“How can you?”: the artist John Lennon thought he could never top
It’s natural for every single rock star to have a sense of impostor syndrome at least once in their lives. No one can truly predict where music will be heading, and when someone finds themselves at the top of the world, there’s always that lingering feeling in the back of their head wondering if they truly deserve to be one of the biggest artists to walk the Earth. John Lennon certainly had the pedigree to become one of pop’s finest writers, but he knew to keep his musical abilities in check when looking at the true legends.
If the music business relied on one’s knowledge of theory, though, there’s a good chance that The Beatles would have never made it past the front door of Abbey Road Studios. They didn’t have a clue how to read music notation, nor did they care to, but when they started working with George Martin, they had that fifth member that made them capable of creating complex musical passages that no one had heard.
And once people started paying attention to what they were doing, there was much more nuance than traditional rock and roll songs. Most of Chuck Berry’s greatest tunes pump out the same 12-bar blues progressions, but when listening to any of Lennon’s songs, there will always be a handful of chords that come out of nowhere and turn the song on its head, like when he switches to a minor chord in the chorus of ‘She Loves You‘.
These kinds of musical decisions may have been considered breaking the rules at the time, but since none of them knew what the rules were, it was better for them to continue as if nothing was wrong. Some true musical enthusiasts may not have been completely happy with that, but if you look at the greatest classical musicians that ever lived, none of them were known to follow convention every time they played, either.
“I have great hopes for what I do, my work. And I also have great despair that it’s all pointless…”
John Lennon
There are plenty of avant-garde pieces of music that are meant to sound a little piercing on the ears, and while that doesn’t possibly compare to something like ‘Helter Skelter’, The Beatles knew there was power in making something simple rather than complicating matters to satisfy the musos in the audience. And while the simple approach did work more than a few times, Lennon thought they would never reach the status of classical geniuses.
Despite being famously bitter about many of The Beatles’ greatest hits, Lennon felt that nothing they could manage to eclipse something like Beethoven. When discussing ‘Give Peace a Chance’, he only hoped to come close to what the classical genius did, saying, “I just remember hearing them all singing [in Washington, DC]. I don’t know whether it was on the radio or TV, but that was a very big moment for me. That’s what the song was about, because I’m shy and aggressive. So I have great hopes for what I do, my work. And I also have great despair that it’s all pointless and s**t – how can you top Beethoven or whatever?”
Then again, Lennon might be selling himself a little bit short when looking at the complex moments of his previous band. Ignoring the fact that a song like ‘Because’ was based on ‘Moonlight Sonata’ played backwards, the creative ingenuity of ‘Eleanor Rigby’ or ‘A Day in the Life’ showed them to be more than capable of working in that kind of grandiose space without sounding like amateurs.
So while it would have been difficult for Lennon to call his shot as one of the finest musicians in the world based on ‘Give Peace A Chance’, time has been far kinder than his assessment of his work. Beethoven had years for his music to become classic, but in 200 years, people will still go to tracks like ‘She Loves You’ and ‘Hey Jude’ for that sense of musical euphoria.
