By the end of the 1960s, it was impossible for any of The Beatles to avoid each other if they tried. Even though they didn’t have to be shoved into cars and forced into playing shows they didn’t want to play anymore, they were still the only four guys who knew the kind of pressure that came with being in the biggest band the world had ever seen. While every member was trying to get as far away from their old mates as possible by the time they reached their solo careers, Paul McCartney recalled that he wasn’t even going to trouble with John Lennon’s experimental piece Two Virgins.
If anyone has at least one functioning eardrum, it’s easy to see why McCartney would want to stay far away from this album. Far from being the kind of pop-flavoured masterpiece Lennon was so good at making, his first record with Yoko Ono is, in essence, a document of how they got together, recorded when Ono first visited Lennon’s home while his wife, Cynthia, was on vacation.
Then again, if there was one Beatle that this kind of album should have worked on, it was probably McCartney. Outside of being Lennon’s greatest songwriting partner, Macca was the one who actually exposed the band to different pieces of the avant-garde scene, including bringing in the tape loops that are found throughout ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’.
Those were still done in service to a song, and there are no songs to be found on this track listing. Outside of one song that’s actually titled, the album almost works in movements, featuring Yoko screaming her guts out on random tracks and Lennon either playing nonsense on his guitar or matching Yoko with her shrill shrieking.
When asked about it for The Beatles Anthology, McCartney’s main complaint about the record was that he had already done it before, saying, “The Two Virgins record itself I didn’t find that interesting; the music wasn’t shocking to me because I’d made a lot like that myself. I think John may have got some ideas from when I had a couple of Brennell tape recorders… It was just ambient music”.
It’s not like McCartney is that off the mark, either. Before the band had even started making masterpieces like Sgt Pepper, ‘The Cute One’ had been toying with the idea of releasing his own ambient album of experiments and calling it Paul McCartney Goes Too Far, only to be talked down by his higher-ups who thought it wasn’t a good idea.
Apparently, those people either weren’t around or were too intimidated to tell a Beatle what to do, which meant this album squeaked by as one of Lennon’s most confusing releases. Since it did get a proper release, that’s when the divide started in people’s public perceptions of Lennon and McCartney.
Suddenly, Lennon was now the provocative artist who made outlandish music, and McCartney made granny-style ditties that you could play to fans of all ages. Nothing could have been further from the truth behind the scenes, but The Beatles never got to write their own story. It just gets twisted with every generation, but that hasn’t stopped McCartney from making more experimental pieces under the pseudonym The Fireman. There was still room for him to grow, and over time, it seems like McCartney may have expanded a lot more than Lennon ever had the chance to.
