How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin: The Untold Story of a Noisy RevolutionA&C Black, 2013 M04 25 - 288 pages Imagine a world where Beatlemania was against the law-recordings scratched onto medical X-rays, merchant sailors bringing home contraband LPs, spotty broadcasts taped from western AM radio late in the night. This was no fantasy world populated by Blue Meanies but the USSR, where a vast nation of music fans risked repression to hear the defining band of the British Invasion. The music of John, Paul, George, and Ringo played a part in waking up an entire generation of Soviet youth, opening their eyes to seventy years of bland official culture and rigid authoritarianism. Soviet leaders had suppressed most Western popular music since the days of jazz, but the Beatles and the bands they inspired-both in the West and in Russia-battered down the walls of state culture. Leslie Woodhead's How The Beatles Rocked the Kremlin tells the unforgettable-and endearingly odd-story of Russians who discovered that all you need is Beatles. By stealth, by way of whispers, through the illicit late night broadcasts on Radio Luxembourg, the Soviet Beatles kids tuned in. "Bitles," they whispered, "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah." |
Contents
Section 1 | 1 |
Section 2 | 6 |
Section 3 | 18 |
Section 4 | 31 |
Section 5 | 54 |
Section 6 | 61 |
Section 7 | 67 |
Section 8 | 68 |
Section 20 | 136 |
Section 21 | 141 |
Section 22 | 148 |
Section 23 | 156 |
Section 24 | 167 |
Section 25 | 177 |
Section 26 | 183 |
Section 27 | 188 |
Section 9 | 72 |
Section 10 | 75 |
Section 11 | 77 |
Section 12 | 83 |
Section 13 | 90 |
Section 14 | 96 |
Section 15 | 103 |
Section 16 | 111 |
Section 17 | 119 |
Section 18 | 123 |
Section 19 | 130 |
Section 28 | 196 |
Section 29 | 199 |
Section 30 | 208 |
Section 31 | 214 |
Section 32 | 238 |
Section 33 | 251 |
Section 34 | 269 |
Section 35 | 273 |
Section 36 | 275 |
Section 37 | 279 |
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Common terms and phrases
album American Andrei Makarevich Art Troitsky audience band Beatles fan Beatles songs became began Boris Boris Grebenshikov called Cavern Club commissars Communist concert crowd dance Dean Reed decades door dream Fab Four felt festival film friends gathering girl Gorbachev Gradsky Grebenshikov guitar hair hero huge Iron Curtain jazz John Lennon kids Kiev Kolya Kolya Vasin Kremlin Lenin Leningrad Lipnitsky listen Liverpool lives looked Matietsky McCartney’s Melodiya memories millions Minsk Moscow musicians numbers official Party Paul McCartney Paul’s Pelyushonok play police popular music Pozner Pussy Riot Putin radio record Red Square revolution Ringo rock music roll Saint Petersburg Sasha seemed sing smile Soviet Beatles Soviet culture Soviet rock Soviet Union stage Stalin star Stas Namin story street studio talk tape temple told Troitsky’s Tropillo Vladimir Vladivostok wanted West Western yellow submarine Yoko young youth Yuri