Michael Gerber • Hey Dullblog, the Beatles fan blog

Lies, Damned Lies and Dullblog

By Michael Gerber|2016-01-30T13:20:39-08:00January 30, 2016|Housekeeping|

Story, nothing -- John should've sued over the PICTURE A side-question from the indefatigable @Rob on whether or not Paul McCartney actually was pissed off by Hunter Davies printing this interview in his revised edition of his book The Beatles, sent me off on a desultory Google search to determine the truth. After two minutes I could not, and I don't have more time to investigate this fully. Everybody, please feel free to fire up your own brains/Googling machines. When it was mentioned in a comment thread; seeing that it was a private phone call taken down after the fact, [...]

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Dirk Voetberg

By Michael Gerber|2016-01-30T11:50:02-08:00January 30, 2016|comedy|

Great-looking, but when it rains, they're SH*T (image links to a neat merch site) From my very funny friend Dirk Voetberg, on Facebook: "With the almost-death of printed media and the ubiquity of Uber, is it any wonder that newspaper taxis are now practically nonexistent?" Go friend him. He will make you laugh.

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Faul McCartney expert wanted

By Michael Gerber|2016-01-30T10:26:45-08:00January 29, 2016|1969, Each One Teach One|

"We Demand Justice" This morning, I received the following email: Hello, I'm Tatiana. I'm doing a project.. my class got to pick from 41 different topics and I chose one about "Faul McCartney." I was wondering if you had any information/ clues about this topic? If so could you email me back ASAP? Thank you very much! Who says doing a Beatles blog is all arguments about heroin and Yoko? I sent Tatiana to the Wikipedia for "Paul Is Dead." Is there anything more to the contemporary theory? How else can we help this youth? Besides reassuring her that Paul [...]

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Lester Bangs on the Beatles

By Michael Gerber|2016-02-25T11:13:26-08:00January 28, 2016|critics, Lester Bangs|

"Uncool" is just another type of cool, Lester. Oliver Hall over at the amazing website Dangerous Minds surfaced this contentious clip by ur-rock nerd Lester Bangs dismissing Beatles nostalgia as "sick" and "a rip-off," a mind-killing corporate shill whose ultimate victims were "the consumer" and (gulp) "John Lennon." This explosion of insight comes from a TV series called "FM-TV," which did a segment on Beatles nostalgia. The entire annoying segment is below. Right up front I'm going to cop to taking this personally, being one of those second-generation fans that, in Lester's eyes, should've lined up to see -- I [...]

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Paul and Hunter Davies, 1981

By Michael Gerber|2016-01-26T13:28:02-08:00January 26, 2016|biography|

Hunter Davies in 1980 In the Allen Klein thread, @Ruth mentioned an interview Beatle biographer Hunter Davies conducted in 1981 with Paul McCartney, in which Paul expressed some more caustic feelings about John, rather than his usual "butter-doesn't-melt-in-my-mouth" persona. Though things apparently improved between Paul and Hunter Davies, McCartney was apparently pretty angry that the author chose to publish it in a revised version of his 1968 biography. I found it on the internet and have pasted it below. (H/T Abbeyrd's Beatles Page; their store is here, if you buy something they get a few shekels.) "Not long after John's [...]

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Allen Klein Playboy Interview, 1971

By Michael Gerber|2016-01-24T15:39:21-08:00January 24, 2016|Allen Klein|

"Scuse us, folks. It's the 70s." Ladies and gents, I have a treat. It seems the proprietor/tress of the wonderful Beatles tumblr Amoralto was reading our comment thread, and shot me a link to the entire scan of the Allen Klein Playboy interview. This link will take you to a site where you can download it. (A natural word of caution: Of course download at your own risk, etc etc. I have not had a chance to download it myself.) Thanks Amoralto! Million h/ts in your general direction.

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Allen Klein

By Michael Gerber|2016-01-21T11:19:24-08:00January 20, 2016|Allen Klein|

Commenter @ChelseaQW sent in this interesting tidbit this morning, which I just had to share. It's from Allen Klein's November 1971 interview in Playboy magazine: VETTER: You make it sound as if they [John and Paul] were never really close. KLEIN: I can only tell you what John said when I asked him who he would call among the Beatles if he was in trouble—you know, if he had a real problem. He said he’d call George. That surprised me. Then I asked him if he’d ever been really close with Paul and he said no. Not that he didn’t love him; [...]

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The Beatles and Class open thread

By Michael Gerber|2016-01-15T12:21:27-08:00January 15, 2016|British culture/politics|

Saturday Evening Post, August 15, 1964. Beatles as City gents; two British stereotypes for the price of one! Over the past several months there's been a topic in the wind here on Dullblog — no, not just Beatle-boinking -- but the impact of class on the Beatles story. We've talked about it might've shaped their relationships with each other (particularly John being, or considering himself, just a little bit posher than the other three). And we've noted how it is almost never mentioned, particularly by American authors. But given their time and place, class was as much a part of [...]

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Bowie and The Beatles

By Michael Gerber|2016-01-11T18:36:21-08:00January 11, 2016|Obituaries|

Love you, too, Dave. Impossible, folks, to let a full Earth's rotation pass without a post on the late, great David Bowie. Bowie has always seemed to me to be a performer whose rise to fame would've been impossible without the Beatles coming first, preparing the way. The seven years of Fabdom were essential in priming the audience for what Bowie was and wanted to be, and where he would lead them. As Keith Richards said about the Stones, there'd be no Bowie without the Beatles. And I don't think it's a coincidence that Bowie blew up after it was [...]

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Why We Still Love The Beatles?

By Michael Gerber|2016-01-09T18:15:34-08:00January 8, 2016|Beatles on the Web|

"You love us because you are anxious." The New Yorker's Adam Gopnik has a theory, and apparently it's something like, "modern life makes people anxious, and in their anxiety they cling to certain things, and discard other things." Which is not really an answer -- why the Beatles and not, say, Queen? -- but the real reason makes for bad copy. The real reason is a stew of the following: some art is simply better than other art; some artforms age better than others; some art is destroyed by changes in consumption patterns or technology; some eras are more iconic [...]

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About Michael Gerber