Nancy Carr • Hey Dullblog, the Beatles fan blog

Starostin on the White Album

By Nancy Carr|2016-06-20T07:18:13-07:00June 20, 2016|1968, Beatles Criticism, George Starostin, The White Album|

The tireless George Starostin, still working his way through Rate Your Music's list of "Top Albums of All Time," has just published a new review of the White Album (currently #25 on the list). As usual, there's plenty of substance in Starostin's review, and I highly recommend it. These lines particularly stood out to me (ellipses mine): "A typical 'complaint' against The Beatles is that this is the first album where the band, much too often, reads like the sum of its parts rather than a collective whole: The Lennon songs are Lennon, the McCartney songs are McCartney, the Harrison songs mark [...]

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McCartney and Starr on Orlando attack

By Nancy Carr|2016-06-16T07:33:19-07:00June 16, 2016|concert, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Uncategorized|

McCartney on stage in Berlin After the June 11 mass shooting attack at Orlando's Pulse nightclub, both Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr have publicly expressed their solidarity with the victims. This isn't a surprise, but it's a welcome reminder that in this time when so many seem driven by fear and hatred of those who are different, there are still prominent voices speaking of the power of love and connection. At his June 14 show in Berlin, McCartney emerged for an encore wearing a large rainbow flag and declared "We stand together with Orlando." And in an interview on June [...]

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Interview with Chip Madinger, coauthor of Lennonology: Strange Days Indeed

By Nancy Carr|2022-08-25T17:24:20-07:00June 6, 2016|books, Interviews, john and yoko, John Lennon, Lennon family, Yoko Ono|

In this conversation with Hey Dullblog, Chip Madinger talks about the genesis, process, and future of the ambitious Lennonology project he has undertaken with coauthor Scott Raile. Thanks to Chip for answering our questions, and to Mary Klein, who recently reviewed Lennonology: Strange Days Indeed for HD and helped write the questions. You can learn more about the book, and purchase it, at www.lennonology.com. HD: How did you determine what information to include about the other Beatles' activities? CM: As time is such a rigid constant, a day-by-day format seemed the ideal way to present the Lennons' history. The narrative in Strange [...]

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Drugs and Differences

By Nancy Carr|2022-09-04T17:56:19-07:00May 16, 2016|1980, Drugs, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Wings|

Given the comments on a recent thread beginning here, we've decided to resurface a great post by Nancy on the topic. Originally posted 3/13/13.--MG On the apparently unstoppable "How Do You Sleep?" thread, Peter Deville commented that "it's interesting to note that the growing differences within the band coincided with a divergence in their individual drugs of choice, having made the collective journey from alcohol to uppers to pot." He adds: "Acid initially created that soon-to-be familiar fissure, with John, George and Ringo on one side and Paul on the other. I'm not suggesting that the drug divergence was responsible for the [...]

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“Lennonology: Strange Days Indeed” a Lennon/Ono data feast

By Nancy Carr|2016-05-10T07:46:38-07:00May 9, 2016|books, John Lennon, Reviews, Yoko Ono|

By Mary Klein, Guest Dullblogger A Lennon/Ono banquet Chip Madinger's and Scott Raile's Strange Days Indeed–A Scrapbook of Madness presents John Lennon and Yoko Ono aficionados with a dizzying spread of information – and it's only the first volume in a projected three- to four-volume work that aspires to chronicle all the doings of JohnandYoko. Madinger (coauthor of Eight Arms to Hold You, 2000) and Scott Raile (academic advisor at the University of Colorado, Boulder) draw from an enormous range of materials to create a day-by-day, sometimes hour-by-hour, chronicle of the couple's activities, beginning in 1966. Even those familiar with the Lennon/Ono story will learn [...]

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Philip Norman’s McCartney “poem”; and an afterthought

By Nancy Carr|2016-05-13T13:28:14-07:00May 4, 2016|books, McCartney, Paul McCartney, Reviews|

In the same vein as Norman's 2005 Daily Mail "letter" to Paul, there's the doggerel he wrote and published in the Sunday Times back in the early 1970s. I've seen references to its being longer than the four lines I can find online, but those four lines are more than enough: "O deified Scouse, with unmusical spouse For the cliches and cloy you unload To an anodyne tune may they bury you soon In the middlemost midst of the road." So, nothing like now having a biography from a writer who once publicly wished for the subject's speedy death. I'm sure Norman [...]

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Starostin re-reviews Sgt. Pepper

By Nancy Carr|2016-05-02T15:09:50-07:00May 2, 2016|1967, Beatles on the Web, George Starostin, Psychedelia, Sgt. Pepper|

Online reviewer George Starostin has just posted another review of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, this time as part of his working down the list of the RateYourMusic site's "Top Albums of All Time" list. (Pepper is currently at #18). I love the whole review, but here are a couple of my favorite song-by-song comments: ʻLovely Ritaʼ - oh, that triumphant cry of "RITA!" leading into the piano solo break. It's one of McCartney's most Pythonesque numbers ever, a hilarious send-up of, let's say, "traditional British values", and the exuberant piano chords of the break are the climactic peak. Although the [...]

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McCartney on Lennon as his hero

By Nancy Carr|2016-03-03T23:54:02-08:00March 1, 2016|books, Interviews, John and Paul|

Over on the "Paul's Essential Elements" thread, in response to an excellent post by Chris Dingman, we've been having a fascinating conversation about what both Lennon and McCartney brought to their artistic partnership. We're also having a conversation about it over on Mike's post, "John Lennon: Man of the Decade," because that's how we roll on Dullblog. In writing a comment on Chris' post, I mentioned that I'd read a magazine article in which McCartney identified Lennon as his hero. It was in the November 2015 issue of Mojo, in a piece titled "The Two of Us," excerpted from Paul du Noyer's [...]

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Paul McCartney’s Essential Elements

By Nancy Carr|2016-02-29T11:12:25-08:00February 29, 2016|Bandmembers, John and Paul, Paul McCartney|

by Chris Dingman, guest Dullblogger So many stars had to align for the Beatles to come blazing forth. Without a slew of key elements—the end of compulsory National Service in 1960, Hamburg, Brian Epstein, and George Martin, to name just a few—The Beatles as we know them might never have been. Of course the band needed to be those four guys, together resonating far beyond the sum of their parts. But the most essential element in The Beatles’ story was the Lennon-McCartney partnership. It was a connection that could only be forged from the dreams of youth, a marriage that was arguably [...]

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Lester Bangs’ anti-Beatles sermon, 1975

By Nancy Carr|2016-02-25T11:14:49-08:00February 25, 2016|1975, Beatle myth, Beatles Criticism, critics, Lester Bangs, solo|

Lester Bangs takes a call, mid-70s. Lester Bangs declared the Beatles “nothing” and hated A Hard Day’s Night. To be sure, he despised plenty of other bands. If you rate Bangs as a great critic (I don’t), you pretty much have to relish his talent for insult. Bangs’ animosity toward the Beatles, however, was particularly barbed. In 1975 he printed, in both The Real Paper and CREEM, an eight-page screed damning not only the former Beatles’ solo work, but the entire legacy of the band. Reading “Dandelions in Still Air: The Withering Away of the Beatles” in 2016, I thought: [...]

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About Nancy Carr