1964 Archives | Hey Dullblog, the Beatles fan blog

The Beatles in musical context, 1963-1965

By Nancy Carr|2019-07-18T00:29:10-07:00December 1, 2016|1963, 1964, 1965, Beach Boys, Beatles vs. Stones, Bob Dylan, Guest blogger, Other bands, The Rolling Stones|

Guest Dullblogger Justin McCann, a freelance writer, musician, and self-described “inveterate lurker” on Hey Dullblog, offers these observations on the Beatles’ musical context in 1963-65. Please give him a warm welcome. As innovative as the Beatles were, their rivals — the Stones, The Who, the Kinks, Bob Dylan et. al. — were often just as inventive and you can read about them on this website if you want to know about the greatest legends of the music industry. If other musicians hadn’t been so good, the Beatles wouldn’t have felt the need to compete with them. And if the Beatles — particularly Paul [...]

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Eight Days A Week: 5 Great Things About Ron Howard’s Documentary

By Nancy Carr|2016-09-26T16:05:36-07:00September 26, 2016|1963, 1964, 1965, Beatle History, Beatlemania, concert, Live, Movies, Uncategorized|

Getting ready to perform, during the suit-and-tie era. Ron Howard's Eight Days A Week documentary of the Beatles' touring years is excellent. Not perfect, not a definitive look at the totality of the Beatles' career, but very good at doing what it sets out to do. Howard does shy away from the unseemly elements of the Beatles' life on the road, most obviously the rampant sex. And he doesn't delve into the disenchantment that Lennon and Harrison later expressed about the experience of being Beatles. But Howard is aiming to show us what being on public display felt like for the band, and [...]

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Magical Mystery Band: The Beatles and God

By Nancy Carr|2016-02-17T10:41:20-08:00February 17, 2016|1964, Eastern religions, Guest blogger, India, rishikesh, Transcendental Meditation|

by Chris Dingman, guest Dullblogger I was born on April 3, 1964, the week The Beatles saturated the US pop charts like no act before or since, claiming the first five songs and fully fourteen percent of the top 100. But I wouldn’t hear them until some years later, when they would spark my first ideas of God. Chris Dingman -- you can read more about him and his projects at the end of this post. We tend to see Copernicus’s realization that the earth revolves around the sun instead of vice versa as the beginning of the end of [...]

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London researchers say Beatles not revolutionary

By Nancy Carr|2015-05-09T18:06:57-07:00May 7, 2015|1964, Beatlemania, Beatles Criticism, Mark Lewisohn, pre-Beatles|

NANCY CARR * A study just issued by researchers at Imperial College London and Queen Mary University of London asserts that the Beatles' success in mid-60s America was anything but revolutionary. According to Professor Armand Leroi, the paper's senior author, “They were good looking boys with great haircuts and British accents but as far as their music was concerned they weren’t anything new.” "Yeah-huh," as those of us raised in Texas sardonically respond to transparently idiotic statements (at least when we're trying to be polite). The researchers decided that the Beatles weren't up to anything new because chord progressions, lyrics, and beats in [...]

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The Beatles in Pittsburgh, 1964

By Michael Gerber|2014-09-15T11:59:05-07:00September 15, 2014|1964, Beatlemania|

The Beatles one and only visit to Pittsburgh came in 1964, at the height of Beatlemania. The Post-Gazette commemmorates both the concert and the phenomenon here. This is my favorite part. Three fans, holding a cake they hope to present to the group, are outside the arena waiting for the concert to begin: Speaking “British” was something the three teens who’d never ventured far from Weirton [West Virginia] had done quite often. Just a few weeks earlier, Sharon and Beverly had launched into the accents while attending the premiere of the Beatles’ new movie, “A Hard Day’s Night,” in nearby Steubenville, Ohio. [...]

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Charles Taylor on A Hard Day’s Night

By Michael Gerber|2014-08-12T09:54:34-07:00August 10, 2014|1964, AHDN, Beatles Criticism, Swinging London|

Some boys have trouble expressing affection. Charles Taylor has written a marvelous appreciation of "A Hard Day's Night" for the Los Angeles Review of Books. He just gets so much right here, and it's stuff that I've felt myself but never read anywhere else. Here's the opener to get you started: HOW WOULD YOU REACT if there appeared in front of you a flesh-and-blood vision of everything you ever dreamed life could be? What if you could, at the same time, be your distinctive self and an irreplaceable part of a greater whole? What if that greater whole showed you [...]

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Ringo on the Train Song

By Michael Gerber|2014-07-08T23:07:32-07:00July 8, 2014|1964, AHDN, Unreleased/Outtakes|

Starr, swaddled. After last night, I should've learned my lesson: no posting after your contacts dry out, it's just gibberish. But this just came over the Mojo Wire: Los Angeles Times man of music Randy Lewis asked our own Ringo Starr about the mysterious 42-second snippet that's been rocketing around Beatledom. It's the full track from A Hard Day's Night, a snippet of which comes out of Ringo's transistor before being switched off by the upper-class git. “I hope you don’t mind a crazy ‘Hard Day’s Night’ question,” I said before relating the recent events and asking if he knew [...]

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The Nicol Theory

By Michael Gerber|2014-07-04T16:00:11-07:00July 4, 2014|1964, AHDN, Unreleased/Outtakes|

Did Jimmy leave a secret legacy? On June 22, Chris Carter's "Breakfast With the Beatles" unveiled an unreleased Beatles track that has fans buzzing: the full 42-second song that blares only for a few seconds from Ringo's transistor radio during the train scene in A Hard Day's Night. Thanks to Chris' kind permission, we were the first site to bring the track to the web. Yay, Dullblog. As the debate over Ringo's train music continues (I say probably yes, Devin says probably no, this blog says probably yes, this one probably no, Chris Carter says probably yes, Giles Martin says probably [...]

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Unreleased Beatles song from Hard Day’s Night?

By Michael Gerber|2014-07-08T23:09:56-07:00June 26, 2014|1964, AHDN, Unreleased/Outtakes|

Okay folks, after checking with Chris Carter from KLOS' wonderful "Breakfast With the Beatles"—a Sunday morning institution in my household, and should be in yours, too--I snipped out this bit of new Beatle-music. Originally recorded during the sessions for "A Hard Day's Night," it was found by collector Dave Morrell, and had its worldwide debut on BWTB last Sunday. I couldn't find it anywhere on the web, so I thought I'd post it so non-LA Beatlepeople could hear and enjoy. Sorry for the slack air at the end, I have to learn GarageBand over again every time I use it. [...]

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Ringo’s Radio Music from Hard Day’s Night

By Michael Gerber|2014-06-25T18:31:35-07:00June 25, 2014|1964, AHDN|

Just a quickie, 'cause I have a book to write and magazine to launch dammit-- Last Sunday, Chris Carter's excellent "Breakfast with the Beatles" played a complete song potentially recorded by The Beatles during the Hard Day's Night sessions in 1964. A loving recreation of anonymous Invasion pop, we've only heard a snippet of this before…at 4.01 in the video below: http://youtu.be/4Nq-GyLrtHc I looked for a full recording online, and it's not up anywhere (yet). Is it The Beatles? Carter believes so, and I agree; it's highly unlikely that any backing group would've been able to keep mum for 50 years. Furthermore, [...]

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