Did John dislike any of Paul's songs? | Page 4 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Atlas said 

 
It’s easy to find negative comments from John and George about Paul’s work but I can’t recall Paul putting down John or George’s songs…….illuminating! 

You could look at these comments made by Paul during his infamous “self-interview” that accompanied the press releases for ‘McCartney’ as pretty “negative”, the questions are more “illuminating” than the evasive answers to his own questions however.  I’m sure that George could share some stories about “Paul putting down” his songs over the years, but Paul is just too aware of how the public perceives him and did it “behind closed doors”.  Paul’s pretty bright, and he knew that George & John’s albums were much better than his at the time:

Q: “Did you miss the other Beatles and George Martin? Was there a moment when you thought, ‘I wish Ringo were here for this break?'”

PAUL: “No.”

Q: “Is your break with the Beatles temporary or permanent, due to personal differences or musical ones?”

PAUL: “Personal differences, business differences, musical differences, but most of all because I have a better time with my family. Temporary or permanent? I don’t really know.”

Q: “Do you foresee a time when Lennon-McCartney becomes an active songwriting partnership again?”

PAUL: “No.”

Q: “What do you feel about John’s peace effort? The Plastic Ono Band? Giving back the MBE? Yoko’s influence? Yoko?”

PAUL: “I love John, and respect what he does – it doesn’t really give me any pleasure.”

I don’t agree with John’s “rubbish” assessment of ‘McCartney’, nor did I ever feel that George’s “fruity” comment accurately describes ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer ‘, but I most certainly agree with Ringo’s view of ‘RAM’, he nailed it, in my opinion…:-)

ivaughan said

 

I really disagree here. I think you have one example – Run For Your Life – and are inferring from that. He has never said anything particularly bad about Michelle , nor Kite, nor Tomorrow Never Knows (despite him talking about being influenced by the Tibetan Book of the Dead), nor Come Together (despite him openly admitting to lifting the lyrics of You Can’t Catch Me ), nor All I’ve Got To Do (which he admits to being a Smokey Robinson imitation), nor Whatever Gets You Thru The Night (which he admits to lifting the rhythm from Rock Me Baby), etc. Lennon was open about the music he was attempting to copy and never in my view, used it to shift blame especially since he rarely critiqued the songs that were so openly inspired by other sources – if anything he would praise them. Even with Run For Your Life , he hardly blames Elvis, nor would he since Baby Let’s Play House was cited as one of his favourite songs. He certainly had no problem calling his own songs “crap” without having to draw it back to some influence. Indeed, he could have said It’s Only Love was influenced by Dylan…

Ira Lipson referenced a John Lennon interview during the 1981 Radio Program ‘The Beatles: The Days In Their Lives’ before playing ‘Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite’, he says after discussing where he borrowed the lyrics from (the famous poster), “I’m not proud of it, I was just going through the motions because we needed another song for Sgt. Pepper “…:-)

ivaughan said

Billy Rhythm said

Ira Lipson referenced a John Lennon interview during the 1981 Radio Program ‘The Beatles: The Days In Their Lives’ before playing ‘Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite’, he says after discussing where he borrowed the lyrics from (the famous poster), “I’m not proud of it, I was just going through the motions because we needed another song for Sgt. Pepper “…:-)

 

Fair enough — I suppose I was confused because I’ve seen instances where he was more positive about the song. But I think the reason why this is confusing is because Lennon was typically negative about songs that he just “knocked off” –> in other words, he wasn’t proud of songs that he wrote just to write a song rather than the ones he wrote because he was genuinely inspired. And yes, one could say that it was likely in songs that Lennon “knocked off” that there might be more stealing going on since he was trying to write it quickly. But that doesn’t mean that one always equals the other.  In a song where he is inspired, like Tomorrow Never Knows , he doesn’t speak negatively about it even though the lyric outright steals from Timothy Leary’s psychedelic version of the Tibetan Book of the Dead which Lennon himself acknowledged.

I think that John wasn’t too keen on a lot of their(his) work.  You referenced ‘Eight Days A Week ‘ earlier as an example, and I remember his quote on that one but it was more in reference to their earlier songs in general, after commenting later on his dislike for much of their earlier work he said, “songs like ‘Eight Days A Week ‘ sound like a big drag to me now”.  He later added, “I’ve never been a knocked out Beatles fan by any of our albums, I like some of the work we do and some of it I don’t”.  He’s implied on more than one occasion that although ‘Sgt. Pepper ‘ was “a peak” in their careers that he much preferred their other albums, in particular his own songs on the ‘White Album ‘.

A lot of John’s work during the psychedelic period was a case of him “just going through the motions” (perhaps because he was overindulging in different areas).  His other songs on ‘Sgt. Pepper ‘ echo this sentiment, aside from quoting word for word from the Circus Poster, his contribution to ‘A Day In The Life ‘ was much the same except it happened to be a newspaper laying around that particular day, or with ‘Good Morning, Good Morning’ the TV was on in the background and a commercial for Corn Flakes came on saying “good morning, good morning”.  This is a quote from the book, ‘The Beatles : In Their Own Words’:

JOHN 1968: “We write about our past. ‘Good Morning, Good Morning,’ I was never proud of it. I just knocked it off to do a song. But it was writing about my past so it does get the kids because it was me at school, my whole bit.”

It seems that his son Julian was the only one inspiring him during the ‘Pepper’ period when he came home with that famous ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds ‘ painting which prompted John to revisit his childhood love of Lewis Carroll with the ‘Through The Looking Glass’ style lyrics to that song, which were later much more fully explored for ‘I Am The Walrus ‘.  I think that John was having a hard time following Paul, let alone being inspired by him in 1967, this quote about ‘Lovely Rita ‘ by John is from the same book referenced above:

JOHN 1980: “That’s Paul writing a pop song. He makes ’em up like a novelist. You hear lots of McCartney-influenced songs on the radio now. These stories about boring people doing boring things– being postmen and secretaries and writing home. I’m not interested in writing third-party songs. I like to write about me, ‘cuz I know me.”

I also thought that I’d share this quote with you from John about ‘Tomorrow Never Knows ‘ from the same book:

JOHN 1968: “Often the backing I think of early-on never comes off. With ‘Tomorrow Never Knows ‘ I’d imagined in my head that in the background you would hear thousands of monks chanting. That was impractical, of course, and we did something different. It was a bit of a drag, and I didn’t really like it. I should have tried to get near my original idea, the monks singing. I realize now that was what I wanted.”

The songs that I see John commenting more favourably on are the ones that mean something highly personal to him, such as ‘In My Life ‘, ‘Across The Universe ‘, ‘Yer Blues ‘, etc., the ones where he was truly inspired rather than simply going through the motions.  His high praise for ‘Hey Jude ‘ stems from his feeling that Paul was going through the same thing as him at the time, John had left Cynthia while Paul ended his long-time relationship with Jane Asher, or “you’re waiting for someone to perform with”, of course Paul had Julian in mind instead but John still felt very strongly that he knew what “the movement you need is on your shoulder” meant, much to Paul’s delight…:-)