About Karen Hooper

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So far Karen Hooper has created 18 blog entries.

Philip Norman’s “letter” to Paul

By |2016-05-03T16:18:48-07:00May 2, 2016|books|

Apparently written around the time Paul McCartney’s marriage to Heather Mills collapsed, an alleged (and uncharacteristic) altercation between McCartney and his public prompted Philip Norman to editorialize in an article he wrote for the Daily Mail entitled What’s eating you, Macca? After reading it I’d like to ask “What’s eating you, Norman?  His animosity toward McCartney is almost palpable. Dear Macca, The millions of people who regard you as pop music's patron saint will have been shocked and disillusioned by your recent behaviour - though, as The Beatles' biographer and a long-time observer of your remarkable solo career, it comes as somewhat [...]

The Jets and The Beatles

By |2016-04-25T14:44:45-07:00April 25, 2016|1962, Beatle History|

Rick Richards, far right, with the Jets. Tony Sheridan is beside him. Sometimes the musings of artists about the Beatles who knew them in the early days are pretty amusing.  Take, for example, Rick Richards' memories of The Beatles while they were performing together at Der Kaiserkeller: ...[Bruno] Koschmider engaged the Beatles through Alan Williams to play at another club he owned called the 'Indra'. The Indra although in the same street as the Kaiserkeller (the Grosse Freiheit) was someway away from it where the main crowd never seemed to reach, and consequently didn't get the custom it should have. We [...]

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Lennon and McCartney On The Tonight Show, 1968

By |2016-04-21T06:57:16-07:00April 20, 2016|1968, Apple, Lennon, McCartney|

Speaking of his appearance with Paul McCartney on the Tonight Show to announce Apple Corp., John Lennon said it “was the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever been on.”  And if you listen to the audio portion (the video portion is no longer available), it IS truly cringe-worthy. Sitting with a slightly inebriated Tallulah Bankhead and a polite but clueless Joe Garagiola (who was subbing for Johnny Carson), John and Paul endured 22 minutes of embarrassingly vacuous questions (“Will you ever be able to top Sgt. Pepper?”, asked Garagiola) which made ME want to put a fork in my ear. An interesting backstory [...]

Ringo Starr says Give Peace A Chance

By |2016-04-13T18:21:27-07:00April 13, 2016|Uncategorized|

Ringo Starr has joined the growing list of musicians who are cancelling performances in North Carolina/Mississippi in protest of new laws which, in an attempt to protect the masses from the transgender menace in public bathrooms (note sarcasm) removes legal protections for LGBT persons. Peace and Love, Ringo, we love yah. (If you’re not up on the goings on, here’s a video to bring you up to speed.)

Fred Arnold’s Beatle Memorabilia Collection

By |2016-04-05T18:25:25-07:00April 5, 2016|John Lennon, Yoko Ono|

We love receiving emails from our ever vigilant commentariat about new developments in Beatleland. The autographed postcard from the Fred Arnold Collection. Commentator @ODirony sent us an interesting link about a homeless fellow by the name of Fred Arnold, who was killed after being struck by a car in Little Rock, Arkansas.  Turns out Arnold was a prolific collector of Beatles’ memorabilia and had a personal relationship with John and Yoko.  You can read the entire story here.  A quick google of “Fred Arnold and John Lennon” yielded this--an autographed War Is Over postcard given to Fred Arnold and currently [...]

Dr. Jenny Boyd On Creativity

By |2016-04-01T19:10:26-07:00March 31, 2016|Apple/Inner Circle, books, Uncategorized, Wives and girlfriends|

Jenny Boyd with George Harrison I was surfing the internet yesterday and came across an interesting story about Patti Boyd’s sister and ex-wife of Mick Fleetwood, Jenny Boyd. After leaving her modelling career, Boyd attended UCLA and obtained her Ph.D in psychology in the late `80’s. Her Ph.D dissertation about the origins of creativity was published in 1992 as Musicians in Tune and again in 2014 as an expanded version entitled It’s Not Only Rock ’N’ Roll: Iconic Musicians Reveal The Source of Their Creativity. Here’s the description from Amazon. Psychologist Jenny Boyd has probed the minds and souls of these artists [...]

John Lennon’s Self-Portrait

By |2016-03-17T15:11:34-07:00March 16, 2016|Art, auctions of note, John Lennon, Stu Sutcliffe, Uncategorized|

Lennon Self-Portrait No, this isn’t THAT self-portrait--the home movie of the same name, depicting John’s penis in various states of erection (which Yoko has kept under wraps and Beatle fans have been trying to find ever since), but this, an early oil painting done by the man himself, up for auction by Cooper Owen Music Media Auctions in 2014. According to the auction site, John Lennon’s first ever self-portrait that he painted at art college in 1958 has emerged for sale in our next auction. The abstract work in oil depicts a red figure side-on with unflattering features including ‘moobs’ and [...]

Biography vs History: Expectations and Assumptions about Beatle Narratives

By |2016-03-11T15:29:15-08:00March 11, 2016|Beatle History, biography, books|

Over at the Tumblr fandom categories post, an interesting and lively discussion is taking place about Beatle biographies, and our expectations of and assumptions about authorial intent and accuracy.  I thought the topic warranted a closer look. Are journalists and biographers simply writers "who are paid to tell a story that sells", as Mike Gerber contends, or should they be held to a higher standard because their work, as Ruth contends, is presented and consumed as history?  Should biographers be held to the same journalistic standards of factual reporting which govern the Fourth Estate? Here are some basic elements: Reporters are expected [...]

The Beatles and the Boomers: The Childhood They Gave Us

By |2016-03-10T08:10:16-08:00March 9, 2016|1960s, Beatlemania|

I really don’t remember when I first saw the Beatles.  I have no memory of a ‘before’ and ‘after.'   I think I must have issued from the womb with them firmly attached, like a birthmark. I’m a first-generation Beatles’ fan, born in 1956, which makes me a younger cohort of the boomer generation.   According to Sociologist and Beatle Expert Candy Leonard, “screaming teenage girls got a lot of attention in 1964 and they're the ones immortalized in the black and white footage, but the largest number of first-generation Beatle fans were actually boys and girls between five and 10 years old [...]

Tumblr Fandom Categories and Beatle Books

By |2016-03-08T09:13:27-08:00March 7, 2016|Beatles Criticism, Beatles on the Web, biography, books, Uncategorized|

By Gibson DelGiudice, guest Dullblogger As a 21st century Beatles fan (born in 1990, and so coming of age during the new millennium), it seems only natural that I probably have a different perspective than most Beatles fans on the literature that documents the group's rise to fame and the careers of its members. I’d like to share a Tumblr-influenced way of looking at Beatles books and sorting them into categories, based on the attitudes they express. Like many young people today, I’m a consummate Tumblr user. At the time of posting, over 277.2 million blogs make up the Tumblr network , [...]

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