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ARSCLIST  May 2012

ARSCLIST May 2012

Subject:

Beatles Hollywood Bowl, etc

From:

Tom Fine <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Thu, 31 May 2012 08:16:23 -0400

Content-Type:

text/plain

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

text/plain (181 lines)

The Hollywood Bowl thing is interesting overall. They put some very poor-quality audio into the 
Anthology series but never reissued Hollywood Bowl on CD. I found a Parlophone LP for a reasonable 
price a couple years back and am very happy to have it since I completely wore out my original 
Capitol LP. As I understand it, the LP was also issued in mono in England, and I bet that stands a 
chance of sounding clearer than the stereo.

My bet is that the recording crew was making the best with what they had on hand and not thinking of 
anything but a mono master at the Hollywood Bowl. I have photos of Capitol doing a remote recording 
of Tennessee Earnie Ford at a state fair in the late 50's and their setup was very primative, just a 
couple of Altec mono mixers strung together. Sophisticated live recording in loud venues didn't get 
nailed down until the late 60's. You could do good live jazz recordings earlier because the venues 
were small and crowds were pretty quiet while the music was playing. Plus, acoustic instruments 
didn't tend to overload microphones and preamplifiers of the day the way big loud instrument amps 
did.

This is a digression, but speaking of live jazz, I'll nominate two Mercury albums from the early 
60's as excellent recordings capturing super-exciting performances. "Joe Newman at Count Basie's," 
recorded by Tommy Nola, is probably about as good as Newman ever did as a leader. And Roland Kirk's 
live album made in Copenhagen by a Danish crew is just superb, amazing that a simple setup of the 
day could capture the energy of Kirk in front of an audience (I envision Kirk getting going on the 
three reed instruments at once and audience members' hair blowing back against the wall of wind). 
I'd also cite the Stan Getz/Charlie Byrd live album recorded by Ed Greene as superb on all fronts. 
Van Gelder's live recording of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers at Birdland is not great sounding but 
the energy and tightness of the band was definitely captured. The Quincy Jones big-band live 
recording from Stockholm, which was released first in the 80's, is a better performance than the 
1961 Newport album that Mercury released in the 60's.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Roger Kulp" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2012 11:47 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Beatles At Shea Stadium...Sound Mixer--Bob Fine?


This page might interest you

http://www.beatlesbible.com/albums/the-beatles-at-the-hollywood-bowl/


George Martin

"We recorded it on three-track tape, which was standard US format then. You would record the band in 
stereo on two tracks and keep the voice separated on the third, so that you could bring it up or 
down in the mix. But at the Hollywood Bowl they didn't use three-track in quite the right way. I 
didn't have too much say in things because I was a foreigner, but they did some very bizarre mixing. 
In 1977, when I was asked to make an album from the tapes, I found guitars and voices mixed on the 
same track. And the recording seemed to concentrate more on the wild screaming of 18,700 kids than 
on the Beatles on stage."




________________________________
 From: Tom Fine <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2012 9:13 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Beatles At Shea Stadium...Sound Mixer--Bob Fine?

I don't know if one can believe these Youtube descriptions, but here is allegedly the raw sound 
recorded at the concert:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prUW1mR7MzE&feature=related

and here's allegedly the soundtrack fixed by re-recording:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGERC-zjrqE&feature=related

It's amazing to me that they could even attempt vocal harmonies in that noise environment. 
Professionals indeed.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- From: "Tom Fine" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2012 10:05 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Beatles At Shea Stadium...Sound Mixer--Bob Fine?


> Hey Roger, THANKS! This clears up a lot of questions! So Bob Eberenz remembered correctly, it was 
> done in London.
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Roger Kulp" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2012 9:53 PM
> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Beatles At Shea Stadium...Sound Mixer--Bob Fine?
>
>
> So all those bootlegs that circulated in the 70s and 80s of "The Beatles at Shea Stadium" were not 
> actual concert recordings?I'm not that surprised.
>
> I became aware of Tom's father's involvement in the Shea Stadium Beatles concert,or film,after 
> reading this page.
>
> http://www.beatles-history.net/beatles-shea-stadium.html
>
> Roger
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Tom Fine <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2012 7:24 PM
> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Beatles At Shea Stadium...Sound Mixer--Bob Fine?
>
> Hi Rod:
>
> That was indeed my dad. Can you tell me what release of the concert you viewed? Is it out on DVD? 
> How was the sound? I ask because there was a search for sound elements in the 90s and we came 
> tantalizingly close to something but it turned out to have been bulk-erased. I admit never seeing 
> anything but a poor-quality VHS circulated as a re-issue was being undertaken in the 90's.
>
> Here's a little history, told to me when I was a kid just discovering the Beatles so I might not 
> be 100% accurate in my memory.
>
> The concert was indeed filmed on-site with the PA system unable to bust through that wall of sound 
> of the fans! The resultant sound recording was a mess, no mic was directional enough not to be 
> overwhelmed by the crowd noise. My father re-recorded the Beatles lip-syncing and re-playing their 
> instruments over the film and then mixed that with the live sound.
>
> Alas, the studio magnetic films were lost as of when a search was underway in the 90's. It's great 
> if any elements were eventually found. Masters of everything were turned over to the client at the 
> time, as needed for further processing and preparation for broadcast. As of the 90's, the only 
> elements intact were mono master mixes, maybe only optical prints. Not to beat a dead horse, but 
> those re-recordings were done on magnetic film and, I was told, the base elements were 3-channel 
> and could have been remixed to something approaching "stereo" or "surround."
>
> It's not clear to me where the recordings took place. Bob Eberenz specifically remembered my 
> father going over to England to do it, but my mother specifically remembered it taking place at 
> Fine Recording in Manhattan. I don't know if someone has dug into the Beatles' date books or 
> travel calendars to know the exact details of this. If it was done at Fine Recording, it's highly 
> likely that my father would have worked in 3-track because the studio was set up for that and you 
> could lock things up easiest that way. Probably the field recording would be dubbed onto one track 
> as the Beatles' new performances were recorded onto the other two, probably vocals on one track 
> and music on the other to allow for easy final mixing. Remember that film recorders of that era 
> didn't have "overdub" capabilities, although you could just use separate dubbers to build tracks 
> as you liked. You'd be using sprocketed media so as to lock up to the picture, which is what the
> Beatles would be using as their reference. I doubt any consideration would have gone to an end 
> result other than mono, since this was a TV special. I might be wrong, but I think Ed Sullivan's 
> company was behind the whole thing.
>
> My father got the Beatles to sign autographs for my two older brothers, but I wasn't a twinkle in 
> his eye yet, so I missed out. He said the Beatles were very professional and pulled off the 
> lip-syncing quickly and well, and were able to laser-focus despite what you can imagine was 
> swirling around them at the time. Enough of a connection was made between him and the Beatles' 
> people that he later worked on the multi-channel mix for George Harrison's "Concert for 
> Bangladesh" movie and also the John Lennon concert at Madison Square Garden that was filmed either 
> for TV or movie release in the early 70's. One of my older brothers remembers briefly meeting 
> George Harrison at Reeves Cinetel during the mixing of Concert For Bangladesh. By the time I 
> discovered the Beatles in the late 70s, this was in the past, but my father did specifically 
> praise them as creative and skilled musicians and said they were easy to work with, and called 
> them "true professionals."
> When I brought home "The Beatles At the Hollywood Bowl" right when it came out, he took one listen 
> and gave me a "been there done that" look.
>
> For those not alive when the Beatles hit America, myself included, it's hard to imagine the 
> excitement and cultural impact on the youth. I suppose Michael Jackson was a huge thing when I was 
> a teen, but his star power was confined to the worlds of radio play and MTV. The Beatles were 
> everywhere at once and I don't recall girls of my generation going nuts and screaming over 
> anything like 1964-65 teenage girls did with just a look at the Beatles. There might be a certain 
> age of white girls who went that nuts over Britaney Spears and then Hannah Montanna, but that was 
> only a segment of the teen population.
>
> -- Tom Fine
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "rod smear" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2012 8:27 PM
> Subject: [ARSCLIST] Beatles At Shea Stadium...Sound Mixer--Bob Fine?
>
>
>> Hi. I've just recently viewed The Beatles At Shea Stadium concert again, and have noticed that 
>> the Sound Mixer credit goes to Bob Fine. Could this be any relation to our own Tom Fine? Just 
>> wondering. I'm guessing that this is the first ever rock concert to be held in a sports stadium 
>> with 50,000 + screaming fans? Quite an undertaking I would assume.
>>
>> Rod Smear
>

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