The American musician Beck Hansen has lost recordings of an album with covers by country singer Hank Williams. This happened in a major fire in the Universal Studios archive in 2008.
Hansen tells NME that he did not know that the recordings, recorded in 2001, were lost. “Nobody mentioned it.” Twenty years ago he was still negotiating to get hold of the sound recordings. “I wish I could have made copies,” he says.
In addition to the recordings of the Hank Williams album, raw recordings of his album Sea Change have also been lost. “I still have some cassettes with demos, but the masters are gone,” says the 49-year-old musician.
On 1 June 2008, part of the Universal Studios archive was destroyed by a fire that broke out due to work on a roof on a film set. The fire reached a safe with video and audio material. More shots were destroyed during the fire. This includes work by Al Green, Elton John, Nirvana and Tupac Shakur.