The Beatles, Dec. 31, 1962, Hamburg (Star Club)

After two years of residencies at various clubs throughout Europe, the Beatles had one last contract to fulfill. On New Year's Eve 1962, a few months before the Fab Four's "Please Please Me" became their first hit single and made them the biggest band in England, an announcer welcomed "the Beatles from Liverpool" onstage at Hamburg, Germany's Star Club -- five minutes before midnight.

"It's literally an end of the era," says Beatles historian Glenn Gass, who teaches a course about the band at Indiana University. "This show captures them, as they say, the savage young Beatles. The Beatles as a ferocious bar band. There's no indication that they acknowledged New Year's Eve at all. It was like, 'Here is the midnight act.'"

Although Ringo Starr had already replaced founding drummer Pete Best earlier that August, the Beatles performed only two originals that evening, "I Saw Her Standing There" and "Ask Me Why," the B-side for the soon-to-be-released "Please Please Me" single. The rest of the set was mostly early rock'n'roll covers like Chuck Berry's "Sweet Little Sixteen," Carl Perkins' "Everybody's Trying To Be My Baby" and "Long Tall Sally," made famous by Little Richard.

"They turned rock'n'roll from the model of Elvis -- the solo singer with a backup band-- to the rock band," Gass says. "That's what Hamburg captures so beautifully. They are four pieces of a whole -- playing and committed to the same cause. The spark of 'A Hard Day's Night,' that thing that made everyone want to be part of that club."

An extremely lo-fi recording of concert was captured on a mono voice recorder by Ted "Kingsize" Taylor, who was also on the bill that night. Says Gass, "Taylor claimed John Lennon said, 'Do what you want with it.' And to think that within a year their image would be these clean-cut mop tops in suit and tie, bowing after cherry pop songs. This is them as a powerhouse rock'n'roll band. It set the wheels of the Sixties in motion."

Largely due to George Harrison's protests, the bootleg was not commercially available until 1977, when it appeared on the short-lived Lingasong label. Another bootleg featuring all 30 songs performed that night, "Historic Sessions," was issued in 1981 on the Audio Fidelity Enterprises imprint.