Michael Gerber • Hey Dullblog, the Beatles fan blog

Who’s buying the Abbey Road Anniversary Edition?

By Michael Gerber|2019-08-24T23:03:07-07:00August 24, 2019|Uncategorized|

https://youtu.be/GQCfZ4uAAuE I genuinely love Abbey Road—for what it is, and for the role it plays in the Beatles' story, too. I agree with Michael Bleicher's recent post: of all The Beatles' work it is the least sonically dated. More than that, it's always somewhat refreshing to listen to. To my ear, it mapped out a solid future for the group, should they have cared to grasp it (and Allen Klein's machinations not gotten in the way). "Come Together" is a thoroughly Lennon song—no one else could've written or sung that; ditto McCartney's "Oh Darling" or "The End"; or "Something" or "Here Comes [...]

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But Paul Is My Favorite Beatle

By Michael Gerber|2019-08-19T13:30:49-07:00August 19, 2019|Paul McCartney|

As I've written, John Lennon was my favorite Beatle growing up—for all the reasons we love John: his intelligence and wit, his directness, his unique gifts with words and music, his sense of larger purpose in the world and ability to inspire. Plus, I felt that as a young creative person in the middle of nowhere trying to make a black-and-white life turn into glorious Technicolor, John Lennon had specific things to teach me. Plus, his difficult beginnings were similar in some ways to my own, and so we shared that fierce desperation to make it, no matter what. Happy people don't [...]

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Peter Fonda 1939-2019

By Michael Gerber|2019-08-18T12:56:32-07:00August 18, 2019|Uncategorized|

Actor and acclaimed Beatle tangent ("At a party at the Playboy Mansion in 1965, Lennon overheard...") Peter Fonda died this week at age 79. As I said in this earlier post, I met him at a party in 2009, and we talked Fabs. He was tall and gracious and looked just like, well, Peter Fonda. George was his favorite Beatle, but the song he inspired was John's. Dullblogger Devin wrote an acclaimed biography of Peter's dad Henry (link goes to Amazon), so maybe he has something interesting to share. I'll reach out. Meanwhile, my verdict: Good guy. Good song. Good life. https://youtu.be/8b-9DNkWw5g

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John Was My Favorite Beatle

By Michael Gerber|2019-08-18T14:57:12-07:00August 17, 2019|Uncategorized|

Everybody's a baby. Commenter @Justin wrote this morning about John Lennon's lousy reputation among younger Beatle fans, and the concomitant rise in esteem that Paul McCartney has enjoyed. This has joggled some thoughts about my own fandom that perhaps are worth sharing. I haven't given this post the obsessive working over that I sometimes mete out to my posts on Dullblog, and that's on purpose; I'm writing "off the top of my brain," trusting that this will add something that too much analysis might take away. When I was growing up, John was my favorite Beatle, and it wasn't close. I liked [...]

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A John and Yoko movie?

By Michael Gerber|2019-08-15T13:28:20-07:00August 15, 2019|Uncategorized|

Commenter @Hologram Sam found this item on Deadline from last October, and we've been talking about it a little on the Jann Wenner thread, so I thought it was worthy of its own post. Apparently the project teams the director of Dallas Buyers Club, Jean-Marc Vallée, with the screenwriter behind Bohemian Rhapsody. I don't envy them; like the failed Broadway musical, any authorized John and Yoko movie is going to be fighting itself—Yoko will insist that only a certain story will be put forth, but that story (in addition to being oft-told) isn't actually that interesting. John and Yoko certainly felt their [...]

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Thinking of Linking

By Michael Gerber|2019-08-07T01:31:02-07:00August 7, 2019|Housekeeping|

After writing this post on how to defray some of the costs of running Dullblog (keep lobbing over your preferences in the comments!), I've started very tentatively adding Amazon Affiliate links to songs, LPs, and movies. I mean, we all probably have every Beatles song and movie in several permutations, but... [Another way I could do this is have every post sport a little kicker at the end, something like "Media mentioned in this post." The benefit of this is that it doesn't distract the reader in the middle of the text. Better? Worse?] I'm also occasionally linking to older Dullblog posts; [...]

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Supporting Dullblog.

By Michael Gerber|2019-08-05T17:33:41-07:00August 5, 2019|Housekeeping|

When the site came back to life recently, several readers mentioned that they've really enjoyed it over the years, and—being the top-notch humans Dullblog readers are—asked for ways they could help support its continuation. This is greatly appreciated. Hosting and such costs about $500 annually, and so over the years, I've dropped over five grand, and Nancy has paid in, too. (Devin graciously offered a while back, but I told him "don't worry about it" because I was feeling flush. I am...not brilliant.) If only our ISP took Beatlebux. Actually, that wasn't total stupidity on my part. Dullblog is fun for me [...]

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How “Lost” Was My Weekend?

By Michael Gerber|2019-08-07T00:42:48-07:00July 30, 2019|1974|

Lennon and friends, up to no good. Especially that woman up front there, she seems like TROUBLE. :-) Frequent commenter @Hologram Sam provided this comment in one of our earlier threads. I commented, but as is usual these days had enough to say that I'm making a post out of it. Pop over and read it. I'll wait. I feel obliged to point out that May Pang's alleged statement tracks neatly with The Lives of John Lennon: John and Yoko as more a business entity than a couple, fulfilling their sexual/emotional needs elsewhere; May and Julian written out of the history; and [...]

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All Our Troubles Seemed So Far Away…

By Michael Gerber|2019-08-07T00:52:36-07:00July 24, 2019|Movies|

I saw Yesterday a month ago, one day after it premiered, and liked it. But since I haven’t commented on it until Nancy’s post, clearly the movie didn't spark much of a reaction in me. I think that's because Boyle et al. made the simplest version they could possibly make…which, to me at least, deftly avoided all the most interesting parts of the premise. Because of the people they were, when they happened, and what they accomplished in such a short time, a Beatles-less world would be orders of magnitude different from our own. Something on the order of a world without [...]

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Beatles as Women

By Michael Gerber|2019-07-07T13:05:25-07:00July 7, 2019|Uncategorized|

I think I went to high school with Ringolina. Immediately after running across this delightful bit of Photoshoppery, I knew I had to post the following "Shakespeare's Sister" question: Would the Beatles happen today, if four women came together in a band that great? How would it happen? What would it look like? We know it wouldn't have happened in 1957. But I wonder if we've made enough progress by 2019. Set aside if you like details like the lamentable state of the music business today, or how their time in the Reeperbahn would've worked. What say you?

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About Michael Gerber