The entire dynamic between John Lennon and Paul McCartney feels like two kid brothers who happened to grow into the greatest songwriters of all time.
They always took their music seriously in The Beatles, but from the moment they picked up guitars to their final days in Abbey Road Studios, they always wanted to have fun with their music rather than forcing any idea to come together. And while their solo careers went in insanely different directions, Lennon may have had a little bit of resentment knowing that his partner was smashing it on the charts.
Granted, that didn’t mean that Macca was completely safe from ridicule. It looked like Lennon would eventually come out the victor with the public when making songs like ‘Imagine’, but with people re-evaluating RAM as a masterpiece and loving nearly everything that Wings made after Band on the Run, it was clear that the tide was turning a little bit in McCartney’s favour.
It also came at a rocky moment for Lennon’s career. He had been going through an estranged time with Yoko Ono, and while he did make some quality music during this era on albums like Walls and Bridges or Mind Games, it felt like every one of his hits paled in comparison to the handful of songs that McCartney would send up the charts on each album, whether it was the rockers like ‘Jet’ or some of that granny shit like ‘Let ‘Em In’.
But when Lennon finally decided to look at his priorities and walk away from music in 1975, his friend Elliot Mintz remembered him growing a little bit jealous of what his old mate was doing, saying, “He spoke so lovingly of Paul. But then, when John was not making any music between 1975 and almost ‘80, and Paul would have these mega-hits with Wings, John became insanely jealous about that. He was jealous of the amount of attention and accolades, and the fact that Paul was filling stadiums.”
Then again, is “jealousy” really the right word here? Sure, Lennon could have been a little bit resentful knowing that he could have been making good money playing in stadiums, but the stage wasn’t where he felt the most comfortable, either. He had only played a handful of solo shows after 1973, and even when he returned to the stadium crowds when guesting with Elton John, he was encountering a lot of stage fright before he even walked out.
When looking at where he was in his career, Lennon’s dissatisfaction may have had a lot more to do with how the public treated Macca. Lennon would no doubt earn a lot of critical praise for his albums, but McCartney’s music managed to hit people’s nerves in the right way. And since Lennon was concerned with waking people up with his music, it must have been disappointing to realise that most people only wanted to hear McCartney’s jaunty ditties.
But that was only because Lennon was on a different trajectory from his old mate. No one can be joined a the hip with someone for their entire career, and while it took Lennon a lot longer to get used to making upbeat music, the biggest tragedy is that he didn’t have enough time on this Earth to actually make some new songs with his old mate when they were more in sync during the Double Fantasy era.
No matter what Lennon felt about McCartney’s music or how ugly it got during The Beatles’ breakup, there would always be a bit of love there. It’s impossible to go through the kind of struggles that the Fab Four endured and not build up some camaraderie, and even if Lennon didn’t gel with McCartney musically, their spirits were forever linked, whether he knew it or not.