Bob Marley – “RESURRECTION” | London International Productions

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‘THE LOST LIVE CONCERT MASTER TAPES’

Recorded LIVE in London & Paris 1974 – 1978

These ten lovingly restored, iconic musical artifacts, together with their Digital Hard Drive counterparts may finally soon be heard by Marley fans across the world!

Experts were predicting the ten, two inch ‘reel-to-reel’ 24 x track analogue tapes would easily raise hundreds of thousands of pounds, maybe even more, when collectors and fans worldwide start bidding as they went under the hammer at auction, back in late 2019.

However, fate took a different turn when following a major North American / Canadian TV News program announced the auction event.

Island-Universal (UMG) execs politely requested, via their London office, that the reels and accompanying post restoration Hard Drives, be withdrawn from auction while they examined the reels musical content for authenticity and to research their own archives for missing Marley live performance recordings.

These iconic artefact reels were miraculously saved from final destruction at a London refuse dump when they were discovered badly damaged, during a London hotel clearance in the basement.

UMG archivists have now established the priceless reels are from Bob Marley’s historic 1970’s performances at the historic Lyceum and Rainbow venues in London (1975-1977) and Pavilion Baltard in Paris (1978).

The world’s first and only Reggae superstar created a global following that many say is unequalled even by The Beatles. Bob & The Wailers in fact cemented a strong link to Liverpool’s history by playing The Cavern Club, as part of their Burnin’ Tour back in November 1973, just three years after the Fab Four split up.

The priceless tapes were first dubbed ‘The Lost Masters’ by Island Records founder Chris Blackwell back in the mid 1970’s, when the tapes mysteriously disappeared off the company radar and contain most of Marley’s greatest hits; No Woman No Cry, Jammin’ Buffalo Soldier and Exodus and more previously unheard performances…

Nicholas Bonham, former Chairman of Bonham’s Auction House, himself a major Marley fan, is equally excited about the find and said: ‘Surely this has to be one of the most important discoveries and restorations in the world of Popular music. The impact of Bob Marley’s work touches almost everyone of all ages and cultures and is regarded as truly ‘international music’ as are The Beatles…but Marley possibly even more so’.

These lost and still unmixed master recordings were discovered severely water damaged in cardboard box files in a damp hotel basement in Little Venice, northwest London where Bob Marley & The Wailers stayed during their early tours of Europe in the mid 1970’s and were originally thought to be ‘far too damaged and beyond repair’ by flood water and covered in hardened resin seepage.

But thanks to brilliant modern day restoration technology, the reels have now been successfully restored to their former audio glory by audio expert Martin Nicholls and has since been heralded as ‘one of the greatest restoration projects in music history’.

The concerts were recorded on the only mobile studio vehicle available in the UK at the time, loaned to Bob Marley & The Wailers, by The Rolling Stones.

Louis and Joe Gatt, long time Marley fans who rescued the reels from destruction at the last minute said: ‘we received a call about a building refuse clearance that included some old discarded 2-inch tapes from the 1970s with ‘Bob Marley Live’ and other notes scribbled all over them. Being big Marley fans and Joe, who strangely enough, was in the audience at one of those historic Marley Lyceum dates as a youngster, we couldn’t let these sacred treasures, damaged or not, simply be destroyed as mere trash… so we told the clearance guy to take them off the truck’.

Jazz artist Louis Hoover, star of the West End and Broadway hit show THE RAT PACK is also a regular headliner at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club and said ‘When Joe filled me in on the situation, I was speechless and actually stopped the car to check I’d heard him correctly. Then when I finally saw the labeling and footnotes on the tapes, I could not believe my eyes, but when I also saw how severely damaged the reels were, it was pretty gut wrenching as there was plasticized gunk oozing from almost every inch, so saving the music and sound quality of the recordings, looked pretty hopeless’.

Some of the tapes were marked ‘DAMAGED DO NOT PLAY’ others were labeled ‘DAMAGED IN CENTRE TRACKS, CANNOT REMOVE FROM SPOOL WITHOUT FURTHER DAMAGE BEING CAUSED TO BOTH TAPE AND MACHINE’ and one of the reels had scrawled across it in red pen; ‘No Woman No Cry, Kinky Reggae, Natty Dread. Reel #2 and dated 17/7/75 Lyceum London.’

Over the next few months, I asked around within the UK music industry about who could possibly bring these tapes ‘back to life’ and was pointed in the direction of a brilliant sound technician based in Weston-Super-Mare, England, called Martin Nichols. After very careful consideration we took the damaged tapes over to Martin at his studios and over a long period of time, almost two years, Martin painstakingly restored these musical treasures by hand, back to their former glory’.

Martin recalls: ‘when I first saw the tape reels, really I should have have said ‘no thank you guys’ as they were covered in mould and clearly suffered massive water damage. This was without doubt one of the most difficult projects I’ve ever tackled but was also a labour of love. If anyone had even tried to play the reels in that condition, all of the content would have been destroyed and lost forever’.

They were in such appalling condition you could understand why they’d been written off, but I spent hours upon hours, inch by inch, cleaning all the gunge off until they were ready for a professional audio process called ‘Baking’. The end result has really surprised me because, as they are now in digital format and very high quality, so it just goes to show that the original recordings were very professionally made.

Louis added ‘The tension and expectancy while Martin worked his magic over that long period was excruciating and it was essential we immediately transferred all the original analogue content, directly over to Digital Hard Drive for safe keeping and posterity, as these 24 track reels were never designed to last beyond a few hundred plays, only to make and mix master tapes from to then transfer onto vinyl records.

We will never forget when we finally listened to the end results. Martin wasn’t giving anything away on the phone, most probably because no words could have possibly prepared us for what we were about to hear…

We took our seats a bit nervously then when Martin finally pushed the faders up on the mixing desk, our jaws dropped as we were immediately transported back in time especially Joe as he’d actually been there in the Lyceum crowd on 18 July 1975 when he was just twenty-two – on a friend’s spare ticket and I was still at school..!!

The three of us were in the ‘resurrected’ presence of one of the most legendary musical geniuses, ever to grace our planet with his fabulous music and deeply held spiritual social outlook and were the first three people in 43 years, to hear this.

In the grass roots world of ‘T-Shirt-Global-Icon-Status’ Bob Marley is up there with The Beatles, Elvis, Che Guevara, Bob Dylan, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe and Jimi Hendrix and to many millions across the world, Bob Marley is at the very top of that list.

The fact we managed to get these long-lost recordings restored has been nothing short of a series of mini miracles and too uncanny for words at times really, almost as if guided from above.

There has now been huge interest in the Lost Recordings worldwide from fans and media, including from Island-Universal Records who are currently in discussions with us, in the hope Bob Marley’s millions of friends worldwide will finally hear these electrifying performances, as well.

Contact us for more info: hello@lipuk.co.uk