Greatest Post-Beatles songs

[Amor de Cosmos]

Greatest Post-Beatles songs

Based on the selections it appears no one bought any of their albums. Except perhaps All Things Must Pass.

[multipleman78]

Greatest Post-Beatles songs

great to see McCartney getting some credit on here. I find that i am constantly defending his place in rock n roll history as there seem to be a lot of folk out there who like to say he is shit without Lennon around.

I personally think McCartney is every bit Lennon's equal and even within the Beatles produced the better work but i suppose its hard for him to compete against the Lennon legend especially when he was murdered like he was.

All Lennon fans i have met tend to be of the same mind. McCartney stood on Lennon's shoulders to achieve greatness but after that was piss poor. I even had one fan during a debate tell me that McCartney had done nothing whereas Lennon had effectively invented punk music when he wrote Helter Skelter. When i informed this guy McCartney wrote Helter Skelter i was told that i was talking bollocks and even if i wasnt McCartney was still useless. Of course i replied he might be useless but according to you he invented punk music. Cheers.

Has anyone else come across this McCartney bashing by Lennon fans? It annoys me cos i end up defending Macca and i feel i am attacking Lennon when i dont want to do that as i think he is great also.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Greatest Post-Beatles songs

The axe swings both ways on here I think. The anti-Lennnonists are perhaps a bit more voluble.

[Jah Womble]

Greatest Post-Beatles songs

Lennon's generally perceived as the 'sharper' of the two, but, for my money, Macca wrote the best Beatles tune - 'Eleanor Rigby'.

'Helter Skelter' is great, too.

[MsD]

Greatest Post-Beatles songs

I think their rivalry and mutual pisstaking kept each other sharp and at their best, generally. PM can write the best tunes, alright, but lyrically got a bit soft without JL - although Another Day and Maybe I'm Amazed (in particular) are great songs, and BOTR was a good album.

JL was a bit ploddy and dull with his later tunes, I think, although lyrically often strong. Imagine was fairly fab but I can live without hearing it ever again.

Jealous Guy is his finest moment for me, great tune and an unusual case of a bloke admitting to being a destructive fuck-up, but understating it, so it isn't a whine, and without excusing it as part of his rock n rollness. Love it.

[MsD]

Greatest Post-Beatles songs

PS. I loved George's What is Life, too, and his Beatles-era work.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Greatest Post-Beatles songs

Yes. There's a bit in Scorsese's movie where, immediately after Lennon's death, an interviewer says to George "he was a bit of a bastard though wasn't he?" (or words to that effect.) George quickly replies "He was...but he also wasn't." That Lennon could write songs as apposite as Working Class Hero and Imagine testifies to that. McCartney is an exquisite musical craftsman but lacks the sandpaper in his soul that Lennon possessed.

[Beatle Simon]

Greatest Post-Beatles songs

MsD wrote:

JL was a bit ploddy and dull with his later tunes, I think, although lyrically often strong. Imagine was fairly fab but I can live without hearing it ever again.

Jealous Guy is his finest moment for me, great tune and an unusual case of a bloke admitting to being a destructive fuck-up, but understating it, so it isn't a whine, and without excusing it as part of his rock n rollness. Love it.

The first two proper solo albums, Plastic Ono Band and Imagime, were, imho, his finest solo work.
The 3 avant-garde albums that preceded them, and the US-based sucessors are stuff I can live without.
Anyway, nice to discuss this on what would've been his 71st birthday!

[historyman]

Greatest Post-Beatles songs

multipleman78 wrote:

Has anyone else come across this McCartney bashing by Lennon fans? It annoys me cos i end up defending Macca and i feel i am attacking Lennon when i dont want to do that as i think he is great also.

I think a lot of the anti Macca vibe comes from Yoko Ono. There have been a few interviews with her that I've read over the years where she's downplayed Macca's lyrical contribution to The Beatles and bumped up Lennon's.

Whether she actually thinks that or her words were twisted I'm not sure.

[Wyatt Earp]

Greatest Post-Beatles songs

Some of my very favourite Beatles songs are mostly-Lennon ones: You've Got To Hide Your Love Away, And Your Bird Can Sing, Tomorrow Never Knows, A Day In The Life. But his solo stuff mostly leaves me cold. Though I too do like "Jealous Guy".

[E10 Rifle]

Greatest Post-Beatles songs

Ah, now, y'see, We All Stand Together is the closest I have to a 'guilty pleasure'. I also have a great fondness for Pipes of Peace and No More Lonely Nights.

Clicks virtual pint together in more or less agreement with Purv, though No More Lonely Nights has got a slight touch of the cloying 80s cocaine rock about it hasn't it (again, not necessarily a criticism).

Jealous Guy's a fine song, but Roxy Music's version was better. I've got a bit of an embarrassing soft spot for Woman though.

[Jimmy Bignutz]

Greatest Post-Beatles songs

So I guess it falls on me to say that Wings are the band The Beatles could have been.

[G-Man]

Greatest Post-Beatles songs

Oh, I hated Bryan Ferry's interpretation of "Jealous Guy". So smooth, where Lennon's was as raw as the emotion it expresses.

I can't buy into the idea that the quality of the Beatles' solo output was barren. I would agree that many of the LPs were disappointing, though Imagine and much of All Things Must Pass were outstanding albums.

But even despised records, like Lennon's Some Time In New York (we'll leave Yoko's part in it and the jam session aside) had a couple of very good tracks, such as "The Luck Of The Irish", "John Sinclair" and the song for Angela Davis, as well as the melody "Women Is The Nigger Of The World".

But there certainly were plenty of great individual songs, many have been mentioned (though not Harrison's lovely "Blow Away").

The whole Lennon vs McCartney thing is silly as well. Of my top 5 Beatles songs, if I must have a top 5, all but half a track are Lennon songs. Still, if I were to rate each Beatles song, and arrive at an average rating, I suspect that McCartney-penned songs would win.

And let's fucking well acknowledge that "Yesterday" is an utterly gorgeous song, beautifully arranged and performed.

[Renart]

Greatest Post-Beatles songs

"Yesterday" is a good song, but I've heard it so many times I rarely care to listen to it anymore.

I think both Lennon and McCartney were usually better with each other than without. McCartney needed to be goaded by somebody with a bit of abrasive edge, and Lennon needed somebody to tell him to lighten up and not take himself so fucking seriously. I think this dynamic often worked in The Beatles even when a song was entirely written by one or the other. (And some of my favorite Beatles songs were mainly written by one, but with a chorus or bridge by the other, like "We Can Work it Out." McCartney never wrote anything like "Helter Skelter" with Wings. (That I know of, at least. Supposedly that song was a response to "I Can See for Miles," with The Who playing the part of a prodding John Lennon, I suppose.)

And I think George's solo stuff was so good because he finally got out from under the thumbs of the two egomaniacs. He needed freedom and space to thrive, while John and Paul needed constraint, conflict, and compromise.

[Disco Child Ballads]

Greatest Post-Beatles songs

I can't agree with G-Man about "The Luck of the Irish". It's even worse that McCartney's "Give Ireland Back to the Irish".

[Amor de Cosmos]

Greatest Post-Beatles songs

And I think George's solo stuff was so good because he finally got out from under the thumbs of the two egomaniacs. He needed freedom and space to thrive, while John and Paul needed constraint, conflict, and compromise.

I'm not sure he ever lacked freedom. Space — on albums — perhaps so. In all honesty he just wasn't as strong a writer as the other two (who would be?) All Things Must Pass was an accumulation of several years writing that there was no room for on Beatles albums, consequently nothing he did later matched its quality. But there's no sense he was elbowed aside while the band existed. It was Lennon who insisted that Something became the A side of a single for instance. And McCartney was just more musically productive and focused than the others. At the latter end of the Band's life they had other interests, he really didn't.

[MsD]

Greatest Post-Beatles songs

I'm just flicking through my battered copy of "Lennon Remembers" trying to find that wonderfully patronising quote about George Harrison .. something along the lines of "oh, well he was working with two great talents for so long, some of it must have rubbed off".

[Renart]

Greatest Post-Beatles songs

In that Beatles TV doc they showed to coincide with the release of Anthology, George seemed to get bullied a lot, especially by Paul, and sort of treated as something less than a full collaborator by Lennon and McCartney, though of course he got some of his songs on the albums ("Tax Man," "Something," etc.). It was freedom from that sort of thing I was referring to. Obviously at a fairly early point he was a multimillionaire and would have been free to strike out on his own any time he wanted to, if he had wanted to.

[MsD]

Greatest Post-Beatles songs

Oh, just found it, and it's far less scathing than I remembered!

(Jann Wenner) How would you assess George's talents?

I don't want to assess him. George has not done his best work yet. His talents have developed over the years and he was working with two fucking brilliant songwriters, and he learned a lot from us. I wouldn't have minded being George, the invisible man, and learning what he learned. Maybe it was hard for him sometimes, because Paul and I are such egomaniacs, but that's the game.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Greatest Post-Beatles songs

George seemed to get bullied a lot, especially by Paul, and sort of treated as something less than a full collaborator by Lennon and McCartney,

George (as quoted in the Scorsese bio-pic) claims it never occurred to him to write songs in the early days, that's what John and Paul did. When he did begin — as much for financial reasons as creative ones apparently — L&M were the biggest musical writing partnership in history. Of course, they weren't going to say "OK George, you can have four songs per album." EMI wouldn't have been thrilled if they had either. From With the Beatles on he had at least one, normally two, sometimes as many as four songs on each album. Given he was sharing limited vinyl with "two fucking brilliant songwriters" I reckon that's pretty generous.

[Renart]

Greatest Post-Beatles songs

Sure, it might have been justified, might have been consensual. I'm not saying he should have been given entire album sides, just that he seems to have blossomed after the Beatles broke up (for a while, at least) while John and Paul for the most part didn't.

(All based on my personal opinion of their music, of course.)

[Amor de Cosmos]

Greatest Post-Beatles songs

I understand why that's the impression, but as already noted ATMP was mostly songs from storage. If you exclude that double album, then George's output is certainly no better than the others. I mean he released eleven studio albums but, after Dark Horse, you'd be pushed to argue there was much of interest on any of the rest. OTOH Lennon was either distracted or a mess until his death and McCartney lacked someone who'd say "Oh do fuck off Paul" during the making of his early solo albums, so, it's true, their output is spotty too.

[Renart]

Greatest Post-Beatles songs

I'm not sure I agree with the idea that the songs were from storage. Yes, many of them had been written earlier, but the recording and production came in a big exuberant rush after the breakup. And there's that bootleg tape that shows how extensively Harrison rearranged and reworked them during that time. I guess it depends on whether you consider the writing or the performance/production more important. With most great rock albums, I'd say it's about fifty-fifty. But that's probably my personal prejudice again. I think he was pretty obviously motivated by being "the boss" for once, getting all his friends and heroes in on the recording, making it a triple-album, etc.

I do agree that his later work is not very interesting, for the most part. But for me, All Things Must Pass is much much better than anything the other Beatles did.

Anyway, I'm probably out of my depth arguing about the Beatles. All in all, I prefer The Kinks.

[Beatle Simon]

Greatest Post-Beatles songs

G.Man wrote:

And let's fucking well acknowledge that "Yesterday" is an utterly gorgeous song, beautifully arranged and performed.

And, incredibly, written by a 22-year-old!

[Nefertiti2]

Greatest Post-Beatles songs

Amor de Cosmos wrote:

And I think George's solo stuff was so good because he finally got out from under the thumbs of the two egomaniacs. He needed freedom and space to thrive, while John and Paul needed constraint, conflict, and compromise.

At the latter end of the Band's life they had other interests, he really didn't.

Assuming you're talking about George Harrison here, AdC we should maybe acknowledge his contribution to cinema post-Beatles

as a producer his company was responsible for

Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979)
The Long Good Friday (1980)
Time Bandits (1981)
Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl (1982)
The Missionary (1982)
Privates on Parade (1982)
Bullshot (1983)
Scrubbers (1983)
A Private Function (1984)
Water (1985)
Mona Lisa (1986)
Shanghai Surprise (1986)
Withnail and I (1987)
Five Corners (1987)

There are a few turkeys in there but some incredible films; he (and Film Four) could be said to have single-handledly dragged British cinema out of the 60's

Michale Palin's diaries are good on Harrison's involvement -he comes over as a rather lonely but very likeable chap.