When I was in university my lack of enthusiasm for certain Beatles records was so odd to my fellow students it was to them as if I'd taken up flat earthism. I never hated the band (although many took my lack of devotion as the equivalent of hatred the way some people respond to others who don't share their religious or anti-religious views). It wasn't just that I didn't like the White Album, Abbey Road or Let It Be, it was also that the Beatles records I did like struck them as bizarre. But I stand by my earlier judgments.
There is a Lennon quip in response to some rather fulsome praise of Ringo Starr by Paul McCartney: "Ringo wasn't even the best drummer in the Beatles." Which must have hurt poor old Ringo plenty when he read it but it was true enough.
My view of Lennon-McCartney is similar.: "Best songwriters of all time," they weren't even the best songwriters of the 1960s. I'd put Burt Bacharach and Antonio Carlos Jobim way, way, way above Lennon and McCartney for starters. And I'd rate Smokey Robinson, Holland, Dozier, Holland, Jimmy Webb and Brian Wilson as their equals.
But they did produce some very nicely crafted pop songs for a while.
I think the Beatles started well. Their first UK record is not worth buying it has one better than average rock and roll tune on it: "I Saw Her Standing there". That said, rock and roll is kiddie music. Better than anything else on it are two songs by others they elected to do their own versions of: "Baby It's You" and "A Taste of Honey". Both of these suggested they at least had a taste to do better.
All My Loving
And the promise was delivered on very next record with "All My Loving". Feeling underwhelmed? Well, give it a listen again. Any idiot could have written "She Loves You". All My Loving shows a rare talent beginning to develop. And the old quip is true, if you think it's not impressive, try it yourself.
It also is wonderful for its complete lack of irony. They mean it. And that was their real strength for a while. This was a period when jazz and adult popular music was mired in facile cynicism of such things as "Strangers in the Night" and "Is That All There is". This stuff was a breath of fresh air.
Things We Said Today
The next album had another gem, "Things We Said Today". This is almost adult music. Again, completely irony free. A nice mature sentiment well expressed. Jobim would have done much better with the same theme but ...
"I'll Follow The Sun" was an old song recorded in 1964 and really doesn't belong here but there isn't much else to like about their second LP Beatles For Sale, which is mostly filler. McCartney seems to have written it before 1960 which is stunning. The man had a gift. It's a shame he didn't spend more time on it in 1964 because it isn't really a completed song so much as a sketch for a song he ought to have completed later. I suspect that they were just looking for tunes to fill up record space at the time.
Yesterday
Things begin to go wrong in my view with the Album Help! It also features a lot of filler but, worse, is beginning to also show some of the gimmicky crap they increasingly filled records up with after this. The exceptional song on the record is "Yesterday". And yes it is good but not really quite so good as everyone makes it out to be. It's better than anything any rock and roll bands of that time were doing but it's still an obvious imitation of adult music rather than an attempt to say something that McCartney himself felt or believed. It also bears a thematic similarity to Charles Aznavour's "Hier encore" (which was getting European airplay as McCartney was writing his lyrics) that strikes me as too close to be a coincidence.
This song and the next also highlight one of the big limitations on Lennon and McCartney as songwriters. The thing that really held them back was that they were always writing for the Beatles. They always wrote with the limitations posed by their own bland vocal abilities in mind. They could, and increasingly did, hire studio musicians to make up for their limitations as instrumentalists, but every Beatles song had to be sung by a Beatle or two or four. None of their songs lend themselves to much interpretation.
And ask yourself, how many memorable versions of Beatles songs are there? A couple by Joe Cocker, maybe Cassandra Wilson and, well, that's about it. The studio wizardry and the session musicians were more of a limitation than a help.
In My Life
I believe this is the only song on the list with a major contribution from John Lennon. The others are all more or less Paul McCartney songs. It's funny that Lennon should be responsible for this because it is one of the very last modernism-free songs the band produced and Lennon was the guy most responsible for bringing the dark clouds of modernism into the Beatles music. The very ugly "Norwegian Wood" and "Run For Your Life" (both featuring suggestions of violence against women) on the same album with this being good examples of what I mean.
But this little gem, apparently much laboured over, is a real triumph. If you can sing these words to someone and mean them, you're well on your way. (Lennon, unfortunately could not.)
Here, There and Everywhere and Good Day Sunshine
As I've written elsewhere, the one commonality in successful groups from the mid 1950s to the mid 1960s was close harmony singing. There aren't any exceptional single vocal performances in the Beatles œuvre because none of the Beatles was a great singer. But there are some lovely harmonies and these two songs are probably the very best harmony singing they ever did. (A cynic might wonder how the lead on Here, There and Everywhere" would sound without the double-tracked echo effect giving McCartney's voice extra depth. Singers don't do things like that unless they are trying to hide something. Listen to McCartney's unplugged version from 1991 and it's obvious he can't actually hit all the notes in his own song.)
When I was in university, I had a friend who has now published about ten fairly successful books who claimed to hate "Here, There and Everywhere". It got to be a bit of a thing for the rest of us to put the record on as we were leaving his house in Montreal and then wait outside by an open window until this song began. If he thought he was alone, Bruce would inevitably sing along. It's that kind of song that people don't want to admit they love it but they do.
Eleanor Rigby
This is a lovely record as opposed to a lovely song. Like the Beach Boys "Good Vibrations" it's more of a studio triumph than a good song in its own right. Other performances of this tune are always a let down. Both recordings are kind of like really great photographs of someone who can never appear quite so impressive in any other setting.
She's Leaving Home
This, in my view, was the last moment of glory. It's a lovely, sensitive song and you can really feel the humanity of the people it is about—the humanity of all the people it is about. You worry about the girl (or at least I always have since the first time I heard it at about ten years of age). You can understand what she is doing but this just isn't a good idea. Similarly, you feel for the parents even though your sympathy is always with her.
Musically, it's really nice and someone could do a nice instrumental version of it (perhaps they already have). But to do so would be to take it away from Lennon and McCartney and make a new song out of it.
Some might argue, contrary to what I said above, that John Lennon also had a significant input into this. Well, he had some input but that input unfortunately detracts from the song. His contribution also includes what may be the single stupidest line in any Beatles song: "Fun is the one thing money can't buy." Actually, money can buy quite a bit of fun. That said, this was the last really genuine song they wrote. From this point on the group was increasingly bogged down by gimmicky trash or wasted time earnestly expressing appallingly stupid sentiments such as "All You Need is Love".
The darkness really set in after this and I think the blame for that lies largely with the Doors. That is mostly a subject for another day but all I'll note here is the incredible influence the Doors first album—which was getting heavy airplay while the Beatles were recording Sergeant Pepper—had on this record.
PS: Oh yeah, "Maybe I'm Amazed" was darn promising. Freed from the Beatles, McCartney might have done better but something, either the effects of fame, or Linda or the constant drug use frying his brain cells had happened to make the well run dry pretty quickly.
As to the solo careers of the other three, I can't think of anything nice to say so ...
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