When Joshua Wolf Shenk's book Powers Of Two: Finding The Essence Of Innovation In Creative Pairs was published in 2014, Michael Gerber, Devin McKinney and I each wrote a post about it. Since Shenk's book has come up in recent comments, I thought I'd bring those posts back to the forefront. You can read take 1 here, take 2 here, and take 3 here. Add your own take in the comments!
Last Thursday Rolling Stone online published an interview with Paul McCartney about his current tour. It sounds like a stellar show—I’m sorry I haven’t been able to see it this year—but I groaned when I got to the part of the interview in which McCartney says, of adding “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” to the setlist, that he was “happy to kind of reclaim it as partially mine.” I just want to say to him: please don’t keep pouring kerosene on those embers. Please step back and let that frustration go, because you’re fueling the dynamic that seems to keep you feeling insecure. Here’s [...]
Sometimes it’s good to go through the time tunnel and remember that once the Beatles were “the strangest group to ever hit the pop scene.” I was reminded of this when I happened across The Best of Boyfriend (ed. Melissa Hyland: Prion, 2008) in a bookstore. Boyfriend was a UK magazine for young women published from 1959 to 1966, and in addition to advice columns, clothing ads, and serial fiction, it featured stories and pictures of the latest musical groups. In early 1963 Boyfriend ran a spread on the Beatles, who had recently released “Please Please Me.” The anonymous writer sounds almost [...]