Cover-Up Revealed: Master Tapes of Some of Rock's Most Iconic Albums Were Lost in a 2008 Fire

[Geee]

PJ Media

Eleven years ago this month, a treasure trove of rock history was lost and almost no one knew about it. On June 10, 2008, a fire swept through the vaults on Universal Studios' lot containing the master tapes of some of rock's most iconic albums. The New York Times Magazine story that blew the lid off the coverup calls it "the biggest disaster in the history of the music business."

According to the report, the fire started on the roof of a movie set where before maintenance workers had used blow torches to heat asphalt shingles the night before. After the workers left, a hotspot flared up and the flames quickly spread through the wooden set. Security guards discovered the fire early the next morning, but the blaze engulfed the music vault before it was contained. The fire, of course, was initially reported on by the media, but Universal failed to reveal the destruction of thousands of master tapes.

The scope of the devastation to rock music history is extreme. A small sample of what the fire destroyed includes almost every single Buddy Holly master tape as well as a sizeable portion of John Coltrane's library. The master tapes of albums from musical luminaries like Nirvana, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, R.E.M., Ray Charles, B.B. King, Guns N' Roses, Neil Diamond, and Eric Clapton were destroyed. All in all, around 500,000 songs were lost according to estimates made by Universal. Of great historical value, Bill Haley & His Comets' "Rock Around the Clock" was among the songs lost.