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How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin: The Untold Story of a Noisy Revolution

How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin: The Untold Story of a Noisy Revolution

by Leslie Woodhead (Author)

  • Used

    Paperback 2013

    $3.29
Synopsis

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.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
 Pages: 296
 Edition: UK ed.
 Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 25 Apr 2013
ISBN 10: 1408840421
ISBN 13: 9781408840429
Book Overview: A fascinating examination of the enduring popularity of the Beatles in the former Soviet Union by a writer who was there from the beginning, including never-seen-before photographs

Media Reviews
How the Beatles really did come and keep their comrades warm ... a fascinating lost chapter in their history * Philip Norman *
Forget the triumph of market capitalism. According to Woodhead, it was the subversive power of art and cultural connection that stoked the fires of freedom and popular revolution, which ultimately brought down the Iron Curtain. A deliciously appealing premise! * Helena Kennedy QC *
An amazing account of how the Beatles lit the red touch paper of change in Russia: an intriguing and previously unexplored perspective from the man who filmed it all happening back in the USSR * Jon Snow *
Leslie Woodhead has given us a priceless addition to Beatle literature - and a beautifully observed and witty insight into the cultural underbelly of the Soviet Union * Paul Greengrass *
Could a few three minute songs really threaten a superpower? Suddenly the claims of Woodhead's Beatlemaniacs - the Russians for whom Lennon trumped Lenin - don't seem quite so absurd after all. **** * Mail on Sunday *
Effervescent ... This tells the remarkable story of precisely how and why Woodhead explains, the Beatles came to mean more, and were more important, to that generation of Soviet youth that they were here, or in America - for several reasons * Observer *
Fab Four zealotry doesn't get much more inspiring than this account of what various Soviet citizens would risk to listen to their favorite band ... Gob-smacking * Rolling Stone *
Did the Fab Four bring down the Soviet Empire single-handed? It's a wonderful thought ... You'll read the book with a smile on your face, and a song - possibly written by Lennon and McCartney - in your heart * Daily Mail *
Hurrah for Leslie Woodhead for confirming that the Beatles won the Cold War, well, sort of... * Hunter Davies *
Offers a fascinating confirmation that it was pop culture, rather than political culture, that really brought down communism * Music Books of the Year, Independent *
Author Bio
Leslie Woodhead, OBE is one of Britain's most distinguished documentary filmmakers. His films have won many international awards, including recognition by the Emmy and Peabodys in America, and by BAFTA, and the Royal Television Society in the UK. He is the author of two books, My Life as a Spy and A Box Full of Spirits. He lives in Cheshire, England.