Solo Beatles Deluxe Karma Ballast

Answering Rob Sheffield's Rolling Stone List

“The 100 Best Beatles Solo Songs:
Five decades of amazing tunes from John, Paul, George, and Ringo”
by Rob Sheffield
(Rolling Stone magazine, March 6, 2024)

Beatlehead Rob Sheffield recently wrote up his top 100 solo Beatles tracks, an irresistible invitation for jousting. Last year I weighed on Stereogum’s McCartney feature, 80 Artists Pick Their Favorite Paul McCartney Songs, which included Richard Thomson’s choice quote on “Penny Lane” (“The lyrics are very visual, and create a little three-minute drama, an enclosed world of vivid characters that bleed out of the edges of the song into surrealism. It seems less like the real Penny Lane, and more like a remembered dream.”) Here’s what I wrote about the solo albums in the Lennon biography:

The four solo careers unveiled previously hidden internal politics as each man packed and moved out of the cozy Beatle mansion. Lennon seemed closest to Ringo, and then George; neither Harrison nor Lennon ever appeared on a McCartney solo album or vice-versa, whereas Ringo played for all three. Of course, Lennon’s solo “career” had begun as early as 1968 with numbers like “What’s the New Mary Jane” and “Revolution 9” during the White Album sessions, and then his avant-garde projects with Ono. Casual jams reflected these affinities as well: John and Yoko appeared onstage with George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and the Bonnie and Delaney band in London in December of 1969. Harrison was slumming with the band after sitting in for a night and having rather too much fun; he appeared onstage anonymously until it got reported in the music press. Mostly they got away with two weeks of touring, with Clapton and Harrison sharing lead guitars almost before most audiences figured this out.

…Neither Harrison nor Lennon ever appeared on a McCartney solo album or vice-versa, whereas Ringo played for all three.... McCartney contributed material and played and sang on Ringo albums (most notably on 1973’s Ringo, with a standout track, “Six O’Clock”), but never on a Lennon or Harrison solo record.

Only two semi-Beatle reunions reached the press in the early seventies, both offstage. McCartney joined Starr, Clapton, and others at Mick and Bianca Jagger’s wedding in Saint-Tropez in 1971; and Lennon, Harrison, and Starr did a session for Ringo’s Ringo album early in 1973 in Los Angeles. Harrison and Lennon often sat in on each other’s solo tracks, and drummer Alan White remembers Lennon anonymously adding acoustic guitar to All Things Must Pass. Harrison appeared on Imagine (1971), and probably elsewhere uncredited. Ringo appeared on all three others’ solo records, most notably Lennon’s first, Plastic Ono Band, where he set down a new visceral authority in rock drumming and teased a new riddle from the band’s interpersonal chemistry: here Lennon and Starr’s musical intimacies rival Lennon and McCartney’s.
McCartney contributed material and played and sang on Ringo albums (most notably on 1973’s Ringo, with a standout track, “Six O’Clock”), but never on a Lennon or Harrison solo record. Lennon also contributed to Ringo’s projects (1973’s “I Am the Greatest,” which rivals “With a Little Help from My Friends” as a Ringo signature, plus a guide vocal of the Platters’ “Only You” and the writing of “Goodnight Vienna” the following year).

On Harrison’s work, Lennon chose anonymity. Lennon and McCartney never played on each other’s solo sessions, save for one informal Los Angeles jam from 1974, bootlegged as A Toot and a Snore, named for a snowy-oldies session with Lennon, McCartney (on drums), and Stevie Wonder; the dates coincide with reports about McCartney’s visit to Lennon’s Malibu hangout with Starr, Keith Moon, and Harry Nilsson. However, to prevent runaway rumors and preserve their hard-fought integrity as solo figures, Lennon and McCartney visited far more often and warmly throughout the seventies than they let on to the press.

But in the beginning, the spat had an epic stature, and when Lennon used the term “divorce,” few considered it an exaggeration. Never one to acknowledge grief, let alone submit to it, Lennon seems to have been so convinced of his choices that grieving came as a surprise, if it came consciously at all. The pop world at large may have lost its center, but Lennon seemed to feel everything more keenly, and in more complicated fashion, than the other three. As usual, he wanted his future to happen yesterday, the way some songs just tumbled out. But his divorce from the Beatles made his divorce from Cynthia look like child’s play, since these early conflicts defined the legacy of the Lennon-McCartney publishing catalog indefinitely…

—from Lennon: Man, Myth, Music (Hyperion, 2011)

---

Sheffield’s 2024 list introduced me to a few curiosities: a lost Harrison track, “Dehra Dun,” not available in stores. We could take issue with some choices here, but not this one. We admire choosing “Run of the Mill” (Deer Tick does too) but prefer “Behind That Locked Door” to “I’d Have You Anytime,” even though he overrates that album (All Things Must Pass) and in general lacks persuasion when it comes to George (see also Buffalo Tom’s “Wah Wah”). Readers await a long overdue defense of Harrison as a lead singer; I don’t hear it. A more pressing question becomes: why has Harrison’s image changed so drastically over the years? Do we lean into the softened grade curve time allows, or does his spiritual pretense, which once rang so patronizing, now seem relatively sane in our post-apocolyptic hellscape? Other George tracks we concur with: “Apple Scruffs,” “Here Comes the Moon,” “Pure Smokey” (at way too high #10, for Smokey Robinson, but still a lesser cousin to “You Take My Breath Away,” for Orbison), but please don’t forget his delicious Dylan cover, “Absolutely Sweet Marie” from 1992.

More from Kate Middleton’s Audio Photoshop:

George Does Ringo: “Miss O’Dell”

George Does Paul: “Crackerbox Palace”

Any George List Must Include: “Sour Milk Sea”

George Does Paul Simon: “Give Me Love, Give Me Peace,” Sheffield’s #3 (?!?), which volleyed with Simon’s “Kodachrome” that summer of 1973 like twins of different mothers. (Check out Dave Davies singing this.) Always had a soft spot for George duetting with Paul Simon on “Homeward Bound” SNL in 1975

George Should Have Covered This Ringo Track: “Coochy Coochy,” left off of Beaucoups of Blues, sounds like a guide vocal for “Miss O’Dell.” (Yes, Ringo should still make follow-up records to both this and Sentimental Journey.)

The Smiths should have covered HARRISON’S MOST COVERED solo track, “Isn’t It a Pity,” but the Cowboy J*nkies almost make up for that

Where Oh Where Is George’s: “It’s Johnny’s Birthday,” the redemptive track on that extra ATMP jam side, geez

Ringo Channels Lennon: “Only You,” which Lennon suggested for him with a guide vocal

Lennon Improves on Zappa: “Beef Jerky,” from Walls and Bridges

Lennon Does Captain Beefheart: “Do the Oz,” B-side of “God Save Oz”

"Do the Oz"

more on “Oz” (pdf)

“Oh Yoko!” at #11 strikes us as almost high enough, the “I Should Have Known Better” harmonica roaring back with peels of joy, sincerity as clownish lust (for years I mistook this punctuation as as the far perferable “Oh! Yoko!”); “Woman” underrated at #77

Lennon Does McCartney: “Love,” obviously, but also “Grow Old With Me,” “Free as a Bird”

More Lennon omissions: “Nobody Told Me,” an answer song to the Shirelles “Mama Said” from 1961

“Cold Turkey” doesn’t make Sheffield’s cut? [Silent scorn.] Most people recognize the Lennon echos on Wings’ “Let Me Roll It,” but why choose? “Cold Turkey Roll” (more here)

“Cold Turkey Roll” mashup, on https://timrileyauthor.com/

McCartney omissions:

• “Oh Woman Oh Why,” B-side to 1971’s “Another Day” single, ranked a dubiously high #34 when all you have to do is flip that pancake to hear Little Richard bleeding out from a lover’s gunshot wound (“Where’d you get that gun!!?…”)

• “Name and Address,” an Elvis turn from London Town

• “Soily,” the 1976 Wings Over America encore, and underrates “No Other Baby” from 1999’s Run Devil Run, howling blowback from Linda McCartney’s death from breast cancer at age 56 in 1998; he also ranks Macca’s maudlin “Here Today” way too high at 19

• “Dear Boy,” from Ram, spinning out the “She Loves You” triangle, addressed to Linda’s ex

• Yes to McCartney’s “Hi Hi Hi,” but where’s its lecherous twin, “Girl’s School”?

• “On the Wings of a Nightingale,” a 1984 number he wrote for the Everly Brothers (on EB84)

• "Let's Love," Peggy Lee, produced by McCartney in 1974

• Fast Ram, and the Percy "Thrills" Thrillington orchestral session arranged by Richard Hewson, hardcore whimsy

McCartney 80x80: answering Stereogum’s 2023 list:

On the edge of turning 80, in front of 75,000 fans recently at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, and the following week at Glastonbury, Paul McCartney invited Bruce Springsteen up onstage to sing “Glory Days.” Youtubers the world over have since joined in the swoon. Somehow, even though the song came out in 1984, it lassoed all the Beatles memories studding the McCartney set as well as its legacy. The sight of two senior citizens playing youth music to an adoring crowd gave rock history another shudder of wonder at how far the style has gone, and how unlikely it was to turn out like this...

Doesn’t Fit Anywhere Else:

Patti Smith sang “She’s Leaving Home” recently, even though we think of her as a primo George stan

also mentioned

• McCartney 80x80: answering Stereogum, June 2023

• John Lennon Grieves the Beatles on 1970’s Plastic Ono Band, riley rock report, October 2022

• Other paths: tribute records, even George has two: “All Those Years Ago” the spring after Lennon’s death, and “When We Was Fab.” Yes, and: Elton John’s “Empty Garden” (which recalls the “Dear Prudence” line “Won’t you come out to play…”), Dream Academy’s “Life in a Northern Town,” or any randy Cheap Trick Sgt. Pepper show.

• Get Back links and resources

• Tim Riley on “Now and Then,” NPR, Nov 2, 2023

• Skidmore “Now and Then” discussion, Salmagundi magazine

• Recent Beatle cover of note: Dolly Parton chases Aretha with “Let It Be”

---

incoming

• Oral history of the Village Voice

• History of College Radio

album of the month

Kacey Musgraves, Deeper Well (Interscope/MCA Nashville)

---

noises off

• substack archive, riley rock index: obits, bylines, youtube finds, reference sites, pinterest, beacons.ai, random deep link

• First to compile a this solo Beatles playlist (go nuts) wins a giant cash prize