Share this Post
Local author releases book on The Beatles’ forgotten era.
In the summer of 1966, The Beatles were fed up with Beatlemania—the exhausting fame, the constant touring and the public’s lingering expectation of new pop music. So, the OG boy band began exploring different sounds with an aim to create more complex (and compelling) tunes.
This transitional period of Beatles history is often viewed as “downtime” for the band and has traditionally been overlooked. Durham author Gene Popa recognized the gap in The Beatles story and set out to fill it with the release of his new book, The Colour of Your Dreams, which examines the period between the end of their tour in 1966 and the summer 1967 release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Looking back on the era, many don’t realize Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’s success wasn’t inevitable, Popa emphasizes. The tremendous shift in the music—and personal lives—of The Beatles were taunted as the end to their career, rather than the beginning of a new era of ambitious music and the continued release of chart-topping tracks.
“I want to go back and find these little moments that aren’t counted,” notes Popa. The Beatles fanatic scoured newspapers, magazines and letters to piece together the era history had failed to notice.
The band “approached their music with new creativity,” says the author. “They didn’t go into the studio with songs written, they just said, ‘Let’s see what develops.’” And what developed was one of the most seminal albums of all time.
Now in the works for nearly three decades, Popa began his tireless research on The Colour of Your Dreams in 1996. “I would come back to it from time to time, but it seemed too daunting to me,” he reminisced. “It wasn’t until I had written a couple of other books that I felt I was ready to tackle this one. … Anyone who is a fan of The Beatles would find this interesting.” And thanks to this overlooked era, a lot of people still are. bearmanormedia.com
courtesy of Gene Popa
Related Articles
Share this Post