The Britins have been playing Beatles tunes in Milwaukee and all over the country for over 40 years. WTMJ’s Libby Collins sits down with them to discuss how they began playing music, the pressure that comes with paying tribute to music legends, and the impact that the Beatles have had on their lives, as well as the lives of their audience. Listen in the player above.
A partial transcript is provided below, courtesy of eCourt Reporters.
MIKE TRUTTSCHEL: Back in the old days, you’d take the turntable and keep moving the needle back and forth to this one part of the song, back and forth, back and forth. And with repetition, well, I think that sounds about right, I think I got it, I think I got it. And then 50 years later, it’s something else, listen to this. And we’re constantly hearing new things.
MIKE SHUMWAY: Constantly learning.
MIKE TRUTTSCHEL: Yeah.
LIBBY COLLINS: So, you’re not using charts, you’re doing it all by listening to the original recording?
MIKE TRUTTSCHEL: Well, I don’t read music, I always have played by ear, and I feel that it gives you a good feel for the music. Maybe I lose out a little bit on not being able to read music, but I heard that about the Beatles too, they don’t read music.
MIKE SHUMWAY: When you would look at the music that they wrote, there’s music out there, but it’s incorrect. Some of it’s in the wrong keys, the chording is incorrect, you know, they don’t even chart it correctly. So, it’s almost useless anyway. So, you have to revert back to the recordings, you know, the original recordings. And it’s gotten more sophisticated now with YouTube. We can watch people that breakdown these songs and they really have them down and they have tracks now separated where you can listen to them and you can hear a lot more stuff than we ever could back in the day when we used to take the needle and move it back to the beginning of the song or the part we were working on, you know.
