theories Archives - Hey Dullblog, the Beatles fan blog

Prudence and the Penis: A Mystery

By Devin McKinney|2013-09-02T08:03:39-07:00April 3, 2012|1968, Paul McCartney, Ringo, The White Album|

We know who wrote it. But who is on the Dear Prudence drum track? DEVIN McKINNEY • Mike's Facebook posting of isolated tracks from "Hey Bulldog" led me to seek out other examples of stripped-down Beatlesongs. This is among the more interesting, for both the music and the controversy. The mystery of the Dear Prudence drum track Did Ringo play the outro drums on "Dear Prudence"? One tends to forget that Paul is credited with drumming this track (recorded during Ringo's brief angry White Album hiatus), because its climactic passage is so utterly Ringoesque. (Plus, recordings like "The Ballad of [...]

Mikal Gilmore: “They had thrown away something special”

By Devin McKinney|2015-01-03T15:09:40-08:00June 4, 2011|1969, Apple, books|

DEVIN McKINNEY • "I've never come across a story that fascinated or moved me more than this particular one. The end of the Beatles was convoluted and acrimonious, but it was also transcendent." Read this if you haven't. It resonates nicely with discussions that have gone on here, mainly between Michael and various of our correspondents, about why the Beatles broke up. It's by Mikal Gilmore, journalist, critic, and author of Shot in the Heart, one of the best books I've ever read. It is an excerption from Gilmore's 2009 Rolling Stone article, as well as prologema to his planned 2013 release, [...]

Thoughts on "Paperback Writer"

By Ed Park|2015-01-30T17:23:05-08:00January 18, 2011|books|

Thinking about "Paperback Writer" — it's a thousand pages, give or take a few?!Heard this one with fresh ears recently and began thinking about 1,000-page debut novels (paperback or no): Are there any?Not sure. But then I thought about that scene in Wonder Boys (the film based on the Michael Chabon novel), in which novelist Grady Tripp (Michael Douglas) is typing a number on a page of his manuscript...and then adds a fourth digit.Wonder Boys the novel was inspired in part by Chabon's experience writing and abandoning a novel called Fountain City. (More info here; an excerpt, with annotations, has just been [...]