The Beatles' Solo Careers Poll - Voting and General Discussion Thread

which he used to be good at arranging! (and would be again)

RAM is awesome, proper rating = awesome album

otm

Yeah its weird

Does anyone know who plays the electric gtr leads on stuff like Many Rivers to Cross and #9 Dream? That weepy wah-wah slide gtr sound sound like John trying to get some George substitute.

Xp

might be this guy, credited with "guitar"

https://www.discogs.com/artist/270581-Jesse-Ed-Davis

Man that guy was everywhere in the 70s. No Other!

If the top part of my ballot stays in its current form, four of my first six McCartney tracks will be recent ones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLOTD7wrbtQ

pretty sure "Hold On" will be my top John Lennon track

here is that 10+ year John and Ringo rhythm section at work

most of ram sounds to me like "yesterday" if paul had never bothered to change the lyrics from "scrambled eggs."

change "ram" to "paul's solo career" and i think this still holds. so it turns out i'd have been totally pleased with "scrambled eggs" on a beatles album but at the same time it's hard not to wonder what might have been.... all these incredibly hooky, ingenious songs but very very few with anything to really connect to most listeners' lives or imaginations. apparently a lot of people identify with the idea of being in a band on the run, okay.... and the love songs (whether genericized or specific or "woe woe WOE woe") tend to do well, but god what if "jet" was actually about something and not just a stream of syllables loosely inspired by a sheepdog? or if "junior's farm" wasn't just a string of nonsense for nonsense's sake? they'd surely be among the best and most loved classic rock hits of the 70s. i think i might end up ranking "hi hi hi" over all the other 'rockers' even though it's a little less tight than "jet," just because he seems focused on something. man do i wish ringo was playing on it though.

(certainly denny laine and the interchangeable wings drummers were nothing on having george harrison and ringo starr in your band in terms of musical contributions and elevating a song with the right little touches or unexpected rhythmic moves or whatever. even just someone to sometimes be able to tell him that just for this one particular song, having the guitar be louder than the bass might be the right choice...)

"Junior's Farm" fascinates me. Still devoted to stand-alone singles, Paul releases a nonsensical rocker that hits #3 on momentum alone, whereupon it vanishes from history (I'm a fan of country-leaning B-side "Sally G").

I think that take on McCartney is fine up through about McCartney II, but not so much after.

My favorite sounding Wings group was the first one. Wild Life sounds like a band to me and, although Red Rose Speedway is subpar, they got better with Henry McCullough.

i also think it could be said that paul learned the wrong lessons from watching john work, as a lyricist - - - or at least, the lessons worked well for him having fun making music but not so well for making indelible music. i was listening to a 1968 radio interview where paul is discussing the white album, track by track, and mostly just completely evading giving any explanation, "it's, y'know, when you're writing, y'know it's just some words, like john with his poems, it doesn't necessarily mean anything and i don't sit down to try and say something..." etc. but lennon just had a better ear for which bits of nonsense really sounded like something, in the way that poetry works - you don't know exactly what it means but it expresses or evokes something anyway. they were different kinds of writers. i still like paul's nonsense like "monkberry moon delight" and "morse moose" more than his really dry and classicist writing like "only love remains" and "once upon a long ago" but you can tell when he's running dry and really trying to be weird and that's not so good either...

it also happens that the nonsense poetry mode, for john, seemed to dry up right when he veered hard into the "confessional" thing. i could be forgetting but i feel like his solo stuff is generally MUCH more literal-minded and certainly far less carrollian... very few "walrus gumboots" to be found... which leaves paul looking especially silly to listeners hearing them back to back on the radio in the 70s. okay folks that was john lennon "Imagine," next up we've got paul mccartney's new band "Wings" with their song "C Moon"....

yeah i love "Sally G." a little pastiche-y but charming. "I never thought to ask her what the letter G stood for / but I know for sure it wasn't Good."

also, i would love to read something really substantive on band dynamics in Wings. what was paul and denny's working relationship, all those years? what kind of contributions did he make (besides allegedly writing "Mull of Kintyre")? did he get to stick around because he was a yes-man, or because he was a really good collaborator that lifted and shaped the songs in ways we don't realize? did he and paul stay up til 3 getting stoned and scribbling out ridiculous lyrics together? linda's creative role is also much hazier than it ought to be.

Are songs unique to the John Lennon Anthology valid for this poll? I don't see (for example) Real Love listed anywhere.

"Junior's Farm" fascinates me. Still devoted to stand-alone singles, Paul releases a nonsensical rocker that hits #3 on momentum alone, whereupon it vanishes from history (I'm a fan of country-leaning B-side "Sally G").

― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

My #2 in the Classic Rock poll, and it'll place high on my ballot here. I love its nonsensicality.

xxxp "Hold On" completely rules, in fact JL:POB is the only Beatles solo I unreservedly like from front to back.

Yes Vernon all non-live solo tracks featuring at least one beatle are eligible xp

xxxp "Hold On" completely rules, in fact JL:POB is the only Beatles solo I unreservedly like from front to back.

― startled macropod (MatthewK), Thursday, May 17, 2018 8:15 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark

the performance is just so strong. John and Ringo had been manning half the Beatles rhythm section for a decade now and they had been playing with Klaus on bass since mid 1969. it sounds like a really well rehearsed band. that guitar is so sweet to listen to. i don't even want to hear any outtakes, every note fell perfect. this is John's style, documenting the moment, which ofc is Yoko's style as well. this song is a magical moment.

Thanks Οὖτις! xp

Doctor Casino have you read Band On The Run: Paul McCartney in the 70s? It gets into the band dynamics a fair bit, especially with Denny. I wouldn’t call it “really substantive,” not sure if that’s possible with this crew, but it will get you part of the way there.

That's what I asked earlier: how much of BOTR's lead guitar is played by Paul?

xp Adam yeah - half the joy of JL:POB is the visceral buzz of three guys just getting down to it and digging in. I love how sloppy the recording is. A much needed purgative for the prissiness of Abbey Road.

Also...

COOKIR

COOKIE

Argh

sciatica, i have not! but perhaps i shall!

Mind Games not popular in comments so far, but we've been down this road. Some people like it! I'm looking at four tracks from it possibly all in my top fifty.

Extra Texture: I quite like the lyrics (and sentiment) of "The Answer's at the End".

It seems notable that when solo-Paul did try to write songs that were 'about' something, songs that made an important statement or whatever - they were usually embarrassing failures? Thinking of 'Give Ireland Back To The Irish' and 'Ebony And Ivory' here (maybe 'Here Today' to an extent, which isn't doesn't descend into unintentional comedy like those other two, but still feels kind of like a misfire?).

There's a demo version of 'Ebony And Ivory' that's just a Paul vocal and keyboards and it's very pretty, I feel like if he'd been content to have it be one of his general non-specific "why can't we all get along" hand-wringing songs, rather that making it 'about' racism, it would have been ok. 'Give Ireland Back To The Irish' is just incredible in how every single aspect of it falls flat and feels misjudged, it's almost like a perfectly bad song.

yeah, I love that "Ebony&Ivory" demo.
I also love this version of "Band on the Run" but apparently it was recorded later (2003).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkfdG1K_suM

this is John's style, documenting the moment, which ofc is Yoko's style as well
v otm

used to listen to Mind Games all the times

good mourning!

It seems notable that when solo-Paul did try to write songs that were 'about' something, songs that made an important statement or whatever - they were usually embarrassing failures? Thinking of 'Give Ireland Back To The Irish' ...

I point you straight in the direction of Lennon's Some Time in New York City, which is choc-full of exactly what you've described.

for this poll I have listened to a fair bit of Paul that I hadn't heard before & well nothing much has stuck. It feels corny that after all these years the only one I really rate is John. ram on.

Give Ireland Back to the Irish >>>>>>>>>>>> Luck of the Irish

Would be reversed if Lennon had meant the song as a joke though.

You can sing the words of the Lennon song to the McCartney tune.
Making a Lennon/McCartney tune.

Doesn't make it any better though.

I quite like the b-side.

I do think Macca was capable of writing about specific topics and concepts beyond "I love her," and channeling his tendency to write about "characters" into proper observations, meditations, or even good jokes - "Eleanor Rigby" springs to mind, or "Paperback Writer." He just didn't always do that, or would focus his eye on something of more interest to him than to the general public (famous groupies, Marvel comics, how one might edit a filmed montage of a homeless person, etc.). "Issue" songs are another matter entirely - there he's almost always been clumsy, like a lot of well-intentioned songwriters who can't find the notes of emotional immediacy or evocative specificity to turn their commitments into functional, audience-grabbing songs. Someone like Lennon, even when at the weaker end of sophomoric sloganeering, is able to sound pissed off on record, and that goes a long way - one of several ways in which he reminds me of Eminem ("Mosh," "White America"). Imho, Macca's intentions in this arena tend to exceed his grasp, with a certain gotta-give-em-a-good-show staginess always detectable, from "Ireland" up through "Pipes of Peace" and "Big Boys Bickering."

McCartney's inability to do the Lennon-esque pissed off thing is a big part of why 'Give Ireland Back To The Irish' is so funny imo, the peevishness of "but really, what are you doing", the urge to be even-handed and reasonable even in a protest song. 'Luck of the Irish' is also terrible, but terrible in a less awkward/more convincing way

Chorus is OK though.

i also think it could be said that paul learned the wrong lessons from watching john work, as a lyricist ... it also happens that the nonsense poetry mode, for john, seemed to dry up right when he veered hard into the "confessional" thing.

had similar thoughts myself, it's like once Paul hit the psychedelia period and realized he could get away with just any old silly off-the-top-of-me-head bullshit he never looked back. Whereas John pretty much abandoned it within a year or two!

The other distinctive Beatle-era Lennon thing missing from his solo work (and I think I've said this on some previous threads) is his penchant for odd rhythmic switchups - going to 6/8 in a bridge from 4/4, or adding an extra bar of 5/4 at the end of a verse, etc. Seems like that happens way less in his solo work (although it does still pop up occasionally - just as the nonsense does: a babagawa pussay pussay etc)

Listened to the Spotify list of this thread last night and “C Moon” and “Gimme Some Truth” came on back to back. The contrast between these two couldn’t have been more stark.

Also, Harrison’s Don’t Let Mw Wait Too Long sounds like a lost Big Star track.

Wow Give Ireland Back To The Irish is so fuckin shit hahahaha.

was thinking a side poll of worst solo Beatle album might be fun (certainly more interesting than a best side poll)

sounds good, except there is no way I'm subjecting myself to those to try and determine the worst one

worst song maybe?

Give Peace A Chance has lots of great things about it (chorus, spontaneity, situation) but it feels to me like a missed opportunity in terms of an actual good record. Not perhaps its point I realise.

Not putting in that category btw, just randomly putting my thoughts out.

except there is no way I'm subjecting myself to those to try and determine the worst one

yeah slogging through all of Paul and Ringo's albums seems like a thankless task

Spoiler alert: it isn't.