59 Rare Beatle Songs Released Briefly on iTunes
There is a lot of hoopla and muted "Beatlemania" in the media about the recent discovery of 59 songs and outtakes of the same song and released ever so briefly on iTunes. The release of the material was not advertised and last only minutes before taken off and put back on and then off again.
What is going on?
Since iTunes owns the copyright to the material and since the copyright will expire by the end of December unless released again to the public (even if for a few minutes) to extend the copyright for another 70 years. So, that is what iTunes did. Now, they still own the copyrights to these songs and people cannot bootleg them.
It is that simple. As to the songs, Beatle fans have heard all them before. In fact, if you own the Capitol records CD set, The Beatles, Live at the BBC, released in the early 90's, a two CD set, you already own them (like I do). In fact, you have even more of rare material (mostly covers of rock songs), like, John ripping into, I Got a Woman many others. Many of the recordings on the CD are acoustic. The only two songs interesting on the released material is John singing, I'm in Love while playing the piano (it was later done by the B52's years later) and Bad to Me. Neither song were ever done by the Beatles but given to lesser bands, which did them. Both eventually got to #1 on the Top Ten.
But, while these are rare, any collector of the Fab Four has many more. For instance, I having a bootleg LP called "Watching Rainbows" containing a variety of material from the 1968 period, not just from the "Get Back" sessions. Some of it is interesting, some is junk, some shows the magic.
However, of ALL the unreleased material, the Beatle's CD Anthology series from the mid-90's remains your best bet. The best of unreleased songs, that should have been released as a single or on a LP is their, "Leave My Kitten Alone" from in 1964. John's raspy voice is iconic for this song (actually not penned by John and Paul). The story behind this song is that between doing their own songs in the studio, they ripped into this. It was completed and overdubbed after several takes and then forgotten about until the 90's. At one point, it was going to be on the Beatle's 2nd or 3rd LP, but got bumped for another one they favored more.
The 59 songs released are interesting, but the outtakes are only subtle differences from the final release and in other cases, covers of old rock numbers you probably have never heard before done the Beatle way, which is always better than the original.
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah.
