Posts From Colin Fleming

First Banger: The Shredding Delight of the Beatles’ ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’

This is the first Beatles guitar solo that shreds, and it’s hard to fathom/estimate how many kids decided they wanted to be guitar heroes upon hearing Harrison’s thrilling break.

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The Beatles’ First American Show: The Gig They Dreamed Of

After playing ‘The Ed Sullivan Show,’ the Beatles performed their first real U.S. gig in Washington., D.C.

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The Beatles’ Decca Audition: An Invaluable Lesson in Failure

Try to please everyone, and you please no one, including yourself. For the Beatles, January 1, 1962, was the day that the lesson was learned.

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Liverpool Get-Together: The Most Touching Show The Beatles Ever Gave

This was like having friends over for a boozy party, minus the booze, and in a theater instead of a parlor.

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The Blended Shane MacGowan: On the Death and Life of a Genius

The music of MacGowan and the Pogues is some of the most urgent you’ll ever experience. That immediacy is stunning.

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‘Get Back’: The Beatles’ Album That Was, Wasn’t And Is

When you listen to the LP as a cohesive experience, it feels like a genuine concept album—these guys being what they were.

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10 Career-Spanning (and Unique) Beatles Guitar Solos

They are rarely hailed as a band known for their guitar solos. But sorting out which solos stand apart from the rest is a pleasing task

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Gotta Bludgeon: The Delightfully Punishing, Hell-for-Leather Second Take of The Beatles’ ‘Helter Skelter’

Close your eyes and it’s not hard to picture George Martin in the control booth, thinking, “What on earth are we doing tonight?”

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The Important Half: John Lennon, ‘Julia’ and Singing to Reach

“The song, inspired by John’s late mother, “is brave, because in the delivery we hear a singer willing to be transported.”

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‘The Great Lost Kinks Album’: Revisiting an Overlooked 1973 Delight

Although compiled to satisfy a contractual obligation, the collection of stray tracks is “a corner of the room worth spending some time in.”

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