I once heard someone describe creativity as a newly fixed tap. Turn it on and it will start pouring out dirty water. Keep going and it will get a little cleaner, but still with some crappy residue before finally reaching a point of crystal clear bliss. The point is, it’s a work in progress. But I’m not sure how the plumbing worked in Liverpool, because it seemed to me that The Beatles had never worked off a broken tap in their lives.
Something in the Liverpudlian waters carried with it genius, as The Beatles wasted no time in creating greatness. From the very minute Paul McCartney and John Lennon’s guitars conversed with each other, the charts began shivering as they awaited an onslaught of hits from the pair that wouldn’t let up until the end of the 1960s.
Even when The Beatles finally dissolved at the end of a frenzied decade, Macca, Lennon and George Harrison dusted themselves off to embark on a much-needed solo career. Solo careers that saw them explore sounds without the heavy burden of collaborative expectation. Because, despite all of the sonic exploration the band indulged in, there’s something innately restrictive about being in the biggest band in the world.
However, for McCartney, the opportunity presented the opposite feeling. Rather than being liberated, he stood on the precipice of the unknown with sickening anxiety. He said, “I was going through a bad time, what I suspect was almost a nervous breakdown. I remember lying awake at nights, shaking, which has not happened to me since. I had so much in me that I couldn’t express, and it was just very nervy times, very difficult.”
He flipped that feeling into some paradoxical, in his first solo effort, Ram. With his wife Linda by his side, he indulged in every playful corner and esoteric segue he could possibly find. The sort that, by the end of his Beatles career, would have been met with an eye roll from his bandmates, for they lost patience with his sonic silliness.
The record undoubtedly paved the way for Wings’ blueprint in the 1970s. One that would tread the line between heartfelt and heavy ballads, and outright songwriting irreverence. Macca leant into his almost childlike songwriting sensibilities, while Lennon spent the decade delving deeper into his twisted fantasies and Harrison his spiritualism. The personality differences between the three songwriters became strikingly clear.
As a result, there was somewhat of an unspoken link between Harrison and Lennon, who together united over their individual pursuit of more nuanced outlooks, while their former partner leaned into his pop sensibilities. So much so that Harrison delivered a rather cutting swipe at McCartney’s back catalogue.
In the 1980s, when asked what former bandmate was considering injecting covers of his fellow Beatles into his setlist, Harrison said with a smile, “Paul? Maybe because he ran out of good ones of his own”. When a nervously excited journalist laughed at their potential scoop, Harrison doubled down, saying, “Well, it’s true.”
Admittedly, McCartney’s greatest hits came from the two preceding decades, and in the brave new world of the 1980s, his impact on the charts started to wane. But so had Harrison’s, for that was simply the nature of the beast. But I think both earned their right to put their feet up after two decades of unrelenting contribution.
