"You know, people think that because I'm Mike Nichols, I don't need praise. I need a lot. Nobody gets that." The previous quote comes from Mark Harris’s excellent 2020 biography (review here) of - you guessed it - Mike Nichols.
To read about the polymath was to marvel at how much he was venerated by the best and seemingly brightest. As no less than Oprah Winfrey once said, Nichols was the individual that everyone wanted to be seated next to at dinner parties dense with people whom every would want to be seated next to. Apparently, Nichols had that certain something.
Which perhaps requires a re-read of the quote that begins what is a review of Ian Leslie’s excellent new book about John Lennon and Paul McCartney, John & Paul: A Love Story In Songs. Nichols, despite broad worship for him by the brightest of bright people from entertainment, business, politics, and the arts, still needed praise. Which means a lack of praise was arguably worse than a bad review for him. Think about it.
Nichols’s insecurities came to mind while reading Leslie’s analysis of Lennon and McCartney. Really, who could praise or pan two of the greatest songwriters of all time? With everyone essentially looking up to the duoe in a musical sense (perhaps Bob Dylan didn’t, maybe Brian Wilson?), it’s easy to wonder where they went in search of sustenance.
This is surely a way of trying to understand Lennon and McCartney’s friendship. Though the best of friends, they were also very competitive with each other. How could they not have been? You don’t achieve at the level they did with the Beatles (and beyond) if not. But if you’re at the top together, realistically you only have each other in the meaningful compliments sense.
There’s a focus on praise because a third of the way through John & Paul, Leslie writes that “McCartney has often complained that Lennon rarely complimented him on a song, but he doesn’t mention any examples of him complimenting his partner, and there are no credible third-party accounts of his doing so.” Describing their friendship, Leslie makes a case that “it was a romance [figuratively]: passionate, tender, and tempestuous, full of longing, riven by jealousy.”
Which is interesting, or not. Though best of friends, the greatest of great songwriters generally couldn’t bring themselves to say nice things about one another’s work. Well, of course not. If capable of complimenting each other, logic suggests they wouldn’t have been the best songwriters. McCartney famously referenced Brian Wilson’s “God Only Knows” as one of the greatest songs of all time, but not one of Lennon’s? And why didn’t Lennon praise McCartney to the skies? Again, and no matter how good of friends, greatest can’t praise greatest when they’re the greatest at the same thing. Throwing bones to lessers is easier, by many miles.
The anecdote about McCartney’s complaint stuck with me throughout the reading of the book. Would their friendship have been much better if they could have let their guard down a little about the other’s immense talent, or is the anecdote a waste of time? As in, was all their great work together an implied compliment? Enough philosophizing, at least for now.
Leslie has once again written an excellent book. It’s about how “two young men merged their souls and multiplied their talents to create one of the greatest bodies of music in history.” Really, does anyone compare to the Beatles?
No doubt some will list other prominent names like Dylan to perhaps avoid sounding common, but the next time someone does that quickly ask them if they can name ten or even five Dylan songs. With the Beatles it’s easy. Memory says McCartney listed Lennon’s “Beautiful Boy” as one of his “desert island” songs on BBC’s Desert Island Discs (unknown is if he listed it while Lennon was still alive), but if you can only take one band’s music catalogue with you to a desert island, are you really choosing Dylan or the Beach Boys over the Beatles?
Notable about the Beatles’ music alone, Leslie reports that Lennon and McCartney accounted for 159 out of 184 songs. Prolific doesn’t do them justice. They were always writing, and making music. In John & Paul, “each chapter is anchored in a song that tells us something about the state of their relationship at the time.” About what each song is said to tell, here readers will probably read different books.
That’s because Leslie perhaps finds meaning where others might not. By this, there’s lots of philosophizing in the book that may bother readers who are there for the music. Examples include Lennon’s upbringing. He was largely raised by a relatively cultured and surface prosperous aunt and uncle since his father was off at sea and his mother (hit by a car and killed when Lennon was in his teens) was mostly too young to be a mother, and at one point Leslie speculates that Lennon wanted McCartney “to come and be an orphan with him.” About the classic songs Lennon’s mother taught him, Leslie suggests that Lennon “seemed to associate them” with “the vulnerability of childhood.” Later in the book, and trying to explain the struggles for John and Paul in being apart, Leslie writes that “when John wasn’t being looked at by Paul, he didn’t know who he was supposed to be.” The trips to the proverbial psychiatrist didn’t ring true to this reader, but they’ll surely enliven an already interesting book for others.
Whether or not Lennon or McCartney would buy Leslie’s analysis is of course unknowable, and more important, likely won’t matter to most readers. Of greater interest will likely be just how well they worked together. They were Adam Smith’s pin factory, musical edition. When together, and they were together a lot in the early years, the song ideas came fast and furious. They plainly inspired each other, while at the same improving one another. Politicians imagine jobs and work as one taking from another, but Lennon and McCartney remind us that people are additive, and when they work together 1+1 frequently equals much more than 2. This was certainly true with Lennon and McCartney. Leslie indicates that John’s song “ideas were platforms for the creativity of the group,” while “McCartney’s ideas tended to be more fully formed.”
The more fully formed nature of McCartney’s songs revealed itself early on with Yesterday. While all other Beatles music up until then had collaborative qualities, the band came close to not releasing Yesterday as a Beatles song. It was a McCartney creation right down to the instruments, but he and Lennon had agreed early on that all their music would be by them both. Funny about Yesterday was that in McCartney’s recollection, “we all regarded it as filler on the Help! album.” The filler wound up reaching #1 in the U.S.
As they say, no one knows anything. Not only did the Beatles have no clue about Yesterday’s eventual popularity, record companies in England didn’t initially grasp the Beatles. Leslie notes that Decca Records chose Brian Poole and the Tremeloes over the Beatles, while Columbia and HMV turned manager Brian Epstein down too. Finding the Beatles a record contract proved “soul-sapping work” for Epstein.
Yet, while Yesterday was an unexpected hit, when the Beatles recorded "Please Please Me," producer George Martin quite simply knew. On the studio’s intercom, he said “Gentlemen, you’ve just made your first number one record.”
Leslie’s description of McCartney is of “sheer exuberance and joy in being alive.” Abundant genius too. He could play all the instruments, and as a left-hander he could pick up a right-hander’s guitar, turn it upside down and play it flawlessly.
Lennon was the founder of the Quarry Men that McCartney aimed to be a part of. He was also older than McCartney. Lennon was seen as the leader, though McCartney quickly established himself as 1B to Lennon’s 1A. About this, Leslie references a comment from McCartney that eventually the newby “got up to his level…we grew to be equals. It made him insecure. He always was, really.”
Which is essential in high achievers. McCartney too. Leslie cites the Kinks Ray Davies’ description of McCartney, that he “was one of the most competitive people I’ve ever met. Lennon wasn’t. He just thought everyone else was shit.” Two sides of the same coin?
George Harrison saw them both as “egomaniacs,” while the surely exuberant McCartney acknowledged about himself that he was “a turd.” It’s no insight to say that the rampant insecurity was the catalyst for great music. They couldn’t compliment each other probably because a little bit died inside of one another when the other happened upon a great song. They needed each other for those songs, but it hurt just the same.
Leslie fascinatingly reports that the Beatles made Rubber Soul in fifteen days, which is a fraction of the time it takes to make an album today. The speculation here is that this was the prolific nature of Lennon and McCartney at work, plus Parkinson’s Law must enter the picture. C. Northcote Parkinson observed that the amount of time required to finish a job expands with the time allotted to it, and back in the 1960s studio time was incredibly expensive, and by extension, precious.
The album was made, and insecurity loomed large in its creation. Leslie indicates that with Lennon, “a desire to beat Dylan, and a need to keep up with Paul was bringing out the best in John.” Classics by Lennon from the album included “Norwegian Wood,” along with “In My Life.” Leslie reports that more than any other Beatles song, “In My Life” unearthed the most conflicting recollections from Lennon and McCartney about who did what. No doubt it was Lennon’s song, but McCartney claims he contributed the song’s melody, along with the guitar riff. Whatever the truth, “In My Life” eventually led to “Penny Lane” by McCartney. Competitors known to sing to each other, looking deeply in one another’s eyes, made great music because the other made great music. It’s all so interesting, and as was so often the case with the book, it raised questions. What if Dylan had an equal in the studio, and what if Wilson did? Did Quincy Jones make up for the relatively less talented Jackson brothers, or would Michael Jackson have soared to even greater heights with a family member or fellow artist routinely working to outdo him?
What’s interesting and fun at the same time is that jealousy and competition aside, the Beatles truly were a group. Contrast the latter with the Rolling Stones. From Keith Richards’s memoirs (review here) it’s evident that the members very much led and lead separate lives away from touring and making music. Maybe that’s why they’re still together today?
With the Beatles, Leslie writes that even after the band had become a global phenomenon, “John, George and Ringo were in and out of one another’s houses on a daily basis.” McCartney wasn’t as much a part of this since he was single and living in London, but even then they were still a band in the most literal sense. When Harrison developed a fascination with the Maharishi, the whole band went to India. Lennon actually wanted to purchase a Greek island for the band members to build a house each followed by just one guest house for visitors, only for first wife Cynthia to tell him “they [the other band members] seem to need you less than you need them.”
As most readers already know, the Beatles’ final U.S. tour closed the door on touring altogether. True musicians, they couldn’t hear themselves play. Where it was a little surprising was with the attendance figures. Leslie reports that their show at Candlestick Park was ¾ full, and Shea Stadium only 4/5th. It’s so easy to forget that by the time of those final U.S. shows, the Beatles were controversial. There was Lennon’s line about Jesus that Leslie helpfully clears up. Though Lennon was “an atheist of a distinctly religious bent,” his Jesus line “was slightly wistful.”
About Pet Sounds, Leslie confirms that the Beach Boys “had hit a creative peak high enough to scare McCartney into proving the Beatles could do better.” Since the Beach Boys never matched Pet Sounds again, it’s fun to at least wonder what might have happened if the Beatles’ response in Sgt. Pepper’s had quickly been met by Wilson with what was expected to be his next masterpiece in Smile. We’ll never know.
Notable about Sgt. Pepper’s is that “A Day In the Life” (it frequently comes in at #1 in the holiday weekend playback of the Beatles’ best songs) was actually the first song recorded for the album while the last song on it. In Leslie’s words, “nothing could possibly follow it.” Lennon credits McCartney with “I’d love to turn you on.”
Which raises another counterfactual. What if Lennon and McCartney hadn’t been master songwriters? Work divided unearths so much in people, so why not the Beatles? Would their good taste in songs have lifted the band to even greater heights? Elvis, whom they revered, didn’t write his own music.
The not-so-insightful, musically illiterate view here is that the writing is what made the Beatles. Writing is learning, and it made Lennon and McCartney much better than they would have been without it. Furthermore, their prolific nature indicates that they couldn’t have not written even if the best of the best had plied them with endless songs.
All that, plus consider the evolution of the band. While Leslie’s book is largely about Lennon, McCartney and their fruitful collaborations, contemplate what George Harrison became. Leslie confirms what other biographers have about how Lennon and McCartney were a separate income stream within the band to Harrison’s great resentment, but the facts are that at least in the early days, he wasn’t writing good music. What choice did they have in reducing him to a lesser place in the hierarchy? Lest readers forget, it wasn’t exactly easy for the Beatles to initially get a record contract. But record companies were wrong, and obviously music in abundance was made. Harrison, though already the best guitarist in the group, also learned how to make music. Leslie quotes McCartney as saying about Harrison, “Well, the thing is, I think that until now, until this year, our songs have been better than George’s. Now this year his songs are at least as good as ours.” What an admission, what praise in a sense, and it’s worth thinking about relative to McCartney and Lennon’s difficulty summoning praise for one another. No matter how good Harrison became, McCartney or Lennon he would never be. McCartney knew this, hence his ability to say what he couldn’t about Lennon.
Interesting about Leslie is that he’s more than a biographer, or an analyzer of a friendship. It’s evident from the chapters that he knows music. Which means musicians will read a different book simply because there’s much in John & Paul about the making of the songs. About “Here, There and Everywhere,” he writes of how McCartney “allows the merest hint of something darker in the middle eight, with its chromatic, sharking guitar line over a minor chord.”
Was Lennon and McCartney’s friendship deeper than friendship? Leslie makes allusions to this, as mentioned writes about them singing to each other while looking deeply in one another’s eyes, plus there’s a quote from Yoko Ono in which she says “I’m sure that if [Paul] had been a woman or something, he would have been a great threat, because there’s something very strong between John and Paul.” Without any inside knowledge, the guess here is that as opposed to unresolved feelings, McCartney and Lennon’s friendship foundered on the sad truth that familiarity breeds contempt.
No doubt they competed with each other, and no doubt as the fame everyone secretly craves rose to an unimaginable level, the intensity of the rivalry underlying their friendship grew. Contemplate all this while knowing the person you’re competing with is a major instigator of your own talent and vice versa such that you in some ways have to routinely be around the person you’re growing contemptuous of exactly due to extreme familiarity? Wow, that’s some philosophizing too.
Is it right where Leslie is perhaps wrong? Probably not mainly because it's not unreasonable to believe that Leslie likely wouldn’t disagree with it. Marriages struggle at times because you see the person you’re married to each day. In Lennon and McCartney’s case, for a thirteen year stretch they were around each other much more than married couples. With each other frequently when they weren't working, they were nearly always with each other when they were working. And we wonder why there was jealousy about wives, bitterness about how the band was run, and deep-seated anger about each other?
It’s really not surprising. While the Beatles’ stretch of fame included endless togetherness, the Rolling Stones were apart. And while they couldn’t compliment each other, the feelings were evident. Leslie quotes an associate of McCartney’s witnessing the Beatle “crying his eyes out” after a meeting of the band during which Lennon said he was leaving. Just the same for the most part, Rolling Stone’s Jann Wenner attended a screening with Lennon and Ono of the documentary Let It Be, and upon seeing “an image of Paul singing on the rooftop at Apple [the Beatles’ record company], he broke down crying.”
Well, there you go. Or something like that. The guess here is that as with so many friendships, they simply needed a break. Which leads to arguably the ultimate counterfactual: what if Lennon had lived? If so, it’s not hard to imagine the duo recording together again, and lifting one another.
