The solo John Lennon could never figure out: “I couldn’t play”
Every guitarist will want a little challenge whenever they get into the studio. It’s never fun just playing the same chords repeatedly on every song, and John Lennon knew enough to realise that there was much more to explore when going outside the typical bluesy framework in The Beatles. But even when he returned to his old stomping grounds, he knew the song ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ was enough to defeat him musically.
Before we go on a deep dive there, it’s better that we ask whether Lennon was even a good guitarist. There have been many people who have claimed that all he had to do was write a handful of songs and strum chords to get to where he was, but listening back to his tracks, there’s a lot of rhythmic discipline in between his lines that are never as easy to pin down, like the strumming pattern in ‘All My Loving’.
It’s not like he couldn’t solo when he wanted to, either. His subbing in for George Harrison on ‘You Can’t Do That’ resulted in a fairly chaotic solo, and when all of the guitar-toting Threetles were performing round-robin-style in ‘The End’, his overdriven guitar boasted some of the most memorable licks in the entire tune, especially when he starts hitting those blues licks on the lower strings.
At the same time, it’s easy to figure out why Harrison took the lead when it came to their multitude of covers. As much as Lennon worshipped at the alter of Chuck Berry, only Harrison could have made the group jump like they did when they tore through tracks like ‘RollOver Beethoven’. Although ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ was one of the few cover tunes that never saw a studio release, it’s still a nice piece of history from their time together.
If anything, hearing The Beatles playing a version of the classic tune feels like it should have been a vehicle for Harrison. He had already been indebted to Elvis Presley, but he had no problems calling Carl Perkins his musical hero, even performing the occasional cover on studio albums like ‘Everybody’s Trying To Be My Baby’.
Although they did a run-through of ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ during the session, Lennon admitted that he could never quite pin down what was going on during the solo section, saying, “It took me about two years, on and off, to be able to strum tunes without thinking. I think I had one lesson, but it was so much like school that I gave up. I learnt mostly by picking up bits here and there… I learnt the solos on ‘Johnny B Goode’ and ‘Carol’, but I couldn’t play the one on ‘Blue Suede Shoes’.”
While people could easily call Lennon a poor guitarist for just quitting while he was ahead, his time was better served elsewhere. Sure, he knew that he would probably never be able to play like Perkins or Berry, but for him, it didn’t matter as long as he honed his craft and wrote songs like ‘Imagine’ and ‘A Day in the Life’ instead.
That’s not to say that he couldn’t take his guitar into certain areas, including the blues licks that he sprinkled into ‘Get Back’. He was on his way to something bigger as a songwriter, but that didn’t necessarily mean he was breaking out the blazing licks all the time.
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