Lennon and McCartney were rendered artistically sterile by their split

THERE SHOULD BE a reappraisal of John Lennon. He has a stature which was warranted when he partnered Paul, now Sir Paul McCartney; as part of the creative duo that made the Beatles. But when the group split, neither produced any work of merit. The Lennon and McCartney partnership was comparable to the great American song writers and musical composers of the past; nothing they touched could go wrong; they were truly blessed with a creative vigour that, used as a duo, produced the greatest popular music of modern times from the 1960's to 1970. They produced the great lyrics and musical accompaniment to those lyrics that were unsurpassed in popular music during that decade and any other that followed.

                  

            Tell me, did anything they contrived as individuals come even close to what were on the wing albums? Please Please Me (1963), With the Beatles (1963), A Hard Day's Night (1964) Beatles for Sale (1964), Help! (1965), Rubber Soul (1965), Revolver (1966), Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), The Beatles ("The White Album", 1968), Yellow Submarine (1969), Abbey Road (1969),   and Let It Be (1970).

            To pretend their individual talent outlived their partnership (as many of those of my generation seek to do) are just falling victim to sentiment .The Beatles produced the most popular music and the most literate of lyrics. Their lyrics often pre-empted and summed up those years when you look back on your life.

            

            The Beatles were the very best. Better than the Stones or Elvis Presley – although the Kinks did run them a close second. But when they split; the music died. Although neither McCartney or Lennon could accept this; having believed themselves artistically supreme in their own right, they sustained each other by believing themselves individually gifted; so they continued alone, but to produce only the banal in terms of musical and lyrical composition: which the critics and the media went along with mainly because they were part of the same 1960s generation as myself; and so continued the Lennon and McCartney myth under the mediocrity they undoubtedly were, as individuals.

            

             McCartney formed the group Wings, with little success and even attempted a classical theme with his Liverpool Oratorio; a pretentious ambition born from an overweening sense of his own self-importance. As for Lennon, all he could come up with was a commercially proclaimed anthem called Imagine. A rebuke to the modern world replaced only by nihilism. Both gifted artists lost their way when they separated. Neither could function without the other. Which was well understood by the other two members of the group.

JOHN LENNON DIED on the 8^th of December 1980 at the age of 40. He was assassinated by Mark Chapmen outside of the Dakota Apartment building in New York. With his death his legend was meant to, and did indeed prosper; like many another American pop entertainer from Buddy Holly onward. Yet Lennon was a pedestrian presence once freed from Paul McCartney's contribution;  as was Paul McCartney once freed of Lennon's. Their individual talents complimented each other; and they were the Beatles – as both Ringo Starr and George Harrison would acknowledge.

            

          When they separated from each other, their work was reduced to the everyday and commonplace. Lennon and McCartney were the creative geniuses of the 1960s and early 1970s. In combination they produced single after single, and LP after LP. They lit up a generation and embedded their lyrics into future generations. The Beatles were exemplary in the way they captured a generation without ever knowing it; until they absorbed what was written about them.

RAY DAVIS AND THE KINKS were second only to the Beatles and better than the Stones. But unlike the Beatle's,  Ray Davis new when the group's time was up and left the music scene. In doing so they left the music world a portfolio, like the Beatles, of music that will continue to transcend the generations. Albums such as  Face to Face, Something Else, The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, Arthur, Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround and Muswell Hillbillies, on top of their singles.

JOHN LENNON, when he took up with the avant-gardes 'artist' Yoko Ono, was pussy whipped by her. Her influence absorbed him more than his talent. The ridiculous Plastic Ono Band that they set up was even more unremarkable than McCartney's Wings. There was the so-called 'sleep in' and 'give peace a chance' pantomime that finally made me give up on any hope that Lennon could work, like McCartney… alone. Both were tolerated for their earlier combined work after the breakup, as artists.

            

             John Lennon's reputation has grown since the tragic circumstances of his death. There is nothing more appetising to modern youth of any generation than the early demise of a pop icon, and John Lennon did himself and his reputation a great deal of good by dying so young.

            

            The Beatles, as a group, should be separated from its two foremost creative talents who separated themselves from the group. The Beatles died when the group split up; and the contribution made by its two premier artists should not be judged only on what they created as partners motivating the Beatles, but also as separate individuals, separate from their period as partners, which was not a lot, and third rate.

            

             It is about time that Lennon and McCartney were appreciated solely for their musical partnership. It is upon this, that the true talent of both should be judged. What they both did individually, after the split, merits little: in terms of creativity of the equal worth that they achieved when in tandem. Their individual efforts after the split amounted to the mediocre. Lennon and McCartney were meant for each other, and nothing greater.