The website for the book Still the Greatest: The Essential Songs of the Beatles' Solo Careers
Hosts Ryan and Chris of the excellent McCartney podcast TAKE IT AWAY and I recently discussed THE SONGS THE BEATLES GAVE AWAY TO OTHER ARTISTS.
We play Paul and John’s unreleased demos and compare them with singles by the Stones, Peter and Gordon, Badfinger, Cilla Black, Billy J. Kramer and more.
If you want it, here it is, come and get it!
Episode 22 – Songs Paul Gave Away
In the early ’60s, girls used to stand in line for three hours before the Beatles’ daily Cavern Club shows, sometimes clawing Starr’s future wife, Maureen, out of jealousy. In the late ’60s, when the group no longer played live, therewas a clique of hardcore female fans who would permanently hang around outside Apple Records or Abbey Road Studios, regardless of the weather, in the hopes of getting to chat with the Fabs. They’d come by in the morning for a while, then go to their day jobs, then return in the evening. Collectively, they were known as the Apple Scruffs.
Since McCartney lived in town, they also loitered outside his gates. “She Came in through the Bathroom Window” from ABBEY ROAD talks about when they snuck into his house and swiped some pants, which they all traded off wearing. They also took a photo, but gave that back when McCartney asked.
The Beatles also invited two of them (Lizzie Bravo and Gayleen Pease) to sing backing vocals on the first version of “Across the Universe.” The song was given to the World WildlifeFund charity and is now on PAST MASTERS, VOL 2. One night, McCartney sang his new song “Blackbird” to them from his window.
During the early “Longest Cocktail Party” days of Apple, before all the Beatles grew to hate the legal turmoil brought on by their own label, Harrison and publicist Derek Taylor considered doing a musical about the place, at which point Harrison started composing Apple-related tunes. One of them, “Not Guilty,” would be rejected for THE WHITE ALBUM and resurface eleven years later on GEORGE HARRISON. Another was “Apple Scruffs,” which he finished for his first solo album.
While he was once sang “Don’t Bother Me” to his fans, in the early days of going solo he seemed to be trying to shore up his base with this wistful love letter. Perhaps he sensed that he’d never again experience such unwavering devotion.
Harrison’s evocative lyrics describe the Apple Scruffs waiting on the steps in the fog and the rain with flowers in their hands. His wavering voice momentarily veers toward good-natured exasperation, but the Dylanesque harmonica makes the overriding mood one of nostalgia for days already fading.
It’s time for the next installment of our year-by-year comparison. While they were in the Beatles, John and Paul attributed all the songs they wrote to “Lennon-McCartney.” But after 1963, most tunes were primarily the work of one composer or the other, who would usually sing lead on the track.
Who do you think came out ahead in the year Beatlemania broke worldwide?
John:
A Hard Day’s Night
I Feel Fine
Eight Days a Week
I Should Have Known Better
If I Fell
I’m a Loser
No Reply
You Can’t Do That
Tell Me Why
Any Time at All
I’ll Cry Instead
When I Get Home
I’ll Be Back
I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party
I’m Happy Just to Dance With You (written for George)
Rock and Roll Music (cover)
Slow Down (cover)
Mr. Moonlight (cover)
Leave My Kitten Alone (cover)
Paul:
Can’t Buy Me Love
And I Love Her
Things We Said Today
She’s a Woman
I’ll Follow the Sun
What You’re Doing
Every Little Thing
It’s For You (written for Cilla Black)
From A Window (written for Billy J. Kramer)
Nobody I Know (written for Peter & Gordon)
I Don’t Want to See You Again (written for Peter & Gordon)
One and One Is Two (written for The Strangers)
Long Tall Sally (cover)
Kansas City/ Hey Hey Hey Hey! (cover)
Both:
Baby’s in Black
Words of Love (cover)
In June 1973 Yoko Ono told Lennon she wanted a separation right before the sessions for the Mind Games album began began. Lennon didn’t want to believe they were through, and many Mind Games songs were tributes and apologies to Ono: “Aisumasen (I’m Sorry),” “You Are Here,” and the best of them, “Out the Blue.”
In one of his finest arranging jobs, he keeps the song continually interesting through the gradual introduction of each element: first just guitar, then piano/steel guitar/bass/and drums, then Beatles-esque backing harmonies. His impassioned vocal becomes a touch rawer, then leads into a fiery piano solo. With each piece making its own entrance, the listener can appreciate the new color it adds to the whole more clearly than if they had all been playing together right from the beginning.
Lennon fiercely pins his survival on Ono, singing that he was born just to get to her. A reformed chauvinist, he thanks both the Lord and Lady that he survived long enough to marry her. He sings that she came to him like a UFO out of the blue and cast out the blue that had been depressing him with the romance that rocked their world. A UFO is an apt metaphor, for it’s hard to think of any other woman who could have been more surprising to find on Lennon’s arm than Ono back in 1968. One has to give him points for originality. Lennon himself was an alien to much of the conventional world, so naturally he adored someone who had a similar power to confound the small-minded.
Lennon uses all his power to express how much Ono means to him to sway her to stay. The song comes close to being a standard that could serve as the traditional first dance in a wedding, though Lennon’s intensity and offbeat lyrics are too much for that context.
Ono still said it was over and thus Lennon headed out to Los Angeles for the epic bender that was his Lost Weekend. In the cover he designed for Mind Games, a very small Lennon walks away from a mountain that is Ono’s profile, as if she’s lying in a sarcophagus. But in 1975 Ono would take him back.
“The Man” is the second of McCartney’s three collaborations with Michael Jackson, recorded in 1981 and released on Pipes of Peace (1983).
Jackson wrote the lyrics, about some wise dancing man who “plays the game of life so well.” McCartney wasn’t sure if Jackson was talking about Jesus or a Jehova’s Witness — or just a happy “fool on the hill” type guy who kicked up his heels like The Wiz — but went with it.
So it was the second song McCartney sang that seemed to be a merry ode to the general wisdom of “The Man” (the other being “Listen to What the Man Said”), apparently unaware that to many “The Man” was slang for an oppressive government/authoritarian figure. Jackson, too, was apparently unaware or unconcerned.
With two hit singles under their belt (“Say Say Say” and “The Girl Is Mine”), it seemed they had a good thing going. But then McCartney advised Michael Jackson to start buying song copyrights to make big money. Around that time, ATV Music Publishing went up for sale. It owned the copyrights to most of the Lennon/McCartney songs, and as a courtesy they offered McCartney the option to buy it for $40 million. McCartney tried to get Yoko Ono (who ran Lennon’s estate) to split it with him, but she thought they could get it for $20 million. When that deal didn’t happen, McCartney decided to drop it because it was “too pricey.”
So in 1985, Michael Jackson bought it for $47.5 million. Even though he had originally passed, McCartney was reputedly unhappy about it, and they never worked together again.
One of the 1970s stars who came closest to reaching Beatles heights was Elton John, and he worked with both Lennon and Starr in 1974. For Starr’s album Goodnight Vienna, Elton John and his lyricist Bernie Taupin contributed “Snookeroo.”
John kicks things off with “Crocodile Rock”–style piano and Taupin sketches a song based on Starr’s upbringing in a working-class town in the North of England. It includes the same eye for detail that made John’s other working class portrait, “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting,” stand out lyrically as well as musically. The Band’s Robbie Robertson delivers on guitar, tasty horns lean in, gospel-sounding ladies back the Ringed One at the mike, and it’s an anthem for poor Andy Capps-turned-millionaire-playboys everywhere. It made it to number three in the United States as a double Aside with “The No No Song.”
Snooker is a British version of pool with a bigger table and smaller pockets. Basically, Starr sings about being a lazy, no-good guy who hangs out playing pool and refuses to work normal hours while his dad gets drunk and his sister gets a reputation.
He sings that he needs a factory girl who will cook for him and turn him loose at night, which is what he had in Maureen, though she would be the last factory girl with whom he’d bunker down. Technically, she wasn’t a factory girl; rather, she left school at fourteen to become a hairdresser trainee. Before Starr knew this drummer thing was going to sustain, his plan had always been to get his own hair salon, so they must’ve bonded over hair. Maureen was born in 1946 and a regular at the Cavern Club at age fifteen. Starr married her in February 1965 after she became pregnant with the first of their three children.
The lyrics talk about how the family’s four-room house is condemned. In 2005, the Liverpool City Council decided they would knock down Starr’s birth home at 9 Madryn Street—but after an outcry, it announced the building would be taken apart brick by brick and preserved elsewhere.
McCartney’s symphony Standing Stone (1997) was the natural progression from “Yesterday,” “Eleanor Rigby,” and 1966’s The Family Way soundtrack (the first Beatle solo album). Recounting the rise of Celtic man (hence the Stonehenge reference of the title), it opens with the primordial great ball of fire and progresses to the first signs of life in this track, which recalls Fantasia’s take on Stravinksy’s Rite of Spring. Now if Macca just raps over an Asian folk tune, he’ll have every musical genre covered.
“Cell Growth” starts at 4:30 in the clip below:
And while we’re at it, here’s “Love in the Open Air,” from The Family Way.
People have asked what an anthology of the Fabs’ greatest hits since 1970 would include so below is my proposed track listing. I tried to emulate the chart-topping 1973 Beatles collection 1962-1966 and 1967-1970, commonly referred to as The Red Album and The Blue Album, with 54 songs total.
The Solo Beatles had 56 Top 10 hits, and a four-record anthology could have been compiled with just those songs, but there were some classics that didn’t make it that high on the chart (Lennon’s “Mind Games” and “Stand By Me,” for example) so the overview was expanded to three volumes.
Some songs below were included in this list because they were hits but I did not profile them in the book because I didn’t think they were the artists’ best, and the book is about the “essential” songs. (Songs not in the book are indicated with an asterisk.) Still, realistically a solo Beatle retrospective would have to include Paul’s collaborations with Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder … and probably even “Wonderful Christmastime.”
Looking over the list, it’s interesting to see how many of their finest songs are not included, as they were deep album cuts not released as singles … I guess that’s a compilation for another day!
1969-1974 (The Yellow Album)
Side One
1. Give Peace A Chance
2. Instant Karma
3. Maybe I’m Amazed
4. My Sweet Lord
5. What is Life
6. Another Day
7. Power To The People
Side Two
1. It Don’t Come Easy
2. Imagine
3. Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey
4. Hi Hi Hi
5. Back Off Boogaloo
6. My Love
7. Happy Xmas (War Is Over)
Side Three
1. Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)
2. Live And Let Die
3. Mind Games
4. Helen Wheels
5. You’re Sixteen
6. Jet
7. Photograph
Side Four
1. Band On The Run
2. Whatever Gets You Thru the Night
3. Oh My My
4. Junior’s Farm
5. Dark Horse
6. Only You
7. #9 Dream
1975-1983 (The Green Album)
Side One
1. Listen to What the Man Said
2. The No No Song *
3. Venus And Mars/Rock Show *
4. Stand By Me
5. Silly Love Songs
6. You *
7. Snookeroo
Side Two
1. Let ‘Em In
2. Crackerbox Palace *
3. Mull Of Kintyre
4. With a Little Luck
5. Blow Away
6. Wonderful Christmastime *
7. Rockestra *
Side Three
1. Goodnight Tonight *
2. (Just Like) Starting Over
3. Coming Up
4. Woman
5. Waterfalls *
6. Beautiful Boy
7. Watching the Wheels
Side Four
1. All Those Years Ago
2. Take It Away
3. Ebony And Ivory *
4. The Girl Is Mine *
5. Say Say Say *
6. In My Car
7. Pipes Of Peace *
1984-2005 (“The Indigo Album”)
Side One
1. Nobody Told Me
2. No More Lonely Nights
3. Borrowed Time
4. We All Stand Together *
5. I’m Stepping Out
6. I Don’t Want to Do It
7. Once Upon a Long Ago *
Side Two
1. Got My Mind Set On You
2. My Brave Face
3. When We Was Fab
4. This One *
5. Handle With Care
6. Put It There
7. End of the Line
Side Three
1. Weight of the World
2. Hope of Deliverance
3. Free as a Bird
4. Real Love
5. Young Boy
6. Beautiful Night
7. Flaming Pie
Side Four
1. No Other Baby
2. From a Lover To a Friend
3. Any Road
4. Jenny Wren
5. Never Without You
6. Fine Line
7. Liverpool 8
* Not profiled in the book
An acoustic demo of this song was recorded during the Get Back sessions in January 1969. McCartney chimes in on the chorus, and as can be heard on YouTube, the song is almost cheerful, miles away from the nauseous despair of the final version. No doubt all the scorn heaped upon Lennon and Ono between 1969 and 1971 turned the song darker.
Yet despite the rage, there’s vengeful joy in his performance, the catharsis of a brilliant wordsmith at the height of his powers unleashing a hilariously cynical barrage of bile. There’s spiteful glee in the perfectly phrased proto-raps of bitterness he spits out against a “short hair” establishment utterly beneath contempt. It’s as sharp as Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” though Lennon’s songs were almost always succinct whereas Dylan’s luxuriated in precedent-smashing length.
Unlike the political songs that would follow in 1972’s Some Time in New York City, this is one of his most timeless because it is unspecific—as relevant to today as it was in 1971. Most essentially, it’s witty. He can’t decide whether to spend his money on dope or rope, and we don’t know if the rope is to hang the politicians or to just give up and hang himself. With humor as black as could be, he spoke for every guy of draft age deciding whether it was time to run through the jungle or run for Canada.
In high school, the schoolmaster regularly caned Lennon. In his twenties, his records were burned in the South. Now, he called out “Tricky Dicky” by name and brought down the wrath of the US government, immersing himself in a quagmire of deportation court battles for the next four years.
The song carries the righteous indignation of “I Found Out,” but unlike that stark and primitive track, here Harrison perfectly compliments the vitriol with the desolate beauty of his distorted and chiming slide guitar. Harrison stopped by to play on half of Imagine, and Lennon later exclaimed it was the best Harrison had played in his life.
