Devin McKinney • Hey Dullblog, the Beatles fan blog

The Beatles Writings of Joshua Glenn: “Big Mal Lives!”

By Devin McKinney|2022-03-03T14:24:58-08:00May 2, 2012|comedy, Guest blogger|

Part 2 of our series highlighting the Fab scholarship of Joshua Glenn requires a leap of the kind every agile imagination should be willing to take now and again. The flight is high, the loft long, and the landing safe. Best you simply begin. Let me only say that, though his findings seem incredible, given the givens of Beatle history as conventionally written, Mr. Glenn assures me his researches are not fabulation but "straightforward journalism. 100% true." — D.M This piece was first posted at HiLobrow on January 12, 2012. BIG MAL LIVES! Thirty-five years ago today, on the night of January [...]

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Christ! The Beatles In Memphis

By Devin McKinney|2013-09-13T13:54:38-07:00April 28, 2012|1966, bootlegs, concert, John Lennon|

The before-show press conference, backstage, Mid-South Coliseum. DEVIN McKINNEY • I'm a bit ashamed to say it's taken me this long to listen to something I've had on the shelf for a few years—the audience recordings of the Beatles' afternoon and evening shows at Memphis's Mid-South Coliseum, midway through their final tour. The evening show is the famous one: Near the end of "If I Needed Someone," the third song, a cherry bomb was thrown onstage and exploded. I remember reading that three teenagers, adolescent mischief-makers with no malign intent beyond literally making a noise, were detained by security. I [...]

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Beatles and Batteries: Anthony Pomes on slide

By Devin McKinney|2015-09-03T11:16:34-07:00April 26, 2012|Beatles tributes, George Harrison|

DEVIN McKINNEY • My mother, of all non-Beatles-fixated people, sent me the video below: I'm still investigating how she came by it. She asked if I'd ever heard of the musician (Anthony Pomes), his band (Mostly Moptop), or their live show ("Let it Be[fore and After]). "No" on all three, but I really like the sound Anthony makes in this brief instructional vid, and as a guitarist, I appreciate the inside info on the peculiar blues tuning of a minor George song. Nice Lennonesque woodgrain Casino to the side. https://youtu.be/iWYAU2HaMTM

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The Beatles Writings of Joshua Glenn: “The Argonaut Folly (Pt. 3)”

By Devin McKinney|2015-04-26T06:22:13-07:00April 22, 2012|comedy, Guest blogger|

And now for something completely different: It’s my pleasure to introduce you to the work of Joshua Glenn, who joins the short and exclusive list of non-co-founders invited to be a Hey Dullblog contributor. Over the next several weeks, we’ll be posting Glenn’s Beatles-related writings as a sort of serial immersion in the perspectives and conclusions of a writer whose Fab mediations and meditations are unlike any others. This small but intense body of work has been available previously, but is being airlifted in full from its home site(s) for the entertainment and enlightenment of a readership that may not know it, [...]

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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 [...]

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As I go round and round in circles

By Devin McKinney|2013-08-13T22:55:00-07:00March 31, 2012|books, bootlegs|

DEVIN McKINNEY • This seems terribly solipsistic of me—and it is—but Mike asked about this a long time ago and commenter Craig asked about it lately and I got curious for a look back and here it is and it might entertain a couple of you and for the rest at least provide one answer to the question, “What did Mike Gerber mean when he subtitled this blog ‘People Who Think About the Beatles Maybe a Little Too Much’?” A-way back in the Clinton years, I was writing a book about the Beatles and began idly compiling the track list for an [...]

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Book Review: “The Beatles & Bournemouth”

By Devin McKinney|2014-07-23T16:21:34-07:00March 3, 2012|1963, books|

Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth by Nick Churchill 176 pp. Natula Publications, 2011 Reviewed by Devin McKinney The swelling and significant subgenre of Beatles literature dealing with Beatles and place includes tourist guides like The Beatles’ London and The Beatles’ Liverpool that tell you where they walked and drank and sang, what alley, pub, or park backdropped a famous photo. There are books devoted to tours, like Larry Kane’s Ticket to Ride (North America, 1964), Barry Tashian’s Ticket to Ride (ditto, 1966), and Robert Whitaker’s mostly-photographic Eight Days a Week (Germany, Tokyo, Philippines, 1966)—in each of which, the cultural and [...]

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I Forgot to Remember “I Forgot to Remember to Forget”

By Devin McKinney|2013-08-13T22:56:06-07:00September 8, 2011|1964, George|

DEVIN McKINNEY • Thinking about favorite unreleased Beatles songs, my mind, like most people's, went right for the studio outtakes. But I was walking across town yesterday with iPod in ears and shuffled right into George's BBC rendition of "I Forgot to Remember to Forget," one of the songs recorded by Elvis Presley at the legendary Sun Sessions. Elvis's version is lachrymose, a tear-in-beer downer to break up the honky-tonk monotony. But the Beatles do it light, and light, it turns out, is right. George tosses off the lost-love lyric with the callow elan of a boy skipping through mud puddles: he's [...]

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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, [...]

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Doctor Who?

By Devin McKinney|2014-07-23T16:22:22-07:00March 26, 2011|1965, John Lennon|

DEVIN McKINNEY • I'm not a Doctor Who fan myself, but if you are, this must be the cat's whiskers. Courtesy of Archie McPhee's Endless Guyser of Awesome!.

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About Devin McKinney