The late Mark Wirtz (1943-2020) - a German-French songwriter-producer who found his biggest successes in England - is best-remembered for A Teenage Opera, an embryonic rock opera which inspired the likes of Pete Townshend and Paul McCartney and spawned Keith West's U.K. No. 2 single "Grocer Jack," a.k.a. "Excerpt from A Teenage Opera." Yet there was much more to Wirtz's discography than that lone hit and its parent project. Cherry Red's Strawberry imprint recently boxed up five discs of
Let me take you down... The Beatles' songs were so sturdy and well-crafted that artists such as Matt Monro and Ella Fitzgerald became early adopters. But from the start, John, Paul, George, and Ringo's contemporaries had been just as likely as the older generation to mine their songbook. As the sixties continued and the Beatles ushered in the shift from pop to rock (minus the "and roll"), similarly youthful artists brought their own increasingly adventurous spins to the lads' material.