And in the realms of politics, image, fashion, and self-mythologizing, Lennon was easily more avant-garde than McCartney.īut when you set aside those things that were superficial or extraneous to the thing that most music fans truly care about most - the music - McCartney was actually The Beatles’ brilliant boundary-pusher. Now, actually defining “artsy” in a way in which you can definitively compare one person to another is a fool’s errand. He looked and sounded like the Beatle that your mother, and your grandmother, would like.Īnd because McCartney didn’t seem like the artsy one, and Lennon did, we all assume that the image was the truth - which, of course, it wasn’t. He stayed out of politics and virtually never got in trouble with the press. He trafficked in music hall confections, pop standards, and safe balladry. He immersed himself in the art world, painted, wrote poetry, wore glasses, practiced such extreme political activism that he got himself on an FBI watchlist, and starred in a 42-minute film consisting solely of his own penis going from flaccid to erect in slow motion.Īnd McCartney wrote “When I’m Sixty-Four.” He got an eight-minute sound collage (“Revolution 9”) on a Beatles album.
The story goes that Paul McCartney was “the cute one” and John Lennon was “the smart one.” And not just the smart one, but the artsy one, the avant-garde one.Īfter all, Lennon married a decidedly avant-garde artist with whom he made some rather outré musique concrète recordings that remain as startling now as they were 50 years ago. Wikimedia Commons John Lennon (left) and Paul McCartney in Stockholm, 1963. Pepper’s sessions) as a Beatle.īut back to that comb and tissue paper… He Was Actually The Artsy, Adventurous One And then there are the bold feats of musicianship that McCartney performed throughout his solo career, or the musicianship he facilitated yet didn’t personally execute (for example, arranging and conducting a 40-piece orchestra during the Sgt. Lennon’s list of credits isn’t nearly as long, varied, or interesting. Across The Beatles’ discography, McCartney has copious credits on plenty of non-traditional rock instruments you’ve heard of (trumpet, organ, wind chimes), plenty more you haven’t (flugelhorn, clavichord), and some that hardly even seem like instruments at all (“comb and tissue paper”). “Paul is one of the most innovative bass players … half the stuff that’s going on now is directly ripped off from his Beatles period … He’s an egomaniac about everything else, but his bass playing he’d always been a bit coy about.”įurthermore, when moving beyond traditional rock instruments like bass, guitar, keyboard, and drums, McCartney was miles ahead of his bandmates - let alone any of his rock peers. Of McCartney’s widely-heralded bass playing, Lennon himself once said, in a Playboy interview published in 1981: For example, the celebrated guitar solos on hits like “Drive My Car,” “Taxman,” and “Helter Skelter,” to name but a few, were all performed by McCartney.Īll of this is to say nothing of McCartney’s main instrument, at least nominally: bass. When not sitting at the drums, McCartney was sitting at the piano, contributing integral parts on that instrument - in addition to the keyboard, mellotron, and synthesizer - to Beatles classics like “Hey Jude,” “Let It Be,” “Strawberry Fields Forever,” and many, many more.Īnd when not playing virtually any instrument with a keyboard, McCartney was turning in acclaimed performances on the guitar, Lennon’s own instrument. And as soon as The Beatles broke up and Starr was no longer around, McCartney played every single drum track on his first solo album, then on a number of Wings albums and other solo albums thereafter. When Beatles drummer Ringo Starr briefly quit the band during the recording sessions for “The White Album,” McCartney supplemented his bass and vocals duties by filling in on a number of standout tracks (including “Back In The U.S.S.R.” and “Dear Prudence”) with stellar performances on drums. Indeed, the best drummer in The Beatles was Paul McCartney.
But it remains one of the most widely misattributed lines in all of music history because it’s precisely Lennon’s brand of acerbic wit, and because many die-hard Beatles fans know the underlying sentiment to be true. Of course, Lennon never actually said that (British comedian Jasper Carrott did, in 1983).
One of the most quotable John Lennon exchanges has a reporter asking him, “Is Ringo the best drummer in the world?” to which Lennon replies, “He’s not even the best drummer in The Beatles.” Wikimedia Commons From left: George Harrison, Paul McCartney, Beatles producer George Martin, and John Lennon in the studio in 1966.
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