John Lennon Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Francis Newton

Critical Essay by Francis Newton

The Beatles are an agreeable bunch of kids, quite unsinister (unlike some of the American teenage comets), with that charming combination of flamboyance and a certain hip self-mickey-taking, which is the ideal of their age group. They are in fact the 'new Elizabethans' for whom the bishops called 10 years ago. Much of their appeal has nothing to do with music at all, but with clothes, haircuts and stance. What they sell is not music, but 'the sound', a slightly modified version of the heavily accented, electronically amplified noise which has long been familiar to rock-and-rollers and could at a pinch be described as the musique concrète of the masses. Anyone can produce that sound, and practically everyone with the money for the rather expensive gear has done so…. Mersey-side—and the Beatles—emerged as the recognised Nashville of Britain about a year ago, when entrepreneurs first became aware of the size...
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