Short answers, pulled from the story.
The band performed at the Star-Club starting on the 13th of April 1962 and concluded their final engagement on New Year's Day. Their last two shows began specifically on the 18th of December 1962.
Adrian Barber captured portions of the performances using a Grundig home reel-to-reel recorder set to 3¾ inches per second. Ted Kingsize Taylor claimed John Lennon verbally agreed to the recording in exchange for free beer during the shows.
The album appeared in West Germany during April 1977 via Bellaphon Records and reached the UK market the following month. A US version released in June 1977 removed four tracks and substituted them with different selections from the same tapes.
Ted Taylor kept the tapes at his home largely forgotten until he decided to investigate marketability in 1973. Public reports first mentioned the existence of these recordings in July 1973 after Williams, Taylor, and an engineer recovered the tapes from rubble in 1972.
A lawsuit concluded in favor of the group in 1998 when the court granted ownership of the tapes and exclusive rights back to the musicians. George Harrison testified that one drunken person recording another bunch of drunks does not constitute business deals which influenced the judge's decision regarding copyright infringement.