• A quick yawp from Mr. History Comment by Neal on Aug 29, 18:06 I saw Ms. Kessler on Matt Williamson’s fabulous Pop Goes the 60s podcast, but I must admit that I only watched a few minutes as she creeped me out. Now, I fully realize that is on me, but here is my excuse… It was when, for whatever reason, I was wrestling with the concept of Fandom and the question of what would some of these super fans do if they actually met their hero/heroine and they did not like them? What if the object of their admiration was dismissive, rude, and generally someone you would tire of after a few encounters? We all know that even couples who were once madly in love often end up separating. I know for certain that there are those with whom we work that we have avoided as much as possible ( with the opposite, of course, being true). I had yet to understand that Fandom is setting aside all those nagging details of reality. Fandom, at most, requires us to say “Sure he might be quick with a tongue-lashing to others, but he wouldn’t do that to me.” I know…Fandom is supposed to be fun. It is meant to be an escape and to allow for flights of fancy, but I have never liked the imbalances inherent in it nor have many of the artists themselves. It is an artificial scaffold that is not meant to support real and meaningful relationships. So I stand in the dock and can only look at the judge and say “M’lord, I did not mean to speak poorly of the good lady, but that level of Fandom is WAY too deep for me. “
  • Beatle interviews, 1969-70 Comment by Paul on Aug 29, 11:25 Didn’t Paul say in Get Back, I can’t do part time Beatles’?
  • Beatle interviews, 1969-70 Comment by Paul on Aug 29, 11:24 I don’t think Paul would have gone along with less work, he survives on it. I don’t think John would have agreed to any kind of touring, nor George. Ringo? He was easy, even if he said it didn’t come easy.
  • A quick yawp from Mr. History Comment by Michael Gerber on Aug 28, 13:43 @J.D., it’s worse than that. A fictional version of John Lennon who doesn’t swear is like a version of Napoleon who didn’t join the Army. PS — I too have read and enjoyed Gore Vidal’s historical fiction. Every Gore Vidal book seems somewhat similar to me, but I find his style excellent and his opinions provocative. In his case, the “fiction” label gives him the leeway to go where he wants, and the reader intellectual space to accept Vidal’s distinctive takes on things. I’ve also loved Robert Graves’ and Anthony Burgess’ historical fiction.
  • A quick yawp from Mr. History Comment by J.D. on Aug 27, 20:31 I think historical fiction, at its best, can be marvelously revealing. Gore Vidal’s novel about Lincoln is the perfect example — partly because Vidal did his research, yes, but also because he had an interesting perspective on his subject, and he was able to express it in an interesting way. But what Jude Southerland Kessler is doing strikes me as well-researched fanfiction. I read an interview with her, and her take on John Lennon doesn’t seem much deeper to me than that of Ray Coleman’s biography, a sentimental portrait of a seemingly tough guy with a “heart of gold.” I read through a long excerpt from one of the books, and despite the polished faux-Liverpudlian dialogue, something seemed off to me. Then I figured it out — there’s no swearing! A John Lennon who never uses curse words is truly a creature out of science fiction. 
  • Last Recorded Audio of John Lennon, 12/8/80 Comment by Matt on Aug 27, 17:31 Paul, the interview on Dec 8 was with RKO radio. Peebles was a few days earlier, on the 6th.
  • A quick yawp from Mr. History Comment by Nancy Carr on Aug 27, 15:48 Absolutely, Michael — in that post I went on at some length about how legitimate histories or biographies flag when a point is disputed, and while the historian or biographer may adopt a specific view, it’s indicated in the text as a choice. I did read Sutherland’s first book and it is historical fiction. That doesn’t make it bad, it just describes it accurately. And it’s perfectly possible to write good, illuminating fiction about the Beatles! Your novel and Kevin Barry’s “Beatlebone” spring to mind. Then there are riffs on the Beatles like Mark Shipper’s “Paperback Writer.” My contention is that it’s best to own up to what you’re doing as fully as possible, and be careful that you’re not deluding yourself or others about what that is.
  • Last Recorded Audio of John Lennon, 12/8/80 Comment by Matt on Aug 27, 15:22 That’s a good point. And the probability that John himself – codependent as he and Yoko were, under the stress of a tour – would relapse (if, indeed, he had not already by December 1980) seems high. The bottom line is though, these are two people – full of innumerable paranoias and deep psychological insecurites – who spent a decade building their own fortress to avoid contact with lower earth. Unless they underwent a complete mutation of personality, touring would have been anathema to them in every regard.
  • Last Recorded Audio of John Lennon, 12/8/80 Comment by Paul on Aug 27, 12:43 there is also one of his audio diaries on YouTube, 35 minutes.
  • Last Recorded Audio of John Lennon, 12/8/80 Comment by Paul on Aug 27, 12:42 3 hours with Andy Peebles:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z15Zgn3P6cM#:~:text=The%20complete%20John%20Lennon%20and%20Yoko%20Ono%20Interview%20with%20Andy%20Peebles.%20He%20was%20in%20full%20swing%20in%20late%201980%20giving%20long%2C%20time%20consuming%20interviews%20promoting%20Double%20Fantasy%20and%20getting%20the%20message%20out%20that%20he%20was%20back%2C%20rested%20and%20raring%20to%20go.%C2%A0
  • Last Recorded Audio of John Lennon, 12/8/80 Comment by Paul on Aug 27, 12:39 He does sound unusually amiable there. Do we know anything about this interview? Maybe it was all promotion.
  • A quick yawp from Mr. History Comment by Paul on Aug 27, 12:24 And thus the popularity of historical fiction these days, and many people believe they are reading all facts!
  • Last Recorded Audio of John Lennon, 12/8/80 Comment by Michael Gerber on Aug 27, 09:51 @Matt, I can’t see John and Yoko lasting more than two weeks on tour. Pop-up appearances? Sure. But a tour? For one thing, wouldn’t it quickly become common knowledge that Yoko was using again?
  • A quick yawp from Mr. History Comment by Michael Gerber on Aug 27, 09:49 @Nancy, Jude Sutherland is a perfect example of what I’m talking about. If she’s making up dialogue and inner thoughts, she’s writing fiction. That’s what fiction is. It doesn’t matter how plausible your additional material is — how extensively researched. At best it’s calling a bunch of suppositions “facts,” at worst it’s literally speaking for lots of people you cannot speak for. Her whole literary project — a day-by-day reconstruction of John Lennon’s life — requires fictional material as the mortar between the bricks. I haven’t read the books, but here’s from her Goodreads: “Written as a novel, this is not a work of fiction, but a “fly on the wall” account of Lennon’s life.” It’s a bit of sophistry. I think the project is a tremendous undertaking and, as a Lennon fan, am delighted she’s doing it. As fiction, it’s ambitious, harmless, interesting, and potentially revealing. But when you say “it’s not a work of fiction,” either 1) you’re misguided, and using your own idiosyncratic definition of fiction that is not the standard one because you don’t realize the distinction is important, or 2) attempting to differentiate your work in a crowded marketplace by being more than a little dishonest about what it is. Sutherland clearly adores John Lennon, as many of us do, but an intense parasocial connection doesn’t give a person the right to speak for him. No matter how intense or intimate the connection feels. The sad thing is, if the work is excellently done, it will find its audience regardless of what you call it — the sophistry isn’t necessary. Colleen McCullough’s books set in ancient Rome spring to mind. How are those any different from Sutherland’s books? I think primarily because Sutherland feels her connection to Lennon to be more intimate and personal than McCullough felt hers to Cicero, Caesar, and the rest of the SPQR gang. The claim of “this is history,” is a claim of authority, yes, but also of intimacy, and I think it’s the craving TO KNOW that is driving a lot of these latest generations’ rejection of history. History is a cold art, practiced at a distance. Authors like Sutherland don’t want that, and their fans don’t want it either, and since these books are in some sense about the marketplace, the claims aren’t challenged. It’s similar to fan-fic in that way. What does it matter, right? Cumulatively, I think it matters quite a bit. I once considered creating an entire online skeleton key to Life After Death for Beginners, showing all the sources and connections that underpinned the novel, the whole paranoid symphony. “X person is this guy, and he says y because in real life he said z.” That would’ve been interesting to some I’m sure, but it wouldn’t have made my book any less fictional. And one of the reasons that I do not promote the book is how at a certain point I got very uncomfortable with precisely this territory — if I was really asserting something, I felt I should stand behind it as history, but if I was just inflating my own parasocial relationship with a long-dead rockstar that I admired, it was “merely” fiction. Lennon is a particularly difficult person to fictionalize, because he was so changeable and also so prone to using the press to present a line of argument as “the truth.” He neither felt he had to be consistent, nor did he feel that the press or public was owed the unvarnished truth about anything relating to him. He felt that people who believed what they read in the newspaper were idiots. So he was constantly corrupting his own datastream, as it were. My sense after all these years is, were a writer able to channel John Lennon perfectly, the resulting character on the page would be equal parts attractive and unattractive. So from where I sit Sutherland is in a bind — if her Lennon is appealing, as the real guy often was, her books would please fans and sell; but if her character also embodies Lennon’s genuine darkness, fans will throw the book across the room and accuse her of all manner of things. It was the same bind Albert Goldman found himself in, and before we dismiss his book, it’s never been sued by anyone, and its portrait of John, so shocking in 1987, has in large part become incorporated into the historical figure. I understand WHY a Beatle fan author would wish to novelize Lennon, and buttress that novelization with footnotes; this mirrors our contemporary relationship with these guys. The internet has made footnoting a subset of fandom. And I also understand why a Beatle fan author would wish to market her work by calling it non-fiction, even as it gives information only that fiction can provide. I even know many New Journalist authors that I respect who produced “fictional history.” But that’s a hugely tall order even when, say, Tom Wolfe was doing it for the mostly anonymous test pilots and astronauts of The Right Stuff — with the exception of John Glenn, few if any readers came to that book with any opinions about Wolfe’s subjects. To basically attempt to apply a kind of New Journalism to John Lennon, with the difficulties that specific subject contains, writing as a fan (not a journalist), and for other fans, is…your thumb has to be on the scale to a huge degree. Meaning, you have to make John Lennon look good in the ways that fans like; you have to deliver a kind of unearned intimacy with him (unearned by yourself, and unearned by the readers); and with such heavy restrictions, I think it’s either naive or misleading to claim the resulting work is in any way “non-fiction.” To pick an obvious example: did Stu die because Lennon kicked him in the head? Sutherland has to make a call on this seminal, but unknowable, event. If the answer is yes, Lennon is a hugely different guy than if the answer is no. And she cannot side with Pauline Sutcliffe, without turning her book series into something most Beatles fans wouldn’t want to read.
  • A quick yawp from Mr. History Comment by Justin McCann on Aug 27, 09:33 This is why I love this site: the Beatles are just a convenient springboard for discussing everything else in the world. ‘Brilliant morons’ is a great phrase; perfectly sums things up. What really gets me down about the current wave of unelected technoligarchs, and the wave after wave of STEM graduates who help them shape our world, is how relentlessly philistinic they are. As with the MAGA crowd, it’s not simply a matter of lacking morality, it’s lacking taste, refinement, grace, wisdom, balance, proportion, any largeness of soul, and any sense whatsoever that there could be more to life than what’s right in front of your nose. (And you absolutely do not need to believe in a man in the sky to know that there’s far more to the capabilities of human consciousness than whatever parts of the brain are responsible for doing your taxes or creating cool cars.) The ‘price of everything and value of nothing’, in Wilde’s memorable phrase. Just as a total lack of concern for aesthetic beauty allows the technoligarchs steamroller over the arts and a total contempt for introspection allows them do whatever they want without considering the consequences, a total ignorance of history allows them to think they can bypass millennia of philosophical debates and simply recreate human morality from scratch (see: neo-utilitarianism, Effective Altruism, longtermism, the rationalist community). It’s not that there are no good actors in the whole Bay Area subculture, but their access to power and money quickly corrupts whatever good ideas they have until the richest and most powerful people of all end up enacting the most hopelessly debased versions of the ideas. The rest of us, lacking the power, money or time to jump in, sit by and watch as we’re all treated as guinea pigs in social experiments that would be ridiculous if they weren’t so dangerous. I’m choosing to hope that commentators like Ted Gioia are right that our combined people power can still make a difference.
  • A quick yawp from Mr. History Comment by Nancy Carr on Aug 27, 07:28 I agree with you about the replacement of verifiable history with fantasy (I’m getting flashbacks to my old post about Jude Sutherland Kessler’s books about John Lennon, which she touts as nonfiction despite incorporating made-up dialogue and inner thoughts). I’m hoping that the movies et. al. awaken more desire in some people to dig into what is documented to have happened, but who knows.
  • Last Recorded Audio of John Lennon, 12/8/80 Comment by Matt on Aug 26, 20:02 In “Dakota Days,” Lennon tells John Green he doesn’t think Yoko is cut out for touring, that she doesn’t have the patience, or the respect for the audience, to make it work, and it would be a huge financial risk knowing she might suddenly bail in the middle of it. I’m not sure Lennon would have had the energy or the patience to do it night after night at that point either. I can’t see him wanting to leave the Dakota for long. I could see them doing sporadic shows maybe, here and there. I think realistically that could have happened. I think mostly though they were floating the idea to help promote Double Fantasy, and that’s as far as it went. It strikes me in that last interview, the most ‘himself’ and relaxed he sounds is at the very end, where he’s signing things and talking spontaneously. He does sound happy, but I also don’t think it’s irreconcilable with his being personally depressed. Lennon was always ‘on’ with people around, and those reporters are getting his public face; whereas, some of those last demos like ‘Dear John’ sound profoundly defeated.
  • Beatleg Stories Comment by Michael Gerber on Aug 26, 15:37 Thank you, @Paul! I’d trade places with your generation in a second. Music in the 60s, comedy in the 70s. The best.
  • First Thoughts on “The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event” Comment by Paul on Aug 26, 12:39 Agreed! It makes me almost hope the movies flop. But is that even possible? Good or bad, everyone is going to watch them to find out.
  • Beatleg Stories Comment by Paul on Aug 26, 12:33 You are right Mike, at least for me. I was there, and I don’t get it. but I really enjoyed your stories, and kind of understand where you’re coming from. I have never had the same experience with anything that came before me, like Sinatra or Presley, but I’m not a creative. Thanks for the great writing, always interesting and entertaining, makes me wish I was born in 1970!
  • The Artist as a Dissipated Man: Fred Seaman’s “The Last Days of John Lennon” Comment by Charles Platt on Aug 25, 15:40 Thank you for a faultless summary. John Lennon may have been bad news to women in some ways, but Yoko Ono was bad news to just about everyone, including the writer of “The Last Days of John Lennon.”
  • In Defence of Revolver Comment by Paul on Aug 24, 17:14 John dissed pepper after the breakup because it was Paul’s baby, and it was just another one of Joko’s attacks on him. He came back from Spain, and Paul told him to get some songs ready, they were going into the studio. A Day in the Life gets more media and fan attention than anything else on Pepper or Revolver. It was just John’s paranoia from insecurity and drugs.
  • First Thoughts on “The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event” Comment by Michael Gerber on Aug 24, 08:17 Unquestionably so, @Paul. But this underscores my basic issue with the movies. Running “The Beatles” like a bunch of IP that can (and must!) be refreshed for each new generation misses something really important: The Beatles are not the Marvel Cinematic Universe. They are history. They were people who did things and didn’t do other things; had opinions; made mistakes. Their real selves and real lives, which we largely know, aren’t something to be remixed or retconned for money. There is a post in this, surely, but I feel like I spend most of every day thinking/worrying about it. Our culture’s turning away from history — both the study of, and the manufacture of via scholarship — in favor of religion and mythology (which now encompasses everything from pop culture to advertising to conspiracy theories) — seems to be leading us into a very, very bloody and short-sighted era. One that technology may make our last. Feeding The Beatles — the real people, the real story, the actual provable reality — into the myth-making machine is a symptom of a very misguided age, one that, so far, is simply not intellectually prepared or courageous enough to guide our species. That’s really the opposite of who The Beatles were, and what they stood for. The Sixties were a hair-raising time, full of conflict and species-wide near-misses, and it took all the wisdom we could muster to get through them. In addition to creating amazing music, The Beatles were consistently on the right side of the major issues of the day, and spoke more wisely and clearly than anyone had a right to expect them to. The real guys were really something else; for that reason alone, we should resist the corporate urge to remix them, as if who they were in their time isn’t interesting enough for the young folks, or something young people won’t relate to. We know the real John Paul George and Ringo, and they were absolutely great. That should be enough to keep them as au courant as they need to be.
  • Quick Housekeeping Note re: Moolah Comment by Michael Gerber on Aug 24, 08:02 Aw thanks, @Paul! I am beginning that process this week.
  • Quick Housekeeping Note re: Moolah Comment by Paul on Aug 23, 10:23 Anything new on the crossover Mike? Any more thoughts on monetization? I’m still looking for places to send charitable contributions. 🙂
  • First Thoughts on “The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event” Comment by Paul on Aug 22, 12:57 I wonder if they selected these actors to attract certain age groups/fans. I have never heard of any of them, but I don’t follow contemporary culture. Our 40 something children surely know who they are, and have probably seen some/much of their work.
  • Last Recorded Audio of John Lennon, 12/8/80 Comment by Michael Gerber on Aug 21, 16:08 I never would’ve said this earlier, but I think maybe being alive when Lennon was alive is a big part of his magic? Like, he was basically the first person to use old media like everyone uses new media, and that was really thrilling and innovative when he was the only one doing it.
  • Last Recorded Audio of John Lennon, 12/8/80 Comment by Bai on Aug 21, 08:45 If it really comes from when it says it comes, it is pretty horrifying. I don’t share the warmth you have for John any more, but the thought of what happened in a few days’ time is chilling. But I remember reading here all this very dark stuff about his death and his state of health and the general darkness of the Dakota years, and he doesn’t sound all the depressed here. Although… I don’t know. I just admire how invested you guys still are.
  • First Thoughts on “The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event” Comment by Neal on Aug 20, 14:08 I do not like the looks of this project at all. Not only for the reasons that many of you have stated, but that I cannot get my head around what the above picture is supposed to mean. Three actors who, in the role of the Beatles, are seen giving the finger to the viewers. Seriously? It is almost as if the writers feel obliged to try to paint a picture for the generations of today that the Beatles were some type of anarchic “show it to the man” type of rebels. No, they were a quartet of gifted, ambitious, creative, and curious musicians and artists. They were no more rebels then are dentists who put on leather and ride around on their Harleys on the weekends. In fact, until Ringo started to occasionally get nasty with people, most of them retained their very English sensibilities and just lived their lives. If I try to imagine rebels and seriously bad dudes then I think of the Sex Pistols and the punk movement. One only need to read a few paragraphs of the excellent critic Nick Kent to discover how that was a scene that was, dangerous, violent, and apart from any semblance of society. That was not the Beatles. Second, we know that young people today have a smorgasbord of choices when it comes to music. The “angry artist” shtick became a meme long ago and if we want them to give the Beatles a chance, it is best to offer them examples of their ingenuity and the influences they had that reach even to today. A picture of three badly costumed thespians flipping the bird does no one a favor. In, fact, it probably is a candidate for Cory Doctorow’s list of examples of Entshittification. Maybe I am wrong and this was just the actors being the twenty or thirty-somethings that they are while standing around a set shooting still photos. I hope so. I very much agree with them looking as if they were trying to play the Kinks!
  • First Thoughts on “The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event” Comment by Paul on Aug 20, 14:02 See how deeply cynical us boomers can be? 🙂
  • First Thoughts on “The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event” Comment by Paul on Aug 20, 13:37 BTW, Have you heard the two minute clip of Paul talking about Two of Us’? I thought he was very honest and believable, but one never knows.https://youtu.be/xoWYMmQLA2A
  • First Thoughts on “The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event” Comment by Paul on Aug 20, 13:35 Boomer here, 71 y.o. Michael, you nailed it, we’re dropping like flies. My brother is 76, and my partner is 80, but we’ve lost a lot of friends. You really hit home with your paragraph about how we are programmed to ‘the good stuff’, and ‘the bad stuff’. That’s exactly how I think, and have done all of my life. I loved ‘Two of Us’ and ‘Nowhere Boy’. I thought the writing and acting was wonderful. The actors looks were spot on, or at least believable. Looking at the picture above, it will take some great writing and acting to get me past the fact that they look like anybody but the Beatles.
  • Last Recorded Audio of John Lennon, 12/8/80 Comment by Paul on Aug 20, 12:50 Good point! I wonder if he was scared of repercussions, or subconsciously afraid in some way.
  • First Thoughts on “The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event” Comment by Michael Gerber on Aug 20, 09:00 Good point! Paul presents a dramatic problem, namely that there’s not much drama in his life after 1969, not much change or external obstacles preventing him from getting what he wants. Except if what he wants is to work with John again. If I were involved with this project, I would take note of the recent fascination with John and Paul’s relationship, and really amp up the romance there, making John and Paul into star-crossed lovers, prevented by their era from becoming a couple. *Without ever saying that*, of course. Like that recent book, “John and Paul: A Love Story.” The online generations are simply obsessed with two things: identity, and conspiracy. Boomers would hate it, and Xers would too, but it would get young people to the theater, and spur a million tweets…which is the point here: the millennializing of The Fabs, so the heirs can make money for thirty more years.
  • First Thoughts on “The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event” Comment by Nancy Carr on Aug 20, 07:15 I’ve looked around and can’t find the release plans for these four films: I’d suspect that whichever is first to the post will do best financially, because I think audience fatigue will set in.
  • Another Kind of Mind Podcast Comment by Paul on Aug 19, 10:14 @Laura, yours was a brilliant post in my opinion. I have to agree with at least 90%of it. You have really distilled the cause of their problems down to a few insightful paragraphs. Thank you!
  • 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.