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Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back Master Tapes on Ebay.

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Kinda disturbing that they were in the process of locating the music masters of Star Wars as late as 2007, shouldn't Lucasfilm/Skywalker Sound have these important stuff in order, I mean they used them for the RCA '97 album. Were they stolen by someone after that or what? sigh...

We want you to be aware that we have no plans—now or in the future—to restore the earlier versions. 

Sincerely, Lynne Hale publicity@lucasfilm.com

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The seller seems to be selling this guy's personal collection. There's a "quadraphonic" Jaws master tape on there too.

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Yes.  This is not 'cool' at all, actually.  If some schmuck on Ebay buys them, who knows what will happen to them.

Even if they don't do anything with them, I'd rather feel secure knowing that Lucasfilm was actually in possession of their own master recordings, for goodness sake.

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According to someone with Kritzerland Records, none of these are master recordings and aren't of any use to any label.  That said, they should still be in the hands of either Disney or Lucasfilm or someone who will preserve them properly.

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I just sent an email to that address. Let's hope they get it.

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According to Lukas Kendall (of Film Score Monthly), he believes Lucasfilm borrowed the Star Wars tapes from the current owner and digitized them. I guess Lucasfilm didn't want the actual tapes for its archive. At least the Star Wars tapes have been supposedly preserved.  Wonder if the Jaws tapes were digitized by Universal?

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Just to clarify in case there's any confusion about that Skywalker Sound letter included in the auction, the missing 16-track Music Master tapes (which were used for the '97 album of Star Wars) Lucasfilm were trying to locate back in 2007 is not the master tapes in this auction. That said, I really hope these end up in the right hands.

But you still have to wonder how the hell those 16-track master tapes were lost after they worked with them in '97.

John Neal passed away in 2009 btw.

We want you to be aware that we have no plans—now or in the future—to restore the earlier versions. 

Sincerely, Lynne Hale publicity@lucasfilm.com

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After Lucasfilm somehow lost the original Death Star miniature, (it eventually found it's way into the hands of a fan) nothing really surprises me anymore.

Aren't the masters for the other Max Rebo Band songs still missing?

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Where were you in '77?

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SilverWook said:

After Lucasfilm somehow lost the original Death Star miniature, (it eventually found it's way into the hands of a fan) nothing really surprises me anymore.

Aren't the masters for the other Max Rebo Band songs still missing?

At least one Max Rebo song exists in some form because its on the Star Wars Soundboard in the Jabba's Palace section.

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Hmm... apparently this guy did have the 16-track original masters, here's what Lukas Kendall had to say over at the FSM Board:

"I was at a Star Wars-related convention in L.A. maybe 6-8 years ago where Dan Melson had a booth trying to sell these tapes he got from the John Neal estate—he's been trying to unload them for years. He has every right to own and sell the master tapes, even though he does not own the intellectual property recorded ONTO the tapes. He always asked a fortune and, not surprisingly, people were not interested, seeing as how the tapes are worthless except for the "cool factor." He had a lot of rock stuff too. Of the film music, the tapes are basically dub-downs of little importance except for the Star Wars 2" 16-track masters which contain the edited "selects" Williams and Ken Wannberg chose—I remember when they did the Star Wars Special Edition CDs, they had the 16-track masters, but all of these master takes from the original album had been snipped out! So that's where they went, making those 16-tracks are highly important. Now, the good news: at that Star Wars con was Matthew Wood, a sound editor for Lucasfilm (voice of General Grievous, I think?) and he and I were like, WTF?! I am quite sure he subsequently coordinated to have the 16-tracks digitized at Lucasfilm (in exchange for a tour or something for Melson)...whatever. I think it's all OK, so people should RELAX."

http://filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=101432&forumID=1&archive=0

We want you to be aware that we have no plans—now or in the future—to restore the earlier versions. 

Sincerely, Lynne Hale publicity@lucasfilm.com

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Bingowings said:

Motti just wants to know...

is it reeeeegal?

 WRONG....EVERYTHING!!!