barrympls wrote: Wow....(I gotta get that book), but I always thought that EMI was one of the few huge companies that took pride in maintaining all of their tapes. Think of it; only 4 Beatles tracks' multis are no longer available (Love Me Do, P.S. I Love You, She Loves You and I'll Get You). All of the rest of 'em are there. I have never heard any horror stories about The Hollies masters, either.
On the contrary. EMI Abbey Road are notorious for destroying tapes. They would erase the mutli-tracks as soon as a project was finished and they did it often. All of the multis for "Piper At The Gates Of Dawn" are gone. Luckily, the multis from the "Saucerful" sessions are still there. And as Luke said, the work parts for the first two Beatles albums are gone as well, though the final "mutlis" which are really just stereo tapes, still survive. The reason they stopped erasing Beatles multi-tracks was because someone put out a "do not destroy" order at some point.
barrympls wrote:As regards Joe Boyd, it's common knowledge that Boyd was producing Pink Floyd and between the first and second single, prior to the first LP, the decision was made to replace Boyd with Norman Smith, who was an EMI staff producer. I read back when Boyd had the Hannibal label that he had the multi-tracks for "Arnold Layne", "Candy And A Currant Bun" and a handful of early versions of tracks that ended up on the album. I've also heard that "Candy..." was originally recorded as "Let's Roll Another One" and EMI nixed that.
That's interesting. Joe Boyd was interviewed for the Random Precision book and there is no mention made of the mutli-tracks. As far as the author knows, those tapes are missing or destroyed. There is a multi-track tape in the Abbey Road archive from the session but it's contents are unknown. The author didn't attempt to get permission to hear the tapes. Why, I dont know...