Rolling Stones Archives | Hey Dullblog, the Beatles fan blog

Book Review: “Beatles vs. Stones”

By Devin McKinney|2014-02-03T05:09:15-08:00November 11, 2013|1968, Beatles vs. Stones, biography, books|

Beatles vs. Stones by John McMillian 288 pp. Simon & Schuster, 2013 Reviewed by Devin McKinney Note: This review was first posted, precipitately, on July 22nd, after review copies of John McMillian's book were sent out; it was difficult for the reviewer to resist reading and responding to it immediately. Now that the book is publicly available, we repost the review, without any changes. A character in Jonathan Lethem’s novel The Fortress of Solitude claims that every small-group dynamic found in fiction or in life is comprehensible via the Beatles model of organizational relationships: “The Beatles thing is an archetype, it’s like [...]

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Book Review: “Beatles vs. Stones”

By Devin McKinney|2016-12-01T17:40:34-08:00July 22, 2013|1968, Beatles vs. Stones, biography, books|

Beatles vs. Stones by John McMillian 288 pp. Simon & Schuster, 2013 Reviewed by Devin McKinney A character in Jonathan Lethem’s novel The Fortress of Solitude claims that every small-group dynamic found in fiction or in life is comprehensible via the Beatles model of organizational relationships: “The Beatles thing is an archetype, it’s like the basic human formation. Everything naturally forms into a Beatles, people can’t help it.” He illustrates this theory by applying it, convincingly, to Star Wars and The Tonight Show. (For the record, the archetypal roles—or “four sides of the circle,” as the title of a Beatles bootleg once [...]

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Beatles, Stones, and serial killers

By Devin McKinney|2013-08-18T01:12:04-07:00July 8, 2013|Beatles vs. Stones|

Midnight Rambler DEVIN McKINNEY • A friend sent this link to a Guardian article titled “31 Songs That Changed My Life,” in which a variety of English creatives (actually, not enough variety—only six are women) name and briefly describe a song they found in some way determinative of their personal development. Per the EW “best album” commented on by Mike, I don’t like such lists yet I almost always look at them. This entry caught me: #15, by Scottish crime novelist Ian Rankin: Midnight Rambler by The Rolling Stones I have chosen this from my favourite Rolling Stones album: I’m [...]

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Rolling Stones open thread

By Michael Gerber|2014-07-23T11:59:16-07:00July 12, 2012|1980, Beatles vs. Stones, John Lennon|

I'm taking the occasion of The Rolling Stones' 50th anniversary to declare the first-ever Hey Dullblog open thread. Any thoughts/opinions/stories about The Stones are welcome in the comments, especially if they have some relation to Our Guys, no matter how tangential. This is an experiment; if everybody has fun, we'll do more open threads. I'll start it off with what I immediately thought of this morning, when NPR told me it was 50 years since The Stones' first gig: You know, they're congratulating the Stones on being together 112 years. Whoooopee! At least Charlie and Bill still got their families. In the [...]

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The Beatles Writings of Joshua Glenn: “I’m Only Slacking”

By Devin McKinney|2015-04-26T06:14:12-07:00May 15, 2012|comedy, Guest blogger, Help, Let It Be|

In 2008, upon publication of The Idler’s Glossary, one of its authors, Joshua Glenn, engaged in an exchange of open letters with his co-author, Mark Kingwell—the topic of which, befitting the themes of the book, was the proper distinction between idling and slacking. In Glenn’s half of the exchange, our serial contributor illustrates the matter with apt and breezy reference to the Beatles, and even draws a productive contrast with the Rolling Stones (a band whose existence, for whatever reason, has seldom been acknowledged by anyone at Hey Dullblog). Lest it be felt that this discussion is of limited relevance, consider that [...]

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The less eternal question

By Ed Park|2015-09-18T23:38:09-07:00April 4, 2008|Dakota, John Lennon|

Which New York Observer film critic had the more interesting Beatles mention last week? Andrew Sarris, on the Scorsese Stones doc Shine a Light:When I was teaching at the School of Visual Arts in 1965, all the students seemed to be fanatical Stones fans, listening to their songs incessantly on the cafeteria jukebox. They seemed determined to make me see how wrong I was to prefer the Beatles, as I had implied in 1964 in The Village Voice (I had raved about A Hard Day’s Night, which I designated as “the Citizen Kane of juke-box musicals”). I still like the Beatles, but [...]

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