Ah, Ed Rudy. If he was the Fifth Beatle, I am the Fifth Rutle.
The nadir of his cash-in albums was also the last. After two decent interview/press conference LPs (and one featuring the Stones) came the masterpiece pictured above, in 1965.
Probably released around August to cash in on the US tour, it contained a genuine Beatles concert recording, from Atlantic City, August 30th, 1964!
As you'll hear, it was an audience recording, but it was complete - and otherwise unbootlegged!
Oh yeah, the music was a little distant and hard to hear beneath the screams, so Ed hired a group called The Liverpool Lads to sweeten up the recordings. But you can tell the Lads were intimately familiar with the material, and enthusiastic about being in the studio!
Well, perhaps not, but to make up for that, Ed threw in a lengthy revealing conversation with a famous British manager of a pop group talking about the travails of dealing with hotels, fans, and the press!
OK, so it's not Brian Epstein (I have no idea if it's supposed to be someone imitating him or just the Liverpool Lads' unfortunate representative). But who cares? This album only costs a couple of bucks!
What's that you say? It only sold about 70 copies in 1965 and most of those were destroyed by incensed consumers after hearing the first 2 minutes, and now it's so rare, it'll cost a couple of hundred dollars IF you can find it?
Fear not.... or actually, if you plan to play these files, be VERY afraid. Without further ado:
Everyone seems to lose their words...
ReplyDeleteA work of unparalleled genius - it makes The Shaggs sound like Sgt. Pepper.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to decide what is the most brilliant stroke of all - the fact that all the songs are in the wrong order, the distortion of the interviews, the fact that the words are at best approximate ... Interviewing someone pretending to be Brian Epstein takes some beating, but the masterstroke has to be the way the guitarist can't work out the more difficult chord progressions, such as the middle 8 of You Can't Do That, or the whole of If I Fell. Complete genius!!
Nowadays, this would be seen as a post-ironic, deconstructivist statement and would be hailed as a classic. Except, of course, that nowadays it wouldn't get released. It's amazing that Ed Rudy wasn't sued off the planet. Perhaps that's why his earlier albums haven't been re-released like just about every other Beatles interview album. (Would be good to hear those some time - and the Carroll James ones too, for that matter!!)
I notice that in your book, you single out Can't Buy Me Love as the most objectionable of all. Surely you mean Long Tall Sally??
Tim
any chance of a clearer cover? TY
ReplyDeleteThat was the best image I could find online, but if someone has a larger/better one, I'll be glad to post it.
ReplyDeleteThank you! It WAS horrible! Now I'll have to play it again to rearrange the songs to the correct order before I can file it away! I'm sort of glad I did not spend years hunting this one down and then spending 200 bucks on it.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I'm sincerely thankful for your sharing of this rare material. Again..
los paranoias
I can't bring myself to play it a second time to check, but as far as I remember, if you rearrange the songs into the correct order, the introductions don't match up :(
ReplyDeleteBut anyway, why to improve a work of total perfection? :))
Tim
It was just as I expected...HORRIBLE (laughably so...I wonder, speaking of rip offs, Charles Reinhart's book "You Can't Do That" lists a couple of novelty discs that I would love to hate to hear; first is Fisher and Marks' "It's a Beatle World" and "The Beagle and the Four Liverpool Whigs" which I would almost assume is the backing band for this Ed Rudy catasropiece. Thanks for posting!
ReplyDeleteThanks! I just listened and it was truly awful! And it got worse. At first they only seemed to be adding vocals but then I noticed added "drums" and then even guitar. The timing of the vocals often seemed a bit off and for the last 2 songs I don't think they were even trying, haha.
ReplyDeleteA shame the original source tape has never surfaced.