Michael Gerber • Hey Dullblog, the Beatles fan blog

The concept behind Pepper

By Michael Gerber|2026-05-13T01:06:38-07:00May 13, 2026|Uncategorized|

Reading Starostin's part one analysis of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, I realized that I've never wondered for a second about "the concept" behind that LP; it's so clear to me I'm a little puzzled when people -- John Lennon among them -- profess that there is no concept whatever. But I'm finding it difficult to write. I've spent the last two days writing paragraphs and discarding them, and this post is a final attempt to blast through, share my idea, and continue hashing it out in the comments. Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is an album designed around a [...]

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How I’d publish Tune In Vol. 2 and 3!

By Michael Gerber|2026-05-07T01:15:04-07:00May 6, 2026|books, Tune In, Uncategorized|

The Beatles liked BOOKS. I had not been following the publishing trials and travails of the world's foremost Beatle researcher, Mark Lewisohn (having plenty of publishing trials and travails of my own), so I was surprised to hear from commenter @Craig that he doesn't have a publisher for Volumes II or III of his definitive Beatles history. Volume I, Tune In, came out in 2013 to much acclaim, and so much fan interest that a truly mammoth 1728pp Extended Edition is available right now for $169.00 on Amazon.com. (It had gone out of print in the States, which caused us [...]

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Are the guitars on Pepper…different?

By Michael Gerber|2026-05-07T01:18:46-07:00May 4, 2026|1966, 1967, Sgt. Pepper|

The best part? Ringo's wearing a goddamn tie. As an unabashed Pepper-supremacist -- a surprisingly contested position these days -- I'm always trying to figure out why I like listening to that LP so much more than Revolver (which has better songs), or White (which is so much more musically varied). To me, Revolver is still the new sound in-process; and as I've said many times, White to me is the sound of the group breaking up. All I can say for sure is that, of the three, Pepper is simply the place I like to be most. This evening, [...]

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A Few Thoughts on Beatles Scholarship

By Michael Gerber|2026-05-07T01:20:05-07:00April 28, 2026|Beatle History, Uncategorized|

The Fabs at Brasenose College, Oxford, March 1964 Folks, I'm not sure this one is worth posting—I'm not satisfied with it, but sometimes I'm the last to know what will spur discussion. Enjoy.—MG As part of my freewheeling, exhaustive, and ultimately exhausting attempt to do anything other than what I am supposed to, this morning I ran across a very interesting blog post by a Beatles scholar named Serene Sargent. Coming hot on the heels of yesterday's attempt at work-avoidance, a Substack about the decay of the university and the death of the humanities, and the increasingly important role of [...]

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Eleanor Rigby But The Beatles Step On A Lego

By Michael Gerber|2026-05-07T01:21:05-07:00April 13, 2026|comedy|

Okay, it's no "Helter Skelter but rockabilly," but I laughed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWzx80TDdS0

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Did Paul “Save The Beatles”?

By Michael Gerber|2026-05-07T01:22:50-07:00April 7, 2026|1971, Allen Klein, Uncategorized|

"Hey, we're in the best position in the history of showbiz. Now watch us fuck it up." Allen Klein, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, 1969. Allen Klein has, unsurprisingly, been a frequent topic of this blog (to begin with: here, here, here). This morning I read a Great Thought claiming that Paul McCartney gets too much credit for filing his lawsuit to dissolve the partnership; far from "saving the Beatles' legacy" as is now frequently claimed, Paul was simply looking out for his own narrow interests, the commenter said, and following the advice of his in-laws, the Eastmans, who were [...]

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Will the Beatles Last?

By Michael Gerber|2026-05-07T01:24:58-07:00March 30, 2026|Beatle History, Uncategorized|

When the Beatles are 64, from LIFE Magazine in 1968. As the Boomer generation fades into eternity, what does that mean for the standing of Beatlemusic in the culture? And what does it mean for the phenomenon of The Beatles as a cultural force? Will they persist as something like Mozart or Shakespeare, or recede like "Laugh-In" or Herman's Hermits? I'm biased, of course -- but less than you might think. I'm 56, so what people are digging in one hundred years' time is really nothing to do with me. But going strictly by what has happened since 1963, I [...]

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I’d Love to Turn You On

By Michael Gerber|2026-03-26T12:47:44-07:00March 25, 2026|Drugs|

The Beatles and friend in Hamburg, May 1962 Getting to those 10,000 hours at double speed. In the course of (as the kids say) "chopping it up" in the comments, I stumbled on a topic that I'd like to (re-) address. It's one that I've talked about incessantly on this blog, but it suddenly occurred to me that after all the posts and all the comments over the years, I might never have explained why. At one point I was fascinated by the intersection of The Beatles and addiction, and wrote about it a lot here. Even though you could [...]

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Memories of Nicholas Schaffner and The Beatles Forever

By Michael Gerber|2026-03-30T15:51:17-07:00January 4, 2026|1976, books|

This edition is in a lot better condition than mine is. Like many a second-generation fan, I thrilled to Nicholas Schaffner's book The Beatles Forever. (Which can be viewed in its entirety here!) Some years ago, when my mom was cleaning out the family homestead on Forest Avenue in Oak Park, she handed me a box of Beatles stuff salvaged from my old room—LPs, posters, and books all still scented with my desperate teenaged dreams. Of my shelf-full of Beatle books, I kept only five—SHOUT!, John Lennon: One Day at a Time (since pitched), the Hunter Davies bio, Rolling Stone's The [...]

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Old Draft: Beatles Folk Memory 1970-1995

By Michael Gerber|2026-01-03T21:30:45-08:00December 8, 2025|Uncategorized|

[Folks: I found this in Drafts, re-read it, and liked it. I don't know why I didn't post it before, maybe because i didn't come to A Grand Conclusion. Anyway, enjoy.—MG] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl8btU0EYno Commenter D.N. just coined a phrase that I really love: "Beatles folk memory," which I took to mean "how the Beatles phenomenon, and the experience of being a fan of theirs, was experienced by fans." I think it's a tremendously useful concept. The folk memory of first-generation fans is easiest to track, not only because it left huge traces in the mainstream monoculture, but because it was [...]

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