The reggae tapes were initially thought to have been gone for good, until they turned up in the basement of a London hotel.
Long-lost audio recordings from one of music’s most legendary artists have reportedly been found — more than 40 years after they were recorded.
Bob Marley & The Wailers recorded a few of their live shows in London and Paris between July 1975 and July 1978, CTV reported. They did so using a truck that was turned into a mobile studio. That studio had some iconic owners, including The Rolling Stones.
The reggae tapes were initially thought to have been gone for good, until they turned up in the basement of a London hotel. Even though they were water-damaged, covered in resin seepage and marked ‘damaged-do not play,’ they were able to be restored.
The mobile studio now lives at Studio Bell in Canada. Jason Tawkin manages building audio there, and he said there are countless stories of lost tapes, that if found, could also likely be restored.
“I know of one story where Jimi Hendrix left one of the master tapes in a cab in New York City. Where that tape is now? No one knows. These things just fall off the back of the truck, if you will, and the cool thing about tape is that when you do recover it, there’s usually a way to recover the content that’s within those tapes because of the technology,” he told CTV.
Bob Marley’s recordings, called The Lost Masters, will be available for purchase through UK auction house Omega Auctions. They are being sold in three collections, with a starting bid of $17,500.
The news comes nearly 38 years to the day after Marley died of cancer on May 11, 1981. He was 36 years old.
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