Question
BEATLES TROVE? The suitcase, found in an Australian flea market, cost $36. The value of its
of its contents - Beatles memorabilia, including photographs, concert programs and unreleased recordings - is beyond calculation. Although the materials remain unauthenticated, some experts believe that the find is the long-lost archive of the Beatles' roadie and sound recordist Mal Evans, The Associated Press reported, citing an article in The Times of London. According to the newspaper, Mr. Evans was killed by the police in Los Angeles in 1976 after brandishing what turned out to be a fake gun. During the ensuing investigation, the contents of the suitcase were lost. The Times reported that Fraser Claughton, 41, of Tinkerton, England, found the suitcase in a small town outside Melbourne and bought it because he realized it was not empty. "It's like finding the end of the rainbow in Australia,'' he said. The contents included a four-and-a-half-hour reel-to-reel tape on which John Lennon and Paul McCartney experiment with alternative versions of previously unrecorded tracks, as well as previously unknown versions of "We Can Work It Out'' and "Cry Baby Cry.'' Labeled "Abbey Road not for release,'' the tapes are to be evaluated by Apple, the Beatles' label, and by experts. In 1998 an Evans notebook containing draft lyrics for "Hey Jude'' and "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'' sold for $185,000 at an auction in London.
from here
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Augggghhhhh!!!!!!!!
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I was just reading an article on this in the local paper, I will see if it is on their website later.
I feel sort of dubious about where they claim it was bought, as opposed to the veracity of the items.... Geelong is about 4 hours from here, I bet they have a good market this weekend.
Cheers, Kevin
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gee that is a long way
<grooooan>
You should have booth space there this weekend, get a bunch of old suitcases and wooden crates/boxes, fill them up with junk ephemera and flog em off for 50.00
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Our local paper had an edited version of this article (Not sure where this was - I used a search engine on their site so the URL did not show).
It's a long and winding road from Liverpool to a flea market in the Victorian city of Geelong where a British holidaymaker chanced upon a treasure trove of previously unheard Beatles recordings.
British tourist Fraser Claughton said he made the find - including the recordings, photographs and concert programs - at a market in Geelong when he bought a battered suitcase for $55 earlier this year.
The collection will shortly be auctioned by Christie's in London and could attract bids worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Australian music guru Molly Meldrum has likened the discovery to "someone finding a Van Gogh or a Rembrandt in someone's back shed".
And while rock historian Glenn A Baker cast doubts on the authenticity of the find, he said if genuine, many would regard the lost recordings as "a lost Mozart".
According the London newspaper The Times, the collection was thought to be the long-lost archive of one of the Fab Four's close associates, sound recordist and part-time back-up musician Mal Evans.
Evans died in 1976, but he was said to have compiled the collection for a planned memoir he never completed.
Among tapes in the case were alternate versions of well-known songs, some new material and a reel-to-reel tape featuring Paul McCartney and John Lennon experimenting with songs, The Times reported.
It's unclear whether the find was made at a jumble sale for the volunteer fire brigade at Lara, just north of Geelong, or at a major Saturday flea market in the area, the Beckley Park market at Corio.
Either way, Beckley Park market operator Emile Verfurth said he was stunned at the discovery.
"It's unbelievable. I can't believe that it has found its way to Australia and the market," Verfurth said.
"A lot of people clear out their garages and come down to the market. They come from all parts of Victoria.
"I've never heard of anything like this."
Verfurth joked that the market could become a mecca for Beatles fans hoping lightning might strike twice.
"All the Elvis Presley fans come out for Elvis' birthday every year. Maybe now the Beatles fans will come down too," he said.
Meldrum, a longtime Beatles fan, said if the find was genuine, it was one of music's most significant discoveries.
"If the recording of John and Paul working on different versions of tracks such as We Can Work It Out is genuine, you really are talking, in a sort of sense, about someone finding a Van Gogh or a Rembrandt in someone's back shed," Meldrum said.
Baker said he doubted the authenticity of the recordings.
"If it is what it is, my instincts tell me that a good way to claim no attachment is to say it was found at a flea market," Baker said.
"If this is Mal Evans' archive, Mal had unlimited, unprecedented, incomparable access to The Beatles."
Many fans would be thrilled to hear the recordings if they were genuine and would regard the find as if it was "a lost Mozart", Baker said.
But he questioned the value of alternate versions of Beatles songs.
"Alternative versions of songs are great, but they are not earth-shattering in the way they were before three volumes of The Beatles Anthology," he said.
"New songs are the holy grail ... the golden fleece."
In February last year, a Sydney man was arrested and later released without charge after placing a classified advertisement offering two original Beatles recordings for $5,512,216 million.
It was believed the recordings were stolen in a raid on the Abbey Road studios in London in 1969.
When arrested, the man from Auburn in Sydney's west, told police he bought the items from a man he did not know for $1,102.
I suspect that Christies would not list it if it were not genuine, and they should have good experience in beatle-ania. Glenn A.Baker is a rock historian with a good reputation here. If it were at a market in that area, I really think that dealers would have been on it before the crack of dawn. I may be wrong, but it is not the sort of thing that Melbourne / Geelong dealers would overlook.
Cheers, Kevin