Mick Fleetwood’s favourite Beatles solo songs
The Beatles made a mammoth impact on music during their decade-long existence, pioneering new recording techniques, creating some of the most well-loved and well-known songs of all time, and moulding the industry as we know it today. But their impact wasn’t limited to their years as the Fab Four.
As the 1960s came to an end, so too did the Beatles, but each member would go on to embark upon their own successful solo careers. From Paul McCartney’s Wings to John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’, the band members continued to display their songwriting prowess and extend their influence. One of the many fans they acquired through their solo work was Fleetwood Mac drummer and namesake, Mick Fleetwood.
While picking out some of his favourite songs for the Celebrity Playlist Podcast, Fleetwood favoured the Beatles’ solo work over their catalogue as a band. He named two individual Beatles tracks, Lennon’s 1971 track ‘Jealous Guy’, and George Harrison’s ‘All Things Must Pass’.
Sharing his love for Lennon, Fleetwood suggested that he continued to prove his greatness beyond the Beatles and even deemed his solo work “more poignant”. Fleetwood’s song choice called him back to a failing relationship he was dealing with when he first discovered it. The person he was in love with seemed to be moving away from him and towards another person, so he attempted to win them back with ‘Jealous Guy’.
“I remember desperately phoning up in some sordid little motel in Michigan somewhere, freezing cold, and probably was slightly under the weather from a few bottles of wine,” Fleetwood recalled, “Back in that day I think I drank brandy, but anyhow, I put this song on my little tape recorder and played it to her on the phone and apologised. I was deadly jealous and I was in tears at the time.”
It’s a bold move, though not one with a particularly high success rate. Fleetwood had fonder memories of his Harrison pick, ‘All Things Must Pass’, sharing his love for his “dear friend” and brother-in-law. “I miss him a lot,” he shared, “but he was everything that you can imagine George to be.”
Harrison suggested that ‘All Things Must Pass’ and the album of the same name seemed to represent how he felt about the former Beatle. It’s a touching tribute to the man and to the musician and a song that still stands up over half a century on.
Revisit ‘All Things Must Pass’ below.
