The Beatles - Live in Stockholm, October 1963

I've mentioned multiple times that the Beatles are my favorite band of all time. Yet I've only posted one Beatles album in the first couple of years of this blog. In part, that's because I still would like to organize things a bit more. And in part it's because there's such a huge mountain of Beatles bootlegs out there that I feel I can have more impact highlighting lesser known bands. But today, in response to a concert I posted of the Doors playing at Stockholm, Sweden, a commenter started discussing a concert the Beatles played in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1963. I realized I have that Beatles concert all ready to be posted, including having the cover art for it, so why not post it? Here it is.

It can be tough listening to any live recordings of the Beatles. Before they became popular, for instance when they played in Hamburg, Germany in the early 1960s, the few recordings that survive were made on primitive recording equipment and sound poor. After they became popular in 1963, they suddenly got so popular that their music is almost always drowned out by hordes of screaming fans. 

This is probably the best live Beatles recording that exists. In 2019, Rolling Stone Magazine published an article listing the ten best Beatles concert recordings, and this one was number one:

Beatles' 10 Best Concerts - Rolling Stone

The concert falls in a sweet spot in that the band was popular enough for them to be properly recorded (in this case, by Swedish National Radio). Yet this was their very first concert outside of Britain after they'd started to become stars, so they weren't so popular yet that their music was overwhelmed by all the screaming. This does have some screaming on it, but only briefly, at the ends of songs. It's especially notable that when the band members talk between songs, the audience is totally silent. I'll bet that if this concert had taken place only a month or two later, there would have been steady screaming through the whole thing.

Another lucky factor is that if you look at the album cover, which is a photo of the exact concert featured here, you can see the audience is very small. I don't know how small because I don't have a photo of the entire place, but I would guess less than a hundred people. I'm sure that helped greatly with the sound quality, and also helped keep the "Beatlemania" in check.

The one problem with this concert is that it's so short. The main concert here, held at the Karlaplansstudion on October 24, 1963, is just 19 minutes long. Only seven songs were played. It so happens that the Beatles gave another short concert in Stockholm one week later, for the Swedish TV show "Drop In." I've added that at the end. Unfortunately, that one is even shorter, at just 10 minutes. A mere four songs were played, and three of them were also played in the other concert. But this other concert has the exact same excellent sound quality, without the usual screaming. So I've decided to include all of it, despite the repetition of some songs. Note that five of the seven songs performed at the  Karlaplansstudion were included on the official album "Anthology 1," but none of the "Drop In" songs were.

The full length of this album with the two shows together is only 29 minutes. But, as Rolling Stone Magazine said, in terms of sound quality, this is probably the best live Beatles recording out there.

01 I Saw Her Standing There (Beatles)
02 talk (Beatles)
03 From Me to You (Beatles)
04 talk (Beatles)
05 Money [That's What I Want] (Beatles)
06 Roll Over Beethoven (Beatles)
07 talk (Beatles)
08 You Really Got a Hold on Me (Beatles)
09 talk (Beatles)
10 She Loves You (Beatles)
11 talk (Beatles)
12 Twist and Shout (Beatles)
13 She Loves You (Beatles)
14 talk (Beatles)
15 Twist and Shout (Beatles)
16 talk (Beatles)
17 I Saw Her Standing There (Beatles)
18 Long Tall Sally (Beatles)

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Years ago, I made the cover art for this album. I found an excellent photo of one of two concerts in question (the second, "Drop In" one), and cropped it to focus on the Beatles. The only problem was the photo was in black and white. Today, in preparing to post this, I colorized it.