Landmark newspaper series helped make fans aware of Beatles' BBC and other unreleased recordings

May 29, 11:27 AMBeatles ExaminerSteve Marinucci

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  "The Beatles Live at the BBC" was released in 1994, 12 years
 after the Beatles BBC radio special. (Photo copyright Apple
 Corps Ltd.)

On May 29, 1982, the radio special "The Beatles at the Beeb" was broadcast on radio stations across the U.S., and gave the general public their first listen to these early Beatles performances, which Beatle fans already knew from bootlegs. The special later spawned the "Live at the BBC" album released by EMI with little notice in 1994.

Back in those days, when there wasn't nearly the network of Beatle information there is now both in print and online, information beyond the pale about the Beatles was rare. Which was why when we heard, after the fact, that a U.S. newspaper -- the now defunct Los Angeles Herald-Examiner -- had done not just one article, but a whole series on the Beatles' BBC broadcasts, we knew we had to get ahold of it.

We did -- and we paid a premium -- to get fascimile copies through the paper's library.

The series, written by journalist and, at the time, Her-Ex writer Rip Rense, went though the broadcasts in detail. It was a joy to read. We asked him to recall the series and how it came to be written.

"The whole series (nine parts, I think) ran in 1982. It was 'Off the Beatle Track: The Lost Songs of the Beatles.' It happened that as I was researching it, I learned of the BBC plan to play most of the surviving Beatles recordings here on Memorial Day Weekend. So that worked out great as an entire installment in the series. I still have the three-album set of songs that the BBC pressed for the event. Transcription discs, I believe, is the term.

Only two installments of the series were about the BBC broadcasts, Rense says. "The series covered all that I could find out about a unreleased Beatles music---in the studio, live recordings, demos, rehearsals, outtakes, whatever---and the BBC stuff."

How did he convince the editors to let him do it?

"Good question!," Rense says. "Well, at the Style section of the Herald-Examiner, the editor at the time and various copy editors understood very well that new Beatles music was big news, so that helped. I mapped out all the parts and pitched it, and the Style editor, Gary Spiecker, approved it. How and why, I don’t know, except to say that he was smart enough to recognize the news value, and the guaranteed readership among Beatles fans. The whole thing tried to cover the gamut: live recordings, studio leftovers (I got the idea to do the series after hearing the early 'One After 909' and 'If You’ve Got Trouble' playing on a boom-box at an L.A. Beatlefest --- I’d never heard them before, and they were generally not known to exist at that time.)

"The series was incredibly popular. I was on the tube, radio, etc., and at one point played a bunch of BBC tracks on KRLA with Dave “The Hullabalooer” Hull (from bootlegs) before Capitol shut us down. That was great fun. Might have U.S. premiered some of those songs, actually. Newsracks all over town, I was told, were selling out --- newsracks that never sell out. The series made international headlines.

"Yet when the Her-Ex editor-in-chief came back from a business trip and found the series on chapter six or something, she demanded that it be killed immediately. I could not believe it. I don’t know why. She called me into her office and said, 'This has run entirely too long, and it’s going to stop now.' I’m assuming that someone had put a bug in her ear about the series, for some reason, but you’d think that sales figures and her news judgment would have taken precedent. Anyhow, when I tried to tell her how popular the series was, she blew up at me and said I was 'too sensitive about editing.' Huh? I was baffled.

"Anyhow, a couple of other lesser editors apparently straightened her out, and the series was allowed to finish. It won in the Valley Press Club (citywide) journalism competition for best series of the year. "

"There were other occasions where I was trying to sell articles about the Ringo/Mark Hudson albums, especially the first one where he collaborated with Alanis Morrisette, and George and Paul guested, and many editors at newspapers and magazines said things like, 'Nobody cares about Ringo Starr.' How wrong they were."

Rense says that the series was just part of his daily staff writer job, but that he did get a sort of bonus.

"At the Her-Ex, there were certain people who had very high salaries and regular bonuses for good work, and then there were grunts like me. I got no bonus for the series. Just my regular lousy paycheck. But, because the Her-Ex had no parking, reporters generally accrued hundreds of dollars in parking tickets. You couldn’t ditch your computer to run outside and move your car on deadline.

"So I had about $500 in tickets at that time, and asked that the company cover the cost as my “bonus” for The Beatles series.

"The editor agreed to this magnanimous (cough) gesture," he says.

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