The Beatles never had strict rules about who sang whose songs. While the songwriters usually decided who would sing and how a track should sound, it wasn’t unusual for John Lennon to sing a Paul McCartney song or for George Harrison to get help on his own material from ‘The Nerk Twins’. After Lennon’s death, McCartney felt compelled to honour his old friend whenever possible, but he never dared to perform ‘Imagine’.
Once The Beatles called it a day, Lennon and McCartney moved in different directions. Their separation only grew larger once Allen Klein shoved his meaty paws into the mix, but that didn’t stop them from channelling much of their personal emotions into their music. McCartney may have put on a brave face on albums like RAM, but Lennon had something more to say.
After becoming one of the most famous faces on the planet, Lennon decided to finally take some time to work on himself when making Plastic Ono Band. Since he had finally found his own inner peace, though, ‘Imagine’ was his way of sharing that kind of message with the rest of the world, only asking people to think of a world where everyone lives as one.
While Lennon admitted that the whole thing was just a sugar-coated take on his political beliefs, that didn’t seem to matter to the rest of the listening public. To them, this was just a simple song about what could happen if we treated each other a little bit better, but McCartney insisted that he would never be playing the song live.
During a tour in 1990, Macca wanted to commemorate Lennon on what would have been his 50th birthday, only to reel back on doing his signature song, telling Rolling Stone, “There’s no shame in doing these songs. In fact, I considered doing a major tribute to John…But then people started saying, ‘Why don’t you do ‘Imagine’?’ And I thought, ‘Fucking hell, Diana Ross does ‘Imagine’. They all do ‘Imagine’. That’s when I backed off the whole thing”.
That didn’t mean he couldn’t still pay tribute to his friend in other ways. When tearing through his regular touring setlist, McCartney was known to create a medley of different Lennon songs to honour his friend, including bits of ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ and ending with his anthem ‘Give Peace a Chance’.
Even the McCartney of today hasn’t been afraid to put a few Beatles surprises into the setlist. Sure, there may be the old favourites that everyone loves like ‘Hey Jude’, but McCartney made a habit of throwing in other deep cuts like Lennon’s ‘Being For the Benefit of Mr Kite’, something which tripped him up when trying to play it in time.
Regardless of how he decides to pay tribute to his friend now, McCartney has never sounded more reverent of his old friend than on his own song ‘Here Today’. Compared to the thousands of tribute songs spread throughout history, McCartney captured an entire relationship of memories within three minutes, and every time he plays that tune, it often feels like the spirit of Lennon is listening along with all of us.
