The 1960s were characterized by a great cultural and ideological revolution that began with young people and involved workers, intellectuals, and ethnic minority groups. They were the years of racial struggle, women's emancipation, and technological progress. The protests of those years found an effective channel of expression in music, and the Beatles, along with other great musicians, were part of the great revolution.

It is difficult to imagine modern music, rock, pop, singer-songwriter and pop music, without the Beatles, profoundly influenced by the art, music and attitude of the “fab four”, the “baronets”, as John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr are still known, protagonists of a legendary career.

   

Bibliography:

 

The Beatles: Interviews, History, and Magic, Complete Discography and Videography. – Milan: Arcana Editrice, c.1984.

Selected Radio Interviews (1964-1965), A Guide to Recording Secrets and Wonders, A Complete Video Catalog, John Lennon Sued by Manson's Defenders, Paul McCartney Is Dead, The Genesis of "Sergeant Pepper's," The Beatles in Italy...

 

 

 

 

The Beatles / Bob Spitz; translated by Ira Rubini. – Milan: Sperling & Kupfer, 2006.

Think you know everything about the Beatles? Don't say so after reading this gripping biography. Much has been said about the Beatles, but never before has the aura of mystery that surrounded the legendary band for over forty years been dispelled like in this book. Bob Spitz, through nearly a decade of research, has reconstructed the private lives and public image of the quartet that revolutionized music and sparked a true cultural revolution. Through firsthand interviews, unpublished documents, articles, radio programs, and photographs, the author has followed the boys from their working-class roots in Liverpool to their troubled final days as a group, weaving a comprehensive, brilliant, and joyful account of the four pioneers of a new era of rock.

 

 The Beatles anthology. – Milan: Rizzoli, 2000

A true autobiography in which Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, and John Lennon speak about the life and career of the great musical group. Archive pages and interviews conducted specifically for this work paint a portrait not only of the Beatles but of an entire generation that identified with them.

 

 

The Beatles vs. The Rolling Stones / Georg Diez; translated by Thomas Paggini and Fausto Vitaliano. – Milan: Feltrinelli, 2001.

The book is conceived as a face-to-face discussion, a confrontation that tells the story of the two bands that changed the face of pop music and much of Western culture. Beyond the historical contrast, there exists an opposition that "works" beneath the tastes of younger generations. Georg Diez reconstructs facts and misdeeds, intertwining the stories of the two bands and shaping a "conflict" (of ideas, promises, and behavioral patterns) that still impacts our present.

 

                                         

The Beatles: The Complete Works / Ian MacDonald; Italian edition edited by Franco Zanetti. – Milan: A. Mondadori, 1997.

A meticulous and thorough examination of the Beatles' complete oeuvre—an official discography containing 211 recorded tracks, 186 of which were written by the quartet members—opens with an in-depth introduction that places the "Liverpool baronets" within the broader historical context of their decade. For each individual track, MacDonald provides an impressive amount of information and detail: the instrumentation, release dates, the circumstances surrounding its creation, the composition methodology, and the recording process (writing, arranging, performing, mixing). A systematic, rigorously scholarly study—completed with an interesting synoptic section, an extensive bibliography, and a rich glossary of technical and specialized terms—that also considers the complex web of relationships that linked John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, and their collaborators, as well as the more controversial aspects of the story of one of the legends of our century.

 

 

 From the Beatles' Deception to the Music of God / Giancarlo Padula. – Milan: Greco & Greco, 2003.

 How many hopes, myths, chimeras, how many feelings, utopias, and ideals shattered! So much music. Why was and is all this a deception? What really lies behind the seemingly innocuous "Yellow Submarine"? Behind the "pacifist" "All You Need Is Love." What is the true message of "Imagine"? What are the overt and subliminal messages of so many "idols" of modern music, including current Italian ones? Who were the four baronets of Liverpool and everything around them that was born and developed? What lies behind rock, pop, and even Italian and international singer-songwriter music? What was the true "fever" of Saturday night? What lies behind the apparent "innocence" of smooth dancing? Who is actually the director of this diverse, colorful, and phantasmagorical orchestra that plays rock 'n' roll (discover the true meaning of the word!), pop music, invites us to Woodstock, the Isle of White, and then lures us to a nightclub. Does it inspire all this music? In this book, you will read a unique and shocking testimony..

 

 

 A Day in the Life: The Music and Art of the Beatles / Mark Hertsgaard. – Milan: Baldini & Castoldi, c. 1995. –

“A Day in the Life” takes the reader into the creative process that led to the birth of classics like “Eleanor Rigby,” “Yesterday,” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” We discover how George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” transformed, after forty-four versions, from a delicate acoustic piece into a rousing rocker. And we delve into the alchemy of the far-from-idyllic collaboration between John Lennon and Paul McCartney. It’s often forgotten that the Beatles, cultural icons for entire generations and celebrities “more popular than Jesus Christ,” as one of them once put it, were musicians first and foremost. Paul McCartney wasn’t exaggerating when he said that “in a hundred years, people will listen to the Beatles’ music the way we listen to Mozart today.” Hertsgaard shows us why.

 

 

  The Lennon File: The Secret Documents of the FBI / with a testimony by Walter Veltroni; an introduction to the film by Carlo Antonelli. – Milan: Feltrinelli: Mikado distributor, 2007.

The volume, introduced by a testimony by Walter Veltroni, contains a series of documents from the dossier that the FBI had opened on the “special surveillance” John Lennon, considered a “pacifist”, an “extremist” and therefore “dangerous”.

 

 

 

 The Fabulous Beatles: Life, Career, and Recordings / Roy Carr, Tony Tyler. – Milan: Sonzogno, 1980.

The first and only critical guide to the Beatles' songs, from their early days to their most recent recordings. An illustrated anthology: the lives, loves, successes, controversies, and legal battles of the Liverpool Four in 250 carefully selected images.

 

 

 Imagine this: me and my brother John Lennon / Julia Baird; translated by Ilaria Arcà. – Rome: Giulio Perrone, 2008.

This story begins in Liverpool. It's the story of a family and its secrets, and of a fate, often cruel. John is still a child. At just five years old, his aunt Mimi tears him from his mother's arms and tries to keep him away from the woman she deems immoral and unfit. This book is the story of a tender and poignant love between mother and son, one that no one can stop. John runs to his mother as soon as he can. With her, he plays his first chords, discovers an absolute passion for music. In that woman and in his younger sisters, born from a subsequent relationship, he finds his first and most passionate audience. And when everyone seemed convinced that they would soon finally become a real family, his mother's death will upend those plans. The impact it will have on John, now seventeen, and on his sisters will be devastating. Julia Baird, John's sister, tells the story. His pages relive his brother's first loves, his devouring passion for music, and the small band they formed in school, playing in the bathroom, the kitchen, wherever possible. The result is a loving and untold portrait, an emotional map punctuated by John's first loves, his marriage to Cynthia, and the discovery of fatherhood. And then the Beatles, their global success, John's estrangement and violent death. A long biographical narrative, the story of a complicated and tenacious relationship.

 

 

 John Lennon: The Encyclopedia / Bill Harry; translated by Valeria Cozza Caposavi, Luca Piccirilli, and Nicoletta Sereggi. – Rome: Arcana, c. 2002, printed 2001.

Everything known and unknown about the life of the most beloved of the Fab Four. From his difficult childhood to his encounter with the other Beatles, from his departure from the group to his solo work and his emotional and intellectual communion with Yoko Ono. John Lennon. The Encyclopedia is the complete map of the man and the legend, built by analyzing all the elements that made him the supreme popular icon. It's the only book every true Lennon fan truly needs.

 

 

The Beatles Songbook / Edited by Alan Aldridge; translated by Umberto Santucci. – Milan: A.Mondadori, 2001

Knowing the Beatles isn't just about listening to catchy, enjoyable tunes and rhythms whose original sound marked an unprecedented turning point in the history of contemporary pop music: it also means understanding their words and interpreting their poetic message. This is what Alan Aldridge and his collaborators set out to do. A manifesto of neo-Art Nouveau graphics, pop, and beat juxtaposed with the Liverpool quartet's most beautiful songs.

 

 

 

I Mine / George Harrison. – Milan: Rizzoli, 2002.

A unique and precious portrait of George Harrison, brimming with the intelligence, warmth, and grace that characterized his life and his songs. The conversation between George and Derek Taylor ranges from his childhood in Liverpool and the beginnings of Beatlemania to his love of India, gardening, and car racing.

 

 

 

 

  In the Name of the Beatles: Past and Present of a Modern Mythology / Salvatore Pettinato. – Milan: Rusconi, c. 1997.

Searching the Beatles' 230 songs for an explanation of their fame and greatness is a fruitless adventure. The Fab Four themselves never let their output go to their heads: never complacent, never triumphant, completely unlike the facile stars that infest the world of pop music.

The reasons for their overwhelming and unquestionable primacy lie elsewhere, in a favorable combination of time and the youthful "mode" of an entire era, which the four boys from Liverpool symbolized. If rock and roll served as a bridge between a sense of black music and white youth, the Beatles fulfilled the same function of bridging rock and roll and the common culture of pop music. It is this dual mediation that made their "recipe" the unsurpassed benchmark for everything youth music produced in the West in the second half of the century. They didn't compose the best pop music, nor did they play and sing better than anyone else: they set the tone, like prophets, for international rock artists. This book collects and examines everything that revolves around the Beatles.

 

 

 The Quarrymen: The True Story of the Group That Led to the Beatles / Hunter Davies; translated by Stefania Cherchi. – Rome: Arcana, 2002.

 They were an unknown group of kids from Liverpool, one of whom, with a rocker look, answered to the name of John Lennon. One Sunday afternoon, they got a gig at a church fete, and in the audience was a boy their age, Paul McCartney. Here's the story of the making of a legend.

 

 

 

   Shouth! The True Story of the Beatles / Philip Norman. – Mondadori, 1982.

When Philip Norman was asked to cover the history of Apple in 1969, he could hardly have imagined that this close encounter with the Beatles would define his writing career. Nine years later, he would begin the obsessive research that would culminate in "Shout! The Beatles in Their Generation," the first version of what would go down in history as the definitive and unsurpassed biography of the Beatles. "Shout!" traces the life and music of the Fab Four from their chaotic and often comical beginnings in Liverpool and Hamburg to the heights of Beatlemania, then accompanies them through the chaos of Apple, the collapse of hippie ideals, and finally the band's breakup. The biography also explores the challenges of the Beatles' suffocating legacy and the solo careers of John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Already extensively revised at the turn of the millennium, the biography has been updated with information available as of 2020 exclusively for this new Italian translation.

 

 

  Strawberry fields forever : John Lennon remembered / by Vic Garbarini and Brian Cullman with Barbara Graustark ; special introduction by Dave Marsh. – New York [etc.] : Bantam book, 1980.

Contents: Introduction by Dave Marsh – 1) The dream is over – 2) Seven days in December – 3) Sometime in NYC – 4) All the lonely people: the early years – 5) Strawberry fields – 6) The plastic ono band – 7) Two virgins: the exclusive newsweek interview. A chronological biography Liverpool to New York 1940-1980

 

 

 

 

True Love: Drawings for Sean/John Lennon; introduction by Yoko Ono; translation by Anna Martini. – Turin: Einaudi, c. 1999.

For Sean, born in 1975, John Lennon was his father. A father who preferred to stay home to take care of Sean. To play, and to draw together. There was a time in the Lennon family's life, says Yoko Ono, when their entire New York apartment was covered in Sean's drawings. As happens in all families with a child, of course. From this happy normality comes this book, collecting John's drawings for Sean. With John's funny, witty captions that sound like lyrics from a Beatles song; but above all, they resemble the light threads woven by every father for every child, in that happy moment when creativity, simplicity, and joy are still a small land where one can inhabit.

 

 

 Vivendo Cantando: racconti & lennonsense / John Lennon; edited by Antonio Taormina; Italian adaptation by Donatella Franzoni and Antonio Taormina. – Rome: Arcana, 1990. – (With original drawings by John Lennon).

In 1964, John Lennon's "John Lennon in His Own Write" and in 1965, "A Spaniard in the Works," both written by John Lennon, were released in English bookstores. The two works quickly became a literary sensation and were hugely successful. This book re-releases the two texts, rediscovering the highly relevant relevance of the most unpredictable, sarcastic, bizarre, and funny Lennon.

 

 

 

Yesterday…: images of the Beatles between symbol and myth / Harry Benson. – Legnano: Crealibri, c2003.

The photographic story of Harry Benson, a master photographer, for a phenomenon that remains the most extraordinary musical phenomenon of the twentieth century: the Beatles. Unique and unrepeatable shots collected in this large-format book.

 

 

  

 Audio CD:

 

 

The Beatles anthology [Audio recording] / produced and directed by George Martin. – London: Apple Corps; Hayes: EMI, 1996. – 2 compact discs.63 min., 34 sec.; 64 min., 19 sec.

Anthology is a compilation of recordings by the British band the Beatles. Released in November 1995, it includes tracks from 1958 to 1964, including some of the failed Decca auditions. The album also includes the song "Free as a Bird," produced by Jeff Lynne, which is essentially the first truly new Beatles song in 25 years.

 

 Live 1969-1972 [Audio Recording] / John Lennon. – Milan: Curcio, 1992.

1) Woman Is The Nigger Of The World. 2) Cold Turkey. 3) Blue Suede Shoes. 4) Give Peace A Chance. 5) Attica State. 6) The Luck Of The Irish. 7) Imagine. 8) Dizzy Miss Lizzy. 9) John Sinclair. 10) Yer Blues. 11) Money. 12) We're All Water.

 

 

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band [Audio Recording] / Beatles. – Italy: EMI, p1987.

Fifty years after its release in 1967, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band remains a milestone in the Beatles' career and in the history of pop music. Long considered the greatest album of all time, it is deeply immersed in the 1960s, evoking their splendor, sound, and atmosphere, at the height of their joyous psychedelia.

 

Tripping the live fantastic [Audio recording] / Paul McCartney. – [Italy]: MPL Comunications LTD, [1990].

Tripping the Live Fantastic is Paul McCartney's first solo live album. The tracklist covers much of McCartney's career with the Beatles and as a solo artist. Edited to sound like one large concert, the album occasionally features tracks recorded during soundchecks: previously unreleased improvised songs and covers from various eras. The title alludes to the phrase "tripping the light fantastic" from John Milton's poem L'allegro, meaning to dance or move to musical accompaniment.

 

  Filmography:

 

 

Imagine: John Lennon [Electronic Resource]; written by Sam Egan and Andrew Solt. – Milan: Warner Home Video, c. 2005. – 2 DVDs (ca. 102 min.): sound (Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo), color.

“Imagine: John Lennon Special Edition” celebrates the life of one of the most fascinating and complex visionaries of our time. The release of this new DVD version coincided with the 25th anniversary of his untimely death on December 8, 1980. Although best known as a founding member of the Beatles, John Lennon remains a powerful influence today as a musician, writer, philosopher, artist, pacifist, and poet that transcends the immeasurable celebrity of the Beatles themselves. Produced by David Wolper and Andrew Solt, “Imagine: John Lennon” was made at the initiative of Yoko Ono, who believed it was time to open John’s personal archives—videos, writings, and photographs—to create the definitive film of his life. Narrated by Lennon himself and supported by a massive soundtrack of 36 songs (including work-in-progress recordings for the Imagine album), the film, which draws on John's extensive personal video collection (over 240 hours in total!), offers an unprecedented glimpse into the public and private life of the great Liverpool artist. This special edition, comprising 2 DVDs, is intended for all Lennon fans, and beyond...

 

 

USA vs. John Lennon / a film by David Leaf and John Scheinfeld. – Milan: Feltrinelli : Mikado distributor, 2007. – 1 DVD video (approx. 96 min.): sound, color.

 

"All We Are Saying Is Give Peace a Chance." John Lennon's mantra was one of the revolutionary pacifist anthems that most deeply impacted the Anglo-Saxon world and beyond. The most political of the Beatles (who would write and compose the evergreen "Imagine") had already entered the "Yoko Ono phase" that would ultimately lead to the group's dissolution, sparking the ire of fans and sparking accusations against the musician's Eastern partner.

All the books, CDs and DVDs listed (and much other material on the subject) are available in our libraries. 

Sitography: 

 

 

 

 

  Videography:

 

 

 

                 The Beatles' first color video in Blackpool

 

 

The Beatles – Best Moments

 

When Italy snubbed the Beatles

 

Paul is dead. The legend of the "fake" Paul McCartney

 

The Beatles in 5 minutes

 

Beatlemania

 

The Beatles' last concert

 

The Beatles. Interview

Let It Be

When I find myself in times of trouble
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
And in my hour of darkness
She is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.

Let it be, let it be.
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.

And when the broken hearted people
Living in the world agree,
There will be an answer, let it be.
For though they may be parted there is
Still a chance that they will see
There will be an answer, let it be.

Let it be, let it be. Yeah
There will be an answer, let it be.

And when the night is cloudy,
There is still a light that shines on me,
Shine on until tomorrow, let it be.
I wake up to the sound of music
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.

Let it be, let it be.
There will be an answer, let it be.
Let it be, let it be,
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.

Let It Go

When I find myself in moments of anguish
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking wise words, let it go
And in my dark moments
She stands right in front of me
Speaking wise words, let it go

Let it go, let it go
Whispering wise words, let it go

And as soon as the broken-hearted people
Those who live in the world will agree
There will be an answer, let it go
Because even if they were disunited it still remains
An opportunity they will seize
There will be an answer, let it go

Let it go, let it go, yeah
There will be an answer, let it go

And when the night is clouded by clouds
There's still a light shining on me
It will continue to shine until tomorrow, let it go
I wake up to the sound of music
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking wise words, let it go

Let it go, let it go
There will be an answer, let it go

Let it go, let it go
Whispering wise words, let it go.