Allen Klein
Commenter @ChelseaQW sent in this interesting tidbit this morning, which I just had to share. It's from Allen Klein's November 1971 interview in Playboy magazine: VETTER: You make it sound as if they [John and Paul] were never really close. KLEIN: I can only tell you what John said when I asked him who he would call among the Beatles if he [...]
“These Paper Bullets!”: The Fabs Meet the Bard
For everyone who's wondered what might have happened if Shakespeare had met the Beatles, These Paper Bullets! delivers "a modish rip-off of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing with a serious backbeat." I saw one of the last scheduled performances of the play, by New York's Atlantic Theater Company, and it was a delight. Despite a few wobbly bits, it stands on its own as [...]
The Beatles and Class open thread
Saturday Evening Post, August 15, 1964. Beatles as City gents; two British stereotypes for the price of one! Over the past several months there's been a topic in the wind here on Dullblog — no, not just Beatle-boinking -- but the impact of class on the Beatles story. We've talked about it might've shaped their relationships with each other (particularly [...]
Bowie and The Beatles
Love you, too, Dave. Impossible, folks, to let a full Earth's rotation pass without a post on the late, great David Bowie. Bowie has always seemed to me to be a performer whose rise to fame would've been impossible without the Beatles coming first, preparing the way. The seven years of Fabdom were essential in priming the audience for what [...]
David Bowie, Shine On
The news that David Bowie has died at age 69 has saddened people worldwide. He profoundly influenced musicians, fashion designers, and countless teenage kids who felt they were "weird" until they encountered his work. And he collaborated successfully with many other artists, including Brian Eno, Mick Jagger, and John Lennon, Bowie and John joined forces on the song "Fame," released in 1975, and were [...]
Why We Still Love The Beatles?
"You love us because you are anxious." The New Yorker's Adam Gopnik has a theory, and apparently it's something like, "modern life makes people anxious, and in their anxiety they cling to certain things, and discard other things." Which is not really an answer -- why the Beatles and not, say, Queen? -- but the real reason makes for bad [...]
The Beatles on Spotify
"We make it up in volume." Finally! A band that can live on 0.006 per song! As you might have heard, the Beatles' catalog became available for streaming on December 24th, and users took to it with a will, streaming 70 million Beatles songs in the first three days. Commenter @Hologram Sam posted the following lists of the ten most [...]
Dullblog’s Top Posts of 2015
The Fabs look very strange on this, right? George looks like Brian Jones As everybody is still busily digesting their Beatle-related gifts (how many of you got "1+"? Anything else to review?), I will confine myself to a quick check-in/roundup. I'm happy to report that 2015 was a banner year for Hey Dullblog. Traffic was up over 43% from 2014. [...]
John Lennon: Witness for the (Marijuana) Defense
"Yoko, smell this flower! It's like I've never even smelled flowers before!" In 1969, Gerald Le Dain, a Canadian lawyer and Supreme Court Justice, headed a government commission on the “non-medical” use of cannabis and other drugs, with the ultimate aim to develop pertinent social policy. This commission, which ran from 1969 to 1972, was known as the LeDain Commission [...]