Beatles ’66: The Revolutionary Year

New book: Beatles ’66: The Revolutionary Year by Steve Turner

A riveting look at the transformative year in the lives and careers of the legendary group whose groundbreaking legacy would forever change music and popular culture.

They started off as hysteria-inducing pop stars playing to audiences of screaming teenage fans and ended up as musical sages considered responsible for ushering in a new era.

The year that changed everything for the Beatles was 1966—the year of their last concert and their first album, Revolver, that was created to be listened to rather than performed. This was the year the Beatles risked their popularity by retiring from live performances, recording songs that explored alternative states of

consciousness, experimenting with avant-garde ideas, and speaking their minds on issues of politics, war, and religion. It was the year their records were burned in America after John’s explosive claim that the group was “more popular than Jesus,” the year they were hounded out of the Philippines for “snubbing” its First Lady, the year John met Yoko Ono, and the year Paul conceived the idea for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

On the fiftieth anniversary of this seminal year, music journalist and Beatles expert Steve Turner slows down the action to investigate in detail the enormous changes that took place in the Beatles’ lives and work during 1966. He looks at the historical events that had an impact on the group, the music they made that in turn profoundly affected the culture around them, and the vision that allowed

four young men from Liverpool to transform popular music and serve as pioneers for artists from Coldplay to David Bowie, Jay-Z to U2.

By talking to those close to the group and by drawing on his past interviews with key figures such as George Martin, Timothy Leary, and Ravi Shankar—and the Beatles themselves—Turner gives us the compelling, definitive account of the twelve months that contained everything the Beatles had been and anticipated everything they would still become.

Product Details

Hardcover: 448 pages

Publisher: Ecco (October 25, 2016)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0062475487

ISBN-13: 978-0062475480

Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.4 x 9 inches

Available in hardcover, paperback, Kindle and iTunes.

Link: Beatles ’66: The Revolutionary Year by Steve Turner on Amazon

Previously by the same author: A Hard Day’s Write – The Stories Behind Every Beatles Song

3 Responses

  1. George Armstrong says:

    Cover photo is from 1965 though!

  2. Blue Meanie says:

    Very strange. There is abundant enough pictures
    of the Beatles from '66!

  3. Anonymous says:

    Commenters thusfar: How about a nice cup of STFU?
    Thanks.

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