The Beatles album John Lennon refused to call a masterpiece
Choosing a favourite Beatles album is no easy feat, as several records likely come to mind, each vying for that top spot. However, identifying a least favourite album from the band’s discography is a much simpler task. For music enthusiasts, the opportunity to criticise a work that falls below their standards is rarely missed. For John Lennon, this sort of critique was effortless—like shooting fish in a barrel.
Though never quite placing a ‘worst album’ rubber stamp on any of the group’s 13 stunning studio albums, Lennon was always particularly scathing about one record the band produced. The group were famed for having some of the most robust LPs in the world, and one record, in particular, is considered one of the best of all time—a masterpiece in music with almost ubiquitous appeal and appreciation.
Lennon routinely lambasted the Beatles’ poorer creations and often shared his disdain for the albums. He thought side two of Abbey Road, the famous medley, was below their standards. It’s easy to see how the fragrant gumbo of music hall and fragmented song styles wouldn’t appeal to the straightforward rocker that lay within Lennon’s creative spirit. Much like the rest of the band, he also had a sour taste in his mouth whenever he spoke of their final record, Let It Be, only really appreciating it for the sheen disgraced producer Phil Spector would give it. Even then, it felt like his love for the LP was in direct and purposeful conflict with Paul McCartney. One album took the biscuit and rattled Lennon.
Of course, we’re talking about Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The album has rightly been regarded as one of the finest in musical history and certainly packs a wallop. However, McCartney drove the songs on that record, and this, it would seem, would be enough for the whole record to be marred in the eyes of Lennon. This was the album many consider to be their opus, and in many ways, it was founded only on the creative bricks-and-mortar that McCartney laid down.
As the band lost their external leader when their manager Brian Epstein sadly passed away, Macca’s influence began to grow. Tensions over songwriting would be a consistent feature in The Beatles’ later years and eventually lead to their disbandment. Much of this stemmed from the blessed issue that all four members were handy with the pen, but it also led to searing jealousy, rearing its ugly head from time to time and causing havoc among a group of friends who had become the greatest pop outfit in the world.
In a 1971 interview, Lennon, never afraid to speak his mind, suggested that McCartney never liked The White Album because the band members were all following their own talents and doing their own songs—not working as a group. “[Paul] wanted it to be more a group thing, which really means more Paul. So he never liked that album.”
In the same interview, Lennon, perhaps having his own spurt of jealousy, proclaimed The White Album to be his favourite and denounced Sgt. Pepper as he did, disregarding the already huge mythos the record had built over the preceding four years. He said, “I always preferred it to all the other albums, including Pepper, because I thought the music was better. The Pepper myth is bigger, but the music on the White Album is far superior, I think.”
It’s not just this comment that Lennon takes aim at one of the most highly-rated LPs in history. It also saw the inclusion of songs that Lennon purely detested and labelled as “granny shit”. Speaking about Macca’s song ‘When I’m Sixty Four’, Lennon once said: “Paul’s, completely. I would never dream of writing a song like that. There are some things I never think about, and that’s one of them.”
He had a similar feeling about ‘Lovely Rita’ when he said: “These stories about boring people doing boring things — being postmen and secretaries and writing home. I’m not interested in writing third-party songs. I like to write about me, ‘cuz I know me.”
The record, which includes ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds,’ ‘Getting Better’, and ‘A Day in the Life’, also shows Lennon’s growing disconnection with the world around him. Perhaps it was the copious amount of LSD he and the band were taking or, indeed, the growing need to find his own path away from the group, but Lennon’s songs were drifting from personal expressions to tracks inspired by posters and newspapers. Though not less worthy because of their inspiration, it does highlight how much Lennon was disassociating with the band at large.
The album still had plenty of value for Lennon. After all, the worst Beatles album is likely better than most bands could ever muster. But there’s a certain vacantness in Lennon’s words about the album, the known tensions that were beginning to rise between him and McCartney and the loss of direction that seemed to permeate his writing at the time; all surmise that Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, despite being the critical darling and considered a masterpiece, was the singer’s least favourite album of the lot.
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