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How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'n' Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music
Description
"There are no definitive histories," writes Elijah Wald, in this provocative reassessment of American popular music, "because the past keeps looking different as the present changes." Earlier musical styles sound different to us today because we hear them through the musical filter of other styles that came after them, all the way through funk and hip hop. As its blasphemous title suggests, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'n' Roll rejects the conventional pieties of mainstream jazz and rock histoFirsthand experiences
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Discussed in If it was 1962 would you be a rock fan or a jazz fan? in the TalkBass community
LoTone
Once upon a time I read that book, [link] , which is kind of like a Ph.D. thesis about music history. In that book, the author claims that the Beatles, with the Rubber Soul album, invented Rock and, in the process, killed Rock and Roll. So, if you believe the author of that book, Rock was not invented yet in 1962. Putting ... ... more
FryFunk
Yeah the beatles question is interesting. Because you have to ask yourself what was 50s rock? The easy answer is that it's the beginning of modern music. It was the building block from which everything today comes from. This was a satisfying answer for most of my life. But then I got into blues/jazz/folk music/classical, ... ... more
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