Saturday, July 23, 2016

Lost Beatles Demo "It's For You" Rediscovered



Some times pieces of high cultural importance may slip through the cracks and be lost to the sands of time - for a long while anyway. Fortunately some times by chance they get dug back up and are able to be shared with all the world - never to be lost again. Such is the case for a long lost Beatles demo It's For You, which was a song the band had given to singer Cilla Black (who died last year).

Relatives of Black had been going through some of the singer's belongings and found 21 discs of the singer's music. They found an envelope with her name on it and assumed it was just a copy of the single. They took all 21 discs to the Liverpool Beatles Shop to get appraised, when the manager of the shop Stephen Bailey was taken by surprise by what they had actually managed to find.

In an interview with Telegraph, Bailey says:

“We got to the last one, and as soon as I heard it, I thought, ‘Oh God, that’s not Cilla Black. It’s Paul McCartney. I was shaking with excitement and speechless. I realized that this was the long lost Beatles demo disc from 1964, and I was probably one of the few people to have seen and heard it in over 50 years.”

Black managed to take It's For You up to #7 on the charts in the U.K. during the summer of 1964. McCartney played the piano on the recording and producer George Martin produced it. The Beatles' demo of the song is expected to go for between $20,000-$26,000 when it goes up for auction on August 27th at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts.

Personally, I'm stoked by the fact that even after all these years there is still more Beatles music that has yet to be heard by the masses. Considering what cultural icons they are it's important for such things to be preserved and be heard by all of the millions of fans out there. You can listen to a 20 second sample of It's For You here at the auction website. It's grainy and crackles like old tape from a bygone era would, but it's full of that magic and soul that The Beatles put into every song nonetheless.

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