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Joshua Wolf Shenk on Lennon and McCartney (Take 2)

By Michael Gerber|2015-04-11T11:43:35-07:00August 14, 2014|Breakup, John and Paul, Joshua Wolf Shenk, Reviews|

Hello there Nancy (and everybody)— Mike here. Nice post, Nancy; thanks. Here are some more thoughts spurred by The Atlantic's Joshua Wolf Shenk on Lennon and McCartney, perhaps too many. "I read The Atlantic, mmkay?" First of all, Shenk’s piece struck me as typical magazine journalism in the post-Gladwell age — well-written and not factually wrong, but persistently unambitious, only revelatory to somebody who hasn’t really thought about anything but TPS reports since the late 1990s. You know the drill: writer declares something to be conventional wisdom — Shenk even goes to Wikipedia for it — then demolishes it via a catchphrased [...]

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Joshua Wolf Shenk on Lennon and McCartney (Take 1)

By Nancy Carr|2014-08-08T15:09:33-07:00August 8, 2014|books, John and Paul, Joshua Wolf Shenk, The White Album|

[Beloved HD readers: We're trying something a little new here, a call-and-response. This is my take on a recent piece in The Atlantic by Joshua Wolf Shenk on Lennon and McCartney. Soon Mike and/or Devin will chime in with posts of their own. -- Nancy Carr] What hath Malcolm Gladwell wrought? Thith. Hi Mike and Devin, I just finished reading Joshua Wolf Shenk’s Atlantic cover story on the Lennon/McCartney partnership, and while it has its flaws, I'm glad to see John and Paul presented as full collaborators. How crazy is it that it's necessary to argue that the entire Lennon/McCartney songbook [...]

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Mark Lewisohn Interviewed at Critics at Large

By Devin McKinney|2014-08-01T11:51:23-07:00August 1, 2014|biography, books, Mark Lewisohn, Tune In|

DEVIN McKINNEY • One of my colleagues at Critics at Large, Toronto-based arts critic Deirdre Kelly, has scored a dynamite interview with Mark Lewisohn, recently in T-Town for a screening of the Hard Day’s Night re-release and a book-signing. The interview is both substantial and delightful, especially for we who so eagerly consumed Tune In last December, who still see its vivid pictures in our minds, still hear the hum of the history it reanimated. Lewisohn is just as engaged a subject as he is a writer, and Deirdre elicits much fascinating info about the research process he’s been following as “the [...]

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Jude Southerland Kessler’s Lennon books: not nonfiction

By Nancy Carr|2014-06-29T20:08:49-07:00June 29, 2014|books|

Jude Southerland Kessler, author of series of books on the life of John Lennon. NANCY CARR • As the Beatles’ story is told and retold, the line between fact and fiction can grow vanishingly thin, and that’s why this interview with author Jude Southerland Kessler alarms me. She’s currently promoting volume three of a projected nine-book Lennon project she hopes will be “John’s ultimate biography.” Kessler is writing Lennon’s life in novelistic style, basing the narrative on fact while fleshing out conversations and scenes. Here’s what concerns me: she insists her books are equivalent to conventionally researched and presented biographies, and [...]

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Happy birthday, Paul! (with a few notes on style)

By Devin McKinney|2014-07-01T10:18:27-07:00June 18, 2014|1966, 1970s, birthdays, books, Linda McCartney, McCartney family, Paul McCartney, Photos|

Where can I find that jacket? DEVIN McKINNEY • Today is Paul McCartney’s 72nd birthday. He shows no signs of slowing, save for the current illness which his spokespeople will identify only as “a virus” and which has forced him to cancel several dates on his world tour—a contingency unprecedented, as far as I know, in his career. (Surely it’s ironic in some way that he’s taking his rest in Tokyo, cite of his traumatic 1980 pot bust.) What can you say on Paul’s birthday but “Happy birthday”? What can you ask but the same question you’ve asked on every [...]

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Lewisohn’s “Tune In” Extended Edition back in print

By Nancy Carr|2014-08-01T11:53:24-07:00April 28, 2014|books, Housekeeping, Mark Lewisohn, Tune In|

Update for anyone who didn't seize a copy of the two-volume, extended version of Vol 1 of Mark Lewisohn's definitive biography of the Beatles: due to popular demand, it's been reprinted and is in stock in the U.K. You can buy a copy here. My advice is not to sleep on this, if you're interested. I wouldn't bet on another reprint.

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“I Hope We Passed the Audition”: How The Beatles’ Encounter With Abbey Road Studios Changed the World

By Devin McKinney|2015-04-26T06:04:30-07:00April 17, 2014|1960s, Abbey Road, books, Guest blogger|

By Grant Maxwell, Guest Dullblogger Grant Maxwell has served as a professor of English at Baruch College in New York. He holds a Ph.D. from the City University of New York’s Graduate Center, and he’s an editor at Archai: The Journal of Archetypal Cosmology. He’s also a musician, having played on stages with members of The Rolling Thunder Revue, The Black Keys, and The Strokes. He lives in East Nashville, Tennessee, with his wife and son. The following is a modified excerpt from How Does It Feel?: Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the Philosophy of Rock and Roll, issued March [...]

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Alan Bryson’s “Anagrams” imagines alternate Beatles history

By Nancy Carr|2014-04-07T11:28:52-07:00April 7, 2014|alternate history, Beatles fiction, books|

Time-traveling Nathan's car, the Hawk, parked outside Grams' house Anagrams, an alternate-history novel in which a Baby Boomer returning to 1962 not only meets the Beatles but changes their trajectory, has just been published by first-time book author Alan Bryson. The novel’s hero, Nathan Bellew, must decide when and how to intervene in events he knows are set to unfold, while coping with the issues that come with being, outwardly, an 11-year-old kid again. Bryson is an American-born music journalist based in Europe: you can read his work at AllAboutJazz and listen to his interviews at Talking2Musicians. He graciously sent [...]

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Critics at Large reviews “The Fifth Beatle”

By Devin McKinney|2014-03-08T11:09:37-08:00March 8, 2014|alternate history, biography, books, Brian Epstein, Reviews|

DEVIN McKINNEY • While the world waits for the sunrise, and Hey Dullblog for the opinion of honorary Brian Epstein Fan Club president Mike Gerber, take a look at David Kidney’s review of the fantastic-seeming graphic novel The Fifth Beatle: The Brian Epstein Story, by writer Vivek Tiwary and artists Andrew Robinson and Kyle Baker. Posted over at my “other” blog outlet, Critics at Large, Kidney’s review gives enough flavor of the visual and textual of the book to get you wondering how much you’d be willing to spend on one of its numerous permutations: Standard; Deluxe; Super Deluxe Limited Edition, signed; [...]

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Michael Tomasky on the Beatles as the “sound of freedom”

By Nancy Carr|2014-02-06T15:47:52-08:00February 6, 2014|Beatles Criticism, books, Michael Tomasky|

Michael Tomasky, former editor of The American Prospect and The Guardian America, is getting into the Beatles’ 50th anniversary racket. His ebook, Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!: The Beatles and America, Then and Now, has just been released; in it, he puts forward the idea that the Fabs were "the sound of freedom," catalysts for (and participants in) the vast cultural opening that occurred in the West from 1964 onward. His overview addresses everything from race relations to Ringo's revolutionary use of the hi-hat. A longtime political columnist, Tomasky writes a thrice-weekly column for The Daily Beast and contributes on a regular basis to [...]

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