With The Beatles: Alistair Taylor
Alistair Taylor, 1967 In 1960, Alistair Taylor was a newly married 25-year-old office clerk when he applied for a sales job at NEMS. He had never met Brian Epstein before, but the two men hit it off immediately. The sales job morphed into an offer to be Epstein’s personal assistant, and Taylor jumped at the chance. If you’re looking [...]
McCartney on Lennon as his hero
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 [...]
John Lennon: Man of the Decade
Guest Dullblogger Chris Dingman has just written a very interesting and well-expressed post on Paul McCartney's essential contribution to the Lennon/McCartney partnership, and you should probably read that before reading this. This post began as a comment to that post, but as I wrote I felt it ranged too widely, and touched on something too essential, not to be surfaced on its [...]
Paul McCartney’s Essential Elements
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 [...]
Yellow Submarine by Alex Ross
Maybe all of you knew this already (and if so, I appreciate you allowing me to live in blissful ignorance). This morning commenter Linda S. hepped me to an interesting development in Beatledom: Apple has engaged comic book artist Alex Ross to create photorealistic illustrations based on the Beatles' 1968 film, Yellow Submarine. The thing about Blue Meanies is, they never look [...]
Lester Bangs’ anti-Beatles sermon, 1975
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, [...]
John Lennon’s hair…
Lennon, post-shearing, 1966 is worth more than your car. (Probably.) A lock of Lennon's hair clipped in 1966 for his role in "How I Won The War" has been sold at auction for a whopping $35,000. (That is one smart "German hairdresser.") No word as to whether the "U.K.-based collector" is planning on cloning Mr. John, like a Canadian dentist [...]
Like the new Comments?
I write all my comments on my screen, in pen Dullblogisti, in my mania to build an ever-better online clubhouse for Beatle-obsessives, I have installed a new commenting system. If you get a moment, could you help me test drive it? Leave a comment — See if it shows up, and is formatted correctly. Give a comment the thumbs up. [...]
McCartney and Critics
Mike and Nancy’s great posts about Starostin's critique of Abbey Road led to a lively discussion about how Paul McCartney is viewed and treated by music critics, particularly with respect to his early solo efforts. This is a great topic and one that I think deserves its own post. Why is it that Macca seems to run afoul of critics? Is there [...]