When McCartney dropped Lennon and went solo

Apologies to Don McLean but the day the music died was fifty years ago, the day the Beatles broke up. For six years the Fab Four were the standard-bearers of rock music, bringing the notion of the singer/songwriter, exotic instruments, unconventional melodies, concept albums, and more, to the mainstream of music. The band invented and re-invented themselves multiple times in a relatively short period and managed to do what few uber-successful acts can: They evolved and took their fans with them. Think about how many rock bands over the years developed a signature sound, fine-tuned that sound, and won a loyal fanbase with that sound…only to change that sound and lose everything to the refrains of “you sold out” or “I liked them better when they were_____.” Or, think of all the bands that simply never evolved, that just stayed the same old crappy Rolling Stones, fifty-five years and counting.

Not the Beatles.

The Beatles were able to transition from the mop-top pop of the British Invasion, to folk, to…what would you call Revolver? Acidic? to traditional rock before suddenly and abruptly and, to their fans, shockingly, walking away when they seemingly had years of hits left in them.

In fact, they did have years of hits left in them, just not together, and in fact, it was only a shock to their fans and outsiders that they split up. To anyone close to the band (and, to those of us with the benefit of hindsight) it was obvious that a breakup was bound to happen. Depending on who you ask or how you look at it, the band broke up either in late 1970 with Paul filing suit, or in 1975 when the famed “Beatles agreement” was signed, formally and finally dissolving the union of the four. You might look at it in more spiritual terms, and say the band was done when Let It Be released in the spring of 1970, since that was their last album. If you’re going to go that route, you’d be better off saying the band was done when Abbey Road’s symphonic, beautiful, side-two medley ended, since that was the last song on the last album the group worked on as a unit.

I don’t want to go too deep into the band’s break up. Instead, I’m interested in the aftermath of their parting, specifically that which happened in the aftermath of Abbey Road’s release (and subsequent mega-success). The band still had the Get Back recordings, shelved earlier in 1969 after too much drama soured the sessions. With the success of Abbey Road, reworking and releasing the Get Back masters was an easy way to make some money without having to work together. They gave the music to Phil Spector, once upon a time the most gifted producer in popular music, and set him on the task of getting the songs into something worthy of release. His work would produce the album called Let It Be, the foursome’s final LP release of new material. At the same time, all four of the band members were working on something for themselves.

George had dozens of songs that he’d written over the past couple of years. He was a volcano ready to blow after being limited to one or two songs on a Beatles album. His first album, the monumental All Things Must Pass released in November of 1970. Ringo wanted to dig into the country music scene that he’d grown up loving in Liverpool. He released that album, the very good Beaucoups of Blues, in September. John was deep into primal therapy and was writing an album’s worth of self-reflective and cathartic lyrics. His album, the underrated John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band record, came out in December of 1970.

And then there’s Paul.

He was working on something too, a self-titled album written, produced, sung, and even entirely performed by himself. Ever the savant, Paul was ahead of the other three and was ready to release his album in the Spring of 1970…right on top of the Let it Be album. Naturally, the other three asked him to delay his solo release to accommodate the Spector-produced “band” album, but Paul didn’t budge. He didn’t like the job Spector had done, particularly with the songs he contributed to the album, and didn’t appreciate being told to keep his album on the shelf so the Beatles could release what amounted to a eulogy to the band.

The wild card in all this is the fact that Ringo Starr had already, quietly, released a solo album. It wasn’t the country album he’d been working on but rather was a collection of old standards. No one told Ringo to move his album’s release. But when Paul wanted to release his album on it’s scheduled date, mid-April 1970, the band resisted. Why?

They claimed that since Let It Be was ready for release, and the Let It Be movie was coming out in May, the album and film should release within the same time window. And since Paul’s album was set to come out in April, just a few weeks before, they thought it was only right that the band’s work takes priority. They proposed bumping Paul’s album to June.

Did you catch that? A month before Let It Be is no good, but a month after is fine.

Maybe it was the case that they didn’t want Paul’s first solo album to overshadow the band’s work. Maybe they didn’t want to see Paul’s album release next to a Beatles’ movie, giving him a boost of publicity over the other three. It’s not his fault their solo albums were slow-going compared to his. Paul didn’t budge. He made all the legal threats necessary and got his release date as intended.

Paul’s first solo album, McCartney—no doubt so named because it was the only half of the famed “Lennon/McCartney” singer-songwriter duo that contributed to the work—released on April 17, 1970. Anticipation was, as you might imagine, at a fever pitch. This was the album too good to delay. This was the album that couldn’t wait. This was the album whose every song was written by Paul, every instrument played by Paul, every note sung by Paul. This was his magnum opus.

And it’s…mediocre.

McCartney’s greatest sin is in how much potential it had only to fall short of achieving it.

If you judge the record by its track-listing, you’d find what looks to be a complete album. There are, based on the back cover of the album, thirteen songs. But of those thirteen, six are either purely instrumental or short little ditties that last only a minute or so (or less, in the case of the intro-track, Lovely Linda). What actual “songs” we get are mostly stellar.

That Would Be Something is a killer opening song, especially when you consider Paul plays guitar, bass, and drums. What follows is a “song” called Valentine’s Day, which is purely a track with no lyrics. It’s a half-finished song. Then comes Every Night, technically the fourth track, but only the second song. It’s even better than That Would Be Something, and if this was a real (completed) album, it would make—along with That Would Be Something—a great one-two punch to open the album. Hot As Sun-Glasses comes next and while it’s very good instrumentation, it has no lyrics to go with it, making for yet another half-finished song.

That makes three incomplete tracks to two really great songs: The good is getting outweighed by the bad.

Junk is next, a rejected holdover from the White Album days. If nothing else, it’s finished. It’s got a very haunting sound and is very hypnotic. It’s the weakest of the side-A “songs” but wouldn’t be worth complaining about if it was just one “okay” song on an album of good-to-great ones. The first side ends with Man We Was Lonely, a lovely little love song that features Linda singing backing tracks (okay, I lied before when I said it was “all” Paul; this song is the exception). Your mileage may vary on Linda’s singing ability but she’s good enough, which is more than can be said for Yoko.

Speaking of, I should interject and point out John’s criticism. He said something to the effect of “Paul complained about Yoko being in the studio but I didn’t put Yoko on my albums as he did with Linda!” And while that’s true and could be argued as hypocritical on Paul’s part, it wouldn’t be too many years later that John did put Yoko on an album and, unlike Paul, gave her half the album to sing lead vocals at that.

Side-Two opens with a really good riff; Oo You has a great, dirty blues sound and kicks off the second side right. If you’re keeping score that makes five complete songs. Momma Miss America follows and it is yet another instrument-only song, and while it has all the great playing you’d expect (again, it’s impressive that he’s doing it all here), it’s a half-baked offering.

Teddy Boy comes next and while it has lyrics, it’s one of those schmaltzy, sing-along songs that Paul tends to include at least once on every album of his. It’s akin to Martha My Dear or Maxwell’s Silver Hammer. But at least it’s finished; it’s on par with Junk. And speaking of, side-two features a (moody and relaxing and really great) remix of Junk—the song from one side ago—but only in instrumental form. THAT is what you call padding.

As the Junk remix draws to a close, the album-buyer is likely angry that he or she paid full price for half an album. After all, if you listen to it from the beginning, you’ve only heard six songs in a completed form. That’s literally less than half of one Beatles album. You might think “Paul broke up the Beatles for this?!” The Beatles might’ve thought “he held out and screwed up Let It Be for this?!” That’s a fair complaint.

But then the next track—“song” number seven—kicks in…and it’s a masterpiece.

For years to come, no matter how many brilliant songs Paul would write, I don’t know if there’s another as perfect as Maybe I’m Amazed. It captures romance, piano ballading, gospel chorusing, rock music guitaring, and pitch-perfect singing in a stunning package. It single-handedly saves the album and was, in fact, so good, it wasn’t released as a single. Imagine that; ninety-nine times out of a hundred the best song on an album was released as a single, but in this case, they knew the album was so mediocre but for this one incredible song, if they released it as a single, no one would have reason to buy the album. The idea worked, too; the album was #1 for three weeks, falling out of the top spot only because Let It Be released in its fourth week.

So much for the idea that the solo album would overshadow the band’s finale.

Nevertheless, as 1970 drew to a close, Paul was the odd man out. Every other member of the band had released an album far better than his own. None released a single song as good as Maybe I’m Amazed, however. That should have been a hint at things to come.

Paul would go on to make better albums. In fact, while John’s music would rapidly decline in the early 70s (as he focused more on political messaging), and while George struggled to recapture the creativity (born out of late-60’s frustrations) on display in All Things Must Pass, and while Ringo struggled to get top songwriters to work on his albums, Paul only improved. His second album, Ram, is now considered one of the very best of any of the foursome’s post-Beatles catalog. Wings soon formed, released the seminal Band on the Run, and sold-out shows across the globe. Paul proved everyone wrong who had doubted him after his first “mediocre” album. Had they given McCartney a fair shake, though, they might’ve seen just how amazing his solo run was shaping up to be.

And how amazing it continues to be, to this day.