JEFF BAKER
The Oregonian When The Beatles played live in the United States for the first time, it was in a boxing ring in Washington, D.C., and they had to rotate every few minutes so everyone could see them. They picked up their own microphones most of the time, and Ringo Starr helped move his drums.
“Can you imagine anyone from U2 or any modern group picking up the drum kit and moving it?” asked Richie Unterberger, the author of “The Unreleased Beatles: Music and Film” (Backbeat Books, $34.95, 389 pages).
There’s a DVD of that concert called “The Beatles in Washington, D.C., February 11, 1964,” but it doesn’t contain “All My Loving,” “This Boy” and “Twist and Shout.” Unterberger has a clip of “All My Loving” that he’s bringing to Portland next week, along with clips from a dress rehearsal for The Beatles’ Feb. 16, 1964, appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show”; a June 20, 1965, concert in Paris with the only good live version of “A Hard Day’s Night”; and a June 17, 1964, appearance in Australia when a fan tried to shake John Lennon’s hand.
Lennon laughs and doesn’t miss a beat as the police lead the fan away, a great example of The Beatles’ unflappable attitude as live performers.
“They never got rattled, and they often would turn these distractions around and use them in their favor,” Unterberger said. “For a long time, there was this belief that The Beatles weren’t that good onstage and didn’t really like playing live because of the puny equipment they had to use and all the noise. By 1966, they definitely were losing heart and that was becoming true, but before that they were just great.”
Unterberger agreed with the theory that The Beatles honed their sound and developed into a great band during their extended gigs in Liverpool and in Hamburg, Germany, and dismissed the idea that their contemporaries — the Rolling Stones, the Who, Jimi Hendrix, etc. — were better live musicians than The Beatles.
“All those groups took advantage of the advances in (amps and live equipment) that occurred right after The Beatles stopped touring in 1966,” said Unterberger, whose other books include “Turn! Turn! Turn!: The’60s Folk-Rock Revolution” and “Unknown Legends of Rock ‘n’ Roll.”
Unterberger came to his Beatles obsession as a fan who unwittingly bought a bootleg version of “Let It Be” as an 8-year-old in 1970. He collected all the official albums, then moved on to the unreleased stuff, a treasure trove of concert tapes, studio and home recordings, rehearsal tapes and anything else The Beatles recorded before their breakup in 1970. Misinformation is common in the world of bootlegs, and Unterberger said he is careful not to write that something definitely was recorded on a particular date unless there’s proof.
Unterberger talks about his career and plays tapes of The Beatles, Pink Floyd and others at 6 p.m. Tuesday at the Multnomah County Central Library, 801 S.W. 10th Ave., and talks about The Beatles at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Powell’s Books on Hawthorne, 3723 S.E. Hawthorne Blvd.
www.richieunterberger.com
Jeff Baker: 503-221-8165; jbaker@news.oregonian.com
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