The Beatles song John Lennon and Paul McCartney always disagreed on: “More my style than his”
The reason why John Lennon and Paul McCartney worked so well was because of how polar opposite they were to each other.
They came together brilliantly when writing pop tunes, but when looking through their back catalogue, what mattered most was hearing all of them working their hardest to create songs that were different, whether that was McCartney’s soft ditties or Lennon trying his best to make everything sound weird. Those sound like completely different mindsets, and while they somehow magically worked most of the time, there were some moments where each of them went a step too far.
I mean, McCartney already had his reservations after hearing that Lennon had recorded a song like ‘Revolution 9’ for The White Album. The entire point of The Beatles was to be a great pop group, and while they were never afraid to wear their influences on their sleeve, an eight-minute chunk of avant-garde noise wasn’t going to be anyone’s first pick for what their new direction was going to be when making an already-bloated record.
But, if anything, that’s how Lennon always looked at his music. He didn’t like the idea of everything sounding perfect, so it was better for him to try and find some tunes that sounded a little bit stranger than what everyone else was working on. And while Macca was a lot more traditional than most, he might have been a touch too traditional when looking at the songs he was bringing to the table.
His pre-occupation with songs from the pre-rock and roll days didn’t make as much sense for the band, but that didn’t mean that they couldn’t make a decent version of ‘When I’m 64’ when they wanted to. As long as Ringo Starr counted it in, they were going to give it 110%, but by the time of Abbey Road, everyone seemed to have their own opinions about how their tunes should go. All of them were itching towards making their own music, but ‘Oh! Darling’ was always a point of contention for both Lennon and McCartney.
On one hand, Lennon figured that the throat-shredding style that McCartney was using for that song didn’t exactly fit the kind of singer that he was, saying, “Oh! Darling’ was a great one of Paul’s that he didn’t sing too well. I always thought that I could’ve done it better – it was more my style than his. He wrote it, so what the hell, he’s going to sing it. If he’d had any sense he should have let me sing it.”
If you were to ask Macca, though, the whole performance was meticulously crafted day by day until he felt that he had the right tone to work with, saying, “I tried it every which way, and finally got the vocal I was reasonably happy with. It’s a bit of a belter and if it comes off lukewarm then you’ve missed the whole point. It was unusual for me – I would normally try all the goes at a vocal in one day.”
Both of them are entitled to their opinion, but when listening to what McCartney would do later, the song did at least open up his voice a little bit more when working on some of his later records. He was never afraid to make more daring songs, and while Lennon did a great job at shredding his own voice on ‘Cold Turkey’, McCartney needed to make ‘Oh! Darling’ to be able to sing at the top of his range just like he did on tunes like ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’ on his first solo album a few months later.
Each of them had their own strengths as vocalists, but there are always going to be those petty things that would divide both of them when working on some of their greatest albums. It was in their nature to be competitive with each other, and the idea of them working to get just the right take of one of their songs would have made for something legendary, no matter who ended up singing it.
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