Michael Gerber • Hey Dullblog, the Beatles fan blog

Allen Klein Playboy Interview, 1971

By Michael Gerber|2026-04-07T00:31:27-07:00January 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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The Beatles on Spotify

By Michael Gerber|2015-12-31T13:51:16-08:00December 31, 2015|Beatles on the Web|

"We make it up in volume." Finally! A band that can live on 0.006 per song! As you might have heard, the Beatles' catalog became available for streaming on December 24th, and users took to it with a will, streaming 70 million Beatles songs in the first three days. Commenter @Hologram Sam posted the following lists of the ten most -- and least -- popular Beatles tracks on Spotify. They puzzled and enchanted me, and so I decided to write the single most internetty piece in the history of Hey Dullblog. And in the spirit of the internet, my goal [...]

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Dullblog’s Top Posts of 2015

By Michael Gerber|2015-12-30T11:52:00-08:00December 30, 2015|Housekeeping|

The Fabs look very strange on this, right? George looks like Brian Jones As everybody is still busily digesting their Beatle-related gifts (how many of you got "1+"? Anything else to review?), I will confine myself to a quick check-in/roundup. I'm happy to report that 2015 was a banner year for Hey Dullblog. Traffic was up over 43% from 2014. We are reaching more Beatle people than ever before, and will nestle to a stop just under 150,000 pageviews. I am sure that much of that reader interest was due to our playful, informed, incisive-yet-respectful comments, so thank you, thank [...]

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Beatles Ashram is Now Open!

By Michael Gerber|2015-12-09T11:11:43-08:00December 9, 2015|1968, India|

By law, this photo must accompany any article regarding the Beatles in India. It's always sorta been open to the public -- if you wanted to give a local five rupees and sneak over the wall -- but now the Indian government has made the Maharishi's old compound in Rishikesh a tourist attraction. In 1968, the Fab Four wrote most of the White Album while staying at the ashram located in the Rajaji national park, besides the river Ganges. Since the Maharishi left in the 1970s it has been overtaken by forest, but on Tuesday, 35 years to the day [...]

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My Yoko Problem… and yours?

By Michael Gerber|2026-05-14T12:08:14-07:00December 5, 2015|Wives and girlfriends, Yoko Ono|

In the thread regarding Ruth's excellent review, longtime Dullpal @Sir Huddleston Fuddleston wrote this: "I guess what I’m saying is, whatever the problem, it’s Yoko’s fault. A failed 'concept artist' took the most successful popular musician in history, by a long way, and made him think his work was shit. By comparison, it’s nothing to make him hand the keys to Klein." To some degree, I agree with this. John's self-appraisal post-Yoko is so woefully off that you want to check him for a skull fracture. "Mr. Lennon, did you get hit on the head with a coconut?" But agreeing with @Sir [...]

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Allen Klein biography review by Ruth

By Michael Gerber|2015-12-03T13:04:50-08:00December 3, 2015|Reviews|

No, no, he was really a nice guy, says the authorized biography Frequent commenter and house historian Ruth has sent in her review of Allen Klein: The Man Who Bailed Out The Beatles, Made the Rolling Stones, and Transformed Rock & Roll. Written with Ruth's trademark incisiveness and interest in Beatles historiography, it is posted below -- with our deep thanks. By the way: there is much too much Beatle-related content being produced for us to keep up. I am growing mildly alarmed at the many worthy books, reissues, etc, that come and go without our making any comment. Any [...]

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About Michael Gerber