McCartney as the Dickens of Rock
Macca and Boz.NANCY CARR • If you've ever wondered why Paul McCartney writes story songs and loves performing, or why his sentimentality sometimes runs away with him, I hope you'll enjoy these ruminations on his links to a Victorian forebear. Looking at Paul McCartney’s personal and artistic similarities to Charles Dickens helps explain a lot of things. It illuminates why McCartney is [...]
The Ballad of…
From Juliette Tang—check out her pitch-perfect photos of books.
Living In The Material World: review roundup
George with his other supergroup Just finished watching it myself. While I'm collecting my thoughts, I thought it might be helpful/fun to provide a list of some notable/thoughtful reviews. Enjoy, and suggest others.Salon—Matt Zoller SeitzUncut MagazineRoger EbertRichard CorlissMatt Blick (Beatles Songwriting Academy)...and since the editing of the film seems to be one of the few areas of contention about it, [...]
Robert Whitaker, ‘Butcher’ photographer, dies at 71
Nice obit from the blog Ironic Photos.
Self-reference
Can we attempt a complete catalogue of Fab Four self-referentiality? By which I mean things like: 1. "Glass Onion": "The Walrus was Paul" 2. John singing "She loves you" toward the end of "All You Need Is Love" 3. "I Am the Walrus": "...like Lucy in the Sky..."
Interview with Lennon biographer Tim Riley
Biographer says he's "unknowable," which is a hell of a thing for a biographer to say MIKE GERBER • It's Lennon-mas again, and there's a new bio out by Tim ("Tell Me Why") Riley. The Christian Science Minotaur has a nice little Q and A with him. Says Riley: "He’s really kind of like an American stuck in a British [...]
Double coverage
ED PARK • Via Douglas Wolk on Twitter: "Alvarius B. covers You Only Live Twice, arranged/recorded to sound EXACTLY like John Lennon's White Album demos." http://youtu.be/ilI2jS2WkWc [MG update July 2014--The produced track has been taken down, but I've pasted a live version below. You'll get what Ed was talking about.] http://youtu.be/OjYj9r6jL9I
No jacket required
During this period he met Paul McCartney, who hired him to design the cover for the Beatles’ next album. Surprisingly, Mr. Hamilton proposed an all-white jacket. “To avoid the issue of competing with the lavish design treatments of most jackets, I suggested a plain white cover so pure and reticent that it would seem to place it in the context of the [...]