Peter Jackson on the Star Club Tapes

At the end of our three hour conversation with Peter Jackson about the making of Get Back (see other videos), we touched on the idea of applying the machine learning and AI technology used on Get Back to other Beatles audio, including the Star Club tapes. Here's what he had to say.


The Something About The Beatles podcast can be found Apple Music, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, I Heart Radio, and loads of other podcast platforms.

It appears as SATB Raw on YouTube and Spotify.

[michaelharrington]

I'm glad Peter Jackson is a Beatles fan. Hopefully he can use this technology to make the Star Club tapes sound fantastic? That would be great!

[frankboyd.]

I love the way Peter Jackson listens in this interview. He's open to creative ideas even after his great success. Very humble man, no doubt this is why his work is top notch.

[enricomenconi]

The star club tapes of december, 62, should be finally officially released. Those tapes are the absolutely truth that they were amazing musicians when they still could listen to themselves

[caseyhooper]

Please give us a cleaned up star club set please!! Thanks for the great podcast!

[ricknorris]

This is why super talented and also big fans should be involved in stuff like this. Jackson, like me apparently has a large collection of Bootlegs which proves his upper fandom.

[jamesbyersmusic]

Yes, if all the earliest audio could be cleaned up and we could get official releases of the Star Club, a Cavern set and, perhaps even THAT Quarry Men set, whether in their own right or in some sort of 'Early Days/Anthology' type of compilation then it would be AMAZING!

[lettuceboy]

It’s time to clear up the Lennon vocal on free as a bird

[lynnturman]

Aw man, I'd be first in line to buy a restored version of the Star Club.

[humbarcam]

Peter Jackson is one of us, I like his real Beatle passion

[breathspray]

Peter did a great job remixing Some Other Guy at The Cavern Club at the beginning of Get Back although its only like 15 seconds It sounds fantastic you can hear the power of the band.If he could also get the tapes from the 1964 Washington DC Concert. The Beatles were on fire at that show.

[hummarstraful]

Jackson's movie has sucked me into the Beatles vortex for life. I was always a casual fan, but once I saw Paul creating out of nothing the melody to Get Back I was immediately fascinated by his talent. I just heard the Cavern tapes for the first time in my life and wow, the club goers in back in '62 must have been mesmerized by the Beatles. That energy and tightness of the band is even rare amongst bands today. I hope Jackson is successful in getting those mono recording separated and re-mixed as he described. That would be something else.

[daytripper]

Oh hell yes Peter you got to do the star club tapes. Do about five songs and play it for Paul, Ringo, Olivia and son and Sean and Yoko. If you could really do a number on those tapes man that would be a huge seller. I'm all in for that.

[happyron]

There is a wonderful video with the "Executive" version (the best remaster yet that I know of) that has on screen transcription of what they were singing/saying with wonderful pictures of them performing. Makes listening a much more enjoyable experience, making me enjoy the tapes for the first time. Hopefully something like this will happen with the Jackson Star Club tapes

[DougSalad]

God it's been over a year I NEED an update on any of this PLEASE.

[ChromeDestiny]

Some of the more recent fan remasters of The Star Club tapes are quite good but the best I've heard the material sound is brief excerpts of the original unaltered tape. I'd love to hear what Peter Jackson can do but I'd love for any Star Club project to also just have a flat transfer of the original tape.

[SubRosaUSA]

McCartney bought the Cavern 1962 set recording for £2, 310 in 1985.
Nobody knows anything about the sound quality. The setlist (as recorded anyway) is:

– Words of Love
– What’s Your Name
– Roll Over Beethoven
– Ask Me Why
– The Hippy Hippy Shake
– Til There Was You
– Hey! Baby
– If You Gotta Make a Fool of Somebody
– Please Mister Postman
– Sharing You
– Your Feet’s Too Big
– Dizzy Miss Lizzy
– I Forgot to Remember to Forget
– Matchbox
– I Wish I Could Shimmy Like my Sister Kate (aka: Shimmy Like Kate; aka: Shimmy Shimmy)
– Memphis, Tennessee
– Young Blood
– Dream Baby (How Long Must I Dream)

[johnhuteson]

That would be awesome to have them remaster those tapes. I recently bought a copy where the amps were cleaned up and brought forward, vocals made better then the original cassette tape I bought in the 80’s.

[frederickrueckert]

I read somewhere that Larry has now sold the original hamburg tapes to him. Larry is the best source as he's the one that created the whole Beatles live in Star club album anyway. It would be very interesting to sit down and hear what the Beatles sounded like in December of 1962 on the front row of the star club.

[MaxFlapjack]

It's wild that Allan Williams and Kingsize Taylor knew they had a million bucks back in the 70s and couldn't release it, and now they're gone, but if Peter Jackson had a go at these tracks and Apple released them commercially, there would be vast amounts of money made, all around. Mr. Williams and Mr. Taylor could have ended up where Pete Best eventually ended up - making a vast amount of money off their time with the Beatles, and dying rich men. Alas....!

[Brammya]

wow.... at least there is hope. I didn't know that Apple had more of the Quarrymen recording. I really wish there were other Hamburg recordings.... back to the Pete Best days. I just re-listened to the BBC radio recordings with Pete. It's amazing how much faster they played those songs than the later Ringo recordings.