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Discos Capitol de Mexico Beatles Master Tape Reels
Sometime after Thorn bought EMI in the October 1979, they fired most of the Capitol Discos de Mexico employees and also threw their entire analog Master Tape library into the dumpster. Many of these Master Tapes were immediately recovered by a just-fired, ex-employee, we’ll call MC. He has periodically offered Master Tapes for sale on Ebay. MC sold us a large quantity of Beatles Masters, but still has a large number of Masters from other artists, all marked with the Discos Capitol de Mexico numbering system LEM (mono) or SLEM (stereo) numbers on the tape box spines.
MC's dumpster story is consistent with similar stories of massive analog Master Tape purges in the late seventies and eighties at Sterling in the US, Jugoton Yugolsavia, Odeon Venezuela, Dideca Guatemala, Sono Cairo, and Sout El Hob in Egypt, EMI Svenska, Odeon Spain and perhaps others. So it seems evident that there are a large number of potential sources for genuine Master Tapes that would now be circulating outside of the record company vaults. In addition, a number of the Beatles session tapes were stolen from EMI and booted; read Mark Lewisohn's superb book on the Beatles recording sessions,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Complete_Beatles_Recording_Sessions
and John Winn's excellent, complimentary volumes documenting the Beatles recordings, videos and material available as bootlegs, Way Beyond Compare and That Magic Feeling;
https://www.amazon.com/John-C.-Winn/e/B001JRTDQK/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1
An older thread from Steve Hoffman's excellent Music Forum web site discusses (sometimes inaccurately - 'Did they sing in Spanish!!?') the Ebay offering of one of these Discos Capitol de Mexico Master Tapes - the last two posts seem most accurate;
http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/beatles-mexican-safety-master-reel-to-reel-tapes.340642/
47
Some insights in that thread are good, but incomplete such as the observation that, 'if this were genuine and from EMI Abbey Road it would be on EMITAPE'. That's a good observation for copies distributed in the mid sixties but not accurate for 1969 and later, when EMI Abbey Road largely switched from EMITAPE to Scotch tape 206 and 250 (with a few 208 and 226 thrown in) with Let It Be being Mastered on Scotch (206?).
That site also links to a useful, if also with occasionally inaccurate posted commentary, discussion of the original
Capitol Mexico's Mono Sgt Pepper Master Tape that sold on Ebay for the bargain price of $2800.
http://www.thisisbooksmusic.com/201...the-beatles-sgt-pepper-sold-for-2-8k-on-ebay/
From our Library of Master Tapes, we can say that in all likelihood the Sgt Pepper tape sold on Ebay for $2800 was a Capitol US sub-master. Now you scan the images of the Production Master Tapes in the library below -most came straight from EMI - Abbey Road in the seventies.
From the image of MC's tape room (above) its clear that this Discos Capitol de Mexico Sgt Pepper Master Tape is not a one-off!.
Looking through the Museum’s Discos Capitol de Mexico Master Tape Library, it looks like the Masters though Help! were provided in 1964 and 1965 as sub-copies from the Capitol US tapes. Musart, the company that released the first five Beatles LPs in Mexico made their own compilations for the first three releases in late 1964 and 1965, willy-nilly song ordering assembled from Please, Please Me and With The Beatles and with numerous singles mixed in (including a strange mix of Can't Buy Me Love which closes Vol 3!). Volume 4 was Hard Day's Night and Volume 5 was Beatles For Sale.
Break. Then Capitol Mexico was established in May 1965, with the Rock Magazine Billboard announcing it in bylines from Hollywood California, seemingly to take advantage of the popularity of the new Beatles. Discos Capitol re-released the five Musart LPs. Three of the first ten LP releases from the newly established Capitol Mexico were Beatles LPs. EMI - Abbey Road sent new copies of Beatles Master Tapes to Mexico though at least 1979.
However, affiliates worldwide often asked for, and were sent, new copies of Master Tapes directly from EMI Abbey Road through the seventies into the eighties, so affiliates often have both first generation copies directly from EMI, in addition to older tapes that were lower generation. As an example, we know from discogs that Holland was one of over thirty countries that released Abbey Road in 1969, the same year as the UK and US release. On the Master Tapes in the Wild page, the Abbey Road MFSL photo shows that copies of Abbey Road were made for Holland twice more, once in 1973 and again in 1980, even though they already had a Master Tape from 1969! A large number of EMI affiliates were supplied Master Tapes piece meal, perhaps mainly through affiliates in the sixties, but then got new masters directly from EMI Abbey Road through at least 1983.
What does that all mean? EMI Abbey Road sent out perhaps thousands, of Production Master Tapes to hundreds of affiliates all over the globe, and they went out first on EMITAPE in the sixties but eventually more commonly of SCOTCH, with some BASF and AGFA tapes eventually mixed in beginning in the early seventies.
Below is a gallery of Beatles Master Tapes from the Museum of Master Tape Reels originally provided to Capitol Mexico. Dates range from 1965 through 1979. Multiple copies exist of many of the titles. In addition to Mono and Stereo copies, there seems to have been a number of new copies provided by EMI-Abbey Road to Capitol Mexico in the seventies and eighties perhaps to make new, better masters for LPs and also for cassette tapes.
Red boxes are original EMITAPE 77; Aqua Boxes are likely EMITAPE 811, 815, 816 and dark blue boxes are more recent; EMITAPE 832, 851, 852, 862. That said, most tapes sent from EMI-Abbey Road since about 1969 seem to have been Scotch. That's the best we can puzzle together.
In the Library the solid color boxes (except pure black) are EMITAPE, red for type 77, aqua and Blue for later tape types. The boxes with plaid borders, red and aqua, are Scotch. But keep in mid that the tape, reels and boxes were liberally interchanged, so you might have an EMITAPE reel in a Scotch box, with BASF tape spooled onto the reel, or EMITAPE spooled onto Scotch reel in an AGFA tape box. In addition, many came as pancakes - the tape and box, but no reel.
Discos Capitol de Mexico Beatles Master Tape Reels
Sometime after Thorn bought EMI in the October 1979, they fired most of the Capitol Discos de Mexico employees and also threw their entire analog Master Tape library into the dumpster. Many of these Master Tapes were immediately recovered by a just-fired, ex-employee, we’ll call MC. He has periodically offered Master Tapes for sale on Ebay. MC sold us a large quantity of Beatles Masters, but still has a large number of Masters from other artists, all marked with the Discos Capitol de Mexico numbering system LEM (mono) or SLEM (stereo) numbers on the tape box spines.
MC's dumpster story is consistent with similar stories of massive analog Master Tape purges in the late seventies and eighties at Sterling in the US, Jugoton Yugolsavia, Odeon Venezuela, Dideca Guatemala, Sono Cairo, and Sout El Hob in Egypt, EMI Svenska, Odeon Spain and perhaps others. So it seems evident that there are a large number of potential sources for genuine Master Tapes that would now be circulating outside of the record company vaults. In addition, a number of the Beatles session tapes were stolen from EMI and booted; read Mark Lewisohn's superb book on the Beatles recording sessions,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Complete_Beatles_Recording_Sessions
and John Winn's excellent, complimentary volumes documenting the Beatles recordings, videos and material available as bootlegs, Way Beyond Compare and That Magic Feeling;
https://www.amazon.com/John-C.-Winn/e/B001JRTDQK/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1
An older thread from Steve Hoffman's excellent Music Forum web site discusses (sometimes inaccurately - 'Did they sing in Spanish!!?') the Ebay offering of one of these Discos Capitol de Mexico Master Tapes - the last two posts seem most accurate;
http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/beatles-mexican-safety-master-reel-to-reel-tapes.340642/
47
Some insights in that thread are good, but incomplete such as the observation that, 'if this were genuine and from EMI Abbey Road it would be on EMITAPE'. That's a good observation for copies distributed in the mid sixties but not accurate for 1969 and later, when EMI Abbey Road largely switched from EMITAPE to Scotch tape 206 and 250 (with a few 208 and 226 thrown in) with Let It Be being Mastered on Scotch (206?).
That site also links to a useful, if also with occasionally inaccurate posted commentary, discussion of the original
Capitol Mexico's Mono Sgt Pepper Master Tape that sold on Ebay for the bargain price of $2800.
http://www.thisisbooksmusic.com/201...the-beatles-sgt-pepper-sold-for-2-8k-on-ebay/
From our Library of Master Tapes, we can say that in all likelihood the Sgt Pepper tape sold on Ebay for $2800 was a Capitol US sub-master. Now you scan the images of the Production Master Tapes in the library below -most came straight from EMI - Abbey Road in the seventies.
From the image of MC's tape room (above) its clear that this Discos Capitol de Mexico Sgt Pepper Master Tape is not a one-off!.
Looking through the Museum’s Discos Capitol de Mexico Master Tape Library, it looks like the Masters though Help! were provided in 1964 and 1965 as sub-copies from the Capitol US tapes. Musart, the company that released the first five Beatles LPs in Mexico made their own compilations for the first three releases in late 1964 and 1965, willy-nilly song ordering assembled from Please, Please Me and With The Beatles and with numerous singles mixed in (including a strange mix of Can't Buy Me Love which closes Vol 3!). Volume 4 was Hard Day's Night and Volume 5 was Beatles For Sale.
Break. Then Capitol Mexico was established in May 1965, with the Rock Magazine Billboard announcing it in bylines from Hollywood California, seemingly to take advantage of the popularity of the new Beatles. Discos Capitol re-released the five Musart LPs. Three of the first ten LP releases from the newly established Capitol Mexico were Beatles LPs. EMI - Abbey Road sent new copies of Beatles Master Tapes to Mexico though at least 1979.
However, affiliates worldwide often asked for, and were sent, new copies of Master Tapes directly from EMI Abbey Road through the seventies into the eighties, so affiliates often have both first generation copies directly from EMI, in addition to older tapes that were lower generation. As an example, we know from discogs that Holland was one of over thirty countries that released Abbey Road in 1969, the same year as the UK and US release. On the Master Tapes in the Wild page, the Abbey Road MFSL photo shows that copies of Abbey Road were made for Holland twice more, once in 1973 and again in 1980, even though they already had a Master Tape from 1969! A large number of EMI affiliates were supplied Master Tapes piece meal, perhaps mainly through affiliates in the sixties, but then got new masters directly from EMI Abbey Road through at least 1983.
What does that all mean? EMI Abbey Road sent out perhaps thousands, of Production Master Tapes to hundreds of affiliates all over the globe, and they went out first on EMITAPE in the sixties but eventually more commonly of SCOTCH, with some BASF and AGFA tapes eventually mixed in beginning in the early seventies.
Below is a gallery of Beatles Master Tapes from the Museum of Master Tape Reels originally provided to Capitol Mexico. Dates range from 1965 through 1979. Multiple copies exist of many of the titles. In addition to Mono and Stereo copies, there seems to have been a number of new copies provided by EMI-Abbey Road to Capitol Mexico in the seventies and eighties perhaps to make new, better masters for LPs and also for cassette tapes.
Red boxes are original EMITAPE 77; Aqua Boxes are likely EMITAPE 811, 815, 816 and dark blue boxes are more recent; EMITAPE 832, 851, 852, 862. That said, most tapes sent from EMI-Abbey Road since about 1969 seem to have been Scotch. That's the best we can puzzle together.
In the Library the solid color boxes (except pure black) are EMITAPE, red for type 77, aqua and Blue for later tape types. The boxes with plaid borders, red and aqua, are Scotch. But keep in mid that the tape, reels and boxes were liberally interchanged, so you might have an EMITAPE reel in a Scotch box, with BASF tape spooled onto the reel, or EMITAPE spooled onto Scotch reel in an AGFA tape box. In addition, many came as pancakes - the tape and box, but no reel.
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