John Lennon Solo Albums Poll

voted Life with the Lions, prob Lennon's heaviest gtr rec

I would like to be the sole vote for Rock 'n' Roll, which I do like an awful lot, but Imagine is better, and really the only Lennon solo album I play with any regularity.

i have only heard POB, Imagine, maybe Rock'n'Roll a long time ago, Double Fantasy and Milk & Honey. Plus a few compilations, so I'm familiar with No9 Dream and Mind Games which are great songs. Not heard the Beatles-era experimental albums. I can imagine they have a lot of heroin-aided shrieking all over them but are they really any good at all?

I remember not minding Milk & Honey (at least the Lennon songs - never could stand Yoko), particularly the sweet "Grow Old With Me".

Voting POB btw.

Re: Some Time in New York City, Mind Games, Walls and Bridges. You're not missing much

I think Mind Games is half an excellent album, with a half dozen good to great songs spread out amongst a half dozen fair to poor songs. Walls & Bridges and Sometime in New York City are largely bores, though with a couple good songs each.

half an excellent album, with a half dozen good to great songs spread out amongst a half dozen fair to poor songs.

Every album I've heard by him tbh.

Plastic Ono Band over Imagine. I prefer Milk and Honey over DF, tbh.

Voted Plastic Ono Band.

Unstarted music would have been preferable in those 1st two album's cases

You missed out Live Peace in Toronto.

Live albums don't count obv.

JL/POB. THis still ranks as one of the most intense sonic exorcisms you're likely to run across. Its also a prime example of stripped-down rock punch. Gnarly & intense meets soft, melodic & intense, with a touch of mostly crazy thrown in for good measure.

xpost Lifew/ Lions is half live.

only 2 contenders really, Plastic Ono Band for its artistic qualities and Imagine for the tunes. Everything else too patchy for my vote.

yeah there's some really great stuff scattered here & there, but POB & Imagine are the only two i could call solid

Agreed re. POB & Imagine. 'Some Time in NYC' would prolly make third place for me.

The 'Unfinished Music' & 'Wedding Album' things are an excellent preview of what Nurse With Wound would be up to a few years later & had more to do with Yoko's aesthetic than John's. STinNYC would merge the two much more gooder. However, Lennon seems to have been coming from "I am so totally NOT going to do anything like THAT!" (meaning tunes that are remotely 'pop' or resemble the Beatles in ANY way) whereas NWW was all "Damn! I really want to do THIS!" You can sorta tell the difference.

The smug cynicism of 'Mind Games' never did anything for me. 'Walls & Bridges' just mostly blew. Nilsson's 'Pussycats' is just as worthy a listen as most of Lennon's solo output & I mean that in a basically good way. The last couple of discs saw John veering off into well-worn Billy Joel semi-profound MOR goo and away from his earlier bristling art attacks that had me longing for his return. I filed 'Double Fantasy' away after 1 or 2 spins, drank way too much Rebel Yell, blasted 'POB' & pondered the WTF question...

are the first two/three those noise/loops records he made? i always thought pob was the first post-beatles record of actual music

Musically, Some Time in New York City is actually not bad if you can ignore him drinking the lefty Kool Aid lyrically. Please tell me his "Right on, sister!" is meant at least a little sarcastically.

Yoko Ono supervised remixes of the more popular solo albums - anyone have any thoughts on these? WHY? etc.

uh, why not?

(runs way)

i think the remixes are improvements. i know some people disagree but they did a really good job, just adding some separation in places to spector's wall of mud. it did take some of the 'whoomp' feeling out of some of it I suppose but I still like them. the earlier cds sounded terrible and original vinyl is hard to find anyway.

POB is my boring choice, will Walls and Bridges or Imagine next. W&B is really overlooked and underrated.

First two Plastic Ono Band records totally rule. "Fly" owns most of John's catalog.

Although spotty in a few places, 'Imagine' narrowly over POB for me.

I heard DF for the first time on Dec 7 '80. So sad.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

easy one.

Lennon is generally overrated as a solo artist, but "Double Fantasy" was great. Would have been even better without the Yoko tracks though.

Oh, and I am not saying "Imagine" is a bad album. Just a pity the rest of the album doesn't hold up with "Imagine", "Jealous Guy", "Oh My Love" and "How?"

I'd have thought "Mind Games" and "Walls/Bridges" would be up yr alley, geir.

Nah, "Tight A$" and "Meat City" too . . . well, you know.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Wow.

o_O

The order is what I was expecting, but the landslide? Only two points' difference between Imagine and Double Fantasy? I didn't even think PBO was that well known let alone popular.

I didn't expect Mind Games or Walls & Bridges to both get shut out. Neither are particular faves of mine, but I could have sworn that I have heard love for both on ILM in the past.

Lennon is generally overrated as a solo artist, but "Double Fantasy" was great. Would have been even better without the Yoko tracks though

Oh, and I am not saying "Imagine" is a bad album. Just a pity the rest of the album doesn't hold up with "Imagine", "Jealous Guy", "Oh My Love" and "How?"

Geir lives in Bizarro world - down is up, black is white, etx

i find it quite reassuring myself.

http://www.google.co.uk/logos/2010/lennon10-res.gif

I think I disagree with pretty much every single conclusion Wolk draws in today's Pfork review, with the exception of his dismissal of Sometime in NY

Mind Games deserves alot more love than it gets.

I mean

Mind Games, on the other hand, isn't particularly off-putting-- it's just creatively exhausted and timid. The title track has a nice tune; the session dudes who play on the album are entirely competent; "Aisumasen (I'm Sorry)" is a sweet sentiment. But there is not a single risky or urgent moment on the entire thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx0ZqyqO8Wg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4l1ILO2DZwA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJSMvVyRVZ0

Yeah, perhaps if you take away those above songs and the title track.

Yoko's songs on Doubel Fantasy are better than John's. FACT

About to listen to "Life With the Lions" for the first time.

John can really play some feedback!

I imagine there are some 1967 jams where John is doing this while George plays sitar and Paul and Ringo play maracas & congas.

never heard Life with the Lions. neighbor had a vinyl copy of it that he wanted to sell for $150 though. lol

Rawer than Metal Machine Music, tbh.

I like the insouciance of Wolk's review! It's like he wrote his own Walls and Bridges.

insouciant? seems like a lot of received wisdom to me - Imagine is overplayed hippie drivel, POB is good except when you think about it in terms of whiny rich guy, etc

i think it's really hard to write a review of john lennon, or any of the beatles (and *especially* the beatles themselves). some parts of this review (particularly the mind games overview) seemed dismissive to me, but then again, short of writing another book, pretty much anything you say is going to dismiss some aspect of the guy. The notion of yet another compilation of his music does make me tired just thinking about it--- despite the fact that it did make me listen to a bunch of solo lennon today, and like pretty much everything I played. interesting guy!

Wow, now it's total freejazz territory. Sounds almost like Coltrane w Yoko screaming over it.

The notion of yet another compilation of his music does make me tired just thinking about it

yeah I can understand this, being bombarded with his cultural omnipresence every 10 years will do that

I laughed out loud at:

A couple of John's songs here are fantastic, especially the inspired throwaway "Nobody Told Me", allegedly written for Ringo to sing. Yoko's aren't.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7v0O8M5vKc

^^^underappreciated gem imho

that is funny (insofar as you can misread it as implying that Yoko didn't write any songs for Ringo to sing) - but I sorta bristled at the implication that Yoko couldn't function in John's idiom. Witness this piece of absolute brilliance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8k4lN3Kd28

No, I disagree (I love M&H's "You're The One") – I just love the terseness of his dismissal, especially after that long sentence.

yeah I can understand this, being bombarded with his cultural omnipresence every 10 years will do that

and yet I always hope that I'm going to stumble upon Lennon's stuff in a way that will somehow cause all of it make more sense than it does. why? he's dead! I've already heard everything!

have you heard Pussycats?

not that it will make anything "make more sense" - really it's just another piece in the incomprehensible puzzle - but what a fun, great-sounding, bleakly funny piece it is

yeah I can understand this, being bombarded with his cultural omnipresence every 10 years will do that

The problem is, it's always the same dozen or so songs, when he did extremely minimalist and challenging stuff that is being ignored by the music industry. His first two solo albums aren't even being reissued! Thom Yorke just recently ripped off "Two Minutes Silence".

They should let Thom handle Lennon's music LOL

pussy cats

yes, and yeah it's just more haze. I came at it from the Nilsson point of view, in which case it's both inspired and tragic. thru a lennon lens, less tragic, more benevolent albeit w/less invested in the end result of HN's general well being...?

Wow, "Radio Play" is a straight up Animal Collective instrumental.

wait Dom are you blaming HN's drinking on Lennon...?

Yeah that's wrong

I mean I know the story that Nilsson busted a vocal chord on that album and went on recording anyway (ostensibly because he didn't want to admit it to Lennon?) but I dunno if that's the kind of thing you can really lay at John's feet.

Liveblogging "Life with the Lions" first play. Just listened to John Lennon pushing the 'off' and 'on' buttons & volume knobds on a radio for 12 minutes! amazing!!!! "Radio Play" is incredible.

'On a windy day let's go on flying
There may be no trees to rest on
there may be no clouds to ride'

"Song for John" is AMAZING.

"Mulberry", this is some nice stuff. Noise acoustic guitar with a slide, Yoko singing sadly but softly. Brilliant.

Love the fast playing at 3.33

no, not blaming his drinking, but more like, lennon kind of riding the train w/him, and in the end lennon had a fortitude that nilsson didn't, and hence didn't have to pay the same kind of consequences

I wonder if John experimenting with alternate tunings in the 60s or if he just was too fucked up to notice the guitars were tuned oddly.

John was totally familiar with multiple tuning styles and he uses a bunch of different ones throughout the Beatles catalog

Dear Prudence uses both open D and drop D iirc

"No Bed For Beatle John" consists of John and Yoko singing the text of press clippings about themselves, in a cappella chant style.

lol

have we had a thread about Lennon solo books? just slightly off topic but has anyone read the new(ish) Philip Norman biog?

There should be a poll. The Pete Shotton one is amazing.

Classic Lennon books:

Pete Shotton - probably the best one out there
May Pang - good account which brings out a lot of the flaws, but makes him more human
Fred Seaman - needs to be treated with some caution, but has an air of authenticity about it for the most part

I did read the Philip Norman one when it came out - but found it quite a dull read. And disappointingly he seems to go for the Eliot Mintz PR line about the Lost Weekend.

Yeah my interest in Shotton was piqued by the Nowhere Boy film. I must get that. I was only vaguely familiar with him but he was clearly more of an important figure than i realised. Or at least you know the film appears to suggest as much.

What's the Eliot Mintz line Bob? And indeed who's he?!

holy fuck amazon:
John Lennon: In My Life by Pete Shotton and Nicholas Schaffner (Hardcover - Nov 1994)
2 used from $165.00

that's a shame

I paid £12 for a paperback on Amazon about 3 months ago.

$165 ! wow how long has it been put of print?

*out

Elliot Mintz is, or was, effectively PR for Yoko - and constantly put out a stream of stories patching up the mythology of John and Yoko as the great romance, minimising the Lost Weekend period, and glossing over John's depression of the mid-to late 70s.

Fred Seaman's assessment:

"She (Yoko) told Mintz to play up her role as businesswoman and to publicize her reliance on psychics. Mintz had once told me that he did not think that press reports about Yoko's confidence in psychics were good for her image. I was therefore astonished when he agreed with everything Yoko said. He was a consummate sycophant."

Really into Walls and Bridges today, especially this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSS2ABconDg

I'm...not fond of Woman.

if i recall, the original demo on the lennon anthology has some real power, but the MOR production on double fantasy really takes the life out of it.

I'm...not fond of Woman🕸.

was just thinking about how pathetic double fantasy & the interviews he gave in 1980 would be seen if he had lived longer

the contrast between the playfulness and inventiveness of lennon's earlier lyrics and shit like "after all, it is written in the stars" is p depressing to me. and yeah the "little child inside the man" stuff suggests that lennon spent a little too much time absorbing, i don't know, self-help books and psychobabble during his period of exile. the double fantasy stuff i honestly enjoy most is the lighthearted stuff like "starting over."

CLEANUP TIME

I love 'Woman' - beautiful song. Lennon was pretty much spent creatively by 1972, but he still turned out the odd gem.

Love it too, mostly for sentimental reasons

I mostly prefer Yoko's tracks on Double Fantasy to John's, though.

Season of Glass is a better album

yes and yes

I would have voted for John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band like everyone else, but second choice would have been Walls & Bridges, surprised it got no votes.

I think there's three great songs on Walls & Bridges, and two of 'em were singles.

been thinking how being freed from the Beatles really invigorated his songwriting, so many great songs (and def a fair amount of his best) came out in that '69-'72 period. And then around when he splits with Yoko he seemed to mostly lose the plot.

Yeah, '69-'72 was a great period for him artistically (with the exception of Some Time in New York City,I guess.

But: 'Give Peace a Chance', 'Instant Karma!', 'Cold Turkey', 'Mother', 'Working Class Hero', 'Imagine', 'Jealous Guy', 'Oh My Love', 'Gimme Some Truth', 'Happy Xmas (War is Over)' ... I mean, you can't fuck with any of those.

and that production/mixing style he hit on with Spector with the pounding rhythm section + slapback vocal echo was such a great combo. Gives the grooves in things like "How Do You Sleep" a real oomph.

xp

Lennon loved slap-back on his voice, didn't he? It's on his better Double Fantasy songs. Too bad the drum sound is so awful on that record.

But: 'Give Peace a Chance', 'Instant Karma!', 'Cold Turkey', 'Mother', 'Working Class Hero', 'Imagine', 'Jealous Guy', 'Oh My Love', 'Gimme Some Truth', 'Happy Xmas (War is Over)' ... I mean, you can't fuck with any of those.

Well, you can, but that much should be obvious.

Even after that there was 'Mind Games', '#9 Dream', 'What You Got', 'Woman' and 'Nobody Told Me' ... he could still write a great song, just not as many of them. The arrangements of a lot of Lennon's solo stuff can render a lot of it feeling really samey, though. I wish his solo career was a touch more diverse.

xpost:

Nah, all of those tracks are flawless. Perfect.

yeah his sound got really limp w out Ringo and Voorman and Spector imo

Bring on the Lucie and One Day at a Time are hidden gems on Mind Games

agreed that POB and Imagine are two of the best produced records ever, rhythm section is just incredible

After The Beatles broke up, you could have been forgiven for thinking John and Paul would come out with mammoth blockbuster releases and George's record would have been less popular, but John put out this raw confessional record, George put out a mammoth blockbuster and Paul put out a record of him pissing about like it was no big deal.

In hindsight, by the time Band on the Run came out in '73, both John and George were already past their prime - whereas Paul just went from strength to strength commercially and still had many great songs in him.

I can't bear to listen to "What You Got" and "Going Down on Love." You know how on that Billy Joel thread certain 1986 sound like the Forgotten '80s of shitty sunglasses and terrible DX-7 sounds? Those two Lennon songs constitute the Forgotten '70s.

Ah yeah, I like 'Bring on the Lucie' too!

(x-post)

everyone so otm about the Mind Games deep cuts. i really like that album.

Me too. "Out the Blue" and "I Know" as well. And "Only People!"

Some "Julia"-like finger picking on the beginning of "Out the Blue."

Would be fun to take a crack at remixing that album, for sure.

Wrote on "I Know (I Know)" some years ago:

http://thisiheard.blogspot.com/2012/01/john-lennon-i-know-i-know-1973.html

it's remarkable how bad Mind Games sounds to me, compared to the mix on Pussycats, which sounds great

It's a shame. Gordon Edwards on bass. He's great on "I Know (I Know)!"

btw to any interested here, I am planning on running the solo Beatles poll after the Wu-Tang poll wraps up

debating whether Pussy Cats is eligible given the extent of Lennon (and Ringo's) involvement. Inclined to let any of George's Travelling Wilburys songs be eligible as well. Basically if a Beatle wrote it I'm inclined to let it in.

nice

So long as "Cheer Down" gets votes.

It will get one from me :)

Yeah, 'I Know (I Know)' and 'Out the Blue' aren't too bad. I think Mind Games could have turned out better if he'd been more focused on the songwriting front and had a team of musicians that could have injected a bit of excitement into the proceedings.

Lennon died a couple of months after I was born, so his songs were around a lot in my early childhood. I think 'Woman' was among some of the first songs I ever heard, and I still really like it for, yes sentimental reasons but also because I like the melody and overall sound. I think it's easy to look at a lot of these songs from the perspective of an adult music enthusiast and say 'oh but this is terribly cringey and maudlin', but I wasn't thinking that way when I was a kid, or even a naive teen, so I can't look at it in this objective way.

You remember "Woman" from when you were two months old? That's some power of recall.

I think that it’s normal that there are only 2-3 good/great songs on some of his solo albums because, in a way, that was his default rate in the Beatles after Revolver/quitting touring.
Iirc he was quite lazy after the beatlemania days (rightly so) and never as productive as McCartney. So it was a pain in the ass having to « produce » news songs whenever a new album was planned.
He was on fire again for a while with the band split but I suppose he went back to his « lazy » mode, hence the 2-3 songs + filler.

also, hard drugs.

LSD/Heroin : Pepper to Get Back
Cocaine : Abbey Road to Imagine
Heroin : the rest of the 70?

You remember "Woman" from when you were two months old? That's some power of recall.

― Terry Micawber (Tom D.), Thursday, November 16, 2017 11:00 AM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

As far as I know, people back then would continue to play records they'd bought months, if not years after the fact

'68-'69 was Lennon's heroin period.

I was thinking that all his best work was done while he was still living in the UK. Has he done anyting on par with his best work after moving to NYC ?

Yoko got back on heroin in 1980, according to Philip Norman.

I was about to say Albert Goldman told a different story about Lennon's stopping heroin ca.1969.

LSD/Heroin : Pepper to Get Back
Cocaine : Abbey Road to Imagine
Heroin : the rest of the 70?

Brandy Alexanders: 1973-74.

if he was with Bowie and Elton in 1974, he did coke

That was '75 I think?

Elton was '74.

Nilsson was around so Brandy Alexander and Cocaine periods were running simultaneously.

there's a funny bit in the last BBC documentary where he explains the horrible reasoning behind getting Nilsson, Ringo, and Keith Moon in a house in Malibu or something ("At least that way I thought they couldn't get in much trouble....bad idea!"). The brandy bottle was out by 10 am and they'd be falling all over the floor. The nightmare lasted until Lennon quit cold turkey and took the Nilsson tapes back to NYC with him.

if he was with Bowie and Elton in 1974, he did coke

― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, November 16, 2017 3:58 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Given that there's a very well known bootleg floating around from this period where Lennon is offering Stevie Wonder a "toot", I'd say yes.

Harrison also on the devils dandruff in the '70s, too.

he did hard drugs pretty consistently from the mid-60's on. like when the FBI was spying on him to figure out if he was a threat to national security, the report came back "Mr. Lennon is constantly impaired by narcotics."

and the "house husband" period = reclusive junkie years

Anyway, to drag the conversation away from the mythology and back to the music, I'd say Lennon had two great periods. One, of course, was from 'Please Please Me' (the song) up to and including Revolver (the "Beatle John" period, if you'd like) and the other was from The Beatles up to 'Happy Xmas (War is Over)' (the "I'm not Beatle John, I'm John" period)

Even though he still came up with 'Strawberry Fields Forever', the bulk of 'A Day in the Life' and 'I Am the Walrus', all of which are thoroughly classic, there's this sense that Lennon had got a bit lazy during their psychedelic period, contributing half of 'Baby You're a Rich Man' and dashing off 'Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite' and 'Good Morning Good Morning' for the sake of having something to record (even if they're still great songs, IMO) and not to mention joke things like 'You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)' ... by the following year, he'd pretty much hit upon the hard-edged approach that would define his solo material.

Across the Universe was written in late '67/early '68, too

I should mention that while all members of The Beatles contributed some shockingly sub-par material to The Beatles, they also contributed some great stuff. In John's case: 'Dear Prudence', 'Happiness is a Warm Gun', 'I'm So Tired', 'Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey', 'Sexy Sadie' and 'Julia'

why are we discussing TWA here?

We're discussing Lennon's songwriting periods.

let's talk about the mythology instead

I was thinking that all his best work was done while he was still living in the UK. Has he done anyting on par with his best work after moving to NYC ?

― AlXTC from Paris, Thursday, November 16, 2017 3:16 PM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Imagine was the last Lennon album to be worked on in the UK, so aside from a few select tracks you may be onto something.

Pussy Cats is up there with his best work imo

Pussy cats rules!

btw to any interested here, I am planning on running the solo Beatles poll after the Wu-Tang poll wraps up

The thought of having to cram all those solo classics plus all those great deep cuts is making my head spin... even more so when I factor in Lennon and Harrison too!

*onto a ballot

walls and bridges got robbed in this! not that it's the best but I'd put it right behind Imagine in 3rd place, barely edging out Double Fantasy

also re: mind games yeah that album sounds like shit. did the yoko remix a few years ago fix any of that?

re: Walls and Bridges - really? I totally hate "Whatever Gets You Through the Night's" exhausting and forced jollity. "Nobody Loves You When You're Down and Out" is the keep off that one imo.

keeper

walls and bridges got robbed in this! not that it's the best but I'd put it right behind Imagine in 3rd place, barely edging out Double Fantasy

― akm, Thursday, November 16, 2017 5:57 PM

insanity

it has great songs on it, "nobody loves you," "scared", "bless you", "#9 dream", "steel and glass", "Old dirt road"....I mean, those are great. It's such a great bottoming out album. I do like the demo versions of some of these that were on Menlove Ave slightly more than the final versions but still.

Steel and Glass is a super-lazy re-write of How Do You Sleep (musically at least)

bah meh

Ah, I didn't realize the current version that's available of Mind Games was a remastered version of the original mix. Looks like some of Yoko's mix is on Youtube - check this out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=audDh1q8YhU

Pretty sweet. More lively sounding, more clarity, drums sound nice. Still wish Gordon Edwards was a little more front and center.

Heck yeah

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1J92pTmDUw

my long-ago reaction to walls & bridges is that it just seemed kind of sad and tired, like lennon didn't really feel like making albums anymore but felt obligated to keep going. i can imagine a parallel universe where he never got back together with yoko and just kept making one samey so-so album after another, getting thrown out of nightclubs, getting drunk with ringo, occasionally scoring hits w/ catchy but instantly forgettable shit like "whatever gets you thru the night." i do remember "nobody loves you..." fondly, and of course "#9 dream" is probably my favorite lennon track post-1972 or so.

"Whatever Gets You Through the Night" is a depressing experience to listen to: fagged-out, a submission to the sounds of the times, complacent lyric.

Either Bless You was a big influence on Bowie or Bowie was on it, I'm not sure. Bowie was maybe working on the Young Americans album at the same time? Bless You could fit right on it.

I'm listening to Sometime in NYC and I have to say it *sounds* better than I remember it. A lot of kinda early r'n'r grooves that are pretty rockin. Lyrical content is largely a total misfire tho, no gettin around that.

Either Bless You was a big influence on Bowie or Bowie was on it, I'm not sure. Bowie was maybe working on the Young Americans album at the same time? Bless You could fit right on it.

― piscesx, Thursday, November 16, 2017

Lennon claims it was an influence on Jagger's writing "Miss You."

yeah when i finally heard sometime in nyc i was really expecting nothing since its reputation is so bad, but given that i was surprised how much i enjoyed it. the lyrics are pretty bad for the most part but the music has way more life to it than most of lennon's subsequent stuff. "new york city" in particular is a fun song.

We got to got to got to got to got to got to got to got to got to got to got to got to got to got to...

Regarding Double Fantasy, which I don’t particularly like, it’s mostly considered overproduced yet the stripped down version doesn’t work better... It all comes down to the material being weak to begin with, I guess (with a few exceptions like « Woman » which is cheezy but really nice).

Yeah - it’s a bit sad because he was giving these interviews saying how he’d recovered his muse, but I suspect he knew the quality was very thin.

I'd say "Nobody Told Me," "I Don't Wanna Face It," "Watching the Wheels," "I'm Losing You," "Cleanup Time," to name five, are his best songs in a decade.

5 years of said decade being spent “baking bread”.

“i can imagine a parallel universe where he never got back together with yoko and just kept making one samey so-so album after another, getting thrown out of nightclubs, getting drunk with ringo, occasionally scoring hits w/ catchy but instantly forgettable shit “

Sounds like a pretty ok life

The “Bless You” / Bowie idea is interesting. I can imagine Bowie doing the vocal, esp in the lower register

yeah I dislike the idea that lennon's contributions to Double Fantasy are work. Beautiful Boy, Losing You, Watching the Wheels, Woman, starting over...these songs are so good. WTF.

are work? I obviously haven't woken up yet. weak, I meant.

well, I find none of these songs great. Some are nice and alright. But I mean, we're talking about Lennon so no, they're not what I call great Lennon songs !

I'll keep 'Nobody Told Me', 'Woman' and 'Watching the Wheels' and maybe 'I'm Losing You', but that's about it.

agree

But my assessment - like some upthread - is biased due to hearing them when I was a kid

"Watching the Wheels" is probably the best of the bunch.

back to Sometime in NYC, this one in particular struck me as a pretty decent Spector-pop gem. Yoko does 60s girl-group!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe4jyGk3qIY

like there's actually a decent hook there

and feminist-call to arms-as-girl-group-ditty is p clever imo

There's some not bad tunes on that album, as long as you don't listen to the lyrics.

Watching the Wheels acoustic demo is his last masterpiece

"Whatever Gets You Through the Night" is a depressing experience to listen to: fagged-out, a submission to the sounds of the times

Is submission the right term, though? Lennon was quite enthusiastic about the era's hip discofied grooves in contemporary interviews. (I believe he did want a chart topper badly at the time, true.)

and it worked! his only #1 single. (which is sort of crazy)

his first #1 ("Starting Over" hit #1).

In the 1980 BBC interview he's quite touched that Elton helped him get his first #1 and John helped Bowie get his.

that was after he died, right?

"Starting Over" hitting #1, that is

right

Both Lennon and McCartney kept their eyes on the charts to check out the competition from the beginning, really... they were still doing this in the mid '70s, but Lennon was obviously paying more attention to US trends as a consequence of living there, where McCartney was paying attention more to the UK chart - he carried on doing this until at least Flowers in the Dirt, and never stopped working with contemporary producers.

Lennon was a fan of "Coming Up."

Can't remember where I read this but apparently "Coming Up" and the music video are what inspired Lennon to start writing songs again

He was writing songs throughout his "house husband" period, though!

was he? i thought he was pretty dormant creatively, busy "baking bread"... wasn't all of Double Fantasy/Milk & Honey written in 1980?

'Free as a Bird' was written in 1977, for one.

I mean, if anyone thinks a songwriter with instruments lying around the house can just switch off their creative impulses for five years, then y'know, that's just naive.

you're just talking metaphysical nonsense

https://i.imgur.com/y4YErKh.jpg

I understand what you mean and agree in a way but it is totally possible for a songwriter to go through a long period in which, for whatever reason, nothing gets done.
I mean, not comparing, but I have always made songs but at some times (personal issues, work, family, whatever), you can really spend years without making songs although there are instruments and all available.

Free as a Bird is not on Double Fantasy or Milk & Honey.

yeah obviously he probably noodled around but he was busy "breaking bread." i'm pretty sure he wrote most of if not all of DF & MH in 1980

No, but 'Free as a Bird' was still written in 1977, as was 'Now and Then', not to mention numerous other demos from 1975-1979 that have been heavily bootlegged and are out there if you can be arsed to seek them out.

But even though proof of Lennon writing songs during his "house husband" days exists, you're quite welcome to believe the mythology of him baking bread for five fucking years.

lol you realize that's a euphemism right? he was blasted on smack for many of those years. besides, the question was when he was inspired to make a new record, and it was the "Coming Up" video, and none of those bootlegged songs (to my knowledge) made it onto Double Fantasy or Milk & Honey.

idgi what's the basis for assuming he was "blasted on smack" while raising Sean

There was no "question", you out-and-out stated "apparently "Coming Up" and the music video are what inspired Lennon to start writing songs again", and I pointed out, correctly, that he'd never stopped writing songs. You're now changing this (because you're wrong) to "making a new record" which is something completely different.

(x-post, obviously)

The fact that the likes of 'Free as a Bird', 'Now and Then' and 'Real Life' didn't make it onto Double Fantasy or Milk and Honey is neither here nor there. They still got written.

it's fairly well documented, Jann Wenner says as much in his new bio, there's Robert Rosen's Nowhere Man (sourced from Lennon's diaries). even the Philip Norman bio has allusions to it. obviously the truth lies somewhere between the baking bread myth and the nightmare that Albert Goldman concocted. anyway the question is when did he write the songs on DF & MH - I don't know of any songs on those records written before 1980.

& should've been clear initially: it inspired him to start writing songs for a new record, with the intention of releasing it, not puttering about writing a song every six months or something

I can't imagine raising a baby while smacked out but I guess ppl do

Kurt & Courtney

also they obv had help, nannies, etc.

and what a bang-up job they did

How can you be sure that he wasn't intending on doing something with those songs when he wrote them? How can you be sure they weren't in contention? How do you even know how frequently Lennon was writing songs between 1975-1979? The answer to questions of course are: you can't be sure and you don't know.

We can only go off the evidence that exists, which is that he was still writing songs during his "house husband" days.

Now, Lennon might very well have heard 'Coming Up' and thought "hmm, I'd better get back in there and make a record", but that's something different. We know he hadn't made a record for years.

He'd let his record contract lapse- and signed a new one with Geffen for Double Fantasy, which was seen very much as comeback record:

PLAYBOY: "The word is out: John Lennon and Yoko Ono are back in the studio, recording again for the first time since 1975, when they vanished from public view. Let's start with you, John. What have you been doing?"
LENNON: "I've been baking bread and looking after the baby."

"baking bread" "looking after the baby"

https://i.imgur.com/TMLjbG8.gif

Yes, he'd let his record contract lapse and so what? He was John Lennon! I don't think he would have had a problem getting another record deal when he felt the need to look for one, and I'm pretty sure he knew it.

Even Stiff Records tried to sign Lennon.

Ha, right, they sent him a message saying, "$1000! And that's our final offer!" Lennon briefly (thought probably jokingly) entertained taking them up on it.

The timeframe probably doesn't line up, but imagine Lennon making the deal and then recording w/Rockpile* and/or The Attractions!

*Which reminds me of an anecdote from a recent Nick Lowe interview I read wherein he describes a scene from when Brinsley Schwarz opened for Wings. The Brinsleys were having an aftershow party and where singing Beatles songs when Paul shows. They were reluctant to continue because they were under the impression he was really trying to shake off "the Beatles thing", but he joined in, and Lowe noted that afterwards more and more Beatles songs started popping up in Wings sets.

Hard to reconcile his casual appreciation of “coming up” with “How do you sleep nightssssssss?”

Only a person who loved Paul could have written "How Do You Sleep?"

'How Do You Sleep?' and 'Coming Up' were released 9 years apart. That's more time than The Beatles' recording career from 'Love Me Do' to Abbey Road.

For what it's worth, here's the Fred Seaman account of John's reaction to hearing 'Coming Up':

We were driving past a vast shopping mall, near Walt Whitman's birthplace, when a familiar voice boomed over the four speakers.

"Fuck a pig!" John shouted. "It's Paul!".

Indeed it was Paul McCartney's new hit single, "Coming Up', a catchy tune built around a repetitive staccato riff. John frowned, turned up the volume, and began to nod to the beat.

"Not bad," he said at the end of the song, sounded surprised and even somewhat disappointed. When the announcer mentioned that Paul played all the instruments himself, John mumbled something to the effect that it made perfect sense as Paul had always wanted to be a one-man band. John turned down the volume and fell silent for a while. Then he asked me to get him a copy of Paul's new album and set up a stereo system in his bedroom.....

The next day at breakfast, John hummed the melody of Paul's new single, which he said he could not get out of his head." It's driving me crackers!" he exclaimed cheerfully. He said the album was uneven, but he acknowledged that it was an unusually adventurous effort by Paul, and far superior to his previous release 'Back to the Egg' which John had dismissed as "garbage'. He gave Paul credit for trying his hand at something new.

I mean, if anyone thinks a songwriter with instruments lying around the house can just switch off their creative impulses for five years, then y'know, that's just naive.

nah, not really. there is certainly a thing called "writers block". there is certainly a thing called "creative burnout". as a musician there is nothing more that helps the quality of my work than taking a break. it's not like being a creative person is this all consuming thing going at 100% your entire life. like anything, especially to do with creativity/emotional/imaginative intelligence there are rhythms, there are ups and downs, fluxuations. but you tend to have unrealistic demands from your artists.

There's no evidence to suggest that Lennon had writers block, though.

a five year gap between albums might be one piece of evidence, js

are we like required now to have an extremely stupid argument about the beatles on this board once a month

The timeframe probably doesn't line up, but imagine Lennon making the deal and then recording w/Rockpile* and/or The Attractions!

*Which reminds me of an anecdote from a recent Nick Lowe interview I read wherein he describes a scene from when Brinsley Schwarz opened for Wings. The Brinsleys were having an aftershow party and where singing Beatles songs when Paul shows. They were reluctant to continue because they were under the impression he was really trying to shake off "the Beatles thing", but he joined in, and Lowe noted that afterwards more and more Beatles songs started popping up in Wings sets.

I mean, I’ve heard the one about when The Basher was electrocuted more than once, so...

a five year gap between albums might be one piece of evidence, js

― FREEZE! FYI! (dog latin), Thursday, November 23, 2017 4:47 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This proves nothing other than he didn't release an album for five years, which of course everybody knows. Everything else is just pure speculation, but we do know he was writing songs during that period because evidence of that actually exists.

So, what, 20, 30 songs?

More?

Maybe he wrote 500 songs.

20, 30, 500 songs, still lazy. only if he had come up with an album concept singles release schedule and branding schema now we would be talking real creativity

Everything else is just pure speculation, but we do know he was writing songs during that period because evidence of that actually exists.

― Gholdfish Killah (Turrican), Thursday, November 23, 2017 6:39 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You never answered my question.

I did, it's above.

How many songs did he write in that period, is the question.

I genuinely don't know and you seem to.

Can someone explain the love for “Whatever Gets You Through the Night”? There’s virtually no tune to speak of, the arrangement is this godawful Steve Douglas disco groove that somehow doesn’t groove. And the lyrics leave no impression whatsoever.

How on earth this became his biggest hit remains a mystery to me.

(x-post)

Yeah, and I already answered it!

What, three songs?

Can someone explain the love for “Whatever Gets You Through the Night”? There’s virtually no tune to speak of, the arrangement is this godawful Steve Douglas disco groove that somehow doesn’t groove. And the lyrics leave no impression whatsoever.

How on earth this became his biggest hit remains a mystery to me.

― Naive Teen Idol, Saturday, November 25, 2017 7:30 PM (thirty-seven seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It wasn't anywhere near as successful on the UK chart as it was on the US one - I suspect that's because Lennon, as a consequence of living in America at that point, was pretty much paying attention to American trends rather than British ones. I'm unsure as to how much Elton John being on it would have helped his chart position in the US, it didn't do much for it here.

x-post to Tom D:

Everything else is just pure speculation, but we do know he was writing songs during that period because evidence of that actually exists.
― Gholdfish Killah (Turrican), Thursday, November 23, 2017 6:39 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

― Gholdfish Killah (Turrican), Saturday, November 25, 2017 7:20 PM (fifteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

So how many songs did he write?

Yeah, I'm not repeating it again. If you didn't grasp it the first time, there's no hope for you.

this is the worst argument currently running on ILX

Yeah, can't disagree with that.

It is indeed ridiculous and completely incomprehensible.

My father has the NY Post from some point shortly after his death when the headline was “YOKO: DON’T BLAME N.Y.”

And right beneath it is a photo of John’s face in his coffin. Brutal tabloid shit

(xx-post)

I agree, so far we've had people saying that Lennon suffered from writers block from 1975-1979 when there's no evidence to support this. His lack of releases during this period only proves that he didn't release anything, it doesn't prove he didn't write anything, and there is evidence that he had been writing songs during that period. All of this is based on fact. Everything else is speculation.

It's ridiculously SO not difficult to grasp.

why on earth is this important to you

LOL yes!

(xp) So all you say is, "I don't know how many songs he wrote in this period, I'm not sure I can even provide a rough estimate, but I know he wrote some songs, I know the names of three of them". Goodnight Vienna... hold on that's Ringo.

*penny_falling_in_slow_motion.gif*

*golf_clap.wav*

Finally!

like to be clear, turrican, sure, your version of events where lennon was writing tons of songs on the regular is plausible! totally! so is the version where he had writer's block. or just lost the muse or wasn't focused on songwriting. or whatever! they're all speculative guesses into the life of an artist we all like. this is called "interpretation," and it is something fans and critics do both with the content of the work and the lives of the artists.

adopting your i-have-the-objective-facts-and-everyone-else-is-wrong tone (where your take is right and other people's just show they've been sidetracked by "mythology"), which you've now done back-to-back across two different beatles-related threads (completely derailing whatever other conversation might have been possible), is condescending to all other posters and also just really boring as a mode of conversation. i don't know what you're getting out of it unless you just get a kick out of trying to get a rise out of people (aka trolling), in this case for a week straight on one fairly narrow point.

(x-post)

The amount of bootlegged demo recordings that have so far made it out of Lennon's personal achives is irrelevant - it proves that Lennon was writing songs, it does not prove he had writers block. Facts are facts and logic is logic.

in a world where you weren't being a complete junior-high-school music nerd authority about this, someone would probably have the energy to engage in a friendly discussion about how writers' block takes different forms, is not an on-off state change, and is not mutually exclusive with having written some songs at some point in a five year period. people might even share from their own personal experiences or make informed or off-the-wall comparisons with other artists. you know, like a bunch of friendly people talking about music they like might.

but given the bigger problems here i mean why bother? you're not interested in engaging with any of these points of view; you just want to defend lennon against the apparently heretical speculation that he might not have written all that much material in the late 1970s.

like to be clear, turrican, sure, your version of events where lennon was writing tons of songs on the regular is...

...*record scratch noise* Yeah, stop there. That's your wording, not mine. I said he was writing songs and there is evidence to support this. This is fact.

I also did say "everything else is speculation" didn't I? Yes, I did. Several times, which I shouldn't have really needed to do.

I would have been happily done with this conversation two days ago, and I would have been if I wasn't forced to repeat myself.

Hahaha wtf
This is pure entertainment

Is there not a thread on ILM about writers block already?

Apologies but you do realize that writer's block doesn't necessarily mean that the sufferer produces absolutely no work whatsoever.

Can someone explain the love for “Whatever Gets You Through the Night”? There’s virtually no tune to speak of, the arrangement is this godawful Steve Douglas disco groove that somehow doesn’t groove. And the lyrics leave no impression whatsoever.

How on earth this became his biggest hit remains a mystery to me.

― Naive Teen Idol, Saturday, November 25, 2017 11:30 AM (one hour ago)

I always liked this record, not as something particularly tuneful (although the whole thing is sung in harmony). I like it as some kind of rhythm record. Doesn't strike me as a disco groove, I don't really know what it is. Do not like the mix.

Like I said, we know that he was writing songs during that period. As to how many songs, this is pure speculation since we don't get the full picture from what has been bootlegged, and who knows how many songs were written but weren't demoed? There isn't enough evidence to show that Lennon had writers block, no matter how you try and frame the argument.

And also there’s bootlegs which seem to show many attempts to try to finish just a few songs in the domestic period, rather than a lot of songs overall.

Consistent with writer’s block

I always liked this record, not as something particularly tuneful (although the whole thing is sung in harmony). I like it as some kind of rhythm record. Doesn't strike me as a disco groove, I don't really know what it is. Do not like the mix.

― timellison, Saturday, November 25, 2017 8:38 PM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I agree about the mix, it feels a little bit cluttered and muddy - I always think the bottom end should be a bit beefier. I see what you mean about not considering it to be a disco record - it seems to have more in common with the "plastic soul" that Bowie was doing (even though it predates Young Americans) than what Chic were doing (which it also predates) or even the Bee Gees...

And also there’s bootlegs which seem to show many attempts to try to finish just a few songs in the domestic period, rather than a lot of songs overall.

― Luna Schlosser, Saturday, November 25, 2017 8:48 PM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes, I've already covered the fact that the bootlegs in and of themselves don't prove anything other than Lennon was writing songs.

https://www.le.ac.uk/ebulletin-archive/ebulletin/features/2010-2019/2010/10/npimageset.2011-01-14.8388450332/article.jpg

xxpost:

It's unusual, thinking about it, because even though I think a fair amount of Lennon's Walls and Bridges output is nowhere near his greatest work, I can't really fault the production on stuff like '#9 Dream', 'Steel and Glass' or 'What You Got' ... but yeah, 'Whatever Gets You Through The Night' could have been better.

Can we all just agree that Lennon had “good song” writers block? We can? Good.

Anyway, “Whatever Gets You Through the Night” is shit.

Whenever I think of the track, the first thing that pops into my head is the fucking sax break!

It’s like the worst track ever, I agree. Sonic vomit

i like it. sorta repetitive but w/e. production is fine. surprised so many here dislike it, hate it even. #9 dream is the keeper from W&B tho

'#9 Dream' is one of my favourite things Lennon ever did, including with The Beatles, so I can't disagree. Sublime production, string arrangement, lyrics, melody, chord progression... everything just came together beautifully on that song.

Yes.

Wah filter ftw

#9 Dream is ear candy but not much more. Which, given what we were getting from Lennon around that time, isn’t nothing.

I haven’t read any of the Lennon biographies but here’s what I believe we do know:

*Lennon recorded about two albums’ worth of material when he came out of retirement in 1979-80.

*In the intervening 37 years, not much new music from Lennon has emerged from 1975-1980. The “Dakota” disc on Lennon Anthology didn’t add that much to the canon.

*Lennon hadn’t exactly been at the top of his game for the previous 3 or 4 years either. Quality-wise, the songs he recorded when he returned were probably better than what he was writing before he retired but rarely a patch on his work pre-Mind Games (I rate three really good songs apiece on DF and M&H but YMMV).

*Team Yoko has very carefully presented what we know about those years.

*John Lennon didn’t write a ton of music around the time of Sgt. Pepper either – Ian MacDonald notes that he was in bed a lot and his productivity immediately prior to meeting Yoko was low.

What we don’t know:

*Whether he has “writer’s block” from 1975 on (is that even a real thing BTW? I mean, do psychologists actually diagnose this? or is it just a catch-all phrase for “I can’t write stuff”)

*Whether Lennon had a drug problem in those years.

*How “happy” Lennon actually was during that time (one thing we do know about artists is that many tend to be productive when they are in turmoil).

*Whether he actually baked bread.

So is it possible Yoko Ono is hoarding some treasure trove of material John wrote during those years? I suppose. But unless there’s a good reason she hasn’t come out with them, it seems pretty unlikely. Does that mean he was blocked? Maybe? Or maybe he was just uninterested in music – which frankly seems a lot more in keeping with what we actually know about his life then as well as him from before.

Also, Turrican, aren’t you also having some fight over on the George Harrison thread about the number of Beatles references in their solo work? What gives?

I don't know - already having said my thoughts on the matter might have something to do with it!

Turrican is kind of weird. Doesn’t like Presence. Sad

I would also just add: I don’t think there is any way any of us can really understand what it was like to be a Beatle and the impact an experience like that would have. Yes, it was only a decade, and, yes, there is no lack of stars that have blown up unimaginably in the years since, facing all the same paparazzi mania.

But it’s not actually that surprising that Lennon pretty much tanked for most of the decade after they broke up. When you consider that no band since has even come close to having the same cultural significance—and then, how many issues he had to work out from his childhood through his marriage to Cynthia and abandonment of Julian, etc.—it kind of makes sense that he might have simply dried up creatively once he separated from all that and started a new family. Many others have found themselves creatively spent dealing with less.

And FWIW, this isn’t exactly unique to Lennon within the Beatles. Outside of what came out in the immediate aftermath (POB, ATMP, “Maybe I’m Amazed,” etc.), the more time passes, the more you realize how little of the music the Beatles made music outside of the band compares even remotely favorably to what they did together. And, that’s okay.

Nah, I disagree... McCartney continued to write classics for a long time after the Beatles split.

cf. "One of These Days"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPizFm-2jo8

“I don’t think there is any way any of us can really understand what it was like to be a Beatle”
No shit?

The more time passes, the more I realise that McCartney was essentially the driving force during the later Beatles years - not just in terms of coming up with concepts and pulling the band together to work, but... Ram sounds more like Abbey Road than Imagine or All Things Must Pass do.

McCartney kept delivering hit after hit for decades, and wrote a great number of classics from 1970 onwards, and to be honest, I'd rather hear him talk more about that stuff than The Beatles again.

Give me 'Once Upon a Long Ago' over 'Tell Me What You See' any day of the week.

I agree with all that. In the case of McCartney, his craftsmanship alone carried him along after inspiration left him (even some of those songs are classics – craftsmanship counts a lot in pop). But do *any* of those songs (again, those not released in the rush of the breakup) really rank w their Beatles work?

That’s not a knock on the later songs. It’s a credit to the earlier ones, what each brought to them and what the Beatles enterprise brought to them.

“I don’t think there is any way any of us can really understand what it was like to be a Beatle”
No shit?

Yes, I think songs like 'Jet', 'Bluebird', 'My Love', 'Live and Let Die', 'The Note You Never Wrote', 'With a Little Luck', 'Coming Up', 'Take It Away', 'My Brave Face', 'This One', 'Calico Skies' etc. (I could go on - I won't) are as good as any song he wrote 1962-1969.

In fact, if we view Paul's Beatle songs for what they are, rather than just assuming they have some sort of automatic superiority (which they don't) then I would rank plenty of Paul's post-Beatles stuff higher than 'P.S. I Love You', 'Hold Me Tight', 'Tell Me What You See', 'Every Little Thing', 'I'll Follow The Sun', 'All Together Now', 'Your Mother Should Know', 'Yellow Submarine', 'Lovely Rita', 'Rocky Raccoon', 'She Came in Through the Bathroom Window' etc.

This is before we get to 'Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da' and 'Maxwell's Silver Hammer' ... I'll take 'Listen to What the Man Said' and 'Silly Love Songs' over either.

Junk, One of These Days, Coming Up are absolutely among his best.

and McCartney II is a stone cold curveball classic, no other Beatle ever made something as progressive & idiosyncratic & intuitive & of its time after 1970.

When I first dug into solo McCartney in the late 90s, I actually tried to make the case to a fellow musician friend of mine that Paul’s post-Beatles work was as good as his Beatles stuff and in some cases better (this isn’t something you can really try to do with Lennon). I played him songs like “Arrow Through Me,” “Back Seat of My Car,” “However Absurd,” “I’m Carrying,” and “Letting Go.” He looked at me like I had three heads. Which wasn’t a knock on the songs – he liked them fine. But the idea that this was world-changing stuff was silly to him.

The point is, I’m not reducing this to Beatles = Better. And you will find few ILMers more enamored with McCartney than me. I prefer his stuff to a lot of Beatles material in part because there is still something for me to discover. That medley at the end of Red Rose Speedway with the nonsense lyrics tells me more about the artist who made it than another listen to side two of Abbey Road.

Are their best solo moments better than or “When I’m Sixty-Four” or “Good Morning, Good Morning”? Sure. But there are no solo tracks these guys did as deathless as “Yesterday” or “Norwegian Wood,” as deeply weird as “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” or “Helter Skelter,” or as perfect as “Martha My Dear” or “I’m a Loser.”

And again, that’s fine. I like living in a world with all these things.

"I prefer his stuff to a lot of Beatles material in part because there is still something for me to discover."
this is a great point

Johnny will be spinning in his grave.

yeah like i could never make the case that "beware my love" or "loup" is better than "for no one" or "hey jude" or whatever but finding yourself in the zone for speed of sound or red rose speedway is a pleasant experience and the journey should be savored imo. precisely because it's quirky and odd and not always "finished" or polished (in songcraft, performance, and/or production). sorta like how i feel about the white album tbh. or 70s dylan. there are lots of artist where it's fun to just spend time rummaging in their back catalogs and back pages.

"Cookin' (in the Kitchen of Love)" on Ringo's Rotogravure is from early in the John Lennon retirement period.

en I first dug into solo McCartney in the late 90s, I actually tried to make the case to a fellow musician friend of mine that Paul’s post-Beatles work was as good as his Beatles stuff and in some cases better (this isn’t something you can really try to do with Lennon). I played him songs like “Arrow Through Me,” “Back Seat of My Car,” “However Absurd,” “I’m Carrying,” and “Letting Go.” He looked at me like I had three heads.

To be fair, I also probably would have looked at you like you had three heads if you tried to prove this with 'Arrow Through Me' and particularly 'However Absurd' - bad choices.

But there are no solo tracks these guys did as deathless as “Yesterday”...

'Live and Let Die'

as deeply weird as “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” or “Helter Skelter,”

'Secret Friend'

or as perfect as “Martha My Dear”

'No More Lonely Nights' ('Martha My Dear' is a really bad example)

My rankings.

excellent post alfred, though i would (predictably perhaps) put #2 as #1

My rankings🕸.