The one song John Lennon “couldn’t stand” listening to
No one quite had a grudge against The Beatles the same way that John Lennon did.
It was bad enough that he didn’t think that their records were as good as they could be, but when listening to him later down the line, he seemed downright resentful of all those years that he lost to screaming girls and countless live shows. But that’s not to say that Lennon couldn’t be absolutely cutthroat when it came to other bands that he didn’t like, either.
Compared to what the Fab Four did, Lennon already had a grievance with The Rolling Stones riding their coattails half the time. It wasn’t hard to see Mick Jagger and Keith Richards working from the same playbook that they were back in the day, but if they were working with a similar musical model as their Liverpool counterparts, Lennon was always going to be a bit more critical of bands that he actually invested time into.
Elvis Presley may have been one of the biggest heroes to any kid in England with a dream, but the minute he became a movie star was when a lot of kids’ dreams died. He was the rebel of everything that was supposed to be acceptable in music, and yet seeing him play crooning songs while also decked out in some of the most ridiculous outfits in films like Blue Hawaii didn’t exactly endear him to everyone who wanted to hear ‘Hound Dog’ and ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ back in the day.
He saw it happen with Presley, and he even saw the same thing happen with Bob Dylan towards the end of his life, but that was better than genres that had no value whatsoever. Every one of the Fabs might have needed to know their stuff when playing for hours at a time in Hamburg, but every time Paul McCartney got up to sing one of his granny songs, chances are you were going to see Lennon rolling his eyes having to work his way through ‘A Taste of Honey’ or ‘Til There Was You’.
All of those were brilliantly written, at least, but having the same sing-song ditties that Mitch Murray was used to making back in the day wasn’t something any of The Beatles wanted anything to do with. It was bad enough to make pop music that made it sound like rock and roll had never been invented, but Lennon drew the line when he heard literal nursery rhymes try to make their way onto the charts like ‘On Top of Spaghetti’.
There was definitely a way to get the audience involved, but Lennon would have taken anything remotely rock and roll over Tom Glazer’s version of the tune, saying, “I can’t stand these all-together-now records. I like the idea of one shouting and one answering, but not that. I prefer the recent Little Eva, Smokey-Locomotion, folks. But not that, you know. It’s like an outing.” So when The Beatles were making those songs, they wanted to make sure that they did it exactly right.
They weren’t making the likes of ‘We Will Rock You’ or anything, but their version of ‘Kansas City/Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey’ was a perfect way of getting the audience involved when they sang, and even towards the end of their career, seeing McCartney turn ‘Hey Jude’ into one of the greatest singalongs the world has ever seen was a perfect way to get everyone to sing without playing down to them.
Glazer may have done a fine job singing the tune, but audiences don’t necessarily need to sing along to tunes that they all know. That was reserved for preschool music class, and what The Beatles did took the basis of rock and roll and made every single note they sang feel like one of the most cathartic singalongs in the world.
