John Lennon and Paul McCartney in the early 1970s

A Comparative Look at Lennon and McCartney's Solo Albums (Part 1)

Welcome, music lovers! You're in for some fun tonight. We're going to be looking at the early solo careers of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. As you might imagine, that's a lot of material to cover, so we're not going to try to do it all in one episode. 

This first episode will focus on the first couple of years after the Beatles break up, namely 1970 to 1972. That’ll include Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band and Imagine albums and McCartney’s McCartney and Ram albums. But, don’t worry, we’re gonna get to it all eventually. So stick around for this episode, and consider joining us for the follow-up episodes later. 

Incidentally, we're calling this the Rolling Stone Top 500 Albums show, but I need to explain what that means. This isn't going to be a countdown of the top 10 or top 50 or anything like that. We are simply using the most recent Top 500 list as a way to sample what's out there. My hope is that this strategy will enable us to zero in on the best stuff. Certainly, a list like this one, which has been carefully compiled from the opinions of personalities throughout the music industry over time, is going to identify the most prominent material out there. And, though that's not the same thing as best, there's bound to be a lot of overlap. 

And, by the way, that question of quality over quantity, of substance over style, of bubble gum vs. more mature music or however you want to put it, should make for some interesting discussions in and of itself. Expect a lot of that. And please post your comments below.
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I'll just say at the outset that I love all these songs or, … well… to be more accurate, I love most of these songs. There are definitely a few clunkers among them. Nevertheless, it pains me to have to leave so many of them out. But there's just no way to get through everything without picking and choosing and distilling it all down into a set of the most representative tunes. The idea is to present you with a sampling of what is to be found on each of these albums so that you can decide for yourself how interested you might be in getting your own copies of some of them and listening to the full albums for yourselves. 
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McCartney was the first solo Beatle album to be released, and I remember seeing it on display right next to Let It Be, which had also just been released, in the music section of a local department store as a kid in 1970. What I loved about this album back then was that Paul elected to play all the instruments on it himself. That inspired me to make my own 4-track recordings of my songs for years and, as technology has developed, on ever more sophisticated devices. 

Paul McCartney gets a lot of grief for having written some sappy material in his post-Beatles career, Silly Love Songs being perhaps the best example of this. But, at the end of the day, no one can write and perform a solid rocker better than McCartney can. I’ll start us off with Oo You, which makes this abundantly clear. 

Oo You from the McCartney album (1970)

By the way, it’s hard to know how many songs to include from each album in a show like this. I’ve decided that four should be adequate to give listeners a good sense of what each album has to offer. But, sometimes, you may get five or, maybe, just three. You’ve heard my first choice off the McCartney album. Now let’s hear three more before moving on to Lennon’s first solo album.

One of McCartney's greatest strengths is his versatility. This next song, entitled Every Night, is a quiet guitar song. It always makes me think of a street musician when I hear it. I imagine him in an obscure corner of a sidewalk away from the hustle and bustle of nearby streets just as it’s starting to get dark and folks are quietly making their way home on foot, his guitar case open out in front of him to receive tips as he plies his trade. It’s the song of a traveling balladeer of some sort.

Every Night from 'McCartney', 1970

Another aspect of music that McCartney excels at is melody. For that reason, I've often thought that he could be considered the Mozart of popular music. This next little gem is reminiscent of several tunes he wrote with the Beatles, among them For No One, The Fool on the Hill, and When I’m 64.

I studied Arabic poetry in grad school. The Arabs have an expression to describe poetry that seems simple on the surface yet is actually difficult to pull off. They call it سهل ممتنع (sahal mumtani`), which could be translated as “deceptively complicated” since it seems simple on the surface yet is really difficult to reproduce.

The song Junk is like that. The melody seems obvious, like a folk tune, something which has never not existed. Yet it came out of McCartney’s head. As the tune progresses, its direction seems inevitable, as if there could be nothing simpler than that. Sahal mumtani`.

Junk from 'McCartney', 1970

And, finally, here's the big hit from the album. While many of the songs from this collection seem whimsical and unpolished, as if they had been written and recorded at McCartney's remote Scottish farm (which, of course, they were), this tune sounds more polished to me, more like it belongs on the radio or on the soundtrack for a major film. Give it a listen and see what you think.

Maybe I’m Amazed from 'McCartney', 1970

Fans sometimes speculate on who was the best guitarist in the Beatles. Obviously, Paul played bass most of the time, but he did his fair share of guitar work with the Beatles, as well. 

In another episode, we will discuss my top 10 favorite guitar solos, among which is George Harrison's on his own song, Something, from the Abbey Road album. It’s a finely crafted solo with an achingly beautiful melody, and there’s no question in my mind that it’s the best bit of lead guitar work in the Beatles’ entire œuvre. And yet McCartney’s guitar solo for his own Maybe I’m Amazed, which we have just heard, is every bit as iconic, even if Harrison does have a lighter touch.

By the way, I anticipate that we're going to get some criticism for failing to include the other two Beatles here. I would have liked to do that, but it seemed like a bit too much to try to juggle all four at one time. So we'll get to George and Ringo in a subsequent set of episodes. 
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Meanwhile, let’s move on to Lennon’s first solo album, Plastic Ono Band, which was recorded in the same year as McCartney, namely 1970.

It's widely known that Lennon preferred straight rock music to pretty much everything else. Like McCartney, he excelled as a rocker. And yet I enjoy hearing him play a sweetly melodic song occasionally. Love, from the Plastic Ono Band album, is a beautiful example, harking back to Dear Prudence, Julia and others.

Be aware that there’s some dead space at the very beginning and ending of this track. So don’t adjust your volume, and don’t tune away to another channel. We’re still here!

Love from 'Plastic Ono Band', 1970

And here is Lennon doing what he loved best. Namely, a straight rock and roll song:

Well Well Well from 'Plastic Ono Band'

One of the strengths of this album -- something which may well turn a lot of people off, though -- is Lennon's willingness to expose his vulnerability and raw emotions on it. Sometimes he goes overboard a bit with it, Isolation being the best example. Yet a serious listener can't help but be moved by songs like Mother and Hold On. Let’s give the latter a listen now.

Hold On from 'Plastic Ono Band'

Look At Me is another introspective song that’s worth a listen, but we won’t play that one here. (You can find it on YouTube if you are interested. Or buy the album!) Instead, let’s move on to God, the penultimate track on side 2.

This one features more of Lennon being vulnerable, and I find it quite gripping. “I don't believe in the I Ching, I don't believe in the Bible, I don't believe in Jesus,” he begins. Then he moves a little closer to home with “I don't believe in Elvis, I don't believe in Zimmerman (Dylan), I don't believe in Beatles.”. It’s heartbreaking on the one hand and yet, on the other, you can feel the liberation in Lennon’s voice, a triumph of his individuality over the corporate star machine he has been trapped in his whole adult life as he sings the words “the dream is over”. And yet, of course, he wasn’t actually free. Not yet. And perhaps he never would be. Here now is God.

God from 'Plastic Ono Band'

            [pause here for a few seconds before moving back to McCartney]

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All right, let's shift the focus back to Paul now and move on to Ram, an album that was widely panned when it came out in 1971 and which, as recently as 2020, still scored much lower than John and George’s contemporaneous efforts on the RS Top 500 Albums list. 

In my view, Ram is as good as any album ever released by an ex-Beatle. And, I have to admit, all I can do is shake my head in wonder as I read bad review after bad review of the album from that time on Wikipedia. What were those critics smoking? (See the reviews here: Ram reviews)

Uncle Albert - Admiral Halsey, for example, is often mistaken for a Beatles tune and is every bit as good as the top-tier Beatles hits. Let's start with that one. Here we go!

Uncle Albert from Ram

I love the quirky segue into studio noise that comes at the end of Admiral Halsey, which then morphs into the next song, Smile Away, with no break. It adds another dimension to the concept of album rock, where it’s not just about individual songs but about the album as a whole. You heard most of that quirky segue here, but we didn’t continue all the way into the beginning of that next song. I recommend that, though, if you get a chance.

In any case, this is the sort of thing you might have heard on the White album, and it makes for a really fun and interesting listening experience. And Ram is full of this sort of stuff. 

Moving on, Heart of the Country is a lovely acoustic track with a country flavor, and it features some excellent guitar work. 

Heart of the Country from Ram

Listeners familiar with the single Sally G, which was released about three years later, may detect some foreshadowing here with what we’ve just heard. Sally G. was a big hit in the country music world, scoring high on a couple of American Country and Easy Listening lists in late 1974 or early 1975. 

Both these songs show McCartney’s facility with genres new to him, something he demonstrates again and again in his career, starting with show-tunes style Honey Pie and country-tinged Rocky Raccoon on the White album back when he was still with the Beatles. And we see it again in 1980 with McCartney 2’s punk-infused Temporary Secretary and yet again in 2001’s Driving Rain, where songs like She's Given Up Talking and Spinning on an Axis capture the hip-hop vibe that was prevalent at that time.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. We're still looking at Ram, his second solo album. So let's get back to that. 

Ever the rocker, McCartney opens the album with Too Many People which, again, rivals much of the Beatles’ best material.

Too Many People from Ram

And, finally, here’s a piano-based tune called Dear Boy which is more pop than rock. It’s got an infectious melody. This is the sort of sound that inspired later bands like XTC, Jellyfish and many others.

Dear Boy from Ram

           [pause here for briefly before moving on to Lennon’s Imagine album]

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And now we'll have a look at John Lennon's Imagine album, which was perhaps his most popular solo album, at least until Double Fantasy came out shortly before his death in 1980. 

Let's start with the title tune. Writing a political song is a really complicated affair. Not many people can pull it off without sounding either preachy or trite or both. Lennon himself crashed and burned several times when trying to write an effective political song. But I think he succeeds quite remarkably both with Revolution during the Beatles and with Imagine shortly afterward. 

In the early 1990s, a blowhard named William F Buckley Jr, who fancied himself a spokesman for the conservative movement during the 1960s, wrote an op-ed piece that was very critical of the song Imagine. In it, he betrayed his inability to think abstractly. 

I don't really remember the op-ed piece all that well anymore but, just as an example, he excoriates Lennon's rejection of war by stating that, without war, we would have had to just let Hitler or Stalin take over the world. But Lennon’s point was that we should imagine a world where there were no Hitlers or Stalins. He wasn’t saying that we shouldn’t defend ourselves against such autocrats. 

And, anyway, at the end of the day, it is just a song, isn’t it? It's not some sort of declaration of the way things are or should be. He’s just asking people to consider what a world without violence and greed might look like.

Let’s give the song a listen now:

     Imagine from Imagine

Give Me Some Truth, on the other hand, is a political song that sort of falls flat. I do like the song but, unlike with Imagine, the lyrics are kind of sloppy. Still, I like the angry feel to the song, and I think perhaps it comes closer to capturing Lennon’s default demeanor or personality than Imagine. Plus I like the reference to Richard Nixon in the line ‘No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of Tricky Dicky’s going to Mother Hubbard soft soap me with just a pocketful of hope. Money for dope’.

I actually like a lot of things about Richard Nixon. and I think he could have been a very effective president if he hadn't been plagued by paranoia. And counterculture figures like John Lennon were just the kind of character that unnerved Nixon. Anyway, here’s Give Me Some Truth:

Gimme the Truth from Imagine

As caustic and vitriolic as Lennon could be, he could also be very vulnerable. ‘How’ is a song that deftly captures Lennon’s insecurity in a way that I, as a listener, can personally identify with. And it’s also a beautiful ballad with lovely orchestration. I consider it the hidden gem of the Imagine album. 

How from Imagine

Crippled Inside is another song that Lennon may have intended to be as much about himself as anyone else. This is a well produced track with a really engaging instrumental line up. It’s definitely one of the top tracks on the album.

       Crippled Inside from Imagine 

There are definitely some clunkers on the album. I Don't Want to Be a Soldier, for example, is six minutes of pure torture. How Do You Sleep, on the other hand, isn’t a bad recording music-wise, but it’s insulting and obnoxious. I actually like It’s So Hard, but you can’t help but laugh when you hear him talk about how hard his life has become as a home-bound husband and father. It’s as if Lennon believes he’s the first person to ever discover that being a parent and a spouse is difficult.

Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed this first episode. If so, please join us for a second episode soon where we’ll discuss Lennon's Some Time in New York City and McCartney's Wild Life along with several non-album singles which were released by each of these two artists as solo works during the first few years after the Beatles breakup.