Live! at the Star-Club

The double album, whose complete title is Live! at the Star–Club in Hamburg, Germany; 1962 is made up of recordings taken late in December of 1962, when the Beatles were completing their last of five residencies in Hamburg. The record was released in 1977 with one version for the UK and Germany, and another for the North American market. The tapes from which the records were made are extremely low-fidelity, as the machine was a conventional tape recorder at 3.75 ips speed on only one track, with one mike. Neither the recording nor the production was authorized by EMI or its affiliates, though the Beatles had by then signed an exclusive agreement with that record company. Litigation was sparked over the threatened public release of a record from the tapes, accounting in part for the delay of almost 15 years between the time of recording and the time of distribution. EMI and the Beatles did not manage to stop the sale of the record; however in 1998 the Beatles were awarded rights in the recorded performances.

Ted "Kingsize" Taylor, leader of a group called the Dominoes, had the idea of making the recording. He always maintained that Lennon gave him verbal permission in exchange for buying beer for the band. Taylor asked the stage manager at the Star–Club in Hamburg, Adrian Barber, to tape the Beatles and some other acts. Barber used a Grundig, reel-to-reel home recorder. Later, Taylor offered the tapes to Beatles' manager Brian Epstein, who was not interested in them. They were then forgotten for several years. The public became aware of their existence only in 1973, when Paul Murphy purchased them and had them worked on for the elimination of noise, increase in gain and general sound quality improvement. This effort did not create an output acceptable for a commercial record, but the 30 songs in the set represented an historic archive of the Beatles in their earliest days. Hence, the album became immensely popular among collectors and fans. Most experts date the tapes to several days in the last week of December, 1962. December 31, 1962 is commonly used as the "official" recording date.

Almost all the songs on Live! at the Star–Club in Hamburg, Germany; 1962 are covers of songs by other artists. Two are original with McCartney and/or Lennon. Of the 28 covers, 17 would later come out on other recordings, mainly Live at the BBC. Murphy created the Lingasong label to market the records. In April of 1977, Lingasong debuted the two-disc album in Germany and a month later in the United Kingdom. A US version came out in June (Atlantic Records collaborated in the distribution). Four songs were deleted for the US version, presumably for legal reasons, and four others from the set of tapes were inserted instead. Other record companies obtained licenses to distribute the album over the ensuing 20 years, resulting in a variety of labels and covers. Even Sony came out with a CD set in 1991. When the Beatles prevailed in their law suit over the tapes in 1998, distribution was halted. The Beatles have not authorized any other releases. In Harrison's phrase, "the Star–Club recording was the crummiest recording ever made in our name."