• First Thoughts on “The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event” Comment by Michael Gerber on Aug 19, 08:21 Justin, if we’re talking financial success, I think you’re right. John is just too thorny a character for young people to enjoy; they like their males to be unthreatening, and Lennon simply wasn’t that. The interesting thing is that George wasn’t either! (Just rewatched the Scorsese doc, so Harrison’s intermittent fury is much in my mind this morning.) I suspect that the Lennon biopic will beach itself on the shoals of Yoko—-she practically embodies several social media hot-button issues. The transformation of Lennon from a witty truth teller to a despicable wifebeater tracks the rise of social media exactly. George had nearly as big a gap between who he was and his public persona, but his partner hasn’t been nearly as public about this gap, so fans can comfortably think of George as an uncomplicated religious seeker. That will make for a less divisive movie experience, than the John movie.
  • First Thoughts on “The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event” Comment by Justin McCann on Aug 18, 17:23 Bets on which films will do best? Obviously poor Ringo will come in last, and my money’s on Paul coming out on top (he always outsold the others, he’s still alive and selling out venues all over the world, there’ll be interviews & maybe red carpet stuff, etc etc). Tougher to call between George & John: the kids prefer George, but I think there are enough movie-loving Boomers and Xers out there to tip things in John’s favour. Plus, much as his star may have dimmed, he’s still very much an all-round historical Icon in a way George never was or wanted to be.
  • Screamin’ Jay Hawkins: “Monkberry Moon Delight” Comment by Paul on Aug 18, 14:55 Love Ram and Monkberry. I think McCartneys music went downhill a little when he started listening to the critics. But he did a pretty good job of coming back with many beautiful songs.
  • Critic Richard Goldstein’s 1967 pan of Sgt. Pepper Comment by Paul on Aug 18, 14:47 When I heard Pepper, the only difference i noticed from earlier Beatles was Ringo’s drumming, which might have been when Paul started guiding him.
  • Critic Amanda Marcotte: Sgt. Pepper’s made rock “music for men” Comment by Paul on Aug 18, 14:41 I used to see all the girls going crazy at Beatles shows and think, ‘am I the only boy who loves them?’ Perhaps they were more willing to stand in line for tickets.
  • First Thoughts on “The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event” Comment by Nancy Carr on Aug 18, 13:58 I have a sinking feeling about this project for a number of reasons, most of which you touched on, Michael. Most of all I think doing FOUR films is a mistake. That saddles the writers with having to come up with four scripts that will inevitably overlap a lot but also must be distinct and interesting individually. I think they’re going to struggle with the repetition involved in covering the music making and performing and are therefore likely to spend too much time on each Beatle’s personal life, in ways that I don’t expect to be illuminating. The films about the Beatles that have worked tend to focus on either the earliest years (“Nowhere Boy,” “Backbeat,” “The Hours and Times”) or the years after the breakup (“Two of Us.”) Besides “A Hard Day’s Night,” “Help!,” and “Yellow Submarine,” we have the “Anthology” vidoes, the Ed Sullivan shows, and generally just so much video footage. I think these films are going to come off as pastiche no matter what. And that photo does nothing to inspire my confidence. The wigs are bad and the posing looks more like mugging.
  • A George Harrison summer playlist Comment by Paul on Aug 18, 12:33 Got My Mind Set On You sounds very much like a McCartney pop classic.
  • The Gospel of “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” Comment by Paul on Aug 18, 12:14 I think Paul read a newspaper story and wrote about it, as John often did. Great song IMO, like most of Paul’s ‘granny songs’.
  • First Thoughts on “The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event” Comment by Michael Gerber on Aug 18, 07:08 I HAD THE SAME THOUGHTS! Damian Lewis looks strikingly like McQueen. Maybe they’ll use cgi to make these fellas look like The Beatles?
  • First Thoughts on “The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event” Comment by Baboomska McGeesk on Aug 18, 04:19 Remember what Orson Welles said about the Cole Porter movie? When it was being filmed, he joked: “What will they use for a climax? The only suspense is: will he or won’t he accumulate $10 million?” Regarding Tarantino’s “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood”: when I saw Damian Lewis, I KNEW instantly he was Steve McQueen. When I saw Rachel Redleaf, I knew she was Mama Cass. But when I look at the photo above, I don’t see the Beatles. I see maybe Ray Davies and the Kinks.
  • First Thoughts on “The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event” Comment by J.D. on Aug 17, 21:13 I’d say you nailed it, Michael. I don’t expect much from any of these movies, because we already have hundreds of hours of the real thing on video, and the real Beatles are just more interesting than any fictional portrayal of them could possibly make them. I mean, the real John Lennon looked like a different person almost every year of his life from 1963 onward — how is any actor supposed to portray that? The real Paul McCartney who lived in the world of 1965 wasn’t just cute and talented (though he was both); he was also a guy who attended plays and hung out with poets and took photographs and listened to Stockhausen records — can any movie capture that? The real Hamburg story is so much more interesting than Backbeat. The only fictional Beatle movie I remember finding kind of interesting was The Hours and Times, because it wasn’t about the public John Lennon at all, but about who the guy was in private, for a few days of his life, right before the whole Beatlemania phenomenon began. I saw the movie so long ago that I can’t really remember how well it pulled that off, but it strikes me as, at least, a better way to approach the subject than trying to tell the whole story.
  • Confessions of a Teenaged Beatleg Fanatic Comment by Craig on Aug 17, 17:08 Forgot to mention some of my favorite 60 seconds of Beatle music: John (in the Dakota sometime in the late ‘70’s?) singing a very mellow version of Help! Apparently it was how he wrote it originally but bc they needed a single at the time (‘65?) it was sped up and made to zip along. How I wish there was a fleshed out slow version demo from when John originally created the song. It’s brilliant and reminds me (selfishly) of all the things we lost with his early passing. You just know he would’ve recorded more stuff like this as the years went by.
  • Confessions of a Teenaged Beatleg Fanatic Comment by Craig on Aug 17, 17:02 I’m about 15 years younger than you Mike. Got super into Beatles in college and became obsessed in a good way like most of us here. I remember when I discovered Anthology which for me was basically what bootlegs were to you I guess. I was consumed with Discs 2 and 3 and they eventually became some of my most played tracks. Particularly Bathroom Window, Rocky, Happiness, Junk, Cry Baby, Sadie (I love how deliberate and probably stoned John is on this track), and even Mailman is awesome! Wish it went on longer! Discovering these tunes was a totally unexpected gift. I still treasure them and favor them to the originals in some respects.
  • Last Recorded Audio of John Lennon, 12/8/80 Comment by Michael Gerber on Aug 17, 09:07 Well, she was sitting right there. John’s m.o. with “Mother” changed a bit depending on whether she was there or not.
  • Last Recorded Audio of John Lennon, 12/8/80 Comment by Paul on Aug 17, 06:19 He was so conflicted about touring. And his demand for Yoko acceptance over a decade later is revealing. I would have gone to see him, but not with her warbling on the stage. At least hide her up back like Linda
  • Confessions of a Teenaged Beatleg Fanatic Comment by Justin McCann on Aug 15, 15:23 Haha!! Next thing you know I’m gonna start knocking fan blogs XD
  • I’m Down by Joe Strummer Comment by Regal 24th November 1963 on Aug 15, 13:14 The only recorded comment I’ve seen by Joe on the Beatles was a complaint about the treatment of Timon Dogg by Apple (Macca specifically). Well that and “No Elvis, Beatles or the Rolling Stones” – the three parts of which were (presumably deliberately) retracted by Ray Lowry’s London Calling single sleeve, two and a half years later.
  • Last Recorded Audio of John Lennon, 12/8/80 Comment by Regal 24th November 1963 on Aug 15, 13:05 He died with the same hair he had when he arrived in Hamburg. As Charles Shaar Murray remarked at the time: Hello Goodbye.
  • Confessions of a Teenaged Beatleg Fanatic Comment by Michael Gerber on Aug 15, 11:18 “endless parodies” [MG coughs.]
  • Last Recorded Audio of John Lennon, 12/8/80 Comment by Michael Gerber on Aug 15, 11:17 We’re game! Start writin’ 🙂
  • Last Recorded Audio of John Lennon, 12/8/80 Comment by Justin McCann on Aug 14, 15:03 I recently finished the new tome The Way the Music Had to Go – incidentally, a book I’d enjoy reviewing for this site if I could find the time and you were game – and think I may have physically winced when the author described Serve Yourself as the man’s last masterwork. Masterwork? It’s barely even a song! Might have to listen to the above to cheer myself up…
  • Confessions of a Teenaged Beatleg Fanatic Comment by Justin McCann on Aug 14, 14:58 I must confess that I share Starostin’s opinion on Beatles demos, which is that they only go to show how good the band were at polishing things up before releasing the versions we all know and love. (Which is basically the same point you’re making, except that I don’t get the same kick out of hearing the process at work that you do. I wish I did.) Whereas with an anti-perfectionist like Dylan, who’ll record the same song in five different styles then release whichever one takes his fancy on the day, there really is a wealth of just-as-good-as-the-original-if-not-better demos out there (to say nothing of outtakes it’s just baffling he didn’t release at the time). All that said, I’ve really been enjoying this today. Never heard ‘A Case of the Blues’ before! Love it! Can’t believe it isn’t better known! Why does it sound like a ’90s grunge song before its time! Wish John had developed it further with the others! But he was too busy convincing himself ‘Mary Jane’ had something to it… sigh… https://youtu.be/Vrb3K4IRTE8?is=Rz7_srn1vTv0yq40
  • Confessions of a Teenaged Beatleg Fanatic Comment by Justin McCann on Aug 14, 14:47 ‘It is many things, but the web is the opposite of intimate.’ This is one of the many things about modern life that makes me vaguely sad. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why it is that the fact that the Internet = the Library of Alexandria times a billion (and one you can contribute to yourself whenever you feel like it!) doesn’t make us all delirious with excitement every minute of every day. It seems to me that it’s a ‘medium is the message’ type of thing. It just doesn’t feel *appropriate* to be accessing Beethoven’s Ninth and Beowulf and The Seventh Seal and the Sistine Chapel ceiling through a tiny flat rectangle that also serves up social media slapfights, constant ads, endless parodies, hardcore porn, and whatever the latest TikTok trend is. It’s the very embodiment of postmodernism’s flattening of all history and culture, and the pastiche machine that is generative AI is hardly helping. That’s the devil’s bargain: you can have all the riches in the world delivered to your doorstep, but at the cost of reducing their richness. Anything that gets the Doordash treatment starts to seem a little like fast food.
  • Confessions of a Teenaged Beatleg Fanatic Comment by Michael Gerber on Aug 13, 08:56 I feel the same way, @Rafael. There is no more mystery, no more thrill of the hunt. Something I should’ve talked about in the initial post was the intimacy that a bootleg inspired. It’s probably the beginning of the impulse in me that eventually led to the creation of Dullblog. The internet simply doesn’t convey that; it is many things, but the web is the opposite of intimate.
  • The Artist as a Dissipated Man: Fred Seaman’s “The Last Days of John Lennon” Comment by Michael Gerber on Aug 13, 08:53 @mac b, without getting into a blow-by-blow discussion of Fred Seaman — whom I don’t know — it’s not quite right to dismiss what he writes because “he’s a convicted thief.” If we dismissed biographies simply because their authors did something shady, we’d dismiss a lot of truth. Seaman may have stolen the items, or the Estate could’ve given him “an offer he couldn’t refuse.” We can’t know — but I don’t think Seaman’s account is any more untrustworthy than any other Beatle tell-all. If we compare it to other sources and take them all with a grain of salt, that should be sufficient.
  • Some Thoughts on The Boys of Dungeon Lane Comment by Nancy Carr on Aug 13, 07:55 Nick, I agree with your take on “The Boys of Dungeon Lane.” I think it’s stronger than McCartney’s last couple of albums and I’m enjoying it. I’m sure part of that is that I’m getting older myself, so looking backwards to take stock of what is gone and what remains feels natural. . It’s interesting that the album is being overpraised in some quarters, just as it was interesting that “Ram” was, at the time of its release, savaged in some quarters. I can’t claim to be an impartial listener — for anyone who’s looked through the HD archives, it’s clear that I’m a longstanding McCartney fan — but I’m glad he’s still out there performing and creating music. . (An aside to Neal: it needn’t cost “a few thousand” to go to a McCartney concert unless you must travel and stay overnight. I saw him last November for about $250, which is the going rate for arena venues.) . Overall it seems this album is being overpraised, which is, as Michael G. remarks, largely about McCartney’s place in the culture. “Dungeon Lane” is no “Ram,” but then so very few albums are. I like the vibe of “Dungeon Lane,” and what I hear as its reckoning with the reality of being 84. It reminds me of some lines from Tennyson’s poem “Ulysses”: . “Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’ / We are not now that strength which in old days / Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are.”
  • The Artist as a Dissipated Man: Fred Seaman’s “The Last Days of John Lennon” Comment by mac b on Aug 11, 09:47 well, keep in mind that Seaman’s characterizations may or may not be accurate…they are taken from memory…he’s a convicted thief who’s account should not be taken at face value.
  • Confessions of a Teenaged Beatleg Fanatic Comment by Rafael on Aug 11, 07:11 At the beginning of my Beatlemania—in the mid-1980s—bootlegs were almost a Holy Grail. They were incredibly hard to find in my hometown, in Brazil, and even in larger cities they were extremely rare. Somehow, though, I managed to get hold of a few: The Decca Tapes, Who’s Shouting in My Ears, Beautiful Picture of You, and Johnny & The Moondogs. Fast forward to 2026. I was in Barcelona and found an abundance of Beatles bootlegs in several record stores. Forty years ago, I would have been ecstatic. Today, they no longer interest me. I already know the tracks. Time — and the internet — have done quite a number on that sense of discovery. What really interests me is the music, so the digital files made available by Purple Chick are more than enough. But even those hold little appeal these days. Aside from previously unreleased songs, and with a few exceptions, each track is simply an inferior version of what the Beatles officially released. They no longer fascinate me the way they once did.
  • Should I do t-shirts? Comment by Michael Gerber on Aug 9, 12:13 I didn’t do ’em, Paul, but I’d be happy to — lemme post it again.
  • “Broke” John Lennon Comment by Paul on Aug 9, 10:09 If you’re insecure about money, it doesn’t matter how much you have. John probably would have been a wreck whether he had more or less. it’s really a mindset that is difficult to overcome.
  • Should I do t-shirts? Comment by Paul on Aug 8, 11:54 Any left? I can PayPal
  • Get Back Release Date: September 4, 2020 Comment by Paul on Aug 8, 11:53 I really liked Besame Mucho
  • Reader Question #1: George Harrison and Beatlemania Comment by Michael Gerber on Aug 5, 07:43 @Paul, Gerald Ford’s son Jack was a fan of George’s, and invited him to the White House, which he visited in December 1974 during his Dark Horse tour. Here’s a fun little Instagram reel on this: https://www.instagram.com/reels/DSM1Et0CG-q/
  • Reader Question #1: George Harrison and Beatlemania Comment by Paul on Aug 4, 18:51 Anyone know what this is about? https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-ford-is-greeted-in-the-oval-office-of-the-white-news-photo/515113084?slot=6
  • Craig Brown’s “One Two Three Four” Comment by Paul on Aug 3, 09:44 Maybe Paul wasn’t expecting it to be such a hit, which must have made John very jealous. The competition was at its height by then.
  • Are the guitars on Pepper…different? Comment by Michael Gerber on Aug 3, 06:38 Thank you for the implied compliment, but since I was absolutely desperate (and I was really seriously jacked up), I had to jump into the deep end of the pool. Which gave me a LOT of hairy symptoms. I went through deep deep discomfort, and was very close to not making it. I spent six solid months feeling “depersonalization”—I felt like I was outside my body; I lost my ability to write or work or really do anything; I was terrified all the time. Fortunately I had a great team and partner and some family resources to draw on. At the time, if there had been an opportunity for me to use heavy drugs, I probably would have done so, just for some relief. If I’d come from a lifestyle like Lennon’s I would’ve been lost; but I’d been so sick for over a decade that I came to it all without drugs and alcohol (though spiritually quite sick). It was only after going through this experience and re-reading John’s story, I suddenly thought, “wow, this might have been what happened to John Lennon!” And so was launched a thousand Dullblog posts. John’s excessiveness, desperation for a guru, and impatience made him very likely to do what he did — run into something strong, do it a lot until he broke something, and then live with that injury. And something that came from the best parts of him, his curiosity and desire to be better, turned into another layer of damage. I only have compassion for the guy.
  • Are the guitars on Pepper…different? Comment by Michael Gerber on Aug 3, 06:26 Yes, it’s amazing stuff. I am more interested in Eastern culture than most people (in part thanks to the Beatles), but only came to it when I had exhausted all Western options and was near death. Luckily I was not too far gone to save. Worsley acupuncture and qigong are both imperceptible but very powerful, if incremental. Speaking of kundalini (which I suspect is a form of qi; it seems to combine jing [vital life essence] and shen [spirit]), what I think happened to John is something called “a spiritual emergency,” or “kundalini awakening.” The symptoms come from an uncontrolled, large release of energy that overwhelms the channels/meridians—which I believe are called “nadis” in the Hindu tradition. A lot of people in the late 60s and after experienced this, thanks to heavy drugs and heavy meditation. Both should only be used under the supervision of wise experts.
  • Are the guitars on Pepper…different? Comment by Baboomska McGeesk on Aug 2, 09:55 I suspect your experience with these modalities was different from John’s because you approached them more thoughtfully. You did research and adopted them respectfully. You did your homework, in other words. John most likely jumped into the experience the same way he embraced gulping down a handful of pills in Hamburg, or grinding up a bunch of substances in Kenwood. He was never a “do your homework” guy (one notable exception: his encyclopedic knowledge of 1950s/early ’60s rock ‘n roll). The “10,000 push ups” analogy makes sense. It’s like learning how to swim by diving into the deepest part of the pool, and then thrashing.
  • Are the guitars on Pepper…different? Comment by Justin McCann on Jul 31, 11:25 Interesting. Qi in the Chinese system reminds me of what I’ve heard about shakti and kundalini in the Indian one, via accounts from Ram Dass and other Americans who went to Uttarakhand to study under Neem Karoli Baba. So many eyewitness testimonies from so many more-or-less-normal people about so many amazing things…shame the average Westerner is maybe even less open to hearing about any of it than in Lennon’s time.
  • Are the guitars on Pepper…different? Comment by Michael Gerber on Jul 30, 08:48 “he title track was the Beatles’ attempt to keep up with Hendrix” This sounds right to me.
  • Are the guitars on Pepper…different? Comment by Michael Gerber on Jul 30, 08:41 @Justin, if you do tai chi regularly, you’ll start to feel changes in your…self?…which are predictable and cumulative. You’ll start to notice different things, react differently emotionally, and develop sensitivities that you didn’t have before. It’s precisely the same as doing push ups every day and getting bigger arm muscles. The difference is, Western medicine hasn’t yet been able to observe and measure the process. It clearly exists — the only alternative is that it’s entirely psychosomatic, which seems vanishingly unlikely. My personal experience with Hindu forms of medicine is very limited, but there is some overlap. In doing qigong (Chinese system) I developed an injury which can be treated Ayurvedically (Indian system). But when I talk, I’m only talking with experience in Chinese philosophies of medicine, and as a layperson. As a layperson, I think what happened with John in India is, metaphorically, he started doing 10,000 push ups a day, and (quite predictably) ended up damaging himself. Because the extremely strenuous effort was directed at his energy system, the negative effects manifested there, too. He could’ve been fixed, probably completely but certainly in part; but did not avail himself of the people/things that might’ve fixed him. New York in the Seventies was full of people like Cheng Man-Ching, who taught extremely advanced tai chi and traditional Chinese medicine to the lovely hippies who eventually saved my life. Eating macrobiotically is fine, but he clearly needed much more, and different, care. That John was never under an expert’s care is a tragedy, but it’s a tragedy that happens often to extremely rich and famous people. Healing requires a kind of humility (which was very difficult for me, btw).
  • Are the guitars on Pepper…different? Comment by Justin McCann on Jul 30, 06:40 I see what you’re saying. I know more than I want to know about psychosomatic disregulation – and am always meaning to get to that ‘here’s how this emotional response of mine may map onto this physical symptom of mine’ post – but nothing about the energy body, beyond the little I’ve picked up from occasional tai chi. As with the chakra system etc, I’m always willing to entertain ideas from outside of Western philosophy and medicine, but have never so far been ready to follow a particular one of them all the way down. Of course people’s personal stories make things far more vivid and real than any theoretical map could, so I’m intrigued to read about your own experience (as well as feeling compassion).
  • Beatles on Ed Sullivan, 57 years ago Comment by Paul on Jul 25, 13:11 Am I the only geezer here who saw the original Sullivan broadcast? I was starstruck at 9 years old
  • What happened in India? Comment by Michael Gerber on Jul 22, 15:48 I know this is what the Ballad suggests — that all John needed was the love of a good woman, who could show him the vast creative vistas beyond the Beatles, so he could do what he really wanted to do since August 1966. But it doesn’t cut much ice with me. First, because there was a lot of great Lennon music created between August 1966 and August 1969, and a lot of close contact between the four. Do we really think that John hated all his work, and hated working with the other guys? The tension isn’t in evidence until after India, and the hating-all-his-Beatle-stuff is the 1980 interviews, which is heavy myth-making. If John had really wanted to leave — for YEARS — do we really think he was that passive? He’s passive like that with Yoko, but not with P/G/R. So let’s say for the sake of argument that Lennon was conflicted after August 1966. Conflicted or not, The Beatles was his band, something he’d practically invented, and something that was still pretty much under his control even post-India in 1968-69 — insofar as if John didn’t want to do something, the group didn’t do it. Why would he feel he needed to leave, rather than take a break from? Who did it benefit that he permanently leave the group? Not him as a political figure — Lennon’s political platform was immensely bigger as John Beatle. Not his pocketbook. It benefitted his ego, and his new wife. Or was he simply feeling stifled, musically within the Beatles? But with the exception of his Plastic Ono Band record which was a departure and something you couldn’t see as a Beatles record, Lennon’s solo stuff seems to fit solidly in the Beatle bin; it was when he was a Beatle that he did all the experimental music. Why couldn’t that have continued indefinitely? Who was stopping him from recording with Clapton and The Stones? Nobody. So what impelled him to go? People always talk about how John Lennon never did anything by half-measures, and once he’d lost interest in The Beatles, it was old news, doomed. But while he’d pick up and put down enthusiasms like LSD or TM, Lennon didn’t really act like that with the people who were important in his life — he didn’t sever ties with Aunt Mimi, nor Cyn, nor the other three Beatles, nor even Yoko during the Lost Weekend. In fact, storming off and then hanging around was much more John’s style. “Making a clean break” with P/G/R doesn’t fit with him; and in fact he didn’t do it. With the benefit of hindsight, the thing that’s weird about John is how little he reinvented himself; yeah, he wasn’t the same guy at 31 that he was at 21, but who is? The guy at 40 was dressing like he had at 17, still playing Beatle-like music, still talking to the other three, even (supposedly) wanting to write with Paul again. All of the data suggests that 1) something happened in India that really shook his relationship with the other three; 2) he brought Yoko in as a wrecking ball; but 3) by 1971, he’s firmly back into the pop star (not pop artist) game, and 4) by 1976, he’s back loving The Beatles. Do I think Yoko encouraged him, via letter and in person, to think of himself as a genius and get rid of those other three freeloaders? Yeah. Do I think that’s why he left the band? No.
  • How I’d publish Tune In Vol. 2 and 3! Comment by Michael Gerber on Jul 22, 15:12 I agree, @Beasty. Whatever Mark Lewisohn’s problems are, money to write Beatles books shouldn’t be one of them.
  • Prince Plays While My Guitar Gently Weeps Comment by Paul on Jul 20, 12:11 Even later to the party, I discovered Prince’s performance while surfing during covid lockdown. I knew nothing about Prince, or his music, but I was totally blown away by his performance. Enough so to send the link to friends and family, who all agreed that it was the most amazing and beautiful guitar solo they had ever seen.
  • Reader Question #1: George Harrison and Beatlemania Comment by Paul on Jul 20, 10:30 I always thought I was an introvert, but none of the descriptions fit me. Sociopath? IDK. It’s difficult to put people in boxes, and even the professionals can struggle to identify personality ‘disorders’, whatever that even means.
  • How I’d publish Tune In Vol. 2 and 3! Comment by Beasty Glanglemutton on Jul 19, 14:33 I can’t remember where I saw it (it was a very long time ago), but I seem to recall his deal was for $1.4 million? Or one-point-something at any rate. That was in about 2003 or so. It wouldn’t have been at all difficult to have spent all that by the time Vol. I was published, depending on his cost of living. Doesn’t he live in London? Pretty expensive place. But further to the point, I would absolutely contribute to any crowdfunding effort for Vols II & III. And I think your estimates of how many people would contribute to it are very low. Just enlist every Beatles podcast/Youtube channel in existence to spread the word, and Lewisohn would be absolutely swimming in money.
  • “Let It Be,” “Get Back,” and History as Art Comment by Paul on Jul 19, 11:11 We didn’t like it — how could you? – Michael G. I just can’t understand this Mike. Perhaps because I’m a boomer who missed Let It Be the first time around. In 1970, I was 15. And although I was a big fan of the music, I wasn’t into the background noise.
  • The Beatles, “Let It Be,” and “Get Back”: “Trying to Deceive”? Comment by Paul on Jul 19, 10:59 Having watched both movies only recently, I didn’t feel a lot of negativity. If anything, there was more of an apathy (drugs?) I think John was basically done with the Beatles after revolver, but couldn’t decide how to leave, and what would he do on his own, until Yoko came along. Similarly, George had lost interest in the band, but wanted to be able to get back together when he needed money. I thought Jackson was most disingenious with the lunch time recording, trying to make it more negative than the actual conversation on the Nagra tapes. Lindsey Hogg probably did the best he could with the constraints he was under.