Michael Gerber • Hey Dullblog, the Beatles fan blog

Question Time!

By Michael Gerber|2020-01-03T00:14:20-08:00January 3, 2020|Housekeeping|

Private Gripweed indulges his sweet tooth. I am attempting, with only partial success, to stay off my computer. I find, like so many of us, that frequent exposure to Facebook and Twitter makes my mind feel like the bottom of a birdcage; and on top of that, I was in production for Bystander pretty much every day since July 1. So my tanks were low, and this was necessary. Slowly, very slowly, my personality is coming back, and as it reemerges I find myself entertaining happy obsessions like The Beatles and the Sixties that surrounded them. (In the last 24 hours I [...]

48

The Problem With Being a Genius

By Michael Gerber|2022-07-24T13:51:44-07:00December 20, 2019|Paul McCartney, Uncategorized|

In catching up on recent comments, I ran across a couple that suggested Hey Dullblog judges Paul McCartney more harshly than it does the other Beatles; and one of the persistent conversations here for the last couple years is an anti-Paul bias in the media (I suppose we are part of the media?). Why doesn't Paul get his due? commenters ask. Is it because he's been coded as feminine? Is it because he traditionally appealed to female Beatles fans? Is it misguided post-murder worship of Lennon? Is it Jann Wenner's Rolling Stone vendetta hardening into a permanent attitude? This is how a [...]

22

Robert Freeman, Photographer of the Beatles

By Michael Gerber|2021-12-06T01:38:48-08:00November 10, 2019|Photos|

On this busy Sunday (busy for me at least), let us pause for a moment to remember Robert Freeman, the man responsible for many of the most iconic images of the Beatlemania years. Freeman took the photos for With the Beatles, A Hard Day's Night, Beatles for Sale, HELP, and Rubber Soul, plus a proposed cover for Revolver that, if you ask me, should've been the inner sleeve. (Here's a video on that cover if you haven't seen it.) https://youtu.be/EliGoQnSEeA But not only the covers, which I think are probably the least interesting part. Freeman took the cover photo for both of [...]

7

Best Beatles Mashups

By Michael Gerber|2019-11-06T15:45:12-08:00November 6, 2019|Collaborations|

I must admit that I love a good Beatles mashup, and after Stephen Kroninger shared the following one today, I thought: "What are the best Beatles mashups? This sounds like a job for the Dullblog Commentariat!"Put your faves in the comments; if I like 'em, I'll move 'em to this post. https://youtu.be/3QdPI238qh0 Whole Lotta Helter Skelter (Beatles & Led Zeppelin) The one below's a bit of a cheat, given that The Monkees were the best Beatles impression Hollywood songwriters could create. But I like it. https://youtu.be/zghGlLdPp6w Paperback Believer (Beatles & Monkees) A bit awkward in places, but the guitar break makes it [...]

23

Geoffrey Giuliano Goes Off

By Michael Gerber|2019-10-23T15:09:27-07:00October 23, 2019|Uncategorized|

Commenter Gibson pointed me to this cri de coeur from Beatle author Geoffrey Giuliano on the perils of "thinking about the Beatles a little too much." It tickled me immensely, and some of you will have strong feelings, I'm sure. I look forward to hearing them in the comments. Now if you'll excuse me, I must go back to frying chicken. :-) You'll get the joke if you watch the video. (Actually, Kate and I are about to go to The Getty Villa. Ancient Romans had many analogues to Beatle-worship, and not simply gods and emperors and the cults around each. There [...]

23

Soviet Hippies

By Michael Gerber|2019-10-23T01:40:12-07:00October 23, 2019|Politics|

In our recent conversation regarding Revolver and Pepper the historical setting of The Beatles in general and those albums in particular have come up a lot. How much should historical context matter when judging an artistic work? Should it matter at all? Does something as squishy as historical importance trump more concrete metrics like sales or popularity, or even more nuanced ones like influence within important groups like fellow musicians? Back in the USSR, Beatles bootlegs were incised on x-rays, creating a secret Soviet flexi-disc. With that stuff swirling about, this evening I ran across a documentary called Soviet Hippies, about the [...]

9

Lennon and…John?

By Michael Gerber|2019-10-17T14:22:53-07:00October 17, 2019|John Lennon|

I don't know about you, but this always felt like a real friendship to me. Commenter @Hologram Sam dropped this into a comment thread but I thought it was worth making into a post. In Elton John's new autobiography, Me, he tells of a meeting he had with Yoko Ono in the early 80s (had to be some time before January 1984, for reasons you'll see in a second). If you're reading this site, you know that Elton John and John Lennon were good friends, and Elton was apparently one of the few people John socialized with during the Dakota years. Unlike [...]

40

George Harrison’s Last Interview

By Michael Gerber|2019-10-11T11:47:55-07:00October 11, 2019|George Harrison|

Ran across this yesterday for the millionth time and wanted to share; George was an interesting dude. A month later, he was diagnosed with throat cancer—making this George Harrison's last interview. George's core struggle is right here. He spoke the wisdom, saw and felt that it was true, but (for example) smoked so much he died at 58. I suppose there are some few holy men and women who can handle it, but for the rest of us, addiction is the opposite of enlightenment. George, like John, was right here in the soup with us, his flaws and virtues all mixed together. [...]

28

Where would John Lennon have moved?

By Michael Gerber|2020-02-27T21:21:55-08:00October 10, 2019|John Lennon|

This morning I had a stray thought: what would John Lennon have done if he'd survived? Where would he have gone? Now don't get too excited: I was all set to write a big long thinky post about this, but today has been nothing but furious fingers typing typing typing, so I will keep it short, and let the commentariat do the opining for me. In Life After Death for Beginners, my novel about a Lennon-like character who survives an assassination and has to find out who shot him and why, I put the main character here in Santa Monica. I am [...]

72

Happy Birthday John Lennon, wherever you are!

By Michael Gerber|2019-10-09T19:14:35-07:00October 9, 2019|John Lennon|

Lennon with a "UFO Detector," 1965. Photo by Brian Duffy. October 9th is, as every Beatle fan knows, John Lennon's birthday. I am sure he is celebrating along with us, probably on some distant planet. ("Dear People of Earth, all I want for my birthday is an impeachment. You know who.") An old family friend sent me a link to an article: "Five Things You Didn't Know About John Lennon." I knew them, and you would too, so I'm not linking to it. But that led me to another site about Lennon's famous 1974 UFO encounter (which we talked about here). John's [...]

10

About Michael Gerber