Barclay James Harvest - Berlin (A Concert for The People) (1982)

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Barclay James Harvest - Berlin (A Concert for The People) (1982)

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The official police count of the audience at this concert was 175,000 - however, being a free concert, there were obviously no ticket sales to count, and people would have come and gone all day. One estimate put the total attendance at a quarter of a million, but even allowing for some East Berliners listening behind the Berlin Wall, that's probably rather on the high side.

This concert was probably the single most important gig that BJH have ever done, so it was natural to want a live record to be made. Unfortunately, whilst the concert itself was a triumph, just about everything that could go wrong with the recording, did - there were loud buzzes and hums on the recording, John’s main guitar was damaged during the afternoon and was almost inaudible in the mix. The band reluctantly decided to record a lot of new overdubs at Strawberry, which is one reason that the LP didn’t appear until 1982. The album was first released in Germany in February 1982 as a limited edition 11-track version on the Polystar label, with “Love On The Line” and “Rock ‘N’ Roll Lady” as the extra tracks, and went straight to No.1. Subsequent releases in all formats have only the nine tracks listed above until the 2006 Eclectic and 2010 Esoteric remastered CDs, which have the German 11-track version (a different mix all the way through) in the original running order. One interesting anomaly is that whilst in Germany and most other countries the album was titled Berlin - A Concert For The People, the English version reverses the order, presumably to make it sound less Germanic!