Every day, a personality invites itself into the world of Élodie Suigo. Friday December 8, 2023: Dutch cover band The Analogues. Beatles fans are in France for 5 concert dates.
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Felix Maginn and Diederik Nomden are members of the group The Analogues which is what we call a Dutch cover band or tribute band formed in 2014. Its particularity is that it only plays songs from the Beatles repertoire on stage, never performed before. on the scene. That is to say that these titles were only recorded in the studio, and after the end of their tour on August 29, 1966 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, in the last five years of the Beatles’ existence. The members don’t pretend to be Beatles, but they have the same microphones and instruments that the group used at the time.
They will be in concert in France on December 12 and 13 at the Salle Pleyel in Paris, on the 15th in Lyon, on the 17th in Bordeaux and on December 18 in Nantes.
franceinfo: How did you discover the Beatles?
Diederik Nomden: I was ten years old when I met them and I have always had them in my life.
Felix Maginn: Me too, around ten years old and have always been a huge Beatles fan.
It means that music has always attracted you. Is that the starting point or is it primarily the instruments and playing in a band?
Felix Maginn: It’s the Beatles first and foremost. We love music and then we look for inspiration. What are they wearing ? What kind of music do they play? We continually draw inspiration from it.
Diederik Nomden: It’s the same ! We hear the Beatles on the radio that parents listen to. So, we start playing on the piano, on the guitar and we realize that we know all these songs and these sounds. Afterwards, it becomes an obsession to play, and to play exactly as they played it.
You really went looking for everything that created the Beatles sound and that’s first and foremost what characterizes The Analogues, like John Lennon who was a fan of looking for instruments that existed nowhere else.
Felix Maginn: It’s very important that when we talk about the music of the Beatles, we play their music from 1966 all the way through. Their songs were very varied in style, with an orchestra, with brass. As for the band itself, it’s not that hard to know what they were using because it was all written down. We know exactly the type of instrument that Paul McCartney and John Lennon used.
“When you start listening to the music of the Beatles, there are sounds that are difficult to discern and that’s what takes the longest to rediscover.”
Felix Maginn, from The Analoguesat franceinfo
Diederik Nomden: You said that John Lennon was always looking for new sounds. This was the case for everyone. That’s what they did in the Abbey Road studios, they just opened every door and used every instrument they could find. And we have exactly the same instruments.
Felix Maginn: For example in Mamoaka, there is just the sound of a bell. A bell that rings continuously and we had to find exactly the same bell that reproduced exactly the same sound. We had to carry out tests on several bells to find the right one.
How do you explain that after so many years, the Beatles are still up to date and at the heart of music?
Felix Maginn: I think the 1960s are a very important period for pop music, especially if you like guitar. We have compositional geniuses, avant-garde people. We saw it in the recordings.
“As a child, I remember hearing Beatles songs, there was an emotion that never left you.”
Felix Maginn, from The Analoguesat franceinfo
We remember exactly when we bought the records and how we felt when we listened to them. The audience feels exactly the same when we play them. Even if we play them often, it’s always the same feeling, it’s always the same emotion.
How can we explain what they brought to music?
Felix Maginn: I think the Beatles were very important to music. For those who played guitar, their reference was the Beatles. They created standards. The Beatles left a great legacy in the music industry. They are modern classics like Mozart, like Beethoven. We will always listen to the Beatles.
You will be in France on December 12 and 13 at the Salle Pleyel. The 15th in Lyon, the 17th in Bordeaux and the 18th in Nantes. Is it important for you to play in France?
Diederik Nomden: We like to play in all countries. We can go all over the world with the Beatles. In France, people love them so much that they give us this energy, this incredible joy when we are on stage.