Apple: Beatles Tape "Bollocks"

The Internet site momentsintime.com is auctioning an erased tape from what it claims was a secret Beatles reunion. The acetate, which features five hand-written song titles, is alleged to have been recorded at Los Angeles' Davlen Studios on November 2, 1976.

The site's curator, Gary J. Zimet -- who is also currently offering the copy of Double Fantasy John Lennon signed for his killer, Marc David Chapman, for $525,000 -- says that Davlen owner Len Kovner told him that the session ended in an argument, after which the members stormed out. He also said that Beatles producer George Martin was present.

The songs listed on the tape are "Happy Feeling," "Back Home," "Rockin' Once Again," "People of the Third World" and "Little Girl." Zimet says it was erased "at the Beatles' insistence to try to keep secret the fact that this session ever took place" and that the unerased version is in the vaults at Abbey Road.

Beatles/Apple Records spokesperson Geoff Baker scoffs at the claims: "The whole thing is bollocks. What reunion? What tape? I've never heard of these songs, and I've never heard of any reunion."

Bruce Spizer, author of several books on the Beatles, also doubts the session ever took place. "I've never come across anything to indicate that the four of them and George Martin walked into a studio at any time," Spizer said. "What are the odds of them coming together and no one finding out or reporting on it? If something like this happened, it would have leaked out at some point."

Zimet says Kovner is reluctant to talk publicly about the reunion because he fears reprisals from Paul McCartney. "I think it would prove embarrassing to him," Zimet said of McCartney. "He's a control freak and he doesn't want it known that the Beatles got back together and that it ended in failure." Kovner did not return phone calls by press time.

Zimet says he has received word of yet another Beatles reunion session that took place in Bermuda shortly after the alleged Los Angeles one and that he is trying to obtain those tapes.

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Song Stories

“All Along the Watchtower”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience | 1968

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."

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