Paul McCartney on how John Lennon damaged his reputation: “It made my image worse”
For any rock star, looking cool is more than just a cheap publicity stunt. It’s the whole reason why people look to buy your music in the first place, and if people don’t look at you as one of the biggest tastemakers in the world, it’s going to take a lot more heavy lifting for them to bother to throw on your record. Although Paul McCartney could probably care less about how he is viewed by the public these days, he admitted that John Lennon inadvertently hurt his reputation following the group’s breakup.
Because the Fab Four were together, it was almost impossible to differentiate them whenever they performed together. While they had their caricatures of being ‘The Cute One’ or ‘The Smart One’, both Lennon and McCartney seemed to be on a parallel path throughout their time together, always looking to one-up the other with something more experimental or more accessible to the public.
However, as Lennon started to get more involved in experimental territory, Macca started looking more like a softie. ‘Revolution 9’ may have been a bit too much for listeners to take in when they first picked up The White Album, but it seemed like a better creative leap than whatever the hell McCartney was doing on ‘Ob La Di Ob La Da’ and ‘Honey Pie’.
Nothing could have been further from the truth. Lennon did have a reputation for going down more creative artistic directions, but McCartney was the one who first brought in avant-garde techniques to their songs, and given how many zany left turns he’s made throughout his solo career like Thrillington and Liverpool Sound Collage, it’s not like he’s afraid to think outside the box of the traditional poppy single.
As it stands, though, Lennon will always be looked at as the man who took more creative risks. No matter how hard his songwriting partner may have tried to branch out, he certainly wasn’t going to be the person daring enough to make ambient noise records and show his manhood on the front cover of a record.
While that last qualifier may have been for the best, McCartney did admit that his reputation may have taken a few dents because of Lennon, saying, “It’s all jokes, taking the piss out of me. That was John. That’s his particular thing, and that’s what I liked him for. But I think it has probably made my image worse than it is. As I say, the truth is he didn’t really think that was all my character. He knew there were all sorts of other bits. But I think it’s true. I sometimes do catch myself and think, ‘God do I look like that?’ Or, ‘Is that how I come over people.’”
Then again, it’s not like McCartney has held back in giving the people what they want when they hear him. He will always be happy to play the hits, and when there are mainline albums on the horizon, it’s almost expected for him to tap back into that twee style of songwriting, whether it was with Wings on ‘You Gave Me the Answer’ or as recent as the 2000s on a track like ‘English Tea’.
And even in his elder statesman phase, McCartney’s work with The Fireman has at least given him an outlet for him to scratch that art-rock itch whenever he needs to. He might forever be running away from the ‘granny music’, but as he has numerous times before, what’s wrong with the odd silly love song?
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