Glasgow or Kintyre? The Scottish towns that divided John Lennon and Paul McCartney
By the time their solo careers were up and running, Paul McCartney and John Lennon should have had nothing to fuel the feud that ended the careers of one of the greatest bands in rock and roll history.
As bandmates, they allowed their differences to drive a wedge between them, come the end of the 1960s. Paul’s sweeter creativity became the thorn in Lennon’s darker, twisted shoe that felt hellbent on striding towards whatever sense of artistic existentialism it could.
Their yin and yang approach to songwriting, which made them an incredible force for so long, had run its course and was on the verge of becoming polarising.
So, as the freedom of their solo careers beckoned, so did a chance to quieten the noise that the war of these icons had created. For McCartney, nowhere better represented the calm tonic of his creative freedom than his home up in Kintyre, Scotland. While it was a place made famous for his 1977 hit ‘Mull of Kintyre’, it gave way to a string of other hits that would go on to define his post-Beatles career.
One of which was ‘Coming Up’, a song that Lennon was happy to concede as a doozie in the years after their split, despite epitomising the sort of upbeat McCartney fun that seemed to grate on Lennon in the later years.
“I originally cut it on my farm in Scotland,” he explained, “I went into the studio each day and just started with a drum track. Then I built it up bit by bit without any idea of how the song was going to turn out. After laying down the drum track, I added guitars and bass, building up the backing track. Then I thought, ‘Well, OK, what am I going to do for the voice?’ I was working with a vari-speed machine with which you can speed up your voice, or take it down a little bit. That’s how the voice sound came about.”
It was complete creative freedom, exercised without the lingering shadow of bandmate expectation. However, its infectious melody simply wasn’t to be confined to the isolation of Kintyre, and instead made a bona fide live hit for McCartney. As a result, he delivered a live version of the track, recorded in Glasgow in ‘79 on the album’s second disk. Yet, in doing so, he allowed himself to once again slip into the crosshairs of Lennon’s criticism.
He said, “I thought that ‘Coming Up’ was great and I like the freak version that he made in his barn better than that live Glasgow one. If I’d have been with him, I would’ve said ‘that’s the one’ too. And I thought that the record company had a nerve changing it round on him, and I know what they mean, they want to hear the real guy singing, but I like the freaky one.”
Considering the terms they left things on at the end of the ‘60s, Lennon’s underhanded compliment was something of an improvement from where they were. Nevertheless, it subtly highlighted the creative differences that had grown between them and ultimately ended the career of the greatest band to ever do it.
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