If you just hang around long enough, everything’s a masterpiece
Yes, even "Magical Mystery Tour."Since I've long and loudly proclaimed my love for the MMT LP, I look forward to any and all hullabaloo regarding the re-release of the film. Here's a piece in The Guardian touting the upcoming Arena programme "Magical Mystery Tour Revisited." (When it is rebroadcast in America, it will of course be "a program.")The apparent angle of the documentary—that [...]
The breakup, viewed from 1974
In 1974, it seemed entirely possible that the Beatles would reunite. I knew this already, as we all know historical facts, but listening to a voice from that time—a voice that of course can't know what's to come—gives that reality a new vividness. I came across this book [The Beatles: Yesterday . . . Today . . . Tomorrow] [...]
When I was a little boy, way back home in Liverpool
DEVIN McKINNEY • More John Lennon photo-animation, from The Gilly, this great Beatles Tumblr I done found.
Batman Joins In
From "This Isn't Happiness."
It All Comes Down to the Thumb
An English mathematician claims he has cracked the mystery chord at the beginning of "A Hard Day's Night." The article's interesting—the prof used computer software similar to some I've seen used on a tape of the RFK assassination—but the short version is that George was hooking his thumb over the top of the neck, and playing the low E string at the [...]
Manhattan Beatles
This Beatles image is from the wall opposite Bleecker Bob's record store at the corner of 3rd and MacDougal in Greenwich Village. I took it this past spring, just after buying a copy of the "Black Album" (comprised of Let it Be session bootlegs). Now Bleecker Bob's is, lamentably, about to close, another casualty of lagging interest in physical media and rising rents. Depending [...]
Apple Jam’s take on Lennon & McCartney
If you wish you could hear a new Lennon/McCartney single, check out Apple Jam’s “On the Wings of a Nightingale” EP. This Seattle Beatles tribute band has a whole album of Lennon/McCartney covers to their credit (“Off the Beatle Track,” a compliation of songs the writing partners gave to other performers). But “On the Wings of a Nightingale” is something special: an [...]
I’ve got a love-uh-ly bunch of coconuts
DEVIN McKINNEY • The news comes through this morning that Magical Mystery Tour is to be released in remastered form on DVD and BluRay on October 9 in North America, a day earlier everywhere else. The remaster is more than welcome, with the advertised extras making the Deluxe Edition compulsory for the committed. (I just ordered mine.) There's been talk here of [...]
Buckley on hating the Beatles
NANCY CARR * William F. Buckley really hated the Beatles’ music. I’d known this in a general way, but hadn’t read his diatribes against them before encountering them in The Beatles Book, a 1968 anthology of critical writing about the band edited by Edward E. Davis. (Finding books like this makes me feel justified in spending what is probably way too much time [...]