HL1 THE BEATLES WERE UNDERRATED

What’s fascinating about pop is our relationship with it.
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David Hepworth is interested in the human side of pop.
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what it means to us.
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it is possible to take music seriously and, at the same time, not drain the life out of it.
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music and life:

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As Pope John Paul II said, ‘Of all the unimportant things, football is the most important.’
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1 THE LONG SHADOW OF THE FABS
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THE BEATLES WERE UNDERRATED
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Their craft became obscured by their artistry, their artistry disappeared into their significance and their significance was eventually folded inside their legend.
Note:COSA È ANDATO PERDUTO

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underrated for the work they did and overrated, if anything, for what it all meant.
Note:ESITO

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no show-business career can be sustained for longer than three years.
Note:LA LEGGE DI LOUIS MENAND...LA CREATIVITÀ SI ESAURISCE

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three years as cheery moptops
Note:LA TEORIA X I BEAT

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three years as psychedelic adventurers.
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the first period was actually when the Beatles’ collective genius was operating at full tilt.
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didn’t consider it beneath them to make their records for fourteen-year-old girls.
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the false opposition between rock and pop hadn’t yet been invented.
Note:IL RIFUGIO DELLE CANAGLIE

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They took the previously discrete skills of singing, songwriting, arrangement, A&R, backing instruments and production and conflated all into the one skill – creating great records. Nobody had done that before.
Note:LA LORO ABILITÀ....DISCHI ANCORA MIGLIORI DELLE CANZONI

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Many of their lyrics are banal
Note:NN ERANO GRANDI AUTORI

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songs were a vital ingredient of great records.
Note:UN INGREDIENTE

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combined the qualities of a good vocal group with the skills of a capable instrumental group.
Note:FUSIONE

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a new musical shorthand
Note:STENOGRAFIA

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Even if Ringo was not the best drummer in the Beatles, he was certainly the best drummer for the Beatles.
Note:UN VERO GRUPPO

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Lennon and McCartney: two lost boys who somehow transformed their differences into the greatest creative dividend of all.
Note:L ES DELLA FUSIONE

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it was the contributions each made to the other’s ideas that struck the sparks.
Note:LA SCINTILLA

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They were clever without suffering from education
Note:EVITATO UN OSTACOLO X MOLTE POP STAR

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They were from the English provinces in an age when that seemed to be a barrier
Note:PROVINCIA

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It is, as far as pop musicians are concerned, the spark of life at the end of God’s outstretched finger,
Note:L ELEMENTO SEGRETO DEL POP

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catchiness is a measure of how memorable a tune is,
Note:UTILIZZIAMO UN TERMINE PRECISO...ORECCHIABILE

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The coda of ‘Hello Goodbye’ is one such. The prequel to ‘Here, There And Everywhere
Note:IL DETTAGLIO

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wonderful songs they never put out as singles
Note:SPREZZO

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‘Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever’, which is on many people’s lists of the best singles ever, was left off Sgt. Pepper,
Note:ROCORDIAMOLO SEMPRE

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What really hooks the listener
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I knew there was enough on the glistening surface of ‘We Can Work It Out’ to be going on with but I was also aware of something in that deliberately ungainly middle section that would tug away at me for a longer time.
Note:CEETI MISTERI

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Nothing in pop music is more powerful than a thrill containing the promise of further thrills.
Note:LA CONTINUITÀ

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Even when the song was supposed to be the heartfelt plea of a broken man, as in ‘Help!’, they delivered it with bracing glee.
Note:LA GAIEZZA

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There was no foreplay. Listen to ‘All My Loving’, ‘Penny Lane’, ‘Eight Days A Week’ or ‘No Reply’.
Note:NESSUN PRELIMINARE

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‘Help!’ begins like a leap from a high cliff
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they knew the secret of a good speech – start in the middle and finish soon afterwards.

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They began every number as if the shepherd’s crook of time was about to hoick them off stage
Note:LO STILE

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The whole house was energized
Note:ASCOLTO DAL MIO MONO

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This is music aimed at simply making people happy.
Note:LO SCOPO

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Sadly for rock critics, it’s not complicated.
Note:LE VITTIME

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headlong dash to delirium was signalled by the yowl of joy announcing every guitar break.
Note:L ORGASMO

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All their middle eights, such as Lennon’s ‘when I was a boy’ in ‘She Said She Said’ or Paul’s ‘me I’m just the lucky kind’ in ‘Things We Said Today’,
Note:L EQUIVALENTW URLETTO STRUMENTALE

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Nowadays happiness makes people uneasy.
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The Beatles were war babies,
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to make them forget their daily troubles,
Note:LA MUSICA DEI GENITORI

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providing ecstasy in three-minute hits.

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LA LORO...PUR SAPENDO CHE LA VITA È DURA

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we’ve become more blasé.
Note:CON LA VVANTO DI ABBONDANZA E TORPORE

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Nobody uses the word ‘happy’ in connection with pop nowadays
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unique balance between sophistication and simplicity.
Note:STUDIO 2 DI ABBEY ROAD DAL GIUGNO 63 AL MARZO 67…DA SHE LOVES YOU A GETTING BETTER

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How could the word ‘catchiness’ possibly do justice to their achievements?
Note:LA DOMANDA DI CHI HA LETTO IL PEZZO

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a hit record’s emotional stickiness arises from the uniqueness of a particular performance.
Note:L HO SCOPERTO ASCOLTANDO I SESSION MAN PIÙ FAMOSI

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‘It’s very difficult to capture,’
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They think greatness in pop is all about soul and inspiration and having your heart in the right place.
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It’s about the tiny details that, in the words of a musician interviewed in the documentary, ‘make the tune pop’.
Note:L ALTERNATIVA....QUI I B ERANO MAESTRI

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we in our ignorance summarize under the word ‘production’ –
Note:UNA PAROLA

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these musicians used the word ‘pop’ it was as a verb, not a noun.
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IT’S ALL ABOUT THE DRUMMER
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another drummer was already in there,
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Andy White,
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when a new group got into the studio for the first time it was the drummer who let them down.
Note:GEORGE MARTIN LA SAPEVA LUNGA

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‘Love Me Do’,
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got the relationship between George Martin and Ringo Starr off to a shaky start, from which they never quite recovered.
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drummers know where the beat is.
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decides where the beat is.
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It won’t be anything you can persuade him about.
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he’ll be no more capable of changing it than he is of altering the way he walks,
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musicians perform the music. Drummers are the music.
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‘What do you call somebody who hangs around with musicians? A drummer’,
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developing a repertoire of tricks and gimmicks
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musical digression, the drum solo.
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Great drumming is, like the internal combustion engine, something we only truly value when it’s not working.
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even within the limitations of a rudimentary rock and roll style Ringo sends the blood coursing through the band’s veins
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walking out during the White Album sessions in the summer of 1968
Note:L ULTIMO AD ARRIVARE E IL PRIMO AD ANDARSENE...NN SI SENTIVA VALORIZZATO

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he never did anything to draw attention to himself.
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realize how empty and flashy all that jazz-rock and progressive soloing was
Note:ECCO QUANDO ABBIAMO REALIZZATO CHE UN TIPO QUADRATO COME RINGO ERA UNA BENEDIZ

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He revolutionized rock drumming by eschewing the chopsticks grip which people like the Shadows’ Tony Meehan had inherited from big band players like Gene Krupa
Note:IMPUGNATURA A MARTELLO

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He was born left-handed but his grandmother was superstitious
Note:UN DESTRO FORZATO

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This is the reason why no other drummer can imitate what he does on ‘Ticket To Ride’ from Help! or ‘Come Together’ from Abbey Road.
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rock has gone from simplicity to pointless elaboration and back to simplicity again.
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judging a guitar solo by how fast it’s played is like judging a novel by how quickly it was typed,
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best drummers are the ones who do something that you can’t replace with a machine.
Note:UN CRITERIO

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Smart opinion invariably gets pop music wrong, praising it for qualities that matter in other art forms and passing over the things that matter most in pop.
Note:GIUDICARE IL POP

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two great songwriters plus help, rather than the four-headed euphoria machine that they were.
Note:X QS TANTI GIUDIZI SBAGLIATI SUI B

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it is all essentially rhythm music.
Note:SIA IL ROCK CHE IL POP.....NO SOLO ASCOLTO

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‘beat music’,
Note:IL TERMINE GIUSTO

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it calls for a physical response,
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dance fever or just tapping your fingers on the steering wheel.
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the things that jazz and classical fans don’t like about beat music, the repetition and dumb simplicity, those are the very things that are best about it.
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Earl Palmer,
Note:L NVENTORE DEL DRUMMING ROCK

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imported the bass drum sound of the New Orleans parade band into the hits of Fats Domino and Little Richard.
Note:LA DINAMICA

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Hal Blaine, who provided the most dramatic three beats in popular music, the ones that introduce the Ronettes’ ‘Be My Baby’.
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Richard Allen and Uriel Jones, who played that drum track on Marvin Gaye’s ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’,
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play slightly behind the band so that you sound as if you’re reining them in rather than whipping them on.
Note:CHARLIE WATTS

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whose sound has been likened to a wardrobe full of bricks being tipped down a concrete staircase and has been sampled for use on a million hip hop records.
Note:BONHAM DEI LED ZEPPELIN

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the man who inspired the tune ‘Funky Drummer’.
Note:CLYDE STUBBLEFIELD

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replacing the drummer with a drum machine.
Note:GENTE COSÌ È DIFFICILE SENTIRLA ORA

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They are not relying on a mere human being to achieve that particular rhythmic state of grace
Note:OGGI TUTTO È ASSEMBLATO

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‘Come Together’ or Roxy Music’s ‘Love Is The Drug’.
Note:VECCHIA MANIERA

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Nothing speeds up or slows down,
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It started in the mid-fifties and lasted until the early nineties.
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I said that drummers were underrated. I never said they weren’t strange.
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Who without Keith Moon are missing more than just a drummer.
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The 2012 documentary about Status Quo provides the perfect demonstration
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How else do you describe the way these four individuals just happen to lock together while thousands of other four-man groups, no more or less deserving, simply don’t? Rock is not an adjective. Like pop, it’s a verb.
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MANAGERS ARE THE REAL VICTIMS
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the image of the archetypal manager.
Note:LO STEREOTIPO DI CHI PENSA AL POP

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an older, balder man with a cigar jammed in the corner of his mouth, cackling quietly to himself as he counts out the £50 notes he has swindled from the efforts of his saintly, otherworldly charges.
Note:ECCOLO

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thieves, philistines and charlatans.
Note:IL MANAGEE NEI FILM

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love of a band drew them into a Paul McGuinness–U2 relationship with the object of their affections.
Note:SPESSO

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I know people like to think of the manager as the one who sucks the blood from young necks. In my experience it’s quite often the opposite. Young bands understandably search out a manager who’s got the things they haven’t got – a job, a bank account, credit cards, transportation, clean linen, a family, a full fridge,
Note:RIBALTARE TUTTO

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the desire to spend as much time as possible playing music; the belief that this might put them in the way of lots of sex; and the urgent need to avoid having to do any of the things that the world traditionally requires of adults.
Note:LE TRE MOLLE CHE TI FANNO FORMARE VUNA BAND

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the person to whom they can devolve all the many things they find too tiresome
Note:CHI È IL MANAGER

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Brian Epstein
Note:UN CASO

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he wanted to be part of their success and he was in love with at least one of them.
Note:MOTIVAZIONI

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it was common for managers to be ditched as soon as they had negotiated the first deal
Note:LICENZIATI AL PRIMO GROSSO CONTRATTO

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the manager’s the first to blame.
Note:SE LA CARRIERA VA MALE

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If anything goes right, that’s down to their genius.
Note:MA NN È MAI VERO L OPPOSTO

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They don’t often get a second
Note:IL RR È SPIETATO CON LORO

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A HARD DAY’S NIGHT FIFTY YEARS ON
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There’s nothing in media and entertainment that can’t be ruined by more money and more time.
Note:TIRATO VIA....IL SUO BELLO

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they’re playing but also working and just enjoying being together.
Note:FELICI

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They exchange looks that say, right now we’re the luckiest people in the world.
Note:FORTUMA

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There was such outrageous vitality in their music at the time that it didn’t need overselling.
Note:VOTALITÀ SFACCIATA

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The uncanny perfection of ‘If I Fell’ and ‘I Should Have Known Better’
Note:I PEZZI PEZZO MIGLIORI

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When the cowbell came in on the middle eight of the title song I felt the screen was about to burst with joy.
Note:APICE

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LPs were usually for Christmas
Note:NN ERANO CENTRALI NEL POP

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Righteous Brothers’ ‘You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’’, the Kinks’ ‘Tired Of Waiting For You’, the Byrds’ ‘Mr Tambourine Man’, the Walker Brothers’ ‘Make It Easy On Yourself’ and Sonny & Cher’s ‘I Got You Babe’ alongside three from the Rolling Stones, including ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’, and two from the Beatles, both from the soundtrack of Help!,
Note:1965 ANNO MIRABILIS X I 45

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Bob Dylan’s ‘Like A Rolling Stone’, the Who’s ‘My Generation’, the Beach Boys’ ‘Help Me, Rhonda’ and the Four Tops’ ‘I Can’t Help Myself’.
Note:SEMPRE QUELL ANNO

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Wilson Pickett’s ‘In The Midnight Hour’, James Brown’s ‘Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag’ and Otis Redding’s ‘Respect’.
Note:ANCORA

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from the story songs of Bob Dylan to the droning rock of the Kinks, from the bass-heavy Southern funk of Otis Redding to the Chelsea swagger of the Rolling Stones.
Note:INFLUENZE DI RUBBER...A LORO VOLTA INFLUENZATE DAI BEATLES

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it was possible to make long-players that were every bit as taut and compelling as singles.
Note:COSA VOLEVANO DIMOSTRARE

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the middle eight of ‘Norwegian Wood’, which was John’s song, came from Paul; similarly the middle eight of ‘Michelle’, which was predominantly Paul’s, was provided by John.
Note:MX COMPOSER

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McCartney would redo George’s guitar parts if he didn’t think he was playing them well enough.
Note:I VECCHI E LE BURBE

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harmonizing the ‘la-la-la’s on ‘You Won’t See Me’
Note:ARMONIZZAZIONI

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lascivious inhalation after the title of ‘Girl’
Note:SOSPIRONE

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the cod-French of ‘Michelle’
Note:ASSURDO

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‘Day Tripper’ backed with ‘We Can Work It Out’.
Note:IL GRANDE SINGOLO CHE CHIUSE LA STAGIONE

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Obviously everybody thinks the music made when they were fifteen was the best music of all. It’s not my fault that I happen to be right.