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The Beatles bootleg recordings

The Beatles' bootleg recordings (also known as Beatlegs) are recordings of performances by the Beatles that have attained some level of public circulation without being available as a legal release. The term most often refers to audio recordings, but also includes video performances. Starting with vinyl releases in the 1970s, through CD issues in the late 1980s, and continuing with digital downloads starting in the mid 1990s, the Beatles have been, and continue to be, among the most bootlegged artists.

Bootleg recordings arise from a multitude of sources, including radio and TV broadcast performances, live shows, studio outtakes and session tapes, alternate mixes, test discs, and home demos. The largest single source of Beatles bootleg material is the set of Nagra audio tapes from the 1969 filming of the Get Back / Let It Be rehearsal and recording sessions.

Historical overview
The 1970s saw the first Beatle bootlegs issued on vinyl records. The first Beatles bootleg was Kum Back, issued around January 1970 in a plain white sleeve with plain white labels and no mention of a record company. This vinyl bootleg was based on an acetate of one of the early rough mixes by Glyn Johns of the Get Back album (which would later become Let It Be). John Lennon may have been the unintentional source for one of the Get Back bootlegs; Lennon said: "They say it came from an acetate that I gave to someone who then went and broadcast it as being an advance pressing or something."

Other notable bootlegs to appear in the early 1970s were Yellow Matter Custard, containing 14 BBC Radio performances from 1963, (originally these tracks were thought to be from the Decca audition of January 1962, and Lennon himself told McCartney about the album) and Sweet Apple Trax, a two-volume four-disc collection of songs and jams from the Get Back rehearsal sessions first issued in 1974. In 1977, a copy of the Beatles' Decca audition tape was bought by a collector, who released the songs over a series of seven 45 rpm singles pressed on coloured vinyl with full colour picture sleeves. Bootleggers of this era often copied and repackaged each other's releases, so popular titles often appeared from more than one bootleg label. The biggest labels for Beatles material in the 1970s were Kornyfone (TAKRL), ContraBand, Trademark of Quality and Wizardo.

EMI had planned to release an album of alternate takes and previously unreleased songs by the Beatles in 1985 called Sessions, but the Beatles objected after it had been compiled; by the end of the year, bootleg copies were widely available. During the cataloguing and review of the EMI archives in the early 1980s in preparation for the Sessions album and a multimedia show given at Abbey Road Studios, it is suspected that high quality copies of some of the material were surreptitiously made. This may have been the source for the Ultra Rare Trax CD series from Swingin' Pig that started appearing in 1988, which provided takes never previously bootlegged in clarity that rivalled official releases.

The late 1980s also saw the emergence of Yellow Dog, a label specialising in Beatles studio outtakes, who released the CD series Unsurpassed Masters in quality similar to Ultra Rare Trax; Yellow Dog, like Swingin' Pig's parent company Perfect Beat, was registered in Luxembourg, which had the most liberal copyright laws among EU countries. Yellow Dog released Unsurpassed Demos in 1991, featuring 22 songs from the 1968 Kinfauns (Esher) demos, only some of which had been previously made public during the radio series The Lost Lennon Tapes that debuted in 1988.

In 1993, a nine CD box set of the Beatles' BBC radio performances was released in Italy by Great Dane. The official Live at the BBC and Anthology releases in 1994–1996 covered much of the highlights of previously bootlegged material, in sound quality that most bootlegs could not match. However, new bootlegs continued to appear, with bootleggers including the word "anthology" in the title of many of their collections. Starting in 1999, Silent Sea issued a series of CD-Rs, featuring recompiled studio outtakes with commercial-quality packaging and liner notes. In 2000, the Vigotone label followed up their earlier eight-CD package of Get Back session recordings with a seventeen-CD collection called Thirty Days. In the early 2000s, the DVD format enhanced the availability of Beatles bootleg videos, covering filmed concerts, TV appearances, promotional films, and even rare clips and outtakes. The six-volume The Lost Album series, published between 2017 and 2021, was an attempt to bring together almost all of the Beatles' unpublished or never officially released recordings.

The availability of high-speed Internet has transformed the bootlegging industry. The Purple Chick label has assembled and digitally fine-tuned many comprehensive themed packages, including individual studio album sessions, the Get Back sessions, and the BBC performances, all distributed free through various fan trading sites online. Author Richie Unterberger noted that it is "now theoretically possible to assemble a complete collection of the circulating unreleased Beatles recordings without ever buying a bootleg."

Commonly bootlegged material
Several books have been devoted to comprehensively documenting Beatles bootlegs; the following is a list of some of the most common or notable bootlegged recordings by the Beatles.

The Quarrymen / Silver Beatles era (1957–1960)
Other than the commercially released songs with Tony Sheridan issued on In the Beginning (Circa 1960), only three recordings made by the group prior to 1962 have become public.

 * The Quarrymen show, 6 July 1957. The Quarrymen played a show for the Woolton fête at St Peter's Parish Church, notable as the day that Paul McCartney was first introduced to Lennon by a mutual friend, Ivan Vaughan. In 1994, Bob Molyneux, a retired policeman, rediscovered a reel-to-reel tape he had made of the show while experimenting with a Grundig portable tape recorder. The tape contained a poor quality recording of the Quarrymen performances of Lonnie Donegan's "Puttin' On the Style" and Elvis Presley's "Baby, Let's Play House". A thirty-second excerpt of "Putting on the Style" was released to promote the tape's auction at Sotheby's later that year; the tape was bought by EMI for £78,500, becoming the most expensive recording ever sold at auction. EMI decided the recording was not of sufficient quality to include in Anthology. After extensive audio restoration, excerpts from both songs were included in the BBC radio documentary The Day John Met Paul, broadcast on 26 June 2007.
 * The Quarrymen acetate, 1958. on July 12, 1958, The Quarrymen paid to record themselves at Phillips' Sound Recording Services in Liverpool, performing "That'll Be the Day" and "In Spite of All the Danger". These were included on Anthology 1, although the latter song was edited.
 * Home rehearsals, 1960. More than one hour of the band's home rehearsals from 1960 have appeared on bootlegs, although the recording's date and location are uncertain. McCartney once said that it was taped at his home in April 1960; the recording may also originate from two separate sessions a few months apart. Three of the songs were included on Anthology 1. The recording also featured early versions of songs that the Beatles would later record in the studio ("Matchbox", "One After 909", "I'll Follow the Sun"). Other songs that were recorded during these rehearsals include "Well, Darlin'", "Hello Little Girl", "That's When Your Heartaches Begin", "Wildcat", "I'll Always Be in Love with You", "Some Days", "Hallelujah I Love Her So", "The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise", "You Must Write Every Day", "Movin' and Groovin'", and "Ramrod".

A collection of all these recordings were released on the bootleg recording Lapis Lazuli, featuring a longer version of “Puttin’ on the Style” and all of the Beatles home recordings made in early 1960.

Decca audition (1962)
The Beatles performed fifteen songs that were recorded at their audition for Decca Records on 1 January 1962 (three Lennon–McCartney compositions and twelve cover versions). Five of these songs were included on Anthology 1.

Fourteen of the fifteen tracks appeared on a series of coloured vinyl singles with picture sleeves, released in 1978 on the Deccagone label through Strawberry Fields Forever, Joe Pope's fanzine. The following year, all fifteen tracks appeared on the Circuit Records bootleg album The Decca Tapes.

Due to the questionable copyright status of these performances (recorded prior to the group's EMI contract), the Decca audition was commercially distributed in various configurations starting in 1981; some of these "grey market" albums omitted the three Lennon–McCartney songs. By the late 1980s, legal action by the Beatles had halted commercial availability of the albums. In addition to continued inclusion on bootlegs, a small US record label issued the songs on CD through mail order in 2007 as The Lost Decca Sessions, which it described as legal and licensed.

Cavern Club rehearsals and TV shoot (1962)
Sometime between August and December 1962, the Beatles recorded themselves rehearsing at the Cavern Club, performing "I Saw Her Standing There", "One After 909" (two versions), and "Catswalk" (two versions).

On August 22, 1962, a crew from Granada Television shot footage of the band performing live at the Cavern for use in the television show Scene at 6:30; the crew filmed two takes of the band performing "Some Other Guy." The following month, on September 5, a Granada sound crew returned to capture better audio of the band to sync to the film footage, as they felt the audio from the original shoot was not of satisfactory quality. A new recording of "Some Other Guy" and a recording of "Kansas City/Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey!" come from this performance. The shoot constitutes the earliest professional film footage of the Beatles, and would have been the Beatles' first appearance on television, but the footage was shelved for over a year, and was first broadcast after the Beatles had achieved nationwide success. Instead, Grenada booked the group for a live, in-studio performance on 17 October 1962. The Cavern footage has been seen on The Beatles Anthology and other documentary sources, and audio from both dates have circulated amongst bootleggers.

Star-Club performances (1962)
As the Beatles were concluding their final two-week Hamburg engagement in late December 1962, portions of their performances were taped by Star-Club stage manager Adrian Barber; the tapes were acquired by Ted "Kingsize" Taylor, the leader of KingsizeTaylor and The Dominoes at the club. Eventually Taylor sold the tapes, which formed the basis of the double album ''Live! at the Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany; 1962'', released in 1977 by Lingasong Records.

The liner notes for the initial release falsely implied that the recordings had been made in the spring of 1962, prior to the Beatles' EMI contract, on a night when Ringo Starr happened to be sitting in for Pete Best. In commentary for a lawsuit to block the album's release, John Lennon wrote, "the sleeve note, apart from being inaccurate, seems to have been written with a court case in mind." The Beatles lost their case, so the album was viewed as a legitimate release. The thirty songs contained on the initial releases were re-licensed over the following two decades to multiple record labels, most notably Sony Music, which packaged the songs in CD form in 1991 (although the product was withdrawn the following year as legal action was pending from the Beatles). After another lawsuit by the Beatles, Lingasong agreed in 1998 to hand over the original tapes and stop all sales.

Compared with a properly recorded live concert, the sound quality of the tape is poor, with the vocals in particular sounding "muffled and distant" at best. But for a recording made with 1 mic from the audience with a home-use reel-to-reel, the quality is very good. The Beatles display a rawness that matches the raucous Hamburg atmosphere. While the Beatles would later record many of the thirty songs in the studio or perform them for the BBC, nine of the songs would never be officially released in another version.

Additional material from the Star-Club tapes has been bootlegged, including "Road Runner", "Money (That's What I Want)" (with Tony Sheridan singing lead), and a full version of "Red Hot", and alternate performances of several songs.

The BBC sessions (1962–1965)
The Beatles performed for fifty-two BBC Radio programmes, beginning with an appearance on the series Teenager's Turn—Here We Go, recorded on 7 March 1962, and ending with the special The Beatles Invite You to Take a Ticket to Ride, recorded on 26 May 1965; in total, 275 performances of 88 different songs were broadcast. Early bootlegs of some of the performances were based on low-quality home recordings of the broadcasts from the radio. It was not the BBC's practice to archive either the session tapes or the shows' master tapes, but many good quality distribution copies were found in various BBC departments during research for BBC radio specials produced in the 1980s.

Increasingly comprehensive collections of the BBC performances were bootlegged in the 1980s and early 1990s. The most notable of these was The Complete BBC Sessions, a nine CD box set released in 1993 by Great Dane in Italy, where copyright protection for the broadcasts had expired; The widespread availability of good quality bootlegs prompted Apple's own release of BBC performances in 1994, the two CD set Live at the BBC. The set included 30 of the 36 songs that the Beatles never performed on their studio albums, plus 26 other songs and dialogue among the group members and the radio hosts. In 1999, a 10 CD box set The Complete BBC Sessions 1962-1966 was released in Japan by Secret Trax which was soon followed by 3 CD set Attack of the Filler BEEBS! on the same label featuring additions to the box set.

Starting in the 2000s, the popularity of digital downloads through BitTorrent made it possible to replace physical media with virtual box sets of BBC material provided by fans for fans made available free of charge. In 2004, Purple Chick released The Complete BBC Sessions Upgraded as a digital set of ten audio CDs plus one multimedia CD. In 2010, Hobnail released a virtual 13 disc release Unsurpassed Broadcasts. 2015 saw the release of The BBC Archives, by an anonymous source. This set of 23 virtual CDs and one virtual DVD contains all of the available BBC material in the best quality, as well as some previously unreleased radio shows and upgraded material.

Studio outtakes and alternate mixes (1962–1970)
A large number of Beatles studio outtakes are available on bootlegs, ranging from complete session tapes—for example, the morning sessions for the Please Please Me album—to more fragmentary samplings, or alternate mixes and performances derived from acetates. The first studio outtake to appear on bootleg was the White Album outtake "What's The New Mary Jane" in 1972, which fell into the hands of bootleggers via an acetate that Lennon had traded to a friend. In 1977, rough mixes from acetates of "I Am the Walrus" and "The Fool on the Hill" appeared on bootlegs after being played on a Radio Luxembourg broadcast.

After the Beatles' EMI contract expired in 1976, the company began assessing the band's unreleased material for a future release. The first batch of songs to leak came from an in-house compilation cassette that contained "Leave My Kitten Alone", "One After 909" (from 1963), "If You've Got Trouble", "Christmas Time (Is Here Again)", "That Means a Lot", "Come and Get It", "Dig a Pony" (unedited version), and two medleys from the Get Back / Let It Be sessions: "Rip It Up / Shake, Rattle and Roll" and "Not Fade Away / Bo Diddley".

In 1981, in-house engineer John Barrett was given the task of cataloguing the complete collection of tapes from the band's seven-year career with EMI. This led to two projects: a public audio-visual presentation at Abbey Road Studios called The Beatles Live at Abbey Road (which opened on 18 July 1983) and a planned outtakes album which was to be called Sessions. In addition to some of the songs included on the previously leaked compilation tape, Sessions added "Not Guilty", "What's the New Mary Jane", "How Do You Do It?", "Bésame Mucho", "Mailman, Bring Me No More Blues", "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" (demo), and early takes of "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" and "I'm Looking Through You". Shortly before the album's scheduled 1985 release, it was vetoed by the surviving members of the band; but both audience recordings of the Abbey Road presentation and the leaked promos of Sessions became available to bootleggers. These songs appeared on bootleg series such as Ultra-Rare Trax and Unsurpassed Masters, along with other material presumably copied while preparing these projects. Most of the aforementioned tracks were officially released on the Anthology albums in 1995 and 1996.

New Beatles studio outtakes continue to occasionally appear; in February 2009, a complete 10:46 recording of “Revolution 1 (Take 20)” from the White Album sessions was released on the bootleg Revolution: Take... Your Knickers Off!. This version begins with Lennon jokingly counting that way.

Live concerts (1963–1966)
Many of the Beatles' concert performances have appeared on bootleg albums. The earliest relatively complete concert recording is from the 7 December 1963 show at the Liverpool Empire Theatre. The Beatles Anthology contained video clips from several concerts, some of which are available in complete form on bootleg video. The following are some of the most notable concerts on bootleg releases.

 * Washington Coliseum, 1964. The Beatles' first US concert, on 11 February 1964 in Washington, D.C., was captured on black-and-white video for later closed-circuit presentations in cinemas. Some of the video was included in Anthology and in The Beatles: The First US Visit, and most of it was included in the 2003 DVD The Beatles in Washington D.C. from Passport Video. The entire video was released on the grey market DVD Beatles Around the World. All video releases suffer from "dark, grainy, and flickery" image quality; a report of a 2005 auction of the original master tape gives the possibility of a better quality release in the future. In 2010 the Beatles at last came to iTunes and along with their back catalogue they brought with them a video of this show. The video was made available with the purchase of the iTunes version of The Beatles Stereo Box Set simply called The Beatles Box Set where all albums were released as iTunes LP's featuring on-screen album artwork and the Mini Documentaries from the DVD in the physical release.
 * Hollywood Bowl, 1964 and 1965. The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl, an official release by EMI in 1977, contained selections from the Beatles' three Hollywood Bowl shows professionally recorded in August 1964 and August 1965. An authorized CD of the remixed 1977 album with 4 bonus tracks was released in September 2016. Bootleg needle drop copies are available, as well as bootleg compilations of the three performances in their entirety.
 * Palais des Sports, 1965. The Beatles performed two shows on 20 June 1965 at the Palais des Sports in Paris. Both were broadcast over French radio, resulting in bootleg recordings of decent quality; video of the second show also exists.
 * Shea Stadium, 1965. The Beatles' concert at Shea Stadium on 15 August 1965 was filmed for a television special, The Beatles at Shea Stadium. The programme and its soundtrack have been bootlegged in various formats. One song, "Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby", was officially released on Anthology 2. A thirty-minute reissue of the footage of the concert was remastered and issued simultaneously with the release of the Ron Howard film The Beatles: Eight Days a Week on 15 September 2016.
 * Budokan, 1966. The Beatles performed for three days at the Nippon Budokan in Tokyo beginning 30 June 1966, with the first two concerts (30 June 1966 and the afternoon show on 1 July) filmed in colour for Japanese television. The first night's concert video was officially released by Apple in Japan only as Beatles Concert at Budokan 1966. Excerpts from both shows (along with silent colour footage of the first show on 2 July) were included in The Beatles Anthology.
 * Candlestick Park, 1966. Notable as the Beatles' final paid concert performance, the 29 August 1966 show at Candlestick Park in San Francisco was taped by press officer Tony Barrow on a portable recorder at the request of McCartney; the tape ran out before the last few minutes of the show.

Television performances (1963–1968)
The Beatles performed on various television programmes; excerpts from many of these were shown in the Anthology documentary, and bootleg video exists of many of the shows in their entirety. The most famous of these were the four appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 and 1965; after many years circulating on bootlegs, these received official DVD release in 2003 as The Four Complete Historic Ed Sullivan Shows Featuring The Beatles.

Other notable television performances that have appeared on bootleg video include the Swedish show Drop In from October 1963 (four songs); the April 1964 UK special Around the Beatles (six songs mimed to new recordings); the June 1964 Australian special The Beatles Sing for Shell (seven songs survived in complete form, plus fragments of two others); and a September 1968 appearance on Frost on Sunday (new vocals for "Hey Jude" and "Revolution" over studio backing tracks, plus brief improvisations), for which multiple takes are available.

Home demos (1963–1969)
The individual Beatles sometimes recorded basic performances at home of their new compositions, either for copyright purposes (to be sent to Dick James Music publishing affiliate Northern Songs), to later play for the other Beatles, or to give to other artists who would be recording the songs.

Many of Lennon's demos that appeared on bootlegs were first heard on the radio series The Lost Lennon Tapes. Some of the Lennon demos available include "Bad to Me" (1963, given to Billy J. Kramer), "I'm in Love" (1963, given to The Fourmost [although some scholars date this as a late seventies piano rendition]), "If I Fell" (1964), and "Everyone Had A Hard Year" (1968, later incorporated into "I've Got a Feeling"). There are also Lennon demos available of songs that would develop into "She Said She Said", "Strawberry Fields Forever", "Good Morning Good Morning", "Across the Universe", "You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)", "Don't Let Me Down", and two songs he would later record after the Beatles, "Oh My Love" and "Cold Turkey". Lennon's home recordings of "Bad to Me" and "I'm in Love" were briefly released on iTunes in December 2013 in order to extend the copyright terms of the tracks.

McCartney's demos include "One and One Is Two" (1964, eventually an uncharted single for The Strangers with Mike Shannon), "Step Inside Love" (1968, given to Cilla Black), "Spiritual Regeneration Song" from India, "Goodbye" (1969, given to Mary Hopkin), "Come and Get it" (1969, given to Badfinger), and early versions of "We Can Work It Out" (partially taped over by Lennon) and "Michelle". Harrison's 1963 demo for "Don't Bother Me" has also been bootlegged.

Christmas recordings (1963–1969)
Every year from 1963 through to 1969, the Beatles recorded a flexi disc of comedy and music that was sent to members of their fan club. In 1970, these recordings were compiled onto an LP released via their fan club called From Then to You (US title: The Beatles' Christmas Album). Since these singles or compilation album had no official general-public release prior to 2017, all have been frequently bootlegged, some with additional outtakes from Christmas recording sessions, and some supplemented with Christmas themed BBC recordings. A portion of one song recorded for the 1967 Christmas flexi disc, "Christmas Time (Is Here Again)", was officially released as an additional track on the 1995 "Free as a Bird" single. Part of the 1963 track is featured as an unlockable special feature on The Beatles: Rock Band. In 2017, Apple released The Christmas Records as a box set of seven 7" 45 rpm records pressed on coloured vinyl in replica sleeves.

The White Album (Esher) demos (1968)
In May 1968, the Beatles met at Kinfauns, the Esher home of George Harrison, to review and record demos of songs under consideration for their next album; 27 songs, mostly acoustic, have become public from this session. Seven of these songs were released on Anthology 3, including "Junk", a song McCartney would later record for his first solo album. Of the 20 demo songs not officially released, 15 would be recorded and released on the White Album, while "Not Guilty" and "What's the New Mary Jane" would be recorded for the album but not make the final line-up. The recordings included on the Anthology series were of a significantly higher fidelity (they came from George's original stereo reels of the demo sessions, and processed at Abbey Road Studios) than the bootlegged recordings (which probably came from John's mono copy of the tapes), raising the possibility that there were higher-quality versions of all 27 songs. In 2018, all 27 original Esher demos were released in high-quality as part of the deluxe 50th Anniversary reissue of The Beatles, taken from Harrison's original 4-track master tapes. Giles Martin described the tapes as: “To me, it is like the Beatles unplugged. These are demos but they are good: they double-tracked themselves.”

Three additional songs would never be recorded in the studio by the Beatles: Also not the same version from bootlegs.
 * "Child of Nature", later released by Lennon, with different lyrics, as "Jealous Guy" on Imagine.
 * "Circles", released by Harrison on his 1982 album Gone Troppo.
 * "Sour Milk Sea", a Harrison song given to Jackie Lomax and released in August 1968 as one of the first Apple Records singles.

Get Back / Let It Be sessions (1969)
In January 1969, the Beatles got together with director Michael Lindsay-Hogg to film the rehearsals for the group's proposed first live concert since 1966. This project would concentrate on new material, and was intended to form the basis for both a television documentary and a new album, which were given the title of Get Back. But disagreements and a general lack of enthusiasm within the group led to much of the project never being fully completed. However, a one-off live performance was filmed and recorded on the rooftop of Apple Records on 30 January 1969, and the title song "Get Back" was released as a single in April 1969. After essentially being abandoned by the Beatles for more than a year, the project was eventually renamed and released in May 1970; with the film footage now becoming a feature film, Let It Be, and the new songs becoming an album of the same name.

The rehearsals and recordings took place at Twickenham Film Studios (2–16 January) and then at Apple (20–31 January), with more than one hundred hours captured on film and the corresponding Nagra tape recorders used for the film's audio track. These Nagra tapes are the source for most, but not all, of the bootlegs from these sessions. In addition to songs that would later be released by the group, the Beatles played hundreds of cover versions and original compositions. However, many of the performances were brief (some lasting less than ten seconds), and many of the original compositions are undeveloped ideas or improvisations that have been described as the audio equivalent of doodling. A sampling of the rehearsals was officially issued as a bonus disc with Let It Be... Naked.

Among the more complete rehearsed songs that have been featured on bootlegs are "Watching Rainbows", "Commonwealth", Suzy's Parlour (published under the name Suzy Parker), and "The Palace of the King of the Birds" (later recorded but not released by McCartney as "Castle of the King of the Birds"); "All Things Must Pass", "Let It Down", "Isn't It a Pity" and "Hear Me Lord", later released by Harrison; "Gimme Some Truth" and "Oh My Love", later released by Lennon; and "Teddy Boy" and "Hot as Sun", later released by McCartney.

Portions of the rooftop concert were seen in the Let It Be film and the Anthology documentary, and three tracks were used for the Let It Be album, while the complete recording has been bootlegged. The performance consisted of a short take of "Get Back" played as part of the preliminary sound check, "Get Back" (first and second versions), "Don't Let Me Down", "I've Got a Feeling", "One After 909", "Dig a Pony", "God Save the Queen" (a brief version played while the audio tape reel was changed), "I've Got a Feeling" (second version), "Don't Let Me Down" (second version), and "Get Back" (third version).

On 30 January 1969, Glyn Johns compiled some performances he had been mixing, and made acetate copies for the Beatles. In addition to songs that would eventually appear on Let It Be, this set included "Teddy Boy", "The Walk", by Jimmy McCracklin, and a rock and roll medley that included songs such as "I'm Ready", an early Fats Domino song, and "Shake Rattle and Roll", by Big Joe Turner. This was the first version that leaked out and broadcast on multiple radio stations starting in September 1969, and formed the basis for the bootleg Kum Back that appeared near the end of 1969. Johns started working in earnest on compiling an album in March 1969, and a test acetate from this period eventually surfaced on a poor quality bootleg called “O.P.D.”.

Johns later made two "official" attempts at compiling the Get Back album, with both versions widely bootlegged. The 28 May 1969 compilation by Johns contained the following line-up: "One After 909", "Rocker", "Save the Last Dance for Me", "Don't Let Me Down", "Dig a Pony", "I've Got a Feeling", "Get Back", "For You Blue", "Teddy Boy", "Two of Us", "Maggie Mae", "Dig It", "Let It Be", "The Long and Winding Road", and "Get Back (Reprise)". The main changes made for the 5 January 1970 compilation were the removal of "Teddy Boy" and the additions of "I Me Mine" and "Across the Universe".

One of the myriad Get Back session compilation bootlegs was The Black Album, a three-LP set from the 1980s in a memorable package (although the material has since been bootlegged in superior sound quality). In the early 2000s, Yellow Dog Records created Day by Day, a 38-part CD series containing almost all of the "Camera A" Nagra tape recordings, with improved audio quality compared to earlier releases. Around the same time, the bootleg label Unicorn started releasing the "Camera B" tapes, in other smaller CD series, such as Twelve Days At Twickenham. In January 2003, nearly 500 (with 40 still missing as of December 2022) of the original Nagra tapes were recovered by police in England and the Netherlands, with five people arrested.

Even after the raid, bootlegging of the material continued. In 2004, the Purple Chick label released A/B Road, an 81 CD set compiling all of the Nagra material leaked by that time (albeit with a few flaws), and by 2008, every available Nagra tape recording was shared in one way or another.

Studio album needle drops
Starting in 1987, Apple began officially reissuing the Beatles catalogue on CD. However, as digital remastering was still in its infancy, many fans and audiophiles were disappointed with the sound quality of the official reissues, preferring the "warmth" of the vinyl releases. Many fans also clamoured for the digital release of the original Beatles Capitol albums as they contained many unique mixes different from the UK releases. Several bootleggers stepped in to fill this void by offering digital copies of their own needle drops of the entire Beatles catalogue, typically using premium vinyl pressings played and digitised with high-end audio equipment. While these unauthorized copies are not bootlegs as commonly defined, their creation and distribution channels overlap with bootleg products.

Some of the widely distributed collections are the BEAT/Red Robin, Dr. Ebbetts, and Millennium Remasters series and the Beatles' remasters on "DLH Records." The official remastering of the Beatles' catalogue in stereo and mono, released by Apple in September 2009 on both CD and vinyl, has largely made these bootleg remasters obsolete; however, collectors in search of authentic original (and in some cases unique) mixes still find them of historical interest. The Beatles' official catalogue of their original stereo studio albums has since been issued via digital download through iTunes.

Material not bootlegged
A considerable amount of additional never-circulated Beatles material is believed to exist, either in private possession or studio vaults, as mentioned in documents and recollections.

From the group's early years, it has been reported that additional songs exist from the 1960 Quarrymen rehearsal tapes, including a Lennon–McCartney instrumental "Winston's Walk" and early versions of "When I'm Sixty-Four" and "Ask Me Why". Another recording of considerable interest is a tape of 18 songs from a Beatles show in mid-1962 at the Cavern Club, recorded from the audience. The tape includes several cover versions of songs not available elsewhere by the Beatles, including the Bruce Channel number one "Hey! Baby", James Ray's "If You Gotta Make a Fool of Somebody", and the Bobby Vee hit "Sharing You". McCartney bought the tape at a 1985 auction, and since none of it was used for Anthology, it has been assumed to be of poor sound quality.

Many demo recordings are known to have been made by the individual Beatles but have yet to become public. Lennon's uncirculated demos include "Do You Want to Know a Secret", "I Call Your Name", "No Reply" (pre-dating the one on Anthology), "In My Life", and "Good Night". McCartney's uncirculated demos include "A World Without Love", "It's for You", "What Goes On", "Eleanor Rigby", "Etcetera" (a 1968 song intended for Marianne Faithfull), and "The Long and Winding Road". However, a small portion of "World Without Love" made its public debut in January 2013 during a series of Peter Asher concerts and has subsequently appeared in full elsewhere. Also the Daily Express announced, on 20 July 2016, the original acetate of "It's for You" demo featuring Paul's voice (it was discovered among other demos in Cilla Black's collection and was proposed for auction). Portions of these two demos, "A World Without Love" and "It's for You", were made available on Beatles bootleg The Lost Album in 2017.

Between the official Anthology releases and the numerous outtakes that have been bootlegged, many of the Beatles' most interesting studio recordings are available in some form. Nevertheless, there are still recordings known to be in EMI's archives that have generated particular interest in their eventual release. One is "Carnival of Light", an improvised 14-minute vocal and sound collage that the Beatles created in early 1967 for an art festival; the recording was under consideration for Anthology, and McCartney has been an advocate for its release. Another is take 3 of "Helter Skelter" from 18 July 1968, renowned for its length of twenty-seven minutes. Anthology 3 included only a 4:38 edit of the 12:35 take 2 from that day's work on the song; asked why a longer version wasn't issued, George Martin explained: "I think it gets boring." The full 12 minutes of take 2 were eventually released in 2018 for the 50th anniversary of The Beatles.

Some recordings may no longer exist, if they ever existed originally. A Quarrymen rehearsal that was recorded at Colin Hanton's home was taped over. BBC documentation shows that "Sheila" and two versions of "Three Cool Cats" were recorded and never broadcast, but the tapes were likely reused or discarded, a fate shared by some of the Beatles' studio session tapes prior to late 1963. Carl Perkins said that he joined the Beatles in the studio for a late night jam session on 1 June 1964, but this was probably not taped. Several Lennon–McCartney titles were mentioned in a 1960 letter from McCartney, including "Looking Glass", "Years Roll Along", and "Keep Looking That Way", but there is no evidence that tapes were ever made of those songs during rehearsals from that era.

One final source of uncirculated recordings is the set of sessions held in 1994–1995 for the Anthology project. In addition to the two songs released, two other Lennon demos (which have been bootlegged) became the basis for additional work by the other three Beatles: "Now and Then" and "Grow Old With Me". "Now and Then" was close to being the third new song for Anthology, but it needed more work than the two released songs and was left unfinished; McCartney indicated an interest in completing the song with Starr. A new song composed by McCartney and Harrison, "All for Love", was also reportedly recorded by the three ex-Beatles at the sessions but never finished. Starr released a version of "Grow Old With Me" in 2019 with McCartney on bass and backing vocals, while “Now and Then” was later released on November 2, 2023, with AI demixing technology utilized to isolate Lennon's vocals.

Fake or disputed bootleg songs
A number of songs have been incorrectly claimed by bootleggers to be unreleased Beatles songs. Some originated as spoofs or parodies: "Bye Bye Bye" ("Nice Time" by Kenny Everett), "Cheese and Onions" (The Rutles), "Magical Misery Tour" (National Lampoon featuring Tony Hendra). Some were by obscure artists whose names were subject to misinterpretation, such as John and Paul ("People Say" / "I'm Walking"), John Lennon and the Bleechers ("Ram You Hard") and Jock Lemmon ("Idle Sock"). Some were by groups with a (sometimes intentional) Beatlesque style, such as The Fourmost ("I Love You Too"), The Gants ("I Wonder"), The End ("Shades of Orange" / "Loving Sacred Loving"), The Brittles ("Ballyhoo"), Lavender Circus ("N. Bourbaki's Multicoloured Jam"), and Smyle ("It's Gonna Be Alright"); or with a lead vocalist sounding like one of the Beatles, as on "We Are the Moles" (Simon Dupree and the Big Sound as The Moles).

A few "outfakes" have been labelled as Beatles tracks many times:
 * "Have You Heard the Word". This song was credited to The Fut, and it was rumoured to include some of the Beatles playing with some of the Bee Gees. The actual participants in the 1969 recording were Maurice Gibb, the duo Tin Tin, and Billy Laurie. The recording was so plausible as a Lennon song that Yoko Ono tried to copyright its lyrics as a Lennon composition after his death.
 * "The L.S. Bumble Bee". Peter Cook and Dudley Moore combined psychedelic music with lyrics spoofing LSD. It was rumoured that Lennon was somehow involved, perhaps as a rebuttal to the controversy about possible drug references in songs like "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", but Moore has denied this; the song actually predates Sgt. Pepper, having been released in January 1967.
 * "Oh, I Need You" (also identified as "Oh, I Want You"). This song was purported to have been recorded during early sessions for Abbey Road. The artist has not been determined with certainty, but it is often attributed to the band Mortimer, who signed with Apple Records in 1968.
 * "Peace of Mind / The Candle Burns". The song was reportedly found in the Apple trash in 1970, but the true origin is still unknown. Some claim it to be an actual Beatles home demo from around 1967, though the lack of any corroborating evidence and the unfamiliar voices on the record have left Beatles experts convinced that it too is a fake. There is a theory that the tape was found at Apple, but was one of the countless demos sent in by aspiring artists looking for a break with the label. In 2011, a YouTuber named "waltonjones3" claimed that he wrote the song and that "Piece of Mind" was the correct title. He also stated that none of the Beatles were involved with the song.
 * "Colliding Circles", "Left Is Right (And Right Is Wrong)", "Pink Litmus Paper Shirt" and "Deck Chair". In 1971, humorist Martin Lewis compiled a Beatles bootleg discography for Disc magazine, inserting four song titles he'd simply made up: the John Lennon polemic "Left Is Right (And Right Is Wrong)," George Harrison's "Pink Litmus Paper Shirt," a Paul McCartney vaudeville-style number "Deck Chair," and another supposed Lennon track, "Colliding Circles". These spurious tunes were then picked up by other compilers who have continued to propagate them ever since, despite the complete lack of any evidence for their existence. (Outsider musician R. Stevie Moore has since written and recorded tunes entitled "Pink Litmus Paper Shirt" and "Colliding Circles", making them real songs—just not real Beatles songs. In addition, The Brittles, a Beatles pastiche band, has recorded "Left is Right (and Right is Wrong)" and "Deck Chair"). Musician Neil Innes, a Bonzo Dog Band member and Monty Python associate/friend of Martin Lewis, incorporated all four bogus song titles into the song "Unfinished Words", recorded by The Rutles, and released on their album "Archeology".

title: The Beatles bootleg recordings


text:
Leipzig Declaration

The Leipzig Declaration on Global Climate Change is a statement made in 1995, seeking to refute the fact that there is a scientific consensus on the global warming issue. It was issued in an updated form in 1997 and revised again in 2005, claiming to have been signed by 80 scientists and 25 television news meteorologists while the posting of 33 additional signatories was pending verification that those 33 additional scientists still agreed with the statement. All versions of the declaration, which asserts that there is no scientific consensus about the importance of global warming and opposes the recommendations of the Kyoto Protocol, were penned by Fred Singer's Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP).

The first declaration was based on a 9–10 November 1995 conference, organized by Helmut Metzner in Leipzig, Germany. The second declaration was additionally based on a successor conference in Bonn, Germany on 10–11 November 1997. The conferences were cosponsored by SEPP and the European Academy for Environmental Affairs and titled International Symposium on the Greenhouse Controversy.

Today, the declaration is regarded as disinformation campaign, exercised by the climate change denial movement using the fake-expert-strategy, to cast doubt on the scientific consensus about global warming.

The 1995 Declaration
The 1995 declaration asserts: "There does not exist today a general scientific consensus about the importance of greenhouse warming from rising levels of carbon dioxide. On the contrary, most scientists now accept the fact that actual observations from earth satellites show no climate warming whatsoever." The latter statement was broadly accurate at the time, but with additional data and correction of errors, all analyses of satellite temperature measurements now show statistically significant warming.

The declaration also criticised the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, saying: "Energy is essential for all economic growth, and fossil fuels provide today's principal global energy source. In a world in which poverty is the greatest social pollutant, any restriction on energy use that inhibits economic growth should be viewed with caution. For this reason, we consider 'carbon taxes' and other drastic control policies ... to be ill-advised, premature, wrought with economic danger, and likely to be counterproductive."

Signatures
According to the SEPP website, there were 79 signatures to the 1995 declaration, including Frederick Seitz: the current SEPP chair. Perhaps the most prominent signatory to the declaration was Dr. Robert E. Stevenson, a former research scientist for NASA and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The signature list was last updated on 16 July 1996. Of these 79, 33 failed to respond when SEPP asked them to sign the 1997 declaration. SEPP calls the signatories "nearly 100 climate experts".

The signatures to the 1995 declaration were disputed by David Olinger of the St. Petersburg Times. In an article on 29 July 1996, he revealed that many signers, including Chauncey Starr, Robert Balling, and Patrick Michaels, have received funding from the oil industry, while others had no scientific training or could not be identified.

The 1995 declarations begins: "As scientists, we are intensely interested in the possibility that human activities may affect the global climate". However, those identified as scientists and climate experts include at least ten weather presenters, including Dick Groeber of Dick's Weather Service in Springfield, Ohio. Groeber, who had not completed a university degree, labelled himself a scientist by virtue of his thirty to forty years of self-study.

In any case, it is difficult to accurately evaluate the list of signatures of the 1995 declaration, as the SEPP website provides no additional details about them except for their university, if they are professors.

The 1997 Declaration
The 1997 declaration updated the 1995 declaration in a number of ways. The most obvious difference was its focus on the Kyoto Protocol, as the Kyoto conference was in the process of being finalised. The declaration says:

 * "We believe the Kyoto Protocol -- to curtail carbon dioxide emissions from only part of the world community -- is dangerously simplistic, quite ineffective, and economically destructive to jobs and standards-of-living. ... We consider the drastic emission control policies deriving from the Kyoto conference -- lacking credible support from the underlying science -- to be ill-advised and premature."

The 1997 declaration also updated its citations of evidence that appeared to run contrary to the consensus on global warming. For example, the 1995 declaration cites "observations from earth satellites," where the 1997 declaration cites "observations from both weather satellites and balloon-borne radiosondes." As with satellite data, subsequent analysis of radiosondes has shown a statistically significant warming trend.

Signatures
The declaration begins: "As independent scientists concerned with atmospheric and climate problems, we...". As with the 1995 declaration, questions have been raised about the scientific background of the signers, and others have questioned the degree to which they can be deemed to be independent. Because many of those who signed the 1997 declaration also signed the 1995 declaration, the concerns raised by David Olinger and others after the 1995 declaration are still relevant.

The signers are generally described by Fred Singer and his supporters as climate scientists, although the current signers also include 25 weather presenters. One key report opposing the scientific credentials of the signers was a Danish Broadcasting Company TV special by Øjvind Hesselager. Hesselager attempted to contact the declaration's 33 European signers and found that four of them could not be located, twelve denied ever having signed, and some had not even heard of the Leipzig Declaration. Those who verified signing included a medical doctor, a nuclear scientist, and an entomologist. After discounting the signers whose credentials were inflated, irrelevant, false, or unverifiable, Hesselager claimed that only 20 of the names on the list had any scientific connection with the study of climate change, and some of those names were known to have obtained grants from the oil and fuel industry, including the German coal industry and the government of Kuwait (a major oil exporter). As a result of Hesselager's report, Singer removed some, but not all, of the discredited signatures. The number of signatures on the document, according to SEPP's own press releases, has declined from 140 (according to a December 1997 press release) to 105.

SEPP's position is that "a few of the original signers did not have the 'proper' academic credentials - even though they understand the scientific climate issues quite well. To avoid this kind of smear, we want to restrict the Leipzig Declaration to signers with impeccable qualifications." To address the signer credibility issue, SEPP has provided considerably more information about each signer on their website and lists the weather presenters separately from the other signers.

2005, revised
As of 2010, Singer's SEPP website listed the "2005, revised" declaration (which still spoke of the 1997 Kyoto conference as a future event). This version included the claim: "In fact, many climate specialists now agree that actual observations from weather satellites show no global warming whatsoever".

Use of the declarations
The declarations have been widely cited by some in the "sound science" movement. It has been cited by Fred Singer in editorial columns appearing in hundreds of websites and major publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Miami Herald, The Detroit News, Chicago Tribune, The Plain Dealer, Memphis Commercial Appeal, The Seattle Times, and the Orange County Register. Jeff Jacoby, a columnist with The Boston Globe, described the signers of the Leipzig Declaration as "climate scientists" that "include prominent scholars." Think tanks such as The Heritage Foundation, The Heartland Institute, and Australia's Institute for Public Affairs called them "noted scientists." Both the Leipzig Declaration and Frederick Seitz's Oregon Petition have been quoted as authoritative sources during deliberations in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.

Although the key data on which the Leipzig declaration relied (such as satellite temperature measurements) has been invalidated by subsequent research, and much new evidence has accumulated, the declaration continues to be cited, along with the Oregon Petition, as evidence of the current views of scientists on climate change. Moreover, the organizers have not changed their stated position of rejecting global warming with human activity as primary driver.

Original texts
1995 declaration:

1997 declaration:

2005 declaration (revised):

Related resources

 * Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR1) report, TV report cited by Christian Jensen.
 * Hans Bulow and Poul-Eric Heilburth, "The Energy Conspiracy" (video documentary), Filmakers Library, 124 East 40th Street, New York, NY 10016.
 * Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, Trust Us, We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles With Your Future (New York, NY: Tarcher Putnam, 2002).

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Leipzig Declaration


text:
Talk:Leipzig Declaration

Old comments
Thanks, turns out we worked in parallel on the article. Your version is better, so I'll just dump mine. (Note to copyright hawks: Sheldon Rampton is the author both of the cited book and the Wikipedia article.) --Eloquence 09:43 Jan 15, 2003 (UTC)

Sheldon Rampton's "PR Watch" is not objective but only looks for people that disagree with his environmentalist views. His view of the Leipzig Declaration is one-sided. --Uncle Ed

 * I disagree. The article presents both sides of the debate accurately. All you did was insert a couple of headlines, which doesn't add any more or less neutrality to the article than previously. If there is a response from the creators of the Declaration about the findings reported on here, I'd like to hear about it. It is, however, typical in the case of such PR stunts that they are ignored once their purpose is fulfilled. Also, why did you remove the "S. Fred Singer's" before SEPP? It is important in this debate to identify organizations with individuals, especially if the same heads keep popping up again and again .. I'll therefore add this back in. Also, where did Sheldon express "environmentalist views"? Did you read the referenced books? --Eloquence 21:21 Jan 15, 2003 (UTC)

 * His website, which I have read, is devoted exclusively to environmentalist views. You might want to take a look at it. --Uncle Ed

 * You mean like this, the featured link of the day? DanKeshet

 * I'm familiar with PR Watch and his other projects. You completely misunderstand the purpose of the site, however. It is not "devoted to environmentalist views", it is devoted to documenting the deceptive use of public relations campaigns by corporations. This frequently involves environmental issues, but Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber have also reported about the use of PR in wars, by dictators, by tobacco companies, by tech companies like Microsoft and so on. I really recommend reading both books for getting a better understanding of the subject in question. --Eloquence 21:29 Jan 15, 2003 (UTC)

 * I stand corrected. His website is primarily devoted to environmentalist views. Nevertheless, it is not a general media watch site, but only points out PR that disagrees with his own views (not all of which are environmentalist). --Uncle Ed

 * Well, if they (the Center for Media and Democracy is not just S.R.) do not find the PR deceptive, what would be the point in documenting it? There's plenty of completely harmless advertising and there are actually magazines devoted to it. How do you determine what's deceptive and what's not? Of course by using your best judgment about the available facts and trying to document them. I fail to see how this is "one-sided". Wikipedia is NPOV, people are not. If there's an NPOV violation, correct it. But don't use deceptive tactics yourself -- or should we talk a while about your extreme views? --Eloquence 21:36 Jan 15, 2003 (UTC)

I'm impressed at how a 1997 declaration can emerge from a 1995 conference... Martin

This is what the article previously said about David Olinger's report.

 * David Olinger of the St. Petersburg Times investigated the Leipzig Declaration, reporting that most of its signers have not dealt with climate issues at all and asserting that none of them is an acknowledged leading expert. Twenty-five of the signers were TV weather presenters - a profession that requires no in-depth knowledge of climate research. Some did not even have a college degree. Other signers included a dentist, a medical laboratory researcher, a civil engineer, and an amateur meteorologist. Some were not even found to reside at the addresses they had given.

Now, Olinger's report was written in 1996, so it must have been referring to the 1995 declaration. Here's a post where someone has helpfully reproduced it for us:. Where's the mention of 25 meterologists? Where's the mention of dentists? I'm guessing that Olinger's report was conflated with the Danish TV report and/or Jenson's letter? Martin

 * Good catch on the dentists. However, it wasn't taken from the Danish TV report. In a November 14, 1998 commentary in the International Herald Tribune, George M. Woodwell of the Woods Hole Research Center and John P. Holdren of Harvard University characterized the declaration's signers as " an odd assortment of television weather persons, dentists,  lab assistants, civil engineers and others who, despite their names' appearing on the list, say they have never heard of it. We hope that such disinformation will not fool many members of either the public or the U.S. Senate, which eventually must ratify the Kyoto Protocol and measures going beyond it if the challenge of climatic change is to be met and mastered." However, this passage really adds nothing of substance to the article as it already stands, and it isn't clear whether Woodwell and Holdren were referring to specific "dentists" and "lab assistants" based on their own knowledge or whether they were merely making a loose characterization based on sources such as Olinger's report (and Ozone Action, with which they were apparently in contact when they wrote the commentary). Sheldon Rampton

A secondary question - do we need to say that Fred Singer supports the declaration? It seems pretty obvious that he would, given that he wrote it... Martin

A key criticism of the Declaration is that it is supported by self-proclaimed and self-educated experts that are either woefully mistaken or masking a hidden agenda. Citations in criticism of the Declaration based on the same appeal seem hypocritical, don't they? Let's leave them out; we can find many similar examples if we try. --taganov

There seems to be a lot of back and forth propagada on this issue. Someone should do a little digging and find out how many of the signers actually have done reputable climate researches themselves and presented contradictory conclusions as a result. Hawflake - There is a little problem here: While articles are, polemic discussions is maybe not the aim of Wikipedia. I understand the concern but still this is not stand-alone-fact but a statement against an other statement. I hope discussions can find another places on internet. It doesn´t really matter if there already is somthing misleading about Leipzig or Oregon Declarations on Wikipedia or not, this still remains discussion.Jarmopalomaa (talk) 04:20, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Claimed signers

 * Intro: The Leipzig Declaration on Global Climate Change is a statement made in 1995, issued in an updated form 1997 and revised in 2005 [3], claimed to have been signed by 80 Scientists and 25 Television News Meteorologists
 * Further down: The signatures to the 1995 declaration were disputed by David Olinger of the St. Petersburg Times. In an article on July 29, 1996, he revealed that many signers, including Chauncey Starr, Robert Balling, and Patrick Michaels, have received funding from the oil industry.

This article is one-sided, as well as confusing. It openly questions the signatures, calling them "claimed". It also "disputes" the signatures by charging that signers took oil money.

This is original research, and pretty slipshod at that.

There are really two issues:
 * 1) Did the people whose names appear on the declaration ever actually sign it? That is, were their signatures authentic?
 * 2) *A minor related point is, did any of them withdraw their signatures later?
 * 3) Were the actual signers biased in some way?
 * 4) *Which raises the question of, who says they were biased?

If one side in the global warming controversy is using the declaration as evidence that a significant number of scientists have challenged the mainstream view, and another side is saying the opposite, then I don't see why Wikipedia should endorse one of these sides. Rather, it should describe the dispute fairly. --Uncle Ed (talk) 19:39, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Moving criticism to a Criticism & Controversy section - Proposed Deletion of unattributed claim
This article is about the Leipzig Declaration. First and foremost, it needs to be about its subject matter. I don't object to having a proportionate section about controveries, in a separate section. The article as it stands looks like an argument. Many article topics on Wikipedia have people who disagree, look at articles on any U.S. President. Such articles are always written so that the subject matter can be read, and having a section which shows controversies. This article needs the same rewrite an organization. And also Just providing advance notice that the following claim will be deleted a reference from a reliable source is not provided. The latter statement was broadly accurate at the time, but with additional data and correction of errors, all analyses of satellite temperature measurements now show statistically-significant warming. --Knowsetfree (talk) 19:27, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
 * In fact controversy sections are discouraged, it is much better to incorporate criticism into the text. (and much more difficult) --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 05:44, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

title: Talk:Leipzig Declaration


text:
The Far Side

The Far Side is a single-panel comic created by Gary Larson and syndicated by Chronicle Features and then Universal Press Syndicate, which ran from December 31, 1979, to January 1, 1995 (when Larson retired as a cartoonist). Its surrealistic humor is often based on uncomfortable social situations, improbable events, an anthropomorphic view of the world, logical fallacies, impending bizarre disasters, (often twisted) references to proverbs, or the search for meaning in life. Larson's frequent use of animals and nature in the comic is popularly attributed to his background in biology. The Far Side was ultimately carried by more than 1,900 daily newspapers, translated into 17 languages, and collected into calendars, greeting cards, and 23 compilation books, and reruns are still carried in many newspapers. After a 25-year hiatus, in July 2020 Larson began drawing new Far Side strips offered through the comic's official website.

Larson was recognized for his work on the strip with the National Cartoonist Society Newspaper Panel Cartoon Award for 1985 and 1988, and with their Reuben Award for 1990 and 1994. The Far Side won the 2020 Webby People's Voice Award for Humor in the category Web.

Creation (1979)
The Far Side was created by Gary Larson, a cartoonist based in Seattle, Washington. Larson enjoyed drawing as a child but never thought he would become a cartoonist; thus, he never studied art in school outside of required classes. Larson had been inspired to draw comics when he was younger from the strip Alley Oop, and later drew further inspiration from MAD Magazine and the work of Don Martin. He also enjoys comics from Gahan Wilson, B. Kliban and George Booth where humor was derived more from the comics' composition than dialogue, which Larson considered "something almost organic going on between the humor and the art that conveyed it".

In 1976, Larson was working as a cashier at a retail music store when he realized how much he hated his job. Two days into this "career crisis", Larson sat down at his kitchen table and drew six cartoons. The next day, he showed the cartoons to an editor at the local magazine Pacific Search. The editor was impressed and paid him US$90, so Larson quit his job to start cartooning and created Nature's Way, a single-panel comic strip that served as the basis for The Far Side. Larson showed Nature's Way to the editor of the weekly newspaper Summer News Review, who began to publish it on a regular basis.

Although Larson was initially excited to be published, he was only paid US$3 a cartoon. Eventually, he stopped and became an investigator for the local humane society. In 1979, a reporter for the Seattle Times who had met Larson while investigating "pony abuse" showed Nature's Way to her editor. It was revived and began appearing in the Saturday edition of the paper. Larson was paid US$15 a cartoon. After about a year, Larson took a vacation from his humane society work to drive to San Francisco at the encouragement of his girlfriend. In what he called a "daring plan to expand this 'publication empire'", Larson left a portfolio with his work at the headquarters of the San Francisco Chronicle. After several days, Larson was informed that editor Stan Arnold wanted to speak with him. Arnold was impressed by his work and mentioned that, should the Chronicle be interested in Larson's work, it could become syndicated.

When Larson returned to Seattle, he received a letter informing him Nature's Way had been canceled because it generated too many complaints; he attributes this to the fact it ran next to a crossword puzzle aimed at children. Larson believes had this happened a week before, he would not have gone to San Francisco. The next day, Arnold called Larson and told him the syndicate affiliate of the Chronicle decided to syndicate his work. The affiliate, Chronicle Features, coined the name The Far Side; Larson joked Chronicle "could have called it Revenge of the Zucchini People for all I cared." Larson's initial contract for The Far Side called for it to have a cast of recurring characters (like how Peanuts had Charlie Brown), because Chronicle believed newspaper comics needed familiar characters to be successful. However, Larson disagreed, feeling it would be limiting and diminish the humor of the strip. In his first month of syndication, Larson made about US$100. The contract with Chronicle lasted four years. After it expired, Universal Press Syndicate picked up the syndication rights.

Publication (1979–1995)
The Far Side made its debut in the January 1, 1980, edition of the Chronicle, and a few months later, Chronicle Features began to offer it to other papers. While it was only in four papers by 1982, by 1983 that number had increased to eighty, and by 1985 it had reached two hundred. Initially, Larson drew six cartoons a week, which were sent to papers a few weeks in advance. By 1987, he was drawing seven cartoons a week. From October 1988 to January 1990, Larson took a hiatus from The Far Side to travel abroad and study jazz guitar with Jim Hall. When he resumed working on The Far Side in 1990, he negotiated an agreement in which he would only have to draw five cartoons a week. The final Far Side comic was run in newspapers on January 1, 1995. Larson wrote a letter to his followers in October 1994 that explained he was ending the series due to "simple fatigue" and avoid having The Far Side fall into the "Graveyard of Mediocre Cartoons" if he continued. Larson also later stated he wanted to pursue a career as a jazz guitarist.

During its 15-year run, Larson produced a total of 4,337 Far Side cartoons. By the time of its conclusion, the series was carried in more than 1,900 papers and translated into 17 languages. Universal briefly re-syndicated The Far Side for a three-month period in late 2003 to promote the release of the anthology The Complete Far Side: 1980–1994, and many newspapers still publish reprints.

Hiatus (1995–2019)
Larson has expressed disapproval of the distribution of his cartoons on the internet and has requested that fans do not do so; he wrote in a letter that his work is too personal and important to him to have others "take control of it". For this reason, Universal's online service GoComics does not offer Far Side cartoons. In at least one case, he had sent out a cease and desist letter to a comics-aggregation site for reproducing The Far Side online. While an official Far Side site existed, it only offered information related to the comic and published books, but did not offer any of the strips.

In 2003, Gary Larson drew a cover for the November 17 edition of The New Yorker magazine (the Cartoon Issue), a prestigious offer he said he could not refuse.

Online revival (2019–present)
On September 13, 2019, the official Far Side site was updated with a major redesign, teasing that "[a] new online era of The Far Side" would be forthcoming. The full site was launched on December 17, 2019. It features a "daily dose" of several randomly selected Far Side comics, a weekly themed collection, and additional material including art from Larson's sketchbooks. Larson wrote in an open letter announcing the site that he hoped that the official online presence of The Far Side would encourage sites presently hosting his comics to take them down and direct readers to the official site. Larson said that while he does not plan to draw regular Far Side comics, he may include new material every once in a while when updating the site.

On July 7, 2020, Larson released new Far Side strips for the first time in 25 years on the website. Unlike his previous work with pen and paper, Larson transitioned to using a graphics tablet for the comic. In an accompanying post, Larson explained that frustration with his pens clogging from disuse on the rare occasions when he drew following his retirement (primarily for his annual Christmas card) led him to try working on a digital tablet. The new freedom and possibilities offered by the digital medium meant that he soon found he "was having fun drawing again". Larson made it clear that he was not resuming production of a daily cartoon, but was "exploring, experimenting and trying stuff."

As of March 30, 2024, Larson has not uploaded any new work since December 7, 2023.

Design and themes
The Far Side is primarily told through the use of a single, vertical, rectangular panel, occasionally split into small sections of four, six, or eight for storytelling purposes. A caption or dialogue usually appears under the panel as typed text, although speech balloons are sometimes used for conversations. Certain strips, mostly those published on Sundays, are double-sized, colored, and have handwritten captions. When Larson drew panels they were 6 ×; he penciled until the image "closely approximate[d]" his vision, and then he would ink it. The caption was handwritten in pencil underneath the cartoon. When Universal received a cartoon, it would set the caption to the usual typeface and add copyright and publication dates.

The series is characterized by its unconventional, often surrealistic, style of humor. Brigham Young University professor Kerry Soper described it as "an anomaly" among other newspaper cartoons and ComicsAlliance wrote it was "surreal, random, and occasionally very dark". Larson was influenced by his family's "morbid" sense of humor. His older brother Dan, who would often play pranks on him that took advantage of his fears, was a particular influence. He also drew inspiration from personal experience, Mad, and his favorite childhood book, Mr. Bear Squash-You-All-Flat. Larson sought to mock the human condition, often by placing animals in human positions. Fear is also recurring in the strip; The Far Side was produced in a time when horror comedy was becoming popular.

Recurring themes in The Far Side include people stranded on desert islands, aliens, Heaven, Hell, the life of cavemen, and medieval dungeons. Animals—especially cows—are also common. Larson focused on subjects he considered taboo because he wanted his cartoons to be personal statements. Larson's editors refused to publish strips they found indecent, offensive, or hard to understand. Examples include cowboys roasting a horse over a fire because they are "hungry enough to eat one" and a bird eating scrambled babies. Generally, they also avoided publishing cartoons with scatological humor; Larson recalled that during the strip's first few years he was not even allowed to draw an outhouse. Larson often disagreed with his editors' decisions and was sometimes successful in getting rejected cartoons published, although he does admit most of their decisions likely saved his career. Larson also says he never tried to intentionally offend readers.

While Larson frequently used the same stereotypical characters (such as a woman with a beehive hairdo), he purposely did not name his characters nor imply they were the same characters from cartoon to cartoon. He did not want to have a character-based series, as the characters were there to help serve the humor of the comic.

Cow Tools
Cow Tools is the name of a 1982 Far Side cartoon. It shows a cow standing behind a table with strange objects, with the cartoon's caption "Cow tools". While most of the displayed tools had no apparent function, one was similar to a saw. The cartoon has been described as "arguably the most loathed" Far Side strip, with Reddit posters calling it the series' "notoriously confusing cartoon". Larson was frequently asked about the meaning of the cartoon by the media, and received numerous letters, some angry and questioning where the humor was in the comic. Larson said in Prehistory of the Far Side that he had so much mail from this strip he had to issue a press release to explain that there was nothing to explain about the Cow Tools comic.

Jane Goodall cartoon
One The Far Side cartoon shows two chimpanzees grooming. One finds a blonde human hair on the other and inquires, "Conducting a little more 'research' with that Jane Goodall tramp?" Goodall herself was in Africa at the time, and the Jane Goodall Institute felt the cartoon was in bad taste; the organization had its lawyers draft a letter to Larson and his distribution syndicate, in which the cartoon was labeled an "atrocity." These efforts were stymied by Goodall herself when she returned and saw the cartoon and stated that she found it amusing, commenting "It all helps to put us humans in our place, and we desperately need putting in our place." Since then, all profits from sales of a shirt featuring this cartoon go to the Jane Goodall Institute. Goodall wrote a preface to The Far Side Gallery 5, detailing her version of the controversy, and the institute's letter was included next to the cartoon in the complete Far Side collection. She praised Larson's creative ideas, which often compare and contrast the behavior of humans and animals.

The Thagomizer
In 1982, Larson published a comic in which a prehistoric lecturer refers to the then previously unnamed tail spikes of the Stegosaurus as the "thagomizer". The arrangement of spikes originally had no distinct name, but Larson's neologism was adopted gradually by paleontologists, albeit only in a casual context.

Midvale School for the Gifted
One of the most well known cartoons, School for the Gifted consists of a child trying to enter a schoolhouse by pushing the door when it clearly says "pull". The legacy of this cartoon has spawned merchandise.

Protests against certain cartoons
The Complete Far Side and The Prehistory of The Far Side include letters from angry readers alongside the comics that prompted them. The letters were written to newspaper publishers and often demanded the removal of The Far Side. Despite these protests, The Far Side remained popular and continued to run in many newspapers. Larson often laughs at the controversies as evidenced in The Prehistory of The Far Side, in which he writes that the people complaining have usually misunderstood the cartoon.

Collected editions
There are 23 collected editions of The Far Side, which combined have sold over 45 million copies and have generated US$70 million in revenue. The books are published by Andrews McMeel Publishing, an affiliate of Universal. Andrews McMeel acquired the rights to publish collected editions of the series in 1982, the year the first Far Side book was released. It was surprisingly successful, which influenced Larson's decision to sign on with Universal after his contract with Chronicle expired. In January 1985, the four Far Side books out at the time—The Far Side, The Far Side Gallery, Beyond the Far Side and In Search of the Far Side—were simultaneous bestsellers; Jim Davis's Garfield was the only newspaper comic that had previously accomplished this feat. New Far Side books continued to be published after the series concluded and remain in print and popular today.

During his 14-month hiatus, Larson produced The PreHistory of The Far Side: A 10th Anniversary Exhibit, a Far Side anthology that commemorates the series' 10th anniversary. It contains commentary on individual strips, letters from angry readers, unpublished cartoons, and some of Larson's personal favorite Far Sides. In 2003, Andrews McMeel released the two-volume, twenty-pound anthology The Complete Far Side: 1980—1994. The Complete Far Side contains every Far Side cartoon syndicated and, when it was initially published, retailed for US$135. Larson spent three years working on it; the majority of work went into redrawing characters' eyeballs because he was unhappy how they looked when transferred digitally. It sold 350,000 copies and at the time was the most expensive New York Times bestseller. A new, lighter edition of The Complete Far Side was released in 2014.

Merchandise and other media
A large amount of Far Side merchandise was produced, ranging from greeting cards, posters, t-shirts, and mugs. For many years, Larson produced a yearly calendar that contained a Far Side cartoon for each day of the year. He stopped making them annually in 2002, but created another edition in 2006; all proceeds from this edition went to Conservation International. In the years they were available, Far Side greeting cards and calendars sold 110 million and 45 million copies, respectively. Larson stated in 1987 he was personally embarrassed by how much money he made from Far Side merchandise.

Television productions
In 1994, Larson produced an animated special, Tales from the Far Side, featuring his art style and gags from the strips. He produced a sequel in 1997.

Exhibitions
In 1987, a special exhibit of 527 black and white Far Side panels was shown in the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. 127 of the panels were originals, displayed in the rotunda on boards that held 50 panels each. Later the display became a traveling exhibit that was shown in San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Orlando, Chicago, Toronto, New York City, Denver, and Los Angeles.

There was a Far Side gallery at the California Academy of Science that featured some of Larson's panels. The exhibit included a giant microscope under which visitors could stand, based on one of Larson's cartoons. Looking up through the objective lens revealed a giant blinking eyeball. The building was torn down and replaced and the exhibit is no longer in the new facility.

Legacy
As described by Sarah Larson (who is unrelated to creator Gary Larson) for The New Yorker, The Far Side's initial run came at a time where newspaper comics were generally more grounded, such as Peanuts, Garfield, For Better or For Worse and Doonesbury, and helped to introduce more modern and surreal humor into the comic pages that influence other strips such as Calvin and Hobbes and Bloom County as well as brought nerd humor to the forefront, reflected in series like The Simpsons.

title: The Far Side