Get Back tapes recovered - January 10, 2003
From BeatlesWiki
| Event | |
| Date | January 10, 2003 |
| Short description | Tapes of the Get Back sessions were recovered by police in Britain and The Netherlands. |
| Location | London and The Netherlands |
London and Dutch detectives, led by the International Feberation of Phonographic Industry (IFPI), recovered 500 reel-to-reel tapes of the Get Back sessions. This ended a 30-year disappearance of the tapes. New York Times reporter Allan Kozinn reports that the tapes are "monaural recordings made on a pair of Nagra tape recorders for reference purposes by a film crew that was documenting the sessions for a proposed television documentary" Each runs about sixteen minutes. Five people were arrested, two in West London and three in Amsterdam. Police were led to the tapes when a London coupe, who were employed by Abbey Road Studios and suspected of the theft of the tapes attempted to sell the tapes to an undercover cop pretending to be a EMI representative trying to buy them back. They demanded $672,000. The money was shown to the couple as well as the people in Amsterdam, and as the police heard the "transaction" take place by cell phone, they moved in. Michael Ellis, head of IFPI, said "We were always interested in finding these tapes. The tapes were made in 1969 and they represent a significant part of the heritage of the British music industry. It was like a priceless painting being stolen."
