Guest blogger Archives - Hey Dullblog, the Beatles fan blog

The Beatles in musical context, 1963-1965

By Nancy Carr|2019-07-18T00:29:10-07:00December 1, 2016|1963, 1964, 1965, Beach Boys, Beatles vs. Stones, Bob Dylan, Guest blogger, Other bands, The Rolling Stones|

Guest Dullblogger Justin McCann, a freelance writer, musician, and self-described “inveterate lurker” on Hey Dullblog, offers these observations on the Beatles’ musical context in 1963-65. Please give him a warm welcome. As innovative as the Beatles were, their rivals — the Stones, The Who, the Kinks, Bob Dylan et. al. — were often just as inventive and you can read about them on this website if you want to know about the greatest legends of the music industry. If other musicians hadn’t been so good, the Beatles wouldn’t have felt the need to compete with them. And if the Beatles — particularly Paul [...]

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Magical Mystery Band: The Beatles and God

By Nancy Carr|2016-02-17T10:41:20-08:00February 17, 2016|1964, Eastern religions, Guest blogger, India, rishikesh, Transcendental Meditation|

by Chris Dingman, guest Dullblogger I was born on April 3, 1964, the week The Beatles saturated the US pop charts like no act before or since, claiming the first five songs and fully fourteen percent of the top 100. But I wouldn’t hear them until some years later, when they would spark my first ideas of God. Chris Dingman -- you can read more about him and his projects at the end of this post. We tend to see Copernicus’s realization that the earth revolves around the sun instead of vice versa as the beginning of the end of [...]

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George & Ringo: The Brothers Fab

By Devin McKinney|2022-06-17T03:57:26-07:00May 12, 2015|George, George Harrison, Guest blogger, Ringo, Ringo Starr, Uncategorized|

By Michael Ray, Guest Dullblogger • Discuss the Beatles and much has been made regarding the brotherhood of its two principal players, John Lennon and Paul McCartney: a team – collaboratively and spiritually. Such a force is hard to deny. But there is another brotherhood that rarely gets mention, a true musical expression of love and respect between the remaining members of the Fab Four. After all, it was George Harrison who was the first to suggest that Richard Starkey (aka: Ringo Starr) join the group and replace the band’s original drummer, Pete Best. It was George who also took a black [...]

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The Fab Five: My Top 5 Beatles Albums

By Devin McKinney|2015-04-26T19:10:32-07:00April 26, 2015|Abbey Road, AHDN, Guest blogger, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper, The White Album|

By Jack Cornes, Guest Dullblogger • I should just add before I run through this list that the Beatles were genial from their origin to the day they disbanded. Every album they made is magical, sensual and transforming. I adore all of them. The strange thing with the Beatles is that they were and are so unique that they can’t be described; they exist within the heavens of the musical dynasty. These are my five favourite albums that make these four lads from Liverpool more than just musicians but something quite addictively beautiful. 5. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band I can [...]

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The Beatles Story: A Bold Sonic Experiment in How Terrible You Can Make a Museum

By Ben Orlin|2020-08-19T05:16:33-07:00February 18, 2015|Guest blogger, Liverpool|

Is your favorite film Magical Mystery Tour when watched with a hangover? Is your favorite song the sound of Yoko and John screaming in wordless unison? Is your favorite record the White Album… but only when both LPs are playing simultaneously over one another? Then "The Beatles Story" is the museum for you! True fact: More Liverpudlians have had a #1 record than musicians hailing from any other location. Liverpool: First Slaves, then Tobacco, then Hit Records The city of Liverpool is at once artsy and working-class. Walk a quick downtown loop, and you’ll find postmodern exhibitions, good espresso, and [...]

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“I Hope We Passed the Audition”: How The Beatles’ Encounter With Abbey Road Studios Changed the World

By Devin McKinney|2015-04-26T06:04:30-07:00April 17, 2014|1960s, Abbey Road, books, Guest blogger|

By Grant Maxwell, Guest Dullblogger Grant Maxwell has served as a professor of English at Baruch College in New York. He holds a Ph.D. from the City University of New York’s Graduate Center, and he’s an editor at Archai: The Journal of Archetypal Cosmology. He’s also a musician, having played on stages with members of The Rolling Thunder Revue, The Black Keys, and The Strokes. He lives in East Nashville, Tennessee, with his wife and son. The following is a modified excerpt from How Does It Feel?: Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the Philosophy of Rock and Roll, issued March [...]

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Merch, Mind Games, and the Serious Proximity Buzz

By Michael Gerber|2021-12-09T03:57:18-08:00March 11, 2014|anniversaries, Beatle-inspired, Beatles tributes, Guest blogger|

JAMIE BRYAN • “It’s the center of the earth,” Lennon said famously. And so inevitably Beatlemania returned to New York, bringing 60s-era good vibes not only to the cavernous convention spaces of Manhattan’s Grand Hyatt, but even to its sterile, airport-style lobby bar. Where the locals were gleefully engaging in a quaint little custom they picked up from Peter Minuit, the fleecing of the rubes. The "OB-LA-DI OB-LA-OLIVES" were $6. The chef's selection of artisan charcuterie and local cheeses ("MAXWELLS SILVER PLATTER") was $16. A buck less got you either the "MAGICAL MYSTERY HUMMUS" or the "FREE AS A BIRD WINGS". All branding [...]

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Good Ol’ Freda: True tales from the Beatles’ loyal secretary

By Michael Gerber|2022-07-25T11:41:59-07:00September 16, 2013|Apple/Inner Circle, Documentaries, Guest blogger|

Guest review by LINDA MARSHALL-SMITH • When 17-year-old Beatles fan Freda Kelly was hired as Brian Epstein’s secretary in 1962, she couldn’t have known she was in for a uniquely intimate ten-year view of Beatlemania and its aftermath. Unlike many of the Beatles’ former associates, Kelly—a self-described “private person”—has kept her stories of the band under wraps for decades. In Ryan White’s newly released documentary, also available on iTunes, she finally shares her tales. (Well, some of them.) A Beatles fan’s dream job Kelly’s firsthand observations about the Beatles and their inner circle make the film well worth watching. She tells stories [...]

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The Beatles Writings of Joshua Glenn: “Origin of the Pogo”

By Devin McKinney|2015-04-26T06:12:25-07:00July 1, 2012|comedy, Guest blogger|

The fourth in our series of guest appearances by Beatles scholar-investigator Joshua Glenn could be subtitled “or, Ringo Observed in his Natural Habitat.” Following on from ideas—or suspicions—about the secret lives behind familiar Beatles-associated faces first elaborated in “Big Mal Lives!,” Glenn uncovers the identity and unravels the agenda of the flamingo-like gentleman seen dancing sociably with, or at least in proximity to, Ringo in the nightclub scene of A Hard Day’s Night. Who but Glenn would have suspected this brief, rather happy scene was a window on the dark doings of anthropologists and punk rockers—the two most wantonly antisocial groups of [...]

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The Beatles Writings of Joshua Glenn: “I’m Only Slacking”

By Devin McKinney|2015-04-26T06:14:12-07:00May 15, 2012|comedy, Guest blogger, Help, Let It Be|

In 2008, upon publication of The Idler’s Glossary, one of its authors, Joshua Glenn, engaged in an exchange of open letters with his co-author, Mark Kingwell—the topic of which, befitting the themes of the book, was the proper distinction between idling and slacking. In Glenn’s half of the exchange, our serial contributor illustrates the matter with apt and breezy reference to the Beatles, and even draws a productive contrast with the Rolling Stones (a band whose existence, for whatever reason, has seldom been acknowledged by anyone at Hey Dullblog). Lest it be felt that this discussion is of limited relevance, consider that [...]

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