A piece of history thought to be lost forever was recently uncovered in a damp hotel basement of Little Venice in West London. At first glace the reel to reel recordings were damp, had grime oozing out and covered in mold looking beyond repair. But two painstaking years later sound engineer Martin Nichols has restored them, and they are set to go to auction next month.
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The tapes were of various 1970s concerts at Lyceum theatre in the West End of London, the Rainbow theatre in Finsbury Park, and the Pavillon Baltard in Paris.
The concerts were recorded on what was then the only mobile studio vehicle in the UK, loaned by the Rolling Stones. The recordings were rescued by the London businessman Joe Gatt, who said he had a friend working on the hotel clearance who called him about the tapes. At the time they were on a truck heading to the tip, Gatt said.
Gatt asked his friend and neighbour, the jazz singer Louis Hoover, what to do next.
Hoover said: “When I finally saw the labelling and footnotes on the tapes, I could not believe my eyes. But when I also saw how severely water-damaged the reels were it was pretty gut-wrenching … there was plasticised gunk oozing from almost every inch.”
The restored tapes, are being sold by the specialist auction house Omega in Merseyside, in three lots on May 21st. Each has a low estimate of $50,000 and the auctioneer Paul Fairweather predicted worldwide interest.