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The Artist as a Dissipated Man: Fred Seaman’s “The Last Days of John Lennon”
John at Thanksgiving, 1979 Belatedly for someone as into the Beatles as I, I’ve been reading Fred Seaman’s The Last Days of John Lennon. It’s a very quick read, but not a particularly pleasant one. Seaman, John’s personal assistant for the last two or so years, depicts a rock star in his late thirties who […]
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Dullblog’s Greatest Hits
I call this one, “Prellies and Eyemakeup.” In August 2016, a whole lifetime ago, Devin, Nancy and I looked at the vast pile of writing on this site and asked each other, “Which posts still hold up? Which ones do we like best?” So we read back and back and back, and put together a […]
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Does Ringo Starr have a tattoo?
I was rather aimlessly watching this video on YouTube last night — I feel a Klaus Voormann obsession coming on, so get ready for a lot of Klaus stuff on the site — when I saw something that I had to share. Does Ringo Starr have a tattoo? Look at about 9:05 of the video. […]
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Three Cheers for the Girls School Bus
These dark days, I’ll take opportunities to laugh wherever I can get them. On a recent trip to Indianapolis I saw this bus, and immediately imagined it as on its way to the imaginary, wink-wink-pornographic girls school Wings celebrated in song back in 1977. It was released as the B side of “Mull of Kintyre” […]
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Dominic Sandbrook on the Early Seventies
Not-so-Great Britain. Today I happened across something I think Dullblog readers might like: “The Weird World of Seventies Britain,” a lecture by the Oxford historian Dominic Sandbrook. (You’ll also dig it if, like me, you’re a fan of “The Crown.”) The details Sandbrook relates—cue Paul’s “Power Cut”—are interesting and enjoyable. Spurred by our conversations about […]
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Best Post-Anthology Tracks?
I was just prowling around on the internet — as one does on a Saturday night — and discovered a Lennon demo from December 1968 called “A Case of the Blues.” It’s a neat little scrap of a song. See what you think. Maybe all of you know it already? What are your favorite demos, […]
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Ethical Reflections on John/Paul
I’m writing this because the discussion on the “Were John and Paul Lovers?” post has been niggling at me for a while now. Though it was published more than six years ago, it’s one of Hey Dullblog’s most viewed and most contentious posts. And because Michael Gerber and I read every comment as it goes […]
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What are we doing here, anyway?
They don’t even golf like you or I. I was responding to a comment regarding the podcast Another Kind of Mind, and the application of “emotional intelligence” to The Beatles, and as I wrote the water grew deep enough for me to want this to be its own post. I have long thought—since 1995 or […]
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Swinging Through The Sixties Podcast
The many faces (and bodies) of The Profumo Affair. Since everybody seemed to enjoy last week’s post on Another Kind of Mind, a podcast offering some interesting new angles on Beatles analysis, I wanted to offer up another Beatle-related podcast I’d run across recently: Swinging Through The Sixties. Though the podcast is Beatle-tilted, it also […]
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Another Kind of Mind Podcast
The gentlemen under discussion, some years prior Reader Laura pointed me to an interesting Beatles podcast called “Another Kind of Mind,” and after listening to a bit, I think you guys would love it. AKOM describes itself as “Artists, musicians, & professionals who dissect and challenge Beatles narratives with irreverent, though-provoking analysis.” I think we […]