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Albert Goldman and Hunter Davies on Beatles Biographies

By Michael Gerber|2014-12-24T10:58:10-08:00April 29, 2010|biography, books, John Lennon|

"What's the creepiest photo you have?... Yeah, that one." This is a two-part news program from 1989, where the author of the muckraking "The Lives of John Lennon" (just released at that time) debates Hunter Davies, the author of "The Beatles" authorized biography from 1968. Davies is very charming, and makes some very good points about Goldman's tendency to veer off into—well, the nicest thing to call it is "creative writing." I think that's exactly how any sensible person should read it; at points Goldman stops writing about the real John Lennon, whoever he was, and begins crafting a character [...]

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Aspiring or inspiring?

By Michael Gerber|2014-07-07T14:11:45-07:00December 21, 2009|books, John Lennon, Paul McCartney|

John Lennon The Life by Philip Norman The New York Times Book Review sent Philip Norman's new biography John Lennon: The Life to singer-songwriter Nellie McKay, and her very positive review is written in the manner of Lennon the prose stylist. Did she pull it off? I'm of two minds, myself. On the one hand, the review is a chore to get through, in a way In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works are not. As I read, my delight was heavily diluted by frustration. But that's at least in part a genre problem: a book review, [...]

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“Paperback” Trail; or, The Hunt for Mark Shipper

By Devin McKinney|2014-07-23T16:52:15-07:00September 14, 2009|books, comedy, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Rutles|

DEVIN McKINNEY • Note from the future (2013): Refreshing this post four years after assembling it, I find that a couple of the hyperlinks are no longer functional—one doesn't exist, while the other exists but doesn't yield the indicated information. But this is the story of a few hours' Internet idling, a mesh of the long-gone afternoon, and rather than rewrite it to excise the dud links, I let it stand. The links once worked, and they said what I said they said. Honest. As I commented on "The Best Dancer" below, thinking about Chuck Klosterman's piece got me thinking about Mark [...]

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And your "Birds" can sing

By Ed Park|2014-07-07T13:34:53-07:00August 30, 2009|books|

Lorrie, silent no Moore ED PARK • Jonathan Lethem on the new Lorrie Moore novel: I’m aware of one — one — reader who doesn’t care for Lorrie Moore, and even that one seems a little apologetic about it. “Too . . . punny,” my friend explains, resorting to a pun as though hypnotized by the very tendency that sets off his resistance. For others, Moore may be, exactly, the most irresistible contemporary American writer: brainy, humane, unpretentious and warm; seemingly effortlessly lyrical; Lily-Tomlin-funny. Most of all, Moore is capable of enlisting not just our sympathies but our sorrows. Her [...]

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You Say it’s Your Birthday (Or Was Yesterday)?; or, How the Beatles May or May Not Have Destroyed Rock ‘n’ Roll

By Devin McKinney|2014-07-05T11:24:19-07:00June 19, 2009|books, Paul McCartney|

DEVIN McKINNEY • Again showing our contrarian streak, we thought we'd differentiate ourselves from everyone who wished "Sir" "James" Paul McCartney (jus' Paul to us) a happy birthday yesterday—which, true enough, was his actual date of birth, but isn't it always nice to get something the day after too? (Or is that Christmas?) Sorry for the miss, Paul. But you and we are like an old married couple, and one of us is bound to blank on an anniversary once in a while. Beatleheads may celebrate Paul's lifespan and selfishly luxuriate in his giftings over at 30 Days Out, which has agglomerated [...]

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"How the Beatles Destroyed Rock and Roll"…

By Michael Gerber|2014-12-28T13:48:32-08:00June 3, 2009|books|

If that's destruction, bring on Ragnarok. ...is the provocative title of a new book spied by Ed this morning via the Very Short List. The book's not out yet, so I'll quote VSL as to its premise: "When the Beatles became 'purely a recording group,' author Elijah Wald writes, 'they pointed toward a future in which there need be no unifying styles . . . bands can play what they like . . . and we can choose what to listen to in the privacy of our clubs, our homes, or, finally, our heads. Whether that was liberating or limiting [...]

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First bass

By Ed Park|2014-07-04T16:27:03-07:00May 11, 2009|books, Hamburg|

Stu and Emptiness Summer reading for Dullbloggers? Stuart Sutcliffe: A Retrospective is available at Book Soup in L.A. MG adds, July 2014-- Michael Bracewell reviewed the book and show Stuart Sutcliffe: A Retrospective for Frieze Magazine, and it's well worth reading. Here's a scrap: "Since his death, and encouraged by the superior but romantically stylized biographical feature film Backbeat (1994), the assessment of Sutcliffe’s work as a visual artist has perhaps inevitably been contextualized almost solely by its position within the early career of the Beatles. The importance of this latest retrospective of his work, entitled ‘Stuart Sutcliffe: A Retrospective’, curated [...]

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Panel discussion

By Ed Park|2015-01-18T11:41:19-08:00November 7, 2008|books|

Alan Stilltoe I wish [author Alan] Sillitoe, with his contrariness towards things in popular favour, had mounted an attack on the Beatles: then I could have written, "What was the difference between [Alan's brother] Brian and Alan? One was beating panels, the other was panning Beatles." —Telegraph(Via Jenny)

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X-ing the Road

By Ed Park|2014-07-01T22:14:54-07:00April 17, 2008|Abbey Road, books|

ED PARK • From author Jeff Gordinier's interesting video promo for his book X Save the World: "Why is Paul McCartney barefoot on the cover of Abbey Road?" "I don't give a f---! Just stop talking about it." http://youtu.be/MPdEgwOsvDk

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The Vision of Joe Orton

By Devin McKinney|2014-07-23T16:53:37-07:00March 22, 2008|1966, books|

DEVIN McKINNEY • The missing piece in the Beatles’ movie puzzle, the wild card in their deck, is Joe Orton. This enfant terrible of the British theater, in between epatering the ‘60s bourgeoisie with the likes of Entertaining Mr. Sloane and Loot, wrote a screenplay for the Beatles at the commission of producer Walter Shenson. Adapted from an early, unpublished novel and suggestively titled Up Against It (Brit-speak for “under the gun”), the script was violent, sexually transgressive, defiantly sui generis—part Fellini freakshow, part black Ealing Studios farce, part prophecy of every late ‘60s anti-establishment decadence-and-destruction fantasy from How I Won the [...]

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