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As a performing group, the Beatles began by playing old rock favorites, for dancing, to tough audiences in Liverpool and Hamburg. When they began writing seriously, they discovered that they couldn't compose in the early American rock tradition.

Jon Landau

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Jon Landau
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: May 14
Composer
Journalist
Music Critic
Record Producer
Talent Manager
the United States of America
Writing
Rocks
Discovered
Early
Performing
Tough
Seriously
Hamburg
Couldn
Began
Favorites
Groups
Dancing
Compose
Playing
Group
Liverpool
Audience
Tradition
Beatles
American
Rock
Audiences

More quotes by Jon Landau

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The Rolling Stones are constantly changing, but beneath the changes they remain the most formal of rock bands. Their successive releases have been continuous extensions of their approach, not radical redefinitions, as has so often been the case with the Beatles.
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The Rolling Stones have been the best of all possible worlds: they have the lack of pretension and sentimentality associated with the blues, the rawness and toughness of hard rock, and the depth which always makes you feel that they are in the midst of saying something. They have never impressed me as being kitsch.
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Joni Mitchell seems destined to remain in a state of permanent dissatisfaction - always knowing what she would like to do, always more depressed when it's done.
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'Sing It Again Rod' touches all the solo bases since Stewart's departure from the Jeff Beck Band, wherein he cut his teeth on American audiences for $75 a week plus expenses, and wisely ignores his generally inferior work with the Faces.
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Bob Dylan was the source of pop music's unpredictability in the Sixties. Never as big a record-seller as commonly imagined, his importance was first aesthetic and social, and then as an influence.
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Everyone eventually winds up writing about themselves - the problem is finding the best way to go about it. To write about oneself literally, in the first person, presumes a more interesting personal life and philosophy than most rock lyricists possess. John Lennon was good for one great album based on musical direct address, 'Plastic Ono Band.
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To her audience, Janis Joplin has remained a symbol, artifact and reminder of late Sixties youth culture. Her popularity never derived from her musical ability, but from her capacity to link her fantasies of freedom and immortality with ours.
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What makes the Stones' arrogance so divine is that we all believe that long ago and far away they weren't rich and famous but poor and struggling, just like us.
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Since her landmark 'Tapestry,' Carole King has both oversimplified and over elaborated that masterful album's style until her music has become something more overtly but less effectively personal.
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The Beatles never sounded intimidated by their idols. They never interpreted old rock they simply played it as well and as joyfully as they knew how. On 'Rock 'n' Roll,' John Lennon does nothing but interpret old rock.
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On first listening, Joni Mitchell's 'Court And Spark,' the first truly great pop album of 1974, sounds surprisingly light by the third or fourth listening, it reveals its underlying tensions.
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The Rolling Stones are violence. Their music penetrates the raw nerve endings of their listeners and finds its way into the groove marked 'release of frustration.'
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There is a 'patrician arrogance' to James Taylor that accounts in part for his popularity while it at the same time explains the critical resistance to his work.
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In the end, the sign of Aretha Franklin's artistry is that she always leaves her mark - first, on the music, then on us.
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I saw my rock'n'roll past flash before my eyes. And I saw something else: I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen. And on a night when I needed to feel young, he made me feel like I was hearing music for the very first time.
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I saw rock n' roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen.
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When the Beatles cut old rock n' roll, they were recording music still in their performing repertoire, and besides, they never thought of the music as old.
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Carole King's second album, 'Tapestry,' has fulfilled the promise of her first and confirmed the fact that she is one of the most creative figures in all of pop music. It is an album of surpassing personal-intimacy and musical accomplishment and a work infused with a sense of artistic purpose. It is also easy to listen to and easy to enjoy.
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It is by now beyond question that Elton John is a competent and classy entertainer. Few people who have achieved his popularity have succeeded in maintaining his standards for performance and professionalism.
Jon Landau
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It didn't matter that Charlie Chaplin may not have been a great director or a great anything else. He made great movies.
Jon Landau