Shampoo

Shampoo were an Italian tribute/parody band from Naples, who enjoyed a short period of popularity in the early 1980s as spoofers of the Beatles. Background and career The band were originally formed in 1978 by radio DJ Giorgio Verdelli for a radio show on a Neapolitan radio station, immediately after Corrado Ferlaino, then chairman of S.S.C. Napoli, had announced a Beatles reunion to celebrate the team’s victory over Liverpool F.C. in a UEFA Cup match. It was very obviously a joke, as the band who performed on the radio were actually 'Shampoo', four local musicians who took their name from their first song, “Si ‘e llave tu” (“If you wash it”), a parody of “She Loves You” with a Neapolitan lyric about an ugly-looking girl who would improve her appearance by washing her hair regularly. The band’s arrangements, sounds and vocals were remarkably similar to the originals: indeed, unlike their contemporary British "colleagues" The Rutles, whose repertoire consisted in Beatles-sounding original songs (the four Neapolitans were not only aware but highly respectful of the Rutles, thanks to bassist Costantino Iaccarino being an early fan of Monty Python when the troupe was virtually unknown in Italy), Shampoo had an attitude more like a tribute band, in that the music was left untouched; however, the song lyrics were all rewritten in strict Neapolitan and verged on incomprehensibility for non-Neapolitans because of their abundant use of local slang expressions, which made the band sound to outsiders like they were singing in garbled English. Because of this, the “joke” was highly successful, as no less than 150,000 people tuned in to listen to the supposed “Beatles” reunion. After a handful of live shows in and around Naples, noted Italian pop arranger and conductor Vince Tempera took notice of the band and secured them a one-album deal with the Italian branch of EMI. In 1981, they recorded their first and so far only official album release, In Naples 1980/81, a multi-leveled Beatles parody. The rewritten lyrics are mainly about the suburban world of Naples and feature many colourful, ironical portraits of picturesque local characters; the only exceptions are “Si fosse 'o re” (“If I were the king”), a rewrite of “Because”, where a boy imagines himself as a fairy-tale king in a sentimental plea to his girlfriend, and “So' fesso” (“I'm stupid”), a partial parody of “No Reply", where a heartbroken lover blames himself for driving his loved one away from him.