Michael Gerber • Hey Dullblog, the Beatles fan blog

ELO is back

By Michael Gerber|2015-11-27T22:35:54-08:00November 27, 2015|Beatle-inspired|

Since we're talking about Jeff Lynne, I wanted to pause for a moment and take Dullblog's temperature on Electric Light Orchestra. Because ELO is back with their first album in 14 years, and I just listened to this catchy little tune. https://youtu.be/uy0oWuhTzh8 Commercially -- for the moment -- ELO is back, but for a lot of Beatles fans, they've never left. Their greatest hits spend a lot of time on my iTunes playlist, for sure. The overlaps between Jeff Lynne and his four Liverpudlian heroes are well known, and too numerous to list here. But before they snuggled up together in the [...]

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Free As A Bird: Pro or Con?

By Michael Gerber|2015-11-26T12:04:24-08:00November 26, 2015|Anthology|

The act you haven't known... I awoke this morning to begin my American Thanksgiving, and the first song I heard on KCRW was "Free As A Bird." (Droll, young hip DJ, very droll.) FAAB is that rarest of B's: a Beatles song you don't hear very often. And rightly so? I remember being delighted by "Free As A Bird" when it emerged in 1995 -- not due to the song itself which, then and now, sounds a bit spindly to me, and seems to emphasize the loss of Lennon, rather than celebrate the group. But I loved how it brought [...]

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Beatlebone review by Karen

By Michael Gerber|2016-02-28T17:05:18-08:00November 17, 2015|Beatles fiction, Reviews|

One of the few perks of Hey Dullblog (in addition to being able to converse with all of you, which is pleasure enough) is receiving the occasional Beatle-related item in the mail. Earlier in the fall, a nice man at Doubleday reached out and asked if we'd review the Irish novelist Kevin Barry's Beatlebone, a fantasy starring a late-Seventies John Lennon. Of course we said yes, first because we love all things Beatle here, and second because I personally know how difficult it is to nudge any novel's sales into the high two figures. The written word? We're all for it, here [...]

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Beatles Halloween Costumes? Sure there are

By Michael Gerber|2015-11-26T12:06:20-08:00October 31, 2015|Beatle-inspired|

Mr Lennon, before he made my candy bag all sticky Just a quick post before I go out trick or treating -- okay, okay, I'm not quite that immature, my bank account to the contrary. I am going simply as moral support. But I do plan on plucking some winners out of the obscene haul my young friend Henry is poised to extract. Nice neighborhoods around here. Good candy. And Halloween gets a pass from the usual food Fascism practiced by so many Cali liberals -- I think it's the "gay Christmas" connection. Tonight, all the Snickers you can eat; [...]

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Beatles Drum Chronology

By Michael Gerber|2015-11-26T12:08:40-08:00October 28, 2015|Beatles tributes|

A candidate we can believe in A friend (thank you Joey Green!) forwarded this amazing film of Australian Kye Smith going through the drum parts of the Beatles' catalogue in one wonderful five-minute spurt. ("Control yourself, you'll spurt.") Bonus points to Kye for putting "Strawberry Fields" and "Penny Lane" before the Sgt. Pepper tracks in his Beatles drum chronology; demerits for not ending with the drum solo from "The End." This video was originally surfaced by Mark Fraudenfelder at BoingBoing.net, and it only took three or four comments for some guy (and you KNOW it was a guy) to dis [...]

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Mick Jagger as Alex? The Beatles said yes

By Michael Gerber|2015-10-22T09:57:35-07:00October 21, 2015|1968, Movies, Rolling Stone, The Rolling Stones|

"Go for it, Mick" Mere days after revealing that John Lennon was (theoretically) into dudes, Auntie NME has revealed that all four Beatles signed a petition trying to get Mick Jagger the lead in "A Clockwork Orange." Picture this: it's February 1968. You're probably high. Mick as Alex; The Stones as his droogs; music by The Beatles; screenplay by Terry Southern... this movie would've been either the greatest thing ever, or totally unwatchable. Without a firm hand to guide him (Stanley Kubrick) Terry Southern tended to write stuff like The Magic Christian, films much less fun than the parties surrounding [...]

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And now a word from our sponsor…

By Michael Gerber|2015-10-19T14:49:06-07:00October 19, 2015|comedy|

The big, beautiful beast that is the rest of my life. Hey Dullblog wouldn't be what it is today without my dayjob, The American Bystander. For the past several years, I've been working with a team to create the next great print humor magazine. Issue #1, a big and beautiful softcover book, is finally done -- or it would be, if you guys would stop distracting me! ("Were John and Paul Lovers?" I still have no idea, but I predict the comments will hit 250.) Both John and George were involved with projects like this; John hung around National Lampoon [...]

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Hello Goodbye: The first crack?

By Michael Gerber|2015-10-17T14:29:38-07:00October 17, 2015|1967|

Linda S. got in touch with the ol' Dullblog this morning with a thought too interesting not to share. "I was startled the first time I viewed the video piece for "Hello Goodbye," Linda wrote. "John seemed strangely subdued. I wasn't sure what I was sensing, only that it made me feel very uneasy. Still does. There is the coda, of course, the jokey dancing, where John seems more himself. Was it all in my head? Has anyone else ever been given pause by that video?" Actually, I've felt the same thing, but always assumed it was caused by John's many disparaging [...]

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Were John and Paul Lovers?

By Michael Gerber|2022-07-25T11:36:56-07:00October 14, 2015|John and Paul|

Two heads are better than one, 1965. There's a topic simmering in a few comment threads at once, and so I thought I'd surface the topic as a post. Basically, it's the old question of John's attraction to Paul, and whether it was sexual in nature; and furthermore, whether the friendship of these two men -- undeniably close in every other way between 1957-68 -- ever became sexual in nature as well. (This just in, courtesy of commenter @Karen: according to a new interview with Yoko Ono, John "had a desire to have sex with men." If this is true, [...]

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The Beatles and Drugs: the best books?

By Michael Gerber|2016-03-08T09:58:24-08:00October 12, 2015|biography, books|

Yes, this is a bong. I don't even smoke and I want one. Folks, someone in the Beatle fan community told me recently that he's writing a book about the Beatles and drugs. It's a fascinating, underconsidered topic -- well, underconsidered by all but right-wing nutjobs, more about that later. Any weary perusal of our comments will attest that it's one I have a lot of interest in, and opinions about. (This post and thread is but one of many.) This fellow asked me a question about John's drug use in the 1979-80 period, and I immediately thought of several [...]

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About Michael Gerber