The Beatles - 1969 complete A/B Road sessions... a little intro

The Beatles

January, 1969
"A/B Road" session tapes
Also known as The Nagra Reels

To end this Beatles upload frenzy of mine, we'll go into the much over rated 1969 sessions. It's a lot of material because the complete sessions were documented, so to make it easier for all I will only upload the very last two days worth from January 30 - 31, 1969. These two days consisted of both the studio sessions proper (as opposed to mere rehearsals) and the eventual rooftop concert (meant to bring to a close the whole affair.)

For completists I am including some information on the entire set as presented by Purple Chick. This whole series takes up a fair amount of space in my music room as the photo above and the following info will attest to. Trust me...it is a huge undertaking to try and download this baby! (For absolute completists the the entire Twickenham and Apple output can easily be found on the net. Good luck and happy downloading!! Now on with the show:

COMPLETE SET version 1.1
83 CDs
2187 tracks
97 hours, 44 minutes, 7 seconds
Twickenham Studios (Part 1)
Apple Studios (Part 2)

I started trying to collect this set 2 years ago. It gets seeded all kinds of ways. One disc here, one disc there… someone thought it would be nice to encode to .APE on a few I found. Very frustrating to try to collect a set this big that way. Like most people, I only had some pieces.

A gentleman named alGo did manage to collect these though, as they were first being posted. He notes:

This was all downloaded from easytree and then later dimeadozen. It was upped by PC_Eclipse and later by hexer, and, supposedly, they got their sets directly in flac format from Purple Chick (mmm PC and PC_Eclipse. Never thought of that. Who knows...).

They were seeded in small batches of maybe two or three cds. I've made one directory for each day and then put the correspondent discs there, like it should be. Some of the uploaded files had defects and patches were uploaded. Those patches are already applied, as was a later patch from PC to one of the tracks. So this is AB road 1.1 instead of 1.0.

In a disc or two an 'unofficial' patch was uploaded and suggested too. I have NOT replaced the original PC track, but I've put them on a directory inside that disc so everyone can judge and replace it where necessary.

Some of the first batches (that started with the apple sessions) were originally in shn format. Personally, I can't stand shn so I reconverted them to flac level 8 using Flac Frontend. Hope no one really minds about it.

So, alGo did a lot of further work to organize this set. I was still unhappy with having to reference a track list document to browse 2100+ files, so I have named all the tracks, combined into a single folder and added FLAC tags. This is the most complete presentation of this historic set, of over a thousand reels, you will find anywhere. All tracks have been meticulously labeled to include all info for easy browsing, including the DDSI take numbers.

DDSI numbers were published by Doug Sulpy when these tracks were initially pieced together and cataloged, in order of recording, for the most part, and presented in the book, "Drugs, Divorce and a Slipping Image (DDSI). Doug will be releasing an updated version of this book soon, and it is my hope that this set will compliment that nicely – you’ll be able to instantly call up a track while you read about it using the DDSI # assigned by Doug.

This set has been notoriously hard to complete, especially with any consistent lineage. Here is the chain of custody for this set:

THE FILM ENGINEERS - recorded thousands of audio reels over 4 weeks - the people in between

PURPLE CHICK - initial compilation and lots of hard work piecing the reels together

PC_ECLIPSE & HEXER - initial individual distribution of the 83 CDsalGo - initial compiling from the 83 individual Discs to 4 big sets

ROGERLANCELOT - computation of times & track data.

JAMESKG - final compiling and file naming, flac tagging, and fixing a non-compliance problem

I have gone through this set with a fine tooth comb and Doug Sulpy’s 2006 edition book’s list by DDSI #s. I found a few anomalies with track #s and DDSI #s and have re-aligned to Sulpy’s book. Something like 100 or so errors out of all 2187 tracks. I’m pretty sure this is as accurate as the documentation has ever been for this set.

01/02/69 - 2 Discs (2:39:15) 1 double case
01/03/69 - 4 Discs (5:12:33) 2 double cases
01/06/69 - 5 Discs (6:04:03) 2 double cases / 1 single case
01/07/69 - 4 Discs (5:10:28) 2 double cases
01/08/69 - 4 Discs (5:02:49) 2 double cases
01/09/69 - 5 Discs (5:21:39) 2 double cases / 1 single case
01/10/69 - 4 Discs (4:36:51) 2 double cases
01/13/69 - 3 Discs (3:28:50) 1 double case / 1 single case
01/14/69 - 3 Discs (3:02:42) 1 double case / 1 single case
01/21/69 - 3 Discs (3:28:57) 1 double case / 1 single case
01/22/69 - 4 Discs (5:05:22) 2 double cases
01/23/69 - 4 Discs (4:53:14) 2 double cases
01/24/69 - 4 Discs (4:55:06) 2 double cases
01/25/69 - 6 Discs (7:09:17) 3 double cases
01/26/69 - 6 Discs (6:30:01) 3 double cases
01/27/69 - 6 Discs (7:05:26) 3 double cases
01/28/69 - 6 Discs (7:02:31) 3 double cases
01/29/69 - 4 Discs (4:31:24) 2 double cases
01/30/69 - 2 Discs (1:47:56) 1 double case
01/31/69 - 4 Discs (4:35:43) 2 double cases

Total = 83 Discs - 39 double cases - 5 single cases

Part 1: Twickenham = 40:39:10 (1042 Tracks)

Part 2: Apple = 57:04:57 (1145 Tracks)

Total Time = 97:44:07 (83 CDs, 2187 Tracks)