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Thursday 14 June 2012

Some Royal Festival Hall 1964 images







Research on the 'Royal Festival Hall 1964' show..and the Isle Of Wight 1969

...a bit of information has come to light regarding firstly the 1964 'Royal Festival Hall' show and the Isle Of Wight recording.

 This was apprently recorded on 4 quarter inch reels, I'm told that it was very likely recorded by Pye by their main engineer Ray Prickett who had joined Pye in 1963. (Ray would be best known to most as the engineer on Petula Clark's hit "Downtown") Pye were somewhat/somehow involved in the recording of the 1969 Isle Of Wight festival as well, with involvement from Bob Auger, who was employed by Pye at the time. However, my source the Pye mobile truck was not used, contrary to what Elliot Mazer has said previosuly, as the regular mobile crew were certainly not involved. In this case it seems that Bob Auger was requested specifically by the artist/management. Mazer says "At the Isle Of Wight, we used the Pye mobile and the engineer was Bob Auger. Glyn Johns and I were in the truck with Bob." Either Mazer's recollection is wrong, or the truck was rented out (or something similar) for the specific purpose of recording Bob Dylan. My source states - " I did work on the Pye Mobile unit throughout 1969, but we did not record the 1969 I.O.W festival. My diary shows we did no work on those dates.." This has been further varified by a second source - "I agree...the 1969 IOW was not recorded by Pye." Bob Auger sadly passed away some years ago.

The 1970 IOW festival master tapes are in the hands of a particular individual, who says he neither recorded nor handled any material from the 1969 festival. Ray Prickett, I believe is still alive and has worked in recent years with another former Pye engineer, Jed Kearse. I have unfortunately been unsucessful in finding contact details for either of these individuals.

 The Pye building near Marble Arch, London changed hands in 1989 after the company liquidated and has since been demolished. Some of the reels of tapes are in the hands of former employees, the location of the rest is unknown but they I'm told they could've gone to Universal or Sony in a batch aquisition.
 I'm still convinced that a line recording of the complete Royal Festival Hall 1964 show is in the private collection of a former engineer somewhere in the u.k...If anyone has further details or can assist in any way drop me an email at skippingreels@collector.org