Finding just one decent singer can be quite the task when throwing together a rock group. Though The Beatles’ success relied on much, much more, the band was inundated with vocal talent. Not only could band leaders Paul McCartney and John Lennon whip their lungs around an arresting rock harmony, but lead guitarist George Harrison and drummer Ringo Starr were also fine singers with plenty of credits in the catalogue.
Technical ability is, of course, a fundamental attribute when singing in most musical styles. However, as Bob Dylan has demonstrated, one doesn’t need the range of Freddie Mercury to become a successful singer. In the realms of folk and rock ‘n’ roll, personality and timbre are much more important. As for The Beatles, their voices were both technically competent and brimming with character.
Beatlemaniacs have argued for decades over who was the better singer between Lennon and McCartney. If we take personal bias and songwriting nuances out of the equation, McCartney probably just about had the edge on Lennon, with a dynamic voice suited to soulful ballads like ‘Let It Be’ and screaming rockouts like ‘Helter Skelter’.
Although most of The Beatles catalogue is credited to the Lennon-McCartney partnership, most of the tracks were primarily written by one or the other. Thus, there was usually not too much in the way of argument when it came to deciding who would take the lead vocal in each song. The pair tapped up Starr for several songs in need of his unique voice, like ‘What Goes On’ and ‘Yellow Submarine’, but for the most part, the Beatles led the vocals on the material they wrote.
When it came to recording the larynx-ripping Abbey Road cut, ‘Oh! Darling’ in 1969, the band didn’t deviate from the unwritten rule. As a McCartney composition, McCartney decided that he would record the intense and challenging vocal track. “I mainly remember wanting to get the vocal right, wanting to get it good, and I ended up trying each morning as I came into the recording session,” McCartney revealed in Many Years From Now. “I tried it with a hand mike, and I tried it with a standing mike, I tried it every which way, and finally got the vocal I was reasonably happy with.”
Alan Parsons, the recording engineer working on Abbey Road, remembered McCartney’s struggle to perfect the vocal in The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. “He only tried it once per day; I suppose he wanted to capture a certain rawness, which could only be done once before the voice changed. I remember him saying, ‘Five years ago I could have done this in a flash,’ referring, I suppose, to the days of ‘Long Tall Sally’ and ‘Kansas City’.”
Lennon, who was better versed in raspy yelling vocals, as demonstrated in classic songs like ‘Yer Blues’, ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ and ‘Twist and Shout’, felt that ‘Oh! Darling’ would have suited his voice much better. “‘Oh! Darling’ was a great one of Paul’s that he didn’t sing too well. I always thought that I could’ve done it better – it was more my style than his,” he told David Sheff. “He wrote it, so what the hell, he’s going to sing it. If he’d had any sense, he should have let me sing it.”
One can certainly imagine Lennon’s version of the song carrying that nuance of dark intensity with which he’s associated. However, McCartney’s ultimate recording was to use his words “a bit of a belter”. If I were McCartney, I would be much more concerned about the criticisms regarding his “fruity” song that preceded ‘Oh! Darling’ on the album.
