The Beatles are a band who, no matter how many words are written about them, it still won’t be enough to accurately convey what they did for music. They’re the most important band ever, creating a new landscape for music and setting the foundation upon which most contemporary music has been built. That foundation comprises many different styles and concepts, each unique in its own right.
The band started as a standard pop-rock band, with an enticing image and presence that meant the world couldn’t get enough. Then, as their career progressed, they kept their options open and were keen to explore various creative sounds. This meant playing around with melody, the way they wrote, the instruments they used and the concepts they explored.
Eventually, the creative freedom that the band had led to creative differences. There was a split in the dynamic as people wanted to write different things, and members started to resent other members’ work. For instance, John Lennon detested the song ‘Hello, Goodbye’, a track that more or less signalled the end of his and Paul McCartney’s writing partnership.
“That’s another McCartney. Smells a mile away, doesn’t it?” Said Lennon when asked about the track. “An attempt to write a single. It wasn’t a great piece; the best bit was the end, which we all ad-libbed in the studio, where I played the piano.”
There was undoubtedly tension within the Beatles towards the end, but they still always got along and respected one another. This can be seen in the interviews that followed the split, the footage released of them recording their last album in the documentary Get Back, and even just in the member’s favourite songs by the band. For instance, when Lennon was asked about some of his, the majority were the by-product of his musical counterparts.
Lennon loved the George Harrison track ‘Taxman’, which found a home on Revolver, but one of his favourite tracks by the spiritual guitarist came in the form of ‘Within You Without You’, which appeared on Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. It was written after Harrison had spent some time in India and brought a plethora of instruments back with him. One afternoon, playing with a pedal harmonium, the song took form.
“I think that is one of George’s best songs,” said Lennon, “One of my favourites of his. I like the arrangement, the sound, and the words. He is clear on that song. You can hear his mind is clear and his music is clear. It’s his innate talent that comes through on that song, that brought that song together.”
Lennon was also a massive fan of some of the tracks his songwriting partner Paul McCartney produced. He spoke particularly highly of ‘Hey Jude’, which is widely considered one of The Beatles’ best tracks, even if he slightly misinterpreted the meaning. “That’s his best song. It started off as a song about my son Julian because Paul was going to see him. Then he turned it into ‘Hey Jude’.” He said, “He said it was written about Julian. He knew I was splitting with Cyn and leaving Julian then. He was driving to see Julian to say hello. He had been like an uncle. And he came up with ‘hey Jude’. But I always heard it as a song to me.”
‘Here, There and Everywhere’ also spoke to John Lennon. The Revolver track Lennon described as “A great one of his.” He also said, “That’s Paul’s song completely, I believe. And one of my favourite songs is by the Beatles.” McCartney is also a fan of the track, calling it one of his favourite Beatles songs. He also said it was “The only song that John ever complimented me on.”
While Lennon may not have complimented McCartney much directly, he did have a lot of positive things to say about more of his tracks. For instance, he said that ‘All My Loving’ was a “Damn good piece of work.” He also said that ‘Let It Be’ was a good song, describing it as one of McCartney’s last bursts of creativity before the band broke up.
Lennon also complimented the track ‘Oh! Darling’. In fact, this is probably the track where Lennon reserved the highest praise. Towards the end of their creative partnership, Lennon turned his nose up a lot at the way McCartney approached writing songs; however, with ‘Oh! Darling’, Lennon said, “I should have written that song; it sounds like a song I’d write.”
A lot of the Lennon tracks that he helped work on he looks back at fondly because of their authenticity. For instance, he picks up on the song ‘Help!’ because it is an honest track that depicts how he was feeling. “I meant it, it’s real. The lyric is as good now as it was then; it’s no different, you know. It makes me feel secure to know that I was that sensible or whatever – well, not sensible, but aware of myself,” he said. “It was just me singing ‘help’, and I meant it, you know.”
He applies the same rationale to ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’, which he also cites as a favourite thanks to its raw authenticity. “We [Paul & John] wrote that together, it’s a beautiful melody,” he said. “I like them. I sing them, you know, they’re the kind of songs I like to sing.”
A classic held in high regard by Beatles fans across the world is ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, which Lennon agreed was one of their best, but rather than the trippy instrumentation or use of panning that normally wins people over, Lennon was persuaded by the way in the vocals were delivered, citing another rock genius as a counterpart. “It’s like talking, you know, ‘I sometimes think no, but then again, I mean’, you know, like that. It’s like that Elton John one where he’s talking to himself sort of singing, which I thought was nice.”
Lennon also spoke highly about the song ‘Girl’, citing it as something real even if the muse is completely made up. “There’s, sort of, philosophy quotes. I was thinking about it when I wrote it, it was just a song,” he said, “And it was about THAT, that turned out to be Yoko in the end, girl that a lot of us were looking for.”
Finally, even though Lennon doesn’t have a definitive favourite track he has worked on, there are some of his lyrics that he thinks could just be his best. These are contained in ‘Across the Universe’, which Lennon is happy to say is one of the band’s best ever. “It’s one of the best lyrics I’ve written. In fact, it could be the best, I don’t know,” he said. “It’s good poetry or whatever you call it. Without tunes, it will stand.”
John Lennon’s favourite Beatles songs
- ‘Hey Jude’
- ‘Let It Be’
- ‘Oh! Darling’
- ‘All My Loving’
- ‘Here, There and Everywhere’
- ‘Taxman’
- ‘Within You Without You’
- ‘Help!’
- ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’
- ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’
- ‘Girl’
- ‘Across the Universe’
