John Lennon’s love of a rock and roll classic turned him briefly into Paul McCartney
Within the realm of The Beatles, Paul McCartney is often unfairly painted as a dictator, marching the band into their millionth take of ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’, while John Lennon is usually seen as more of a casual genius.
Lennon’s first love was rock and roll, and even in his most spaced-out, experimental phases, he held his flag of appreciation high. For him, those revolutionary early rock records were akin to religious artefacts, deserving the utmost respect. So, on the numerous occasions in which he chose to cover those old-school rock sounds, the songwriter surprised himself with a McCartney-esque sense of perfectionism.
Those cover versions were the bread and butter of The Beatles during their early days, giving the band a vital education in performance and songwriting, which they then carried forward into vast and incredibly innovative avenues themselves. Towards the end of the 1960s, as the Fab Four descended further into their own boundary-pushing world of originality, cover songs inevitably took a backseat.
When the tension rife within The Beatles’ studio sessions began to reach a boiling point, Lennon sought solace in his side project, the Plastic Ono Band. Although that project, created alongside his wife, Yoko Ono, was largely concerned with more avant-garde, experimental offerings than The Beatles, their performances also gave him the opportunity to slink into his rock and roll roots.
Back in 1969, after Lennon had already decided to part ways with The Beatles (although he didn’t reveal it at the time), the Plastic Ono Band were set to perform at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival, and Lennon took that opportunity to return to his love of rock and roll covers. As drummer Alan White recalled, “I remember John being really adamant that we were going to play the Carl Perkins version of ‘Blue Suede Shoes’.”
After months of recording sessions for Abbey Road, in which McCartney demanded countless takes of tracks like ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ in order to get them as perfect as possible, some of that energy must have rubbed off on Lennon. “Because it had an extra beat in it and he was really worried somebody was going to make a mistake,” White remembered of the man’s tireless determination for flawlessness.
Eventually, though, Lennon’s brief moment of evoking Macca’s perfectionism paid off. The Plastic Ono Band’s performance of Perkins’ ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ went off without a hitch, becoming a stand-out moment from the festival. That didn’t necessarily mean that Lennon saw the appeal of McCartney’s determination during the Abbey Road sessions, and it certainly didn’t alleviate any of the tensions plaguing the band at that time. You cannot expect miracles, I suppose, but you can fine-tune them.
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