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Rating: ‘I don't know the Beatles,
I don't even know the world:
yes, yes, I know Hiroshima,
but the rest I know very little about…
I really know very little…’
(Gianni Morandi, ‘Chiedi chi erano i Beatles’ – 1988)
History tells us that the Beatles came to Italy in '65 for a series of concerts: among the lucky cities was Genoa.
30 years later, to remember the event, there were various initiatives, including an exhibition of photos and memorabilia in a historic clothing department store in the western part of my city where I live.
Knowing that the Beatles had been in my city, especially since I loved their music thanks to a collection a classmate from elementary school had lent me (‘The Beatles, 1962-1966’ – the red one), had thrilled me, and every day, a little after the end of the first year of middle school, I would go to that exhibition in the morning and afternoon, except on Saturdays, when my parents were at home (on the other days, there was a grandmother from Calabria).
In the few small rooms of the exhibition, I would escape with my mind from reality, surrounded by the sixties atmosphere of the displayed items and by the music played on the stereo system from the album ‘Live at BBC’, along with one of my own tapes of international hits from the early sixties, including ‘Please Please Me’ and ‘She Loves You’ by them and ‘He’s So Fine’ by the Chiffons (remember the plagiarism case of George Harrison’s ‘My Sweet Lord’?), which came out with a weekly magazine (‘Panorama’).
And I would also leave a trace of my daily presence in the exhibition's guestbook, writing often.
All this ‘intrusiveness’ led, one day, a reporter from a local newspaper to ask me a few questions, but I thought it was just out of curiosity: instead, one of the shop assistants who had often seen me told me that I had ended up in the newspaper and brought me the page. In an in-depth article, a small part was dedicated to me.
Three months later, I watched with great interest a special on ‘TG1’ dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the Beatles’ concerts in Rome, and at the end of the program, there was a video with period images and the Morandi song from the quoted part onward. It struck and moved me.
This year, at a singing lesson at my evangelical church, I brought that song, and soon after I bought two books dedicated to the Beatles' concerts in Genoa, including this slightly fictionalized story about a few adults and young people from the city who awaited and experienced the two concerts in a single day at the end of June that year, within their daily lives.
A lovely narrative that those who live in Genoa, or know it well, will find highly engaging, written while stepping into the hearts of the protagonists, almost all of whom are real.
An exciting leap back 60 years to when modern music was still in the making; and if today it’s normal to see that much of the music of history has been somewhat ‘set aside’ by today’s music, it’s strange to think, at least for me, that in ’88 someone could say
‘I don't know the Beatles...’
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