Title: How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'N' Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music
Author: Elijah Wald
Rating: 3
While I had high hopes for new revelations in rock history with this book, that was not the case. Widely researched and containing interesting side notes, but for someone with my background in music it provided little in the way of things I didn't already know. I did appreciate the anecdote regarding Leonard Bernstein comparing The Beatles to Schumann and Ned Rorem comparing them to Chopin, Monteverdi, and Poulenc.
A final quote from the book:
"Between downloading, burning, and file sharing, there is no way to form even a rough estimate of how many people are acquiring any particular recording these days, and what gets played on the radio is no indicator in a world where most young people are listening to their own digital playlists."
Take that radio stations that continue to play bad music and lose listeners to satellite radio!
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