Lost Bob Marley records discovered rotting in a London hotel basement by a Maltese businessman will go under the hammer later this month at an auction expected to reach tens of thousands of pounds.

The 24-track tapes, known in music circles as “the lost masters”, feature previously-unheard recordings of some of the Jamaican reggae superstar’s greatest songs, recorded live at the Lyceum and Rainbow in London and the Pavilion in Paris in the 1970s.

Joe Gatt (right) and Louis Hoover with some of the tapes.

It was just chance, and a painstaking restoration process, that saved them from being lost forever.

Two years ago, Joe Gatt, who has lived in the UK since 1971, received a call from a friend who worked for a clearing company, informing him he had found some discarded and severely-damaged Bob Marley tapes sitting in cardboard boxes in a waterlogged basement.

Mr Gatt, already a great Marley fan who had been in the audience for the storied 1975 Lyceum performance, immediately knew he was onto a potential treasure but the extent of the damage the tapes had endured made it seem unlikely they could ever be heard in their full glory.

“There were fragments falling off the reel and white gunge on them,” he told the Times of Malta.

“I spoke to a friend, Louis Hoover, a jazz singer, who had more contacts in the music industry and we found someone [sound technician specialist Martin Nichols] who said he could restore them.”

The restoration was a long road but Mr Gatt eventually sat down to hear the outcome. 

Bob Marley is one of the best-selling artists of all time.

“We weren’t expecting much, we thought it would be all crackling. But we heard them and we couldn’t believe it,” he said.

“We couldn’t believe the beautiful sound that came out when he put the volume up. We just started hugging each other.

“I feel lucky enough just to have seen Bob Marley live. To find these tapes 40 years later is just amazing.”

Now, Mr Gatt and the team that has been built to manage the process have decided the time has come for the records to be sold.

“We want them to go to a good home,” he said.

The records will be sold in three lots by Liverpool auction company Omega, which estimates they will sell at £25,000 per lot (€29,000), though some online posts suggest the final price could be double that.

That would make it among the biggest sales for Omega, which specialises in music memorabilia and has previously sold unreleased David Bowie recordings for nearly £50,000 and a Bible owned and containing handwritten notes by Elvis Presley for £59,000.