Did John Lennon lean on a classic Paul McCartney lick for ‘Beef Jerky’?
After the breakdown of The Beatles, the division between Paul McCartney and John Lennon got strange. The two musicians learnt how to write together. Their musical minds were a shared one, born from the same youthful inspirations, early compositions and first sonic loves, shared between them as teenage boys at their kitchen table or young adults navigating. So when they moved into their solo career, it’s no wonder there was some crossover.
There are countless examples of lyrics or melodies that could be picked out and compared to each other. There are Lennon lyrics that sound like they could come from McCartney’s balladic mouth or instrumental sections in some of McCartney’s work that feel at the least deeply influenced by his old friend. But the element in question here is one riff that, when released on Lennon’s fifth solo album on the track ‘Beef Jerky’, already felt familiar.
When released in 1974, fans felt like they’d heard the track’s main riff somewhere. It holds a stand-out position on the song as the rest of the cinematic, high-octane instrumentation falls away for a moment, shining the spotlight on this one guitar section. But hit pause on that song and hit play on Wings’ ‘Let Me Roll It’, and the recognisable riff finds its origin right there.
Almost identical to the riff that leads the 1973 track from McCartney’s band, ‘Beef Jerky’ seems to borrow from, or even sample, ‘Let Me Roll It’, making it clear that Lennon was still taking notes and paying attention to what his former collaborator was doing.
However, the flipside argument is that perhaps McCartney was copying. Since the release of Wings’ seminal record Band On The Run, people have noted the Lennon-isms held within it. Not so much the Lennon the world knew within The Beatles, but the Lennon who broke out of his box with the Plastic Ono Band. As both projects were set up in a similar fashion, led by the former Beatle and their wife and designed to shake off the shadows of the band finally, it’s somewhat ironic that the old bandmates’ missions to go in their own direction led them to somehow sounding similar. In particular, it seemed that on ‘Let Me Roll It’, McCartney was writing in a style less like his own and more like Lennon’s own. So when Lennon later ripped the riff for his own track, it could be argued that he was simply stealing back what was really already his.
With a nod to the song towards the Band On The Run album, it’s a symbolic instance given that the album’s titular track deals in depth with McCartney’s feelings towards his former bandmates and their split, as if Lennon’s use of one of the record’s riffs was his way of acknowledging it.
Perhaps it’s just a point that proves just how musically entangled the Fab Four were. People have also noted that ‘Beef Jerky’ feels reminiscent of the bold brass arrangements on ‘Savoy Truffle’, one of George Harrison’s tracks for the band. So, within one song, Lennon seemingly accidentally reconnected himself to two of his former bandmates or subconsciously channelled the two men who had a major and formative influence on his own musicality.
