All your life
Paul McCartney performs a rare version of Blackbird in this video from 1968. http://youtu.be/3uqGCqMYaHQ
I want to hold your hand…
...just maybe not when you're thirty-five. [Update February 2015: Here's a mini-doc on the "bigger than Jesus" controversy:] http://youtu.be/ETFKXMdjbkU
Albert Goldman and Hunter Davies on Beatles Biographies
"What's the creepiest photo you have?... Yeah, that one." This is a two-part news program from 1989, where the author of the muckraking "The Lives of John Lennon" (just released at that time) debates Hunter Davies, the author of "The Beatles" authorized biography from 1968. Davies is very charming, and makes some very good points about Goldman's tendency to veer off into—well, the nicest thing to call it is "creative writing." I think that's exactly how any sensible person should read it; at points Goldman stops writing about the real John Lennon, whoever he was, and begins crafting a character [...]
More on the breakup…
So there, John. A great comment from Nancy on the breakup of the Beatles, in the comment thread... Here's another thought, prompted by your post and the responses to it: both John and Paul reacted to Brian Epstein's death in ways predicted by their reactions to their respective mothers' deaths. John learned from his whole childhood that he couldn't really trust anyone (from his p.o.v., both his parents abandoned him), and that if you loved someone, he or she would vanish or change beyond recognition (his Uncle George, his mother, Stu Sutcliffe, and from his perspective, Cynthia). Paul learned from his [...]
A Momentary Lapse of Reason
The happy newlywed? Shirley Tilloch over at Beatles Til I Die has written a very interesting post originally inspired by one over here at Dullblog. This post of mine began as a lengthy comment to her post...until I got to the point where it was too long and went off in too many directions. So apologies in advance if what I'm about to say is a bit (or a lot) scattered. I think it's sufficiently original to be worth saying anyway. Briefly—and Shirley, please correct me in the comments if I mischaracterize you—Shirley writes that the presence of a 1969 [...]
Attention Millionaires: Beatles for Sale! (including John and Yoko’s Sexual History)
One of the more intriguing items at auction. Roger over at WogBlog has an excellent head's-up on a massive collection of Beatle personal items/memorabilia from Beatle author Geoffrey Giuliano and one-time Beatle designers The Fool. (A lot of this stuff—which is really mind-blowing—seems to have originated with Derek Taylor, or directly from George and John.) I don't know what I think about memorabilia. On the one hand, I definitely feel the attraction of it—what Beatles fan wouldn't want a letter from George to the other Beatles asking them not to break up the group? On the other hand, memorabilia also [...]
Hey Jude Times Square
http://vimeo.com/9974656 Spontaneous "Hey Jude" in Times Square subway station, 3/6/10Hey Jude Times Square Subway Station from 39forks on Vimeo.
The hits just keep on coming…
http://www.youtube.com/v/4Ph4rZU0Ns4&h What's with the weird autotuning/dubbing? It makes him sound like that guy from The Beatles cartoon.I've written some thoughts on this at my blog, mikegerber.com. (Someday, I'll investigate cross-posting.) [Sorry, folks: in 2012, mikegerber.com was hacked by Azerbaijanis, if you can believe it. I couldn't fix it, so I put up a generic landing page. Unfortunately at present I can't link to the old posts. Revisiting this John Lennon Citroen commercial five years later, I think we can assume the mikegerber.com post was probably some typical MG whinging about not selling John Lennon to the highest bidder. And frankly? With John [...]
Yoko in Cyberspace
Yoko Ono as (an amazingly cute) child. Yoko Ono's on Twitter, how awesome is that? To celebrate this I tweeted (mgerber937) the following: "So I went to her Twitter feed, and it said, '...' Nothing else, just '...' and I thought, 'Wow, that could be anything. Could be 'yes,' 'no', 'piss off', whatever you wanted it to be. It reflects your own internal monologue--you're Twittering yourself. And that's really quite brilliant, because that's what cyberspace is all about." (In celebration of Yoko in cyberspace, I'm riffing on various breathless run-on Lennon interview-quotes about meeting Yoko at the Indica: This was near [...]