John Lennon, alongside his Beatles bandmates, released 13 studio albums worldwide between 1962 and 1970 and established a musical legacy like no other. Some six decades after the Fab Four first got together, the world is still endlessly talking about John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr and the legacy they left behind.
There’s a good reason for it, too, The Beatles are the foundational stones for pop music as we know it today. Their work both in the studio and on stage set a precedent that is still being felt to this day. The unique way they crafted and cultivated songs have become the benchmark for all bands.
From their debut LP, Please Please Me, right up until their final effort, Let It Be, four friends from Liverpool would achieve monumental fame and success in an astoundingly short period of time. However, while the group enjoyed massive highs, they battled through their fair share of internal tension and touring mishaps along the way. The truth is that the group were always tightly wound and on the brink of major destruction. The problems would send the band spiralling away from one another soon enough and, once that happened, the gloves came off.
During their meteoric rise to rock and roll fame, the band recorded more than 300 songs, and, predictably, not all of them hold the same weight as bonafide Beatles classics. In the years after the Beatles disbanded, John Lennon was often drawn into a conversation about the group and the inner workings of his and Paul McCartney’s relationship. It would see him enjoy both moments of self-reflection and opportunities to unleash his razor-sharp tongue.
Across a host of meetings and interviews, Lennon named several tracks that he was less fond of. Songs that didn’t breach the high watermark he and the Fab Four had set out. Lennon was both the band’s biggest supporter and their harshest critic. While the songwriter was notably curt about McCartney’s work, in truth, it was simply the case that if a song strayed too far from the reality of his or his bandmates’ authentic selves the song failed in its original intention.
