After the success of performing “Hey Jude” and “Revolution” in front of an audience in 1968, he was able to convince the group to return to the studio and make an album specifically for live shows.Įven though Get Back showcases how McCartney tried to keep the band together during the sessions that would eventually become the final crumbs of their generational greatness, the documentary doesn’t shy away from his persistent attitude at rehearsals and his dominating ego that casts a new shadow over the two records. And despite the band wanting to cease all touring after the exhausting fallout of Beatlemania and Lennon’s “more popular than Jesus” quote in 1966, McCartney remained in favor of performing, but he was outnumbered on it by everyone else. Most of Lennon’s leads came before 1966, whereas most of McCartney’s came after. The breakdown of lead vocal ownership on songs goes like this: Lennon at 110 and McCartney at 106, with each total accounting for songs in which both vocalists sang. Lennon dominated the first set of Beatles records, even to the point where he stood under his own spotlight during the band’s appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. It’s painstakingly clear, however, that Rubber Soul signaled a shift in power. Lennon later said that McCartney’s leadership kept The Beatles alive after Epstein’s death, but it was a sentiment juxtaposed with him also claiming that McCartney’s intentions were self-serving-that his apprehension about pursuing a solo career correlated with him trying to save the group.īut McCartney’s leadership of The Beatles can be traced as far back as after the release of Rubber Soul in 1965-though a lot of people will probably disagree, claiming that the band were a solid foursome with no head. When The Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein died of a drug overdose in 1967, the band’s future was in limbo, but McCartney emerged as a surrogate managerial replacement and pushed everyone to keep up with projects, which led to the other three members becoming angry at his apparent domination and direction. Each member had their own niche, but each member disdained the rest of the band’s niches. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Harrison’s meditative “Within You Without You” is juxtaposed brilliantly with the horn-driven, jazzy “When I’m Sixty-Four.” Lennon and company notoriously hated McCartney’s light-hearted compositions, like “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” “Martha, My Dear” and “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” despite them writing their own songs about pigs, octopi and forthright monkeys. When the Indian classical influences grew too avant-garde for me (or at least that’s how I would’ve naively phrased it in 2013), I often retreated to the warmth of McCartney’s lovable gospel of charm-and it’s a haven I still return to, as suggested by “Rocky Raccoon” living in my year-end Apple Music Replay, though I might lie about that if I’m cornered.īut what does remain true is this: for every “Tomorrow Never Knows,” there is a “For No One” nearby to match. And while Harrison’s and Lennon’s songs fell into urgency, slowly shifting their gazes towards introspective, sometimes socio-political songs, it was McCartney who ascended higher into the pop stratosphere. In the band’s early years, McCartney’s work didn’t stand out as much from that of the other three, aside from him being relegated to the role of the token acoustic love song writer (“I’ll Follow the Sun,” “And I Love Her”). “Hey Jude” was my first favorite song I had a Wings poster on my wall “I Will” was my and my first girlfriend’s “song” one of my first tattoos was McCartney’s Yellow Submarine character. Still, they fed into the long-standing institution of passing The Beatles’ music down between generations, symbolic of how you didn’t have to be present for their greatness to fall in love with it.Īnd from a young age, it was Paul McCartney’s contributions to the band that I gravitated towards. My dad technically lived through the entirety of The Beatles’ American success, but my mom was born six months after the band broke up. I was only a toddler when the early-aughts Beatlemania surged across America, but 1 was presented to me as a stocking stuffer, tucked beneath a half-dozen chocolate Santa Claus bars, to go along with the small CD/tape player my folks gifted me that same Christmas. In less than a decade, The Beatles accumulated 20 #1s, and-30 years after their highly publicized break-up-Apple/Parlophone Records released them for the first time in CD format. The Beatles’ greatest hits compilation, 1, was released the year prior. In 2001, George Harrison passed away after a battle with lung cancer, after the 20th anniversary of John Lennon’s murder had already come and gone.
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