books Archives - Page 7 of 9 - Hey Dullblog, the Beatles fan blog

A literary White Album

By Ed Park|2015-01-07T20:09:55-08:00July 2, 2012|books|

Highly recommended. I'm reading Joe Meno's upcoming novel Office Girl (highly recommended!), and came across this recent interview in TriQuarterly Online: TQO: [...] I'm about seventy pages into your last novel, The Great Perhaps (2009), and I've already noticed the Beatles popping up throughout.Meno: Yeah, I mean that whole book is The White Album. I wanted to do a book that had four different voices, and they all sing on that album. And they cover pretty much all of 20th century music. There's “Rocky Raccoon.” There's country western. There's “Honey Pie,” which has this kind of jazzy sound. There's “Helter Skelter,” [...]

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Underrating Sgt. Pepper’s

By Michael Gerber|2014-12-23T18:13:47-08:00June 21, 2012|1966, 1967, books, Reviews, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper|

NANCY CARR • “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” is now routinely underrated. I recently read Robert Rodriguez’ new book, Revolver: How the Beatles Reimagined Rock n’ Roll, and the introduction threw this underrating into sharp relief. I highly recommend Rodriguez’ book in all other ways—it's a fascinating look at Revolver’s creation, artistry, and context—but the introduction made me grind my teeth. The path Rodriguez treads in his introduction is now very well worn: people used to think Sgt. Pepper’s was the thing, but now we know Revolver is. Fair enough, to a point. Revolver is excellent, and preferring it to Sgt, Pepper’s is defensible. [...]

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All that time

By Ed Park|2015-09-19T00:06:38-07:00May 7, 2012|1970, Reviews, Rolling Stone|

Greil Marcus "When I became record reviews editor, I made it clear to him after a few months — nobody had done the job before me — that the record review section was an independent republic within the country of Rolling Stone. That meant that nobody else could tell me what to review or what a writer could say. They could argue with me, but ultimately it was my decision. And that worked well. There was one incident where Paul McCartney makes his first solo record and people thought it was wonderful: this rough, homemade one-man-band album. It was accompanied by [...]

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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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Review of "Living In The Material World"

By Michael Gerber|2015-04-26T06:17:55-07:00September 14, 2011|Documentaries, George Harrison, Interviews, Reviews|

We're all water Pal o' Dullblog Shirley Wicevich was lucky enough to catch an advance screening of Martin Scorsese's new George Harrison documentary, "Living In The Material World." Here are her thoughts. HD: Where'd you see the movie, Shirley? SW: At the Telluride Film Festival over Labor Day Weekend; I've volunteered there for 6 years. First Ken Burns came out, and gave the prelude to what the audience was about to experience. Then he introduced the film's co-producers, George's widow Olivia and David Tedeschi. That night was the first time that Olivia watched the documentary at a public viewing. HD: [...]

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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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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 [...]

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Talkin’ Beatle books (and our Dev!)

By Michael Gerber|2015-10-12T13:46:36-07:00January 13, 2011|books|

You forgot "Fluoridation" This afternoon, while trolling the internet for something to listen to while I was in the bath, I stumbled upon this podcast from rockcritics.com, which proved to be a very interesting roundup of Beatle tomage by Tim Riley, author of Tell Me Why (and a bio of John Lennon which I will doubtless purchase and read). Our own D. McKinney is singled out and glorified, rightly so. Anybody reading Dullblog who hasn't read Magic Circles should go do so immediately. I move we should assemble a essential Beatle Bookshelf. Any seconds? PS--In finding the photo for this [...]

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An Innovation in Guerilla Marketing: The Photo-Blurb

By Devin McKinney|2013-08-13T22:57:34-07:00October 14, 2010|books, John Lennon|

DEVIN McKINNEY • In case you didn't know, our own Mike Gerber has published a fanciful and fantabulous fantasy novel re: the Beatles, John Lennon, murder, mystery, memory, and the whole mishigas. Here is another plug of support from a fellow co-founder of this blog (cropped above and below to honor the subclause of our bylaws requiring co-founders to maintain facial anonymity as we walk among our subjects). Kudos, Mike, on—as JL often referred to a PM song he particularly liked—a damn good piece of work.

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