50 years later, the things The Beatles still say to us today
Fifty years after they stopped touring, and four decades after they ceased to exist as a recording entity, is there really anything new to say about The Beatles?
It's pretty safe to conclude that no modern rock group's personal, professional and musical history has been as thoroughly combed through as that of Messrs McCartney, Lennon, Starr and Harrison.
You could stock a decent-sized library and then wallpaper it with all the books and articles that have been written about the band over the years. From authorized biographies and purported tell-alls to socio-cultural ruminations and forensic examinations of their recording techniques, so much water has flowed over their history that the band's collective edges have been sanded down to almost nothing.
My own bookcase counts at least three such volumes, including one that improbably roots through the dream symbolism of the Liverpudlian band and its music. The most well-thumbed book, by far though, is "Lennon, the Definitive Biography," by Ray Coleman.
Yet here we are, as a culture, talking about the band again. The occasion? The release of the new Ron Howard-directed "Eight Days a Week," and an expanded reissue of 1977's "Live at the Hollywood Bowl." Both concern the same era: That four-year period of official Beatlemania that ended with the band's final performance at Candlestick Park in San Francisco in August 1966.
It's a part of our pop mythology that you could scarcely hear a note The Beatles played at any of those early live performances. Credit that to the combination of the the primitive sound systems of the time and the ear-splitting screaming of the crowds.
By: John L. Micek
Source: Penn Live
