The Beatles’ 1962 demos-tape 💫

 

Lost Beatles Audition Tape With “Unreal” Sound Quality Found After 60 Years

A reel-to-reel tape collecting dust for decades in a Vancouver record shop has turned out to be one of the clearest-known recordings of The Beatles’ 1962 Decca audition — the moment before everything changed.

Rob Frith, owner of Neptoon Records, found the tape labeled “Beatles ’60s Demos.” Thinking it was just another bootleg, he eventually played it — and was stunned.

“It sounds like a master tape,” Frith said. “It’s as if the Beatles are right there in the room.”

Music preservationist Larry Hennessey confirmed that the tape contained white leader-tape strips between songs — a sign of a professional studio copy, not a fan-made bootleg. Experts now believe it’s a direct duplicate of the original Decca master, recorded on January 1, 1962, when the lineup still included Pete Best on drums. The band performed fifteen songs that day, hoping to impress Decca Records — who famously turned them down, saying “guitar groups are on the way out.”

Weeks later, of course, George Martin at Parlophone signed them, and the rest is history.

Only rough bootlegs of the Decca session had circulated for decades, but this reel’s fidelity is astonishing. Smithsonian described it as “like opening a sonic time capsule.”

The tape’s origins trace back to Jack Herschorn, a Vancouver music executive who received it from a London producer in the 1970s. He declined to release it, saying,

“I didn’t think it was moral — those guys deserved the royalties.”

In September 2025, Frith personally gifted the tape to Paul McCartney in Los Angeles, ensuring it’s now safely in the hands of one of the men who made it.

“People say it could be really valuable,” Frith said. “I don’t know. I’m just glad it’s preserved.”

The find offers an unprecedented window into The Beatles’ raw, pre-fame sound.