Lost 10.5″ Ampex Scotch reel-to-reel master tape featuring music by Marc Bolan and his girlfriend Gloria Jones, with both sides of the metal reel stamped "Secret." The tape contains 16 tracks and over 3-and-a-half hours of music, including four versions—two demos and two final take versions—of the unreleased T. Rex song ‘Over You Babe.' The balance of the tape contains instrument samples for bass, piano, guitar, and drums, as well as some vocal demos by Bolan, Jones, and an unidentified singer. The tape’s contents have been transferred to a 16GB USB flash drive, which is included with the lot, as is the original Ampex box marked on the top, “Mark [sic] Bolan, Reel #2,” and the original studio production sheet, which is marked “Marc Bolan, Reel 2,” along the top, and lists tracking steps for “Over You.” A particularly notable moment occurs on track No. 9, a full test run of ‘Over You Babe’ sung by Bolan and Jones with drums and guitar; at 3:40 in, Bolan errantly sings ‘My nose was a toad,' and, realizing his mistake, begins to laugh loudly. In overall fine, working condition; this tape has been professionally restored for decades of safe storage. Accompanied by a bill of payment from Audio Restored, which lists its transfer to the USB memory stick, “2 hours of manual restoration (pitch correction of take 2), production of rough stereo mixes of all four songs,” and a “bake/digitize 2″ x 16-track studio master.”
Provenance: Orrill's Auction, Estate Sales, Los Angeles: February 2019.
A video of the tape running can be found below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NKacdfHk4s
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