as well as musical acts.The BBC also had a listening panel and a TV panel people selected to make comments on radio and TV programs broadcasted by the BBC and also all these comments were archived, A security guard said, the Beatles were vastly overrated, their performance was amateur and their entertainment value was very low.
Somebody else said that they were noisy, boring and a waste of time. It is 1963 and the Beatles haven’t broken in nationally but they are getting momentum in the U.K. it is their breakthrough year and are trying desperately and trying to make it and are willing to do anything to appear on the BBC. Nevertheless the BBC was crucial to the Beatles career, it presented them on it’s airwaves months before they had a record deal and when it offered them their own show “POP goes the Beatles”.
At that time they had only released just 3 songs and 1 lp. Consider that the Beatles “Capitol/EMI recordings from 1962 to 1970 amounted to 212 songs.
At the BBC they recorded 88 songs,most in multiple performances, for a total of about 280 songs. Among the 88 songs are 36 songs, nearly three albums worth, that the Beatles never recorded for EMI or Capitol records.Also remember that these recordings are very historical too. At the Beatles first taping for the BBC on March 7,1962 Pete Best was still their drummer.
Learn more about the Beatles Live At the BBC on the Little Red Rooster Show and KWMC’s all classic hits station 1490 AM. as we feature the Beatles “Live at the BBC” as artist of the month.
All information and facts are by Wendy Johnson and all shows are produced by Javier Martinez.