I had a conversation with my son over Christmas and it’s been on my mind ever since.
The first thing he told me was he’s trying to get through the whole Christmas season without hearing Paul’s “Wonderful Christmas Time” or John’s “Happy Christmas (War is Over)”.
While I’d heard occasional beef over the McCartney tune, I’d not been witness to much critique of John’s Holiday hit. I was polite, but I must admit to taking some exception to his comment.
As a hopeless Beatles die-hard, it’s difficult to digest any criticism of the band that shaped EVERYTHING for me since Kindergarten. (Or even its individual members).
I concede not every song is gold. Some of it’s not even copper. But it’s hard to argue the numbers. I’ll spare you those details in this post. Just Google anything about the Beatles record sales, number of hits, influence on other artists, or impact on the culture. You’ll be hard pressed to find anyone in history who has made more of a musical impression on more lives than the Fabs.
We went on to discuss the quality of their material as a group over the solo work. I believe the popular consensus over EVERYBODY WHO EVER LIVED is 99.99% pro-Beatles. 00.01% solo.
I may or may not be in that minuscule minority. I’m not saying.
I have a friend who was a teenager during the British explosion. He contends this early era (64-65) is by far the best Beatles music. He goes so far as to downplay anything after 1966 as rubbish, and fans of said late Beatles era material are “Johnny Come Lately” fans.
I pray for him every day.
But consider his point. Those early tunes were written in the days when John and Paul truly were “Lennon/McCartney”. They wrote the songs together. One would come with an idea, the other wrote the “middle eight”. By 1966, they more and more often had begun to write individually. They still collaborated, but the song writing “team” had evolved into a different animal. And yes, drugs had entered the picture by then, changing the texture of their music and image.
We can always find individual exceptions to the contrary, but when I look at their work as a whole, the depth and quality of their compositions began to grow to stellar heights as they grew into the later years of their life as a group. Some of their biggest hits were on Sgt. Pepper, Abbey Road, and Let It Be. These songs were largely written by individual Beatles, with other group members as side men.
When you start to consider the early solo work, again we can point to specific songs to argue otherwise. But think about it. How much different is “Maybe I’m Amazed” than “Let It Be”? Both awesome Paul songs. One with Beatles, one without. “My Love” equals “The Long and Winding Road”, etc.
For John, “In My Life” could be “Imagine”. When I heard “Instant Karma for the first time in 1970, I thought it was the Beatles. It sounded like them.
George? He barely got a chance before Abbey Road, but his songs were definitely his, and sounded like him. Not exactly collaborative efforts. When his dam burst with the triple album of all his back logged music, he hit the jack pot. He had reasonable success thereafter, but nothing to match the ground breaking “All Things Must Pass”.
And Ringo.
No question. To the average listener, those initial solo albums sounded very much like Beatles albums. It was John, Paul, George and Ringo! Just more of them. Everybody made a solo album that first year.
This is not to weigh the merits of particular songs as much as to say the “group” was great because certainly there was genius in all its parts. It’s also true those parts definitely created a symmetry that has never been equaled. The energy that exploded from our radios and televisions is unparalleled. That intangible “something” we just can’t put our finger on puts them in a class by themselves.
But at the very least, that 60s legacy was extended by what happened in the seventies, their solo work. Most of which was contributed by Paul.
Paul was putting out Wings albums (“Paul” albums) virtually every year. It’s arguable his quality leveled off, but he had hits with every project.
John had his moments of greatness in the 70s, but had comparatively limited production due to his “lost weekend era” in which he fell victim to his own vices, and his semi-retirement years when he became a house daddy. Sadly his great 1980 comeback album “Double Fantasy” was his last.
I guess as I process this my conclusion is, of course the Beatles were the best band in rock history. But is the whole greater than the sum of its parts?
It depends.
If we’re talking Paul, I say no. At the very least by virtue of his vast sum of work. True it’s not all genius, but the sheer quantity of material and his prolific production over the decades by utter percentages provides at least an ample “best of” collection for credibility, and should qualify for something. To limit the value of his mammoth career to simply Beatles is in my opinion, short sighted.
Even today, a half century after the Beatles, his live show is comprised of about half Beatles, half Wings/solo work. And he does a LONG show. About 3 hours! Such a prolific artist can not be pigeon-holed into one chapter of his life. The Beatles got him on the world map. But he by no means rested on his laurels.
The surviving Beatles will tell you. They were a tight little band. They couldn’t help it. They played together nearly every day for eight years. But it took the individual work by each of them to make it happen. And again, as Paul and Ringo have attested, Paul was the driving force, the work horse, particularly in those latter years.
If we consider John, I contend “maybe”. John was brilliant in his unfortunately brief time. As the driving force during the band’s inception, he is credited with much of what became the Beatles brand during those early impressions. His compositions with Paul remain unrivaled. The songs he penned were definitely some of the Beatles’ best. But he began to run out of ideas before Paul did.
George? Probably not. But George deserves respect as one of the finest songwriters, producers and innovative guitarists of the era, and his personal style is unique by any measure.
Ringo is a no, but Ringo was and is a standard setter when it comes to his instrument. Nothing fancy, but spot on. Impeccable timing, and more than any one I can imagine, a “band’s drummer”.
George and Ringo were excellent musicians and perfect side men to round out what this super group entity had become.
We’ll never know, but it’s likely none of the Beatles would have made as big a splash individually as they did as a group in 1964. It was an epic event unlikely to be duplicated, and they rode that wave to even higher levels. But that magic evolved within a few years to more individual efforts that became some of the most interesting and groundbreaking musical art ever composed.
So next time I talk to my musically opinionated thirty-something son about the merits of the Beatles work, together and otherwise, I’ve got a plan. I’m going to lay out my argument, and point by point, I’m going to…
Nah. I’ll just smile and nod. I just love that he loves the Beatles.