Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time

29:51This is a very important question, and I think we may be disagree on this. So if I think of Junk written by Paul in 68, but of course it appears on the McCartney album in 1970, George's isn't a dipiti, which Paul kept off Beatles albums. I think they're better on the solo albums, and I actually think it was efficient that the Beatles split up when they did. I'm glad they did. I didn't think that as a kid, but I feel we got more first quality output and that they would have been getting in each other's way, say in the 70 through 74 or 75 period. No, I don't. You disagree? Like all things must pass.

30:32It's a great album, but we never would have had it. If George was rationed to like two cuts or whatever. That's a doubtless true. I think the kind of better version, better alternative history might have been, George's does our old things must pass and John does imagine Paul does Ram, and then the next year they get to do a Beatles album. And then the year after that they do their solo projects and they come back and do a Beatles album, right? So they would be kind of going back and forth and they did discuss something like that very briefly. You see it in the get back documentary. entry. But I'm kind of glad they didn't.

31:11I mean, I think part of the eternal power and resonance of the Beatles story is that they are seven years and out. You know, there's this incredible narrative tightness to what happens. They get famous. They change the world. They change music. And then they split at the top of their game. So I can't think of many other groups, if any, who split up after recording one of the best albums, I mean, Abbey Road is the last album they record, right? It's not like they've just, you know, declined in form and they're thinking, well, we're not that good anymore. We've got to split up, which is what most groups do.

31:49They're making this really, I think the first album of the 70s. And then they split up. And they split up on after the end, you know, at the end of But mentally, the god of narrative just said, this is the way it shall be. And I'm very glad that they didn't sort of then dribble on, as you say, kind of reforming and forming, getting back together, maybe getting another member in, maybe someone leaves and all that kind of narrative junk that most bands go through, they didn't do that, they just exploded and then they've flamed out. And there's this free rider problem, which they already had toward the end, that if you're getting back together again, and you save your best songs for your solo album, right?

32:32Maybe George was doing a bit of that. So I think that's right. So all things must pass. He had that at the sessions and you see him rehearsing it with the others during get back and it's sometimes said, well, you know, John Paul should have realized how great that song was, isn't it, isn't it, a pity? But I actually think it was George thinking, now I'm gonna keep that one for my solo album. So you're right, there would have been this sort of divided loyalty as far as for all of them naturally, right? So yeah, that's a great point. Is there a great unreleased Beatles track or not? Unreleased now?

33:12No. No, unreleased during their tenure. So all the demos have come out, but is there one where you hear it and you think my goodness? They should have put that one on one of the albums. I don't have a strong candidate. I think my lead would be, what's the new Mary Jane? But if you had given Paul his way with it, you know, over the course of a week, he might have turned it into something great, even though it's a John song. But I don't have a clear nomination, do you? I like come and get it. I don't think there's like a truly great song that should have been released. I mean, some of the songs that just to refer to our previous bit about, that ended up on solo albums, like maybe I'm amazed.

33:57Not maybe I'm amazed, but back to my car. We're kind of floating around, and maybe they could have been on one of the final albums. But, no, I, generally, that's better as a pure Paul song, I think. Just Paul and Linda, you know, deeply in love, and John and George would get in the way. It sets a defiance. It really becomes about the breakup in a sense. So I don't really think so. And I think it goes to one of the extraordinary things about them is that they had incredible taste. And they were very good at judging their own work. And if you listen to the demos that get released and the offcuts, you very rarely think, A, that song should have been in an album.

34:38As you do with Dylan, for instance, you often think, well, you know, blind Willie, it tells obviously should have been on an album. You don't really get that with the Beatles and you also never think, oh that earlier take should have been the album car. Well you're very rarely think that. So they pretty much had a perfect record of choosing the best cut and the best songs for each album. How good is 3 as a bird? I quite like it. All those kind of post -beetles Beatles songs, I, I, there's a kind of poignancy to them and I like George's playing and I like Paul's middle -aid actually on that song.

35:17Is it a song that I really need to listen to? Not really. Do you like it? I like it. One of my hypotheses is that if you had had a Beatles reunion, it would have sounded, I mean that is a Beatles reunion in a sense. A lot like Free as a Bird, which is Paul completely in charge, the others contribute bits. Paul might even, in terms of vocals, subordinate himself to the others, but it would be fairly artificial as is now and then, which I also like, but it doesn't thrill me. I don't sit down and think I need to hear now and then. Maybe I feel that now and then, but I think that is a kind of template for the Beatles reunion.

35:59Yeah. Paul being the boss and pretending he's being subordinate. And I think I agree and I think this points us to one of the fundamental truths about the Beatles which I talk about in the book which is the music was really rooted in the personal chemistry between them. You know, it wasn't just that they had these talents and abilities and that they bring the talents and abilities together and they collaborate and they make something really good. it was spending time together and knowing each other intimately that created this extraordinary music. And so this is why the model of them kind of going apart and they're coming back together getting into a studio and leaving and never seeing each other again for a year would have been very unlikely to work.

36:49They needed to be in this kind of intense hot house atmosphere where they're pressed to get particularly John and Paul, when John and Paul were not in physical proximity to each other, they just found it much harder to have a creative connection. The creativity and the personal relationship are inextricable for those two. You agree with the common view that in 1969 something very bad and damaging happens between John and Paul and John becomes so upset or hurt by Paul? Do you think that's true and And if so, what was the reason? I don't think there is a thing really. I don't think there is. I don't think Paul hurt John in any kind of concrete way.

37:31So John talks about being winded, but nobody's quite sure what he means by that. Even Yoko, you know, when Yoko was interviewed by Philip Norman, I think in the kind of, I'm not sure if it's the 80s or 90s, she was like, you know, John used to talk about how Paul had hurt him more than anyone else in the world. But I was never sure what he was talking about. I couldn't work it out. I think there was a kind of pivotal moment. I really think that India was the turning point and the aftermath of India was the point at which John kind of, something inside John kind of snapped. And John was always on the verge of snapping, right?

38:14Because he had this incredibly volatile personality, his childhood was just wild, you know, so difficult and unstable. And so he was sort of plagued by insecurities and also personality problems. And India, he goes into India feeling very close to Paul, very close to the others. He comes out of it quite bitter and angry. And there's a kind of element of a wildness to him and a sort of malignancy that wasn't as prominent before. It certainly hadn't been for a few years. It had actually been relatively kind of calm the few years previously, a couple of years previously. So something happens around then, but I think it happened inside John's head.

38:59I don't think there was a concrete thing that happened. I think it was just the way he was feeling and particularly the way he was feeling about his relationship with Paul. He started to feel I'm never going to be as close to Paul as I would like to be. I think he had this vision of them as completely wrapped up in a personal and creative relationship in which he could be blissfully happy. And I think during India, for whatever reason, perhaps because he was just spending a lot of time meditating and well, actually just by himself thinking. And then Paul goes home and he's sort of bereft because he spends the last couple of weeks but last few weeks by himself.

39:43I think that tips him over into a personal crisis. And that of that comes, you know, blues and I'm so tired, some of those miserable songs which afterwards he said, you know, really meant those songs. And he also, you know, sexy, steady, and he really takes a lot of, starts thinking a lot more drugs. He gets drunk a lot, splits up with Cynthia in a horrible way gets to go to the yoga and it is. So I think that is the kind of turning point You mentioned what good taste the Beatles had and I agree with that Why is it they were not better judges of talent at Apple Records because other than bad finger It seems pretty weak to me I see me mean and bad fingers best song was written by Paul Well, I mean I guess is James Taylor Billy Preston Mary Hopkins, I mean, I agree they're not like heavyweights.

40:35I don't know if that's because they were, but were they turning away great talents? They would have had loads of applicants, right? But I don't know if there was a good filtering process because there was no process, whatsoever, Apple. So in a way that that might have been the problem that there was nobody kind of being the stage one filter. And so they had a kind of a lot of randomness in the process. If Paul was so upset about the Phil Spector arrangement of the long and winding road with all the strings, why did he play more or less the same arrangement in concert for so many years? I agree.

41:12I mean, it's a pretty good string arrangement and you're right, he plays it with taking the best kind of melodic phrase from that stick arrangement from Phil Spector. So I think he was upset at Spectre just more generally for, you know, having the arrogance to come in and change the Beatles music in any way without Paul's permission, Paul hated, you know, anybody who was going to mess around with the Beatles and his music without his say -so. So I understand why he was angry, but I think you're right. I think in that case Spectre did a good job. What was Paul like as a collaborator with Denny Lane in Wings?

41:53You know, it's a difficult relationship. Denny Lane was very good, a good singer, decent guitarist, but he obviously was not a talent anywhere on the same scale as Paul or as John or indeed of George. And so there was always this kind of, and of course Paul was at the next battle, there was always this kind of inbuilt imbalance. But he did stick with him all the way through the 70s until the 1980s, very early 1980s. So it was an enduring musical collaboration, if not an equal one. But there was also this question of like the money, you know. So Danny was being paid by Paul, or rather than them both going to get it, getting royalties, Although Paul did kind of co -write, Mollivin can tie with him.

42:51I don't know how much of Mollin can tie was contributed by Danny, but that might have been Paul's letting Danny in, as it were. And no words they co -wrote, unbounded on the run. I think I can hear which is the Danny part and which is the Paul part, and the Paul part just makes the song become magical. The Danny part is good, but I wonder how that was for Danny. Yeah, to say look, here's my song and then Paul takes it and just sort of takes it to another level. Yeah, I agree. And I do think the result is really beautiful and a really underrated song from the Paul's post Beatles career. What was John like as a collaborator with Harry Nielsen?

43:35Well, he was very professional and workman like which is slightly surprising, but in a sense not surprising because he'd grown up as a recording artist in the Abbey Road studio where everything ran like clockwork. But Harry Nielsen said, yeah, he was always in the studio in the morning and then saying, right, let's get to work. And they did work. But then in the afternoon or the evening, they would then kind of go crazy and go on drinking bouts and take drugs. But I think he was pretty kind of efficient and professional producer. I'm not sure they produced great work together. What was Paul like collaborating with his brother, Mike McGear?

44:18People have forgotten about that album somehow, but it's quite interesting. I don't know that it's good. Paul is deferring too much. I think he should have just taken over. But he does, I think, only in the one song called All My Living, which sounds quite like Paul. And the title itself tells you something. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think it sounds much more of its time than anything the Beatles did. That's probably because, as you say, Paul was not really pushing it, and perhaps was being a little bit careful not to be the dominant voice in the room with people who he didn't know very well. And perhaps he was eager not to be like the big guy, you know, friend of his brother.

45:03But yeah, I don't know. I think your answer is as good as any. What do you think is the most underrated Paul album? Paul R. Wings or any combination?

45:17Ooh. I think maybe Venus and Mars I really like. Do I think which ones are underrated? A lot of them are underrated. Give me your answer. I would say Red Rose Speedway and then I know this is not an album, but YouTube cuts of wings playing live with Jimmy McCulloch on guitar. I think are generally better than wings over America, which is quite good for a live album. But to see Jimmy and Paul on YouTube, those are just phenomenal performances, songs like Magneto and Titany and Man, quite come to life on YouTube live, or is it's only pretty good on Venus and Mars, I think? Yeah, yeah. Or I'll let him go or call me back again, just they become phenomenal blues cuts on YouTube.

46:04I think the very underrated ones, because very obscure ones are the Fireman albums, including rushes, which is this almost totally instrumental album that he records in the wake of Linda's death. It is very poignant and the kind of few words and sort of fragments of recordings from life that you do here are very moving when you know the context. And it's typically Paul in that I think it's one of his most personal and raw albums and he says very little in it, you know, and it's kind of hidden in a way, in fact, it's under another name altogether. So, you know, and I think that's the kind of fascinating thing about Paul as an artist is that at, and if we're thinking about him in comparison to John, it's particularly fascinating, that Paul is emotionally complex, but with a complexity hidden inside brilliantly, simple, powerful pop songs last time.

47:12So I'm not talking about the firemen now. That is a more avant -garde example, but just something like petty lane, it seems like this bright breezy pop song and then you go to strawberry fields and it's like so obviously radical and weird and odd. But there are layers of complexity to pull songs that are not obvious to the naked eye and they reward a kind of, as you would put it, a Straussian reading. So, you know, a song like O Darling, which appears to be a love song, is, and I think it's partly about him splitting up with John, so I write about that in the book. But it's also this, he overloads it with emotion.

47:51This is something he doesn't a song now and again. He'll kind of write a simple pop song and then he'll kind of like turn up the emotion somehow, the way he sings, in a way that distorts the song and takes it into this strange place. So this kind of screaming vocal in O 'Darling, I hear in it a lot of anger. You know, I don't just hear love and sadness and loss. I hear anger in it and all, you know, a subcurrent of violence, actually. And I think you could read, you know, a feminist reading of that song would be that Paul is kind of exposing the possessiveness and sometimes the violent possessiveness that underlies some of these male rock and roll songs about, don't you leave me baby, you know.

48:35Run for your life. It's his version of John's Run for Your Life, right? Exactly, exactly. But hardly anyone knows that. What's the most underrated John album? I think Wolzen Bridge's is really pretty good. I'm not a huge fan with the exception of Imagine and the plastic -hated band. I'm not a huge fan of his subsequent albums, but I do think walls and bridges and mind games are pretty good. But I didn't have strong feelings in the game. You would say mind games. Why? There's a lot of songs on it like Meets City or I know that you know that seem forgotten, but they're very good. I think the production is systematically weak, but the songs are excellent.

49:20If he had brought Paul in, it would have been an incredible album, I think, maybe better than Imagine. I don't feel all of Imagine has worn that well. I think one of the problems is that, I don't know if you agree with me on this, but I think John kind of lost his voice much sooner than Paul lost the top kind of level of his voice, unsurprisingly because he was, he'd been screaming in songs and in therapy so much he was inshredding his vocal chords, he'd obviously been smoking a lot, had been taking drugs and so on. And I think quite quickly from the early 70s onwards, his voice is thinner and to me not nearly as powerful, it was so on the rock and roll album that he makes 1973, whatever it is.

50:10I think part of the reason it's not very good is that his voice is just not there anymore, It's no longer this incredible instrument that it was through the 60s into the very early 70s. And there's not enough diversity of sound on that album. I feel it was great he did two albums with Phil Specter, but should have moved on and looked for someone else. And that it kept on sounding the same too much. And when you do that, when you're doing covers and your voice is somewhat subpar, a lot of things went wrong there. Yeah, I would agree. I like John's contributions to pussycats. So you can debate who did what on pussycats, but too many rivers to cross in subterranean homesick blues.

50:50I think of them as as much John songs as Harry songs. Yeah. That's debatable. But there are two of the highlights of his solo career. Harry didn't never did anything like those on his own. Yeah. There were little glimpses of John's brilliance throughout the recordings he made in the 70s, but overall I'm just struck by how much he missed that really annoying guy telling him to try this or do that or how about this or come on John let's let's go to work. And George did too of course. So they spent the last sort of couple years of the Beatles having a bit of a moan about Paul, but without Paul they wouldn't have made some of the incredible music they made at the end of the 60s and through the 70s they very quickly kind of lose momentum and he while Paul kind of just tunnels on not always brilliantly right if it is solo and Wings records are kind of erratic but my god he's productive he just keeps going now you've studied this one artistic collaboration in great great detail what do you feel you've learned about artistic collaboration in general or how do you now look at other artistic collaborations through a different lens?

52:10There's so much to say about that. So I'm going to narrow the lens a little bit and say I think it's really interesting that there are very few creative, male, romantic, but platonic relationships that are very creative. I think this is a particular time of relationship that you see recurring a few times throughout history and often makes a big difference. There's a kind of big leap forward to some sort of creative or intellectual revolution that happens. And I think it's kind of distinctive to this relationship where they're not lovers, they're not just mates, you know, and they're not homosexual, but they are two men who have very, very intense feelings for each other and that feeds into the creativity.

53:00I was thinking about a couple of examples recently. One is Wordsworth and Colouridge. In some ways it mirrors John and Paul. There were a couple of years apart. Colouridge is a bit younger. They've got very different personalities. Colouridge is Flamboyant and voluble. He talks a lot. He's wild. He takes drugs. Wordsworth is a little bit more distant and a little bit cooler, a little bit more methodical, but they turn each other on, right? And they spend a lot of time thinking and writing poetry together and really kind of birth romantic poetry movement together. And then the other example I was thinking about, the best 20th century analogy for John Paul, I think is Carneman and Diversky.

53:44If you read Michael Lewis's book, The Undoing Project, as I have the similarities are just too strong to ignore. And here it's Tversky who's this kind of wild font of inside and speech. And Carneman is a little bit calmer, more reflective. But they're completely in love with each other. You know, Carneman says, said to Michael Lewis, well, you know, I've been in love and all, but with Amos I was just wrapped. You know, I couldn't, you know, I was completely compelled by him. I was lost and they just spent hours and hours together. Just wanted to be each other all the time. You know, Carnabans wife said, this is much more intense than a marriage.

54:25And of course, when something is really intense like that, it's gonna explode and in all these cases, the partnership kind of splinters and sparks and falls apart at some point. And then there's this great aftermath of sadness. But it's kind of inevitable because there really kind of two ends of a relationship. you can have a sustainable, steady, marriage type relationship where you love each other in this wonderful kind of love and calm way, or you can have this wildly creative, impulsive, sort of dramatic and volatile relationship, but that can't last forever. One thing that struck me is just how few examples there are.

55:04Another one that occurs to me is Picasso and Brock. Obviously that doesn't last. You have a lot of examples where the people do quite different things. So like Rodgers and Hammerstein, or Stravinsky with both Balanchine and Diagolev, those work, but they're not competing against each other at all, right? They're just working together. And I think of Jagger Richards as ultimately a business relationship where they're quite happy to give up being creative just to make a lot of money. And it becomes not interesting for 50 years. Yeah, exactly. That's the wrong way. I mean, I think Jagger and Riches is much more like a marriage, right?

55:40Right versus a love affair. They love each other, but they're not like wildly compelled by each other. I'm not sure they ever were. They always thought, yeah, this is the guy I want to write, make music with. He's obviously great, and our talents fit together. Let's get married. But it was nothing like this kind of intense jealousy -ridden tempestuous, conflicted, hot John and Paul relationship. And I think there's other examples like Picasso and Brack. I don't think they were like John and Paul either, you know, they were just partnerships. So you came together, you know, God are with each other, but kind of turned to John and that creatively and then kind of spun apart.

56:18And that was it. I doubt that Picasso gave Brack much of a thought after they stopped working together and probably vice versa, whereas John and relationship was much deeper and I think that's important because actually I think the scale of the achievement of what they did together was rooted in that incredibly rich and deep relationship. It wasn't just a byproduct or coincidence. It's striking to me that what to me is the very closest example comes from the same place and broadly the same period and that's Monty Python, which is truly collaborative and they can peat with each other, you know, who skit gets to be done.

56:58They do TV, they do movies. It has a brilliant peak at some point it collapses. Members have quite different skills, but they're truly working together. That's the other British Beatles, I think. Yeah, and there's that wonderful link between them as well via George Harrison. Who becomes friends with them and and funds, I think the life of Brian. So I would buy that and it of course it reminds me of this other aspect to the Beatles which we haven't touched on but it's another thing that's so unique about them is that there were a comedy group as well. You know, can you think of any other groups where laughter is so important, where humour is so important and again that's primarily John and Paul right, they were all funny, George could be very dryly funny, but that sense of antique overflowing childlike glee and humor that runs all the way through the Beatles is John and Paul and it's not true of any other group.

57:59So the link between music and comedy is you know, it's just so interesting. Before my last question, let me just plug your book again. John and Paul, I love story and songs, I loved it, it's one of those books, I started it and I didn't really get up till I finished it, just read it straight through. But final question, what will you do next? I am going to spend the spring and summer talking about John and Paul. I'm going to love every minute of it. It is just wonderful to hang out with John and Paul and the Beatles and a great thing to talk about where there's lots of other darker stuff going on in the world.

58:35I'm going to keep writing my newsletter, The Ruffian, my sub -stack, and I'm going to think about what to write next and I have no idea all suggestions welcome. He and Leslie thank you very much. Thank you, Tyler.

58:53Thanks for listening to Conversations with Tyler. You can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite podcast app. If you like this podcast, please consider giving us a rating and leaving a review. This helps other listeners find the show. On Twitter, I'm Attyler Cowan and the show is At Cowan Convose. Until next time, please keep listening and learning.