On Air – Live at the BBC Volume 2

• 1. Introduction

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  On Air - Live at the BBC Volume 2 arrived on the 11th of November 2013, carrying forty tracks that no one had ever heard on an official release. The Beatles had spent 1963 and 1964 performing live for BBC Radio, and what those sessions captured was something the studio could not reproduce: a looser, more unpredictable version of a band still figuring out exactly what it was. The question the album immediately raises is what had been sitting in those BBC vaults for nearly five decades, and why it had never come out before. The answer turns out to involve cover songs that never made it onto any Beatles record, recording fidelity that varied wildly from session to session, and a handful of moments that left reviewers genuinely surprised by what they heard.

• 2. Songs That Never Made the Studio

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  Many of the tracks on the album are covers of early rock and roll classics by American artists: Little Richard, Chuck Berry, and Buddy Holly. Most of those covers were never recorded in a proper studio and were never released on a Beatles album during the band's time together. The BBC sessions, then, become the only official record of the group performing that material at all. "Lend Me Your Comb" appears here from a Pop Go the Beatles episode broadcast on the 16th of July 1963. "Beautiful Dreamer" had never appeared on any previous Beatles release whatsoever. That made it, at the time of this album's release, genuinely new territory. "Dream Baby (How Long Must I Dream)" and "A Picture of You" occupy a distinct category of their own: both are low-fidelity recordings featuring Pete Best, captured in 1962, and they remain the only songs from the BBC performances that have never been issued in any form.

• 3. A Track with a Shadow

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  "I'm Talking About You" came with a complicated history attached. The song had appeared on various releases from 1977 onwards, but those releases were of dubious legality. The material they drew on was recorded in December 1962 at the Star Club in Hamburg, Germany. The BBC version here, broadcast on Saturday Club on the 16th of March 1963 as a live transmission, offered something entirely different: a recording made under controlled conditions, with proper fidelity, and without the legal murkiness of the Hamburg tapes. Jon Savage, writing in Mojo, singled the track out specifically, calling it a tough version of Chuck Berry's song and listing it among the album's genuine surprises alongside early performances of "Words of Love" and the covers "Lend Me Your Comb" and "Beautiful Dreamer".

• 4. Ringo, Paul, and Brian Matthew

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  Twenty-three of the album's sixty-three tracks are speech recordings rather than music. They capture in-studio conversation and banter with Brian Matthew, the presenter of two BBC radio programs: Saturday Club and Easy Beat. A segment called "A Hard Job Writing Them" preserves a specific moment that the source singles out for its wit. Ringo describes the difficulty he had writing songs for A Hard Day's Night, and Paul, in what the source describes as an unusual voice, launches the program Top Gear as though christening a ship. Ringo's comments are particularly striking given that he was the drummer, not typically a credited songwriter. The speech tracks add a texture that a straight concert recording would not have provided: the Beatles between songs, talking to a presenter, being funny and slightly irreverent on live radio.

• 5. George Harrison Under the Microscope

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  Damian Fanelli, writing in Guitar World, offered one of the more specific assessments of what the album reveals about the band's playing. His review focused on George Harrison's guitar work across three separate performances. The whammy-bar solo on "Till There Was You" he placed in the positive column. The solo on "Lucille" he assessed less favorably. The solo on "I Saw Her Standing There", recorded for Saturday Club on the 5th of October 1963, he called better than the EMI studio version, and noted that it raises questions about what else might have been possible. Fanelli described the album overall as an exceedingly satisfying release and pointed to the Beatles' talent, charm, and general difference from their contemporaries as what the recordings make audible. The Saturday Club session from October 1963 also included "She Loves You", "Memphis, Tennessee", and a track recorded to mark the program's anniversary.

• 6. The Long Gap to Volume 1

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  On the same day this album appeared, a remastered and repackaged version of Live at the BBC Volume 1 was also released. Volume 1 had originally come out in 1994, meaning nearly two decades separated the two volumes. The repertoire on Volume 2 leans on the Beatles' first four studio albums: Please Please Me, With the Beatles, A Hard Day's Night, and Beatles for Sale. The album is available as a two-CD set and as a three-LP set, reflecting the different formats its audience might prefer. A limited edition lithographic print was also made available exclusively through the Beatles' online store. On the year-end UK Albums chart for 2013, the album reached position 166. On the Dutch Albums chart it placed at 72. On the US Top Rock Albums chart for 2014 it reached position 56, and in Greece it peaked at number 11 on the weekly IFPI chart during 2013.