Peter Fonda 1939-2019
Actor and acclaimed Beatle tangent ("At a party at the Playboy Mansion in 1965, Lennon overheard...") Peter Fonda died this week at age 79. As I said in this earlier post, I met him at a party in 2009, and we talked Fabs. He was tall and gracious and looked just like, well, Peter Fonda. George was his favorite Beatle, but the [...]
John Was My Favorite Beatle
Everybody's a baby. Commenter @Justin wrote this morning about John Lennon's lousy reputation among younger Beatle fans, and the concomitant rise in esteem that Paul McCartney has enjoyed. This has joggled some thoughts about my own fandom that perhaps are worth sharing. I haven't given this post the obsessive working over that I sometimes mete out to my posts on Dullblog, and [...]
A John and Yoko movie?
Commenter @Hologram Sam found this item on Deadline from last October, and we've been talking about it a little on the Jann Wenner thread, so I thought it was worthy of its own post. Apparently the project teams the director of Dallas Buyers Club, Jean-Marc Vallée, with the screenwriter behind Bohemian Rhapsody. I don't envy them; like the failed Broadway musical, any [...]
Jann Wenner and The Beatles
Lately I’ve been starting books and stopping partway through. I get what I want in the part I read, or else I get the general idea and move on. So it was with surprise that I recently found myself finishing what could almost be called a tome—Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine by Joe Hagan. [...]
Willy Chirino, “My Beatles Heart”
Willie Chirino's 2011 collection of Fab Four songs, My Beatles Heart, is one of the few cover albums I listen to regularly all the way through. Chirino is a Cuban-American musician, singer, and songwriter who lives in Florida and was involved in the salsa-based "Miami Sound" back in the 1970s and 80s. I'm not familiar with much of his other music, but [...]
Thinking of Linking
After writing this post on how to defray some of the costs of running Dullblog (keep lobbing over your preferences in the comments!), I've started very tentatively adding Amazon Affiliate links to songs, LPs, and movies. I mean, we all probably have every Beatles song and movie in several permutations, but... [Another way I could do this is have every post sport [...]
Supporting Dullblog.
When the site came back to life recently, several readers mentioned that they've really enjoyed it over the years, and—being the top-notch humans Dullblog readers are—asked for ways they could help support its continuation. This is greatly appreciated. Hosting and such costs about $500 annually, and so over the years, I've dropped over five grand, and Nancy has paid in, too. (Devin [...]
Heroin and the Beatles’ Breakup
Finally, someone outside of Dullblog (in fact, George Martin’s biographer, in Salon) says what I’ve been thinking for years: heroin broke up the Beatles. Kenneth Womack does a good job of digging into quotes from McCartney, Barry Miles, and John and Yoko about the Lennons’ heroin habit to show how the Beatles’ delicate balance didn’t just tip, but fracture, in 1969. This [...]
How “Lost” Was My Weekend?
Lennon and friends, up to no good. Especially that woman up front there, she seems like TROUBLE. 🙂 Frequent commenter @Hologram Sam provided this comment in one of our earlier threads. I commented, but as is usual these days had enough to say that I'm making a post out of it. Pop over and read it. I'll wait. I feel obliged to [...]