The one Beatles project John Lennon would never get behind: “Too corny”
The Beatles have always been defined by their eclectic style. If you tried to put the Fab Four’s material into one category, it would probably be rock and roll, but would it be accurate to put the classical stylings of ‘Eleanor Rigby’ or the light jazz of ‘Michelle’ on the same level as Chuck Berry or Little Richard?
John Lennon and Paul McCartney always prided themselves on writing songs of all different styles, but McCartney remembered his writing partner having absolutely no time for musicals.
That attitude was hardly surprising given Lennon’s broader artistic outlook. He was often drawn to work that felt raw, direct and emotionally honest, making the polished sentimentality of many classic musicals an uncomfortable fit with his worldview.
Then again, the musical genre always seemed to have a complicated relationship with rock and roll. Since rock was founded on people who were singing what they felt with minimal technical ability, hearing it taken to that level of extreme in the middle of a theatre tended to be a bit too over-the-top for the Buddy Hollys of the world.
If that’s bad enough, just look at the types of rock and roll musicals that have come and gone since the genre’s inception. Sure, albums like The Who’s Tommy or Green Day’s American Idiot started out as rock operas before becoming theatrical productions, but modern projects like Rock of Ages look like the result of someone who scrolled through the Wikipedia page of glam rock bands and hoped for the best.
Even before the biggest pinup stars of the 1970s like David Bowie brought campiness to rock, McCartney remembered Lennon didn’t want any part in that kind of extravagance, recalling in The Lyrics, “Other than West Side Story, John hated musicals. We liked that and thought it was ballsy enough for us. But John walked out of South Pacific – too corny, too prissy, and sweet. Even though ‘Lennon and McCartney’ sounded like ‘Rodgers and Hammerstein’, it was pretty clear that we were never going to be writing musicals.”
While Lennon never brought up the theatre all that much when talking about his influences, you can tell that he wasn’t the biggest fan based on what McCartney was whipping up at the time. He may have gone along with the schmaltzy songs like ‘She’s Leaving Home’ and ‘Hello Goodbye’, but chances are he would sooner have forgotten the entire thing if he could.
Everything that Lennon did had to be from the heart, and this kind of over-the-top version of showing one’s emotion was practically a mockery of his approach to songwriting. All you need to do is listen to an album like Plastic Ono Band to know how far away Lennon wanted to get from musicals. He had indulged in the extravagant side of songwriting already, and this was him falling back to Earth.
Then again, it’s not like Lennon couldn’t write those kind of whimsical songs, either. For as much as he bemoaned not getting to do much when working on Sgt Peppers, a track like ‘Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite’ is still one of the most overtly ‘showy’ numbers in the group’s catalogue, as if you’ve been transported to a fairground and are seeing every single spectacle right before your eyes.
Lennon did at least loosen up to the idea of making something a bit more story-driven in his music later in life. Regardless of whether it made it to Broadway, an album like Double Fantasy practically works as a short play between Lennon and Yoko Ono about working on their relationship. It might not ever see a matinee release or anything, but maybe had he lived a little longer, Lennon would have explored working on different theatrical projects.
Whether or not that would have happened remains one of music’s many intriguing what-ifs. As his artistic interests continued to evolve throughout the 1970s, it is entirely possible that he may have eventually found a version of theatrical storytelling that suited his sensibilities.
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