Neptoon Records is buzzing, but the people ahead of me aren’t here to shop. They’re here to listen to Rob Frith’s Paul McCartney story.
In fact, I’ve come to sell some records, on this occasion, but I have to wait while Frith holds court. I don’t mind: there’s lots to look at, and later, I’ll be the one making the customers wait, as Frith tells me about receiving a photo of his meeting with Sir Paul.
He unwraps it at the Neptoon counter to show me: an eight-by-10 glossy with Rob, his wife Vicki, and his sons Ben and Robert, looking at the camera along with Paul McCartney. It was professionally taken, printed, and mailed by McCartney’s people, but it came with unexpected conditions: it was not to be published or used for social media.
Frith was a bit bummed about that: “It would have made a great ending to the story.”
(Later, you’ll be pleased to know, MONTECRISTO secured permission to use the photo in this story—you can see it below.)
Truth is, the story probably isn’t over. It began in April, after McCartney’s legal team read of Frith’s discovery of The Beatles’ legendary Decca demo in The New York Times.
The Neptoon owner had been busy working with friends on The History of Vancouver Rock Vol. 5, the fifth instalment in a compilation series featuring local bands from the 1950s through the early ’70s (The Nocturnals, The Northwest Company, The Painted Ship, Mock Duck, The Collectors, et al). Going through his reels of tape, almost on a whim, Frith decided to spin the one labelled “Beatles demos,” which had been behind the counter for 10 years without ever having been played.
He had assumed that it was simply bootleg recordings: “What else could it be?”
Once he realized what he had, Frith declared that he would happily just hand the tape over—likely the original master recording of the session, longer and better-sounding than any other versions, perhaps worth hundreds of thousands of dollars—on the condition that Paul McCartney collect it himself.
Initially, McCartney’s people had proposed, under conditions of secrecy, that Frith fly to New York in the spring to meet with The Beatles’ bassist. “I said, ‘I have a fear of flying—there’s no way I can fly to New York.’ And they said, ‘Well, what would you like to do?’ I said, ‘It would be great if Paul could come to Vancouver.’ They said, ‘Nah, that’s not happening.’”
Eventually, they settled on Frith coming to Los Angeles in September 2025, to coincide with rehearsals for a Paul McCartney U.S. tour.
McCartney’s team initially wanted Frith to come alone, but the 70-year-old proprietor, whose store celebrated its 45th anniversary this February, had imagined other things.
In one scenario, Frith’s friend Nardwuar the Human Serviette would interview McCartney on camera and tell him, as he often tells his subjects, that he had a gift for him: “And I was going to come and give him the tape,” Frith says with glee. “I thought it was brilliant.”
Frith had also hoped to bring his sons’ partners, and two friends who had been with him when he first listened to the tapes. But it was family that were the deal-breakers.
“I’m sitting beside Paul. Paul puts his arm around me. He’s got the tape, and we’re chatting about it.” —Rob Frith
He won that point but then received a call on a Monday saying he needed to be in Los Angeles on Thursday. Frith—who had thought, with enough notice, he might take a cruise down—had to fly after all. Ben Frith, who is also Neptoon’s manager, brought the tape as a carry-on, taking care that it didn’t get accidentally erased in the airport scanners.
At a Hollywood studio rehearsal space with full touring stage, complete with lighting rigs and video screens, introductions were made: the Friths, McCartney’s crew. The mood was chatty and chill.
“And all of a sudden Paul just kind of walks up to us. ‘Rob?’ ‘Yeah!’ And he gives me a big hug and says, ‘I just want you to know, what you’re doing, nobody does that anymore.’ He was very emotional, kinda choked up. It brought him down to this cool, nice level, and he was like that the whole time. As nice as he seems when you see him in an interview, he was even more chill and nice to us.”
McCartney suggested they sit down. “It was a couch for three people, and there’s five of us,” Frith says, laughing. “I’m sitting beside Paul. Paul puts his arm around me. He’s got the tape, and we’re chatting about it.” Frith asked him if he remembered the session, recorded on New Year’s Day 1962. “He says, ‘I was really hungover!’”
McCartney asked about Neptoon, and Frith mentioned that Jack White and his band The Raconteurs had played an in-store there back in 2019. McCartney replied, beaming, that White was a wonderful guy. “He says, ‘Jack came to the plate for us. We needed to get this record pressed right away, and we couldn’t find a place that was available.’ Imagine a Beatle not being able to get a record pressed! So White said he would do it for him. It turns out it was this Wings box set, and his manager, right while we’re chatting, says, ‘Oh, I think it was delivered here today, the promo copy for Paul.’”
So the Friths and McCartney inspected the box set together for the first time, while Frith told McCartney about seeing Wings in the 1970s in Seattle.
Frith never saw The Beatles. He’d seen McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr on separate occasions. Once, in Burnaby, he saw a couple in a limousine who he is convinced were John and Yoko, who he learned years later had been in town to look at property. But he had been a Beatles fan since childhood.
McCartney with Frith, his wife Vicki, and sons Ben and Robert. Photo by MJ Kim. © 2025 MPL Communications Ltd.
His favourite Beatles records now are the White Album and Abbey Road, but “every record was my favourite when it came out,” he says. “Like, I really liked the Beatles 65 in 1965.” (Frith was 10 then). “And I liked the two that were kind of similar, Revolver and Rubber Soul. But I felt with The Beatles, they’d have an album which was unreal, and there’d be such a large step to the next album, it would be so much better than anything else that was going on at the time.”
Frith did have one favour in mind to ask of Sir Paul. “We had been told, no photos and no signatures. But I had these pictures of The Beatles playing in Vancouver, and I say, ‘Paul, I know you don’t like to sign, but…’ And I hadn’t even finished what I had started saying, and he says, ‘Of course I’ll sign for you.’ He signed one thing each for us—well, two for me.”
The photos of the 1964 Vancouver show—one of which now hangs on the wall at Neptoon—were from an outdoor venue on the PNE grounds, Empire Stadium, where Elvis had also performed. They were part of a collection that Frith had bought from the estate of the CBC’s Ken Gibson, who used to produce Let’s Go and Good Rockin’ Tonite. “I was offered his memorabilia first when it went up for sale. I got a Jimi Hendrix autograph and all kinds of cool photos.”
After signing the two photos and an album apiece for the Friths, McCartney suggested his staff give the four a tour of the space. “We got to go on the actual stage and see all his guitars and bass guitars. He had George Harrison’s ukulele, which I guess he got from the family. We talked to all these guys who had been working for him for years, and everybody was as nice as Paul. They were all chill, really nice people, whether it was a sound guy or lighting or special effects. It felt like a family get-together.” One bodyguard explained he was “the new guy,” then told the Friths he’d been with McCartney for 20 years.
What Frith had envisioned as a 15-minute meet-and-greet had morphed into two hours. “And we’re just about to leave, and Paul gives us all a hug, remembers all of our names, and says, ‘So you’re going back to Vancouver now?’ And I say, ‘Actually, no, we’re staying until Sunday.’
‘Oh, what are you doing tomorrow? Do you want to come to our rehearsal?’”
They ended up watching a full concert run through—the band’s last rehearsal before the Got Back U.S. tour, which kicked off September 26 in Santa Barbara—before joining McCartney and his people in a vegetarian lunch prepared by McCartney’s chef. “We basically just lined up with his band.”
While Vicki Frith was queuing to get food, someone came up to hug her and turned out to be McCartney himself. “She almost had a heart attack,” Rob says, smiling. “It was just mind-blowing that Paul was hugging her.”
Neptoon continues to hum with customers as we talk, Frith still blown away by the way McCartney handled things.
“I mean, I’ve always loved them. They’re pretty well my favourite band,” he admits. “For him to have done that, it was a lot. It was great. I can’t say enough about it.”
Read more from our spring 2026 issue.
