The Beatles boys were never ones to mince their words. John Lennon, especially, was always outspoken with his thoughts on the work created by his band, along with the subsequent solo efforts. There, ready to humble his friends or himself, Lennon might have been his own harshest critic.
After the breakdown of the Beatles, Lennon was primed and ready to critique his old bandmates’ new music. When Paul McCartney released his debut solo album, McCartney, in 1970, Lennon offered it no niceties. A year after the Fab Four split, Lennon called his longtime collaborator and oldest friend’s album “rubbish”.
McCartney wasn’t the only one to face up to Lennon’s judgement. As George Harrison also launched his solo career in 1970 with All Things Must Pass, Lennon talked openly about it as “an embarrassing period when George [Harrison]’s songs weren’t that good”.
It seems incredibly harsh and could be read as Lennon feeling bitter and venomous towards his ex-bandmates. But when you look back at the entire history of his interviews, both as a Beatles member and a solo artist, it seems savage was just Lennon’s style.
His critique wasn’t reserved solely for others. Lennon regularly dismissed his own work as he talked badly about several Beatles tracks.
In particular, Lennon never really liked Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Never genuinely buying into the concept or being sold on the sound, he preferred the broader experimentation of the White Album. While he apparently loved ‘A Day In The Life’, Lennon called the album track ‘Good Morning, Good Morning’ a “piece of garbage”.
That’s not the only song to be trashed by Lennon, either. Similarly, his 1970 track ‘Dig A Pony’ from Let It Be was deemed nothing but “another piece of garbage”.
Even one of the most iconic pieces of Beatles music has been criticised by Lennon. The Abbey Road medley, including all the songs on side two of the album, features tracks like ‘Golden Slumbers’, ‘Carry That Weight’ and the beautiful ‘The End’. The rolling instrumental that seamlessly carries you from track to track is applauded as some of the band’s finest and most daring work. But according to Lennon, the medley is “junk”.
“I never liked that sort of pop opera on the other side, I think it’s junk,” he told Rolling Stone. “It was just bits of song thrown together,” he added, talking about the medley as nothing more than a way to use up old songs.
‘Mean Mr Mustard’ was also brushed with the same “piece of garbage” judgement, while ‘Sun King’ also received criticism. “None of the songs had anything to do with each other, no thread at all,” he said, “only the fact that we stuck them together.”
Binning off so many iconic tracks, John Lennon’s own takes on the Beatles discography are wild.
