The sound quality of the tapes proved to be inadequate for commercial release, however, although Capitol used a 48-second excerpt of "Twist and Shout" from the concert on the 1964 documentary album The Beatles' Story.

[6] Despite the obvious demand for a live album, the tapes from the three Hollywood Bowl performances lay untouched in a Capitol vault.

A complete tape of the August 1964 performance found its way out of the Capitol vault in the early 1970s and was the basis of a popular bootleg LP, Back in 64 at the Hollywood Bowl.

In France, a single was released featuring two songs from the LP: "Ticket to Ride" with "Dizzy Miss Lizzy" on the B-side.

Before the official digital release of the album, bootleggers circulated transfers of the LP, and complete recordings of the three concerts, on CD and the Internet.

Alongside this I'd been working for some time with a team headed by technical engineer James Clarke on demix technology, the ability to remove and separate sounds from a single track.

Rudis says that while the "sloppiness" of the album may stem from the Beatles being unable to decipher their performance properly over the primitive amplification and monitoring systems, the atmosphere of the concert – such as the excited fans and "bemused wonderment of the boys" – comes through.

Radel praised George Martin's "fine job" in "remixing, filtering, equalizing and transferring the three-track tapes to the multi-track techniques of 1977.

"[23] The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl was voted the 26th best record of 1977 in the Pazz & Jop, an annual poll of American critics published by The Village Voice.

The sound rings clearly and powerfully through the shrieking: the segues are brisk and the punch-ins imperceptible; and the songs capture our heroes at their highest.

"[20] AllMusic critic Richard S. Ginell was impressed by the Beatles' performances under the chaotic circumstances, although he lamented the sound quality and separation from the crowd noise, citing it as a possible reason for the record remaining out of print.

"[26] The Guardian's Gwilym Mumford writes that while the original 1977 is regarded as one of the weaker Beatles albums, the 2016 remix emboldens both the melodic and muscular, proto-punk qualities of the band's live sound.

[27] Commenting on the "nonstop screaming of fans" through the album, Rolling Stone write that "aside from its value as a document of what a Beatles show actually sounded like, the album anticipated a whole generation of music by British shoegazer bands like My Bloody Valentine and the Jesus and Mary Chain, with catchy songs almost completely drowned out by white noise.

"[29] My Bloody Valentine guitarist Kevin Shields was inspired by The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl after hearing the album as a child and being fascinated by the band's music being largely concealed beneath the noise of screaming fans, and that this was one influence on his intention to create "the most beautiful songs with the most extremeness of physicality and sound",[30] leading to the fuzz-drenched sound of Loveless (1991).