biography Archives - Page 3 of 3 - Hey Dullblog, the Beatles fan blog

Norman and Goldman and Sentimentality

By Michael Gerber|2022-07-24T13:09:54-07:00July 18, 2010|biography, Uncategorized|

Why pick an Isley Brothers song for the title? Yesterday evening, I was perusing Shout! and, as ever, thought it was a really great, fluid, surprisingly no-nonsense large-grain history of the group. Well, maybe "really great" is a bit much, given the book's anti-Paul bias, but it's still wonderfully written, and was essential in its time. If you were a Beatles fan in the early 80s like I was, Shout! was the companion volume to The Compleat Beatles. I'm looking forward to comparing it with Davies, as soon as I can lay my hands on that book. (It's not really [...]

Albert Goldman and Hunter Davies on Beatles Biographies

By Michael Gerber|2014-12-24T10:58:10-08:00April 29, 2010|biography, books, John Lennon|

"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 [...]

Oh! Our mistake

By Michael Gerber|2022-07-24T12:51:53-07:00February 1, 2008|biography, books, Drugs, McCartney|

Harmless-seeming Pied Piper of the Get High Generation From Many Years from Now, Paul McCartney's memoir/bio, page 314: "...Another inaccurate but frequently told story is that 'Fixing a Hole' was about heroin. This track is actually about marijuana."