Much of the credit belongs to John Walker, 33, a trade union official and BBC listener who wrote to suggest the network resurrect old Beatles broadcasts for the 20th anniversary of their first recording on March 7, 1962.
Howlett, who was then assigned to search for them, eventually found one Lennon-McCartney original, I'll Be on My Way (recorded only by Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas), and Beatles renditions of such tunes as Chuck Berry's Memphis, Buddy Holly's Crying, Waiting, Hoping, Carole King and Gerry Goffin's Don't Ever Change, Terry Thompson's A Shot of Rhythm and Blues and Ray Charles' I Got a Woman. Because of copyright complications, the performances may never be released as records. But at least they are preserved for pop posterity. "People like Kevin Howlett are today's cultural archaeologists," says a grateful Walker. "They have to go rooting in the dustbins for our heritage. If they don't save it, no one will."
Howlett, a history graduate at the University of Exeter in Devon and an amateur folksinger, began his expedition through regular channels. "The only material I found in the official BBC archives was five songs," he reports. "The BBC is good at keeping paperwork, but unfortunately it wasn't so good when it came to keeping tapes. In some ways, you can't blame the people involved, because at the time of the early programs no one would have thought that the Beatles would become famous." Then, too, he learned, in the late '60s some tapes were destroyed to save space—"a real case of bureaucratic vandalism," Howlett charges.
But in the "unofficial archives," a repository for odds and ends, he found four tapes. Then the department that transcribes BBC tapes onto discs gave him some good news—it knew of four more tapes—and some bad news: The tapes had been borrowed by a producer and never returned. Howlett raided the producer's office and in a cupboard he found them, covered with grime. Howlett collected the rest of the songs from tapes that were sent in by BBC listeners after a plea was broadcast. "Taping off the air is illegal in Britain and something the BBC doesn't encourage," he says. "But in this case we're thankful that they did it."
The songs were recorded in monophonic sound, before the advent of multitrack recording. But, says Howlett, "You only have to listen to something like I've Got a Woman or A Shot of Rhythm and Blues to see how well the group was playing." As John Lennon said just three days before he died, "We did a lot of tracks that were never recorded on records for Saturday Club [a BBC show].... There was some good stuff." None of the surviving Beatles has commented on the rediscovered songs. Though Howlett's find may not make it to the record stores, other early Beatles music will in the forthcoming album Like Dreamers Do, by "the Silver Beatles with Pete Best." The three records date to early 1962, before Ringo Starr replaced Best, the Beatles' original drummer. Meanwhile Howlett keeps digging. Among the 88 tunes of which he has recordings or evidence, 36 are not available by the Beatles elsewhere. But half a dozen of these 36 have turned up only in bad recordings, and another six haven't turned up at all. Says Howlett: "I'm still looking."
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
