The 1973 Paul McCartney masterpiece that “sounds like” John Lennon
Paul McCartney is one of the all-time legends of the game, and despite being over 80 years old, he is still everpresent in culture, with his tap of creativity never ceasing to stop flowing.
One of the greatest living songwriters, alongside the eminent Bob Dylan, without Paul McCartney’s many different efforts, from The Beatles to Wings and as a solo artist, the world of music would be a completely different place. It is a testament to just how impactful the man from Walton has been.
As a member of The Beatles, alongside John Lennon, he formed the most extraordinary songwriting partnership the world has ever seen, penning hits that range from ‘Yesterday’ to ‘Let It Be’. He has a knack for writing short but impactful anthems; duly, many of his songs are hailed among the best The Beatles ever wrote, with McCartney cited as a hero by many subsequent musical legends.
Part of McCartney’s enduring appeal lies in his ability to balance instinct with craft. While his melodies often feel effortless, there is a quiet discipline behind them, a deep understanding of how to shape a song so that it lingers long after it ends. It is this combination that has allowed him to move so fluidly between styles, adapting to changing musical landscapes without ever losing his core identity.
That versatility also made the transition out of The Beatles less about reinvention and more about expansion. Freed from the dynamic that had defined his work with Lennon, McCartney was able to explore different facets of his songwriting, leaning into ideas that might not have found space within the band. It was a period of rediscovery, one that would ultimately shape the direction of everything that followed.
As The Beatles were ending in the late 1960s, McCartney started his solo career, releasing McCartney in 1970 and the much-lauded Ram alongside his wife Linda in 1971. The couple then formed Wings later that year, with McCartney recalling: “I didn’t really want to keep going as a solo artist … so it became obvious that I had to get a band together … Linda and I talked it through and it was like, ‘Yeah, but let’s not put together a supergroup, let’s go back to square one’.”
The formation of Wings was to be one of the most significant decisions of McCartney’s life, with this period being one of the most fruitful of his career. Over the band’s ten-year existence, they produced a variety of moments that include ‘Band on the Run’, ‘Live and Let Die’ and ‘Arrow Through Me’.
One of their finest cuts, as the mainstream found out when it burst through the speakers at the cinema in Licorice Pizza, is ‘Let Me Roll It’, the swooning B-side to ‘Jet’ from Band on the Run. An undeniable classic, at the time of release, the song was somewhat criticised for its similarities to John Lennon’s iconic sound in terms of its slow-grooving R&B, with the heavy use of the tape echo on the vocals and the spiky riff.
Of course, McCartney denied these accusations that he’d ripped off his old friend’s style. He later said: “I still don’t think it sounds like him [John Lennon], but that’s your opinion. I can dig it if it sounds that way to you.”
Elsewhere, Macca maintained: “‘Let Me Roll It’ was not really a Lennon pastiche, although my use of tape echo did sound more like John than me. But tape echo was not John’s exclusive territory! And you have to remember that, despite the myth, there was a lot of commonality between us in the way that we thought and the way that we worked.”
Interestingly, the song’s connection to The Beatles does not end there. The title was inspired by a portion of the lyrics from former bandmate George Harrison’s song ‘I’d Have You Anytime’ and the words “Let me roll it to you”. It has also been noted that Lennon utilised the ‘Let Me Roll It’ riff in his 1974 piece ‘Beef Jerky’.
