Beyond the Legend: Art Above the Man
When we talk about the Beatles, it is common to fall into the trap of personal narrative. It seems that to be an authentic fan, one must pick a side, build an altar for one Beatle, and simultaneously hunt for flaws or blame in the other. For years, we have seen attempts to judge the band's history under a moralistic magnifying glass—searching for who was to blame for the breakup, or trying to define who was the "good guy" and who was the "bad guy."
However, as music lovers, I believe we must ask ourselves a necessary question: Is it truly our responsibility to judge the personal integrity of those who created the soundtrack of our lives?
The Reality Behind the Stage
As a guitarist, I’ve had the good fortune of personally meeting major figures in the music industry at events like NAMM. I’ve stood before guitar masters with radically different personalities. I’ve seen geniuses whose personal behavior is, to say the least, difficult or insufferable, yet whose virtuosity is undeniable—like Yngwie Malmsteen (and I agree with Mario Nava, the best luthier in Mexico, when he says Malmsteen is a total pompous jerk). I’ve met musicians whose personal convictions or worldviews clash head-on with mine—like Brian Setzer—and others who, fortunately, possess a humility and empathy that confirm musical greatness can indeed come with great human quality, as is the case with Dave Murray.
As a valuable lesson, these experiences have taught me that musical talent and moral quality are independent variables.
Why This Reflection?
I’ve noticed that many Beatle fans tend to undermine Paul McCartney. To a degree, I get why people get annoyed by the Pro-Paul exaggerators on YouTube who call him "the greatest musician in the world," as well as Paul’s shift toward more commercial pop production in the 1980s. But the animosity toward the ex-Beatle sometimes borders on unhealthy.
Among the endless accusations against the bassist, one stands out: the legend that he was solely responsible for the Beatles' internal breakup because he acted like the boss and manipulated everyone to get his way.
Yes and no.
According to the official biography written by Hunter Davies, Paul tried from the very beginning to give the trio formed by himself, John Lennon, and George Harrison (The Quarrymen, up until 1959) a solid harmonic structure. According to Julia Baird, John’s half-sister, in her book John Lennon, My Brother, Paul was the one in charge of arranging the vocal harmonies they used in their early covers. It was also Paul who, looking to tighten their sound, suggested bringing in George to cover the lead guitar spot.
Returning to Davies' account, Paul adhered to the rules and diplomatic manners dictated by Brian Epstein—for those who don't know, though it's hard not to, Epstein was the band's manager—and Paul was the one who kept up the appearance of the "well-behaved boys." This becomes obvious when watching public performances: Lennon had a defiant attitude, Harrison looked rather bored, and Ringo Starr was condescending, all contrasting with Paul’s committed and crowd-pleasing demeanor.
When touring came to an end, McCartney took it upon himself to keep the group connected to headquarters at NEMS Enterprises and the recording studio. Administratively speaking, only Paul cared about keeping the machinery turning, and he was the only one keeping a proper schedule to keep working. As harsh as it sounds, the implicit rift between Brian Epstein’s office and producer George Martin’s leadership at EMI/Capitol after the tours ended removed any daily work obligation. That daily contact had been the backbone of Brian’s office between 1962 and 1966.
Paul McCartney made sure that line didn't break.
After touring ended, George—who hated touring the most—leaned toward jamming with other peers, buying more guitars, and writing on his own, viewing his role as a Beatle purely as a source of income. Essentially, he was the only one who felt no roots or ties to the "Beatles" concept. John was living through a period of sins and redemptions, holding a clear, ambivalent resentment toward his parents, Alfred and Julia, and a very dual gratitude toward the only woman who ever acted as a mother in his life: Mary Elizabeth Stanley—Aunt Mimi.
Ringo was probably the only one of the four with a sturdier foundation and far more prior experience as a working musician when he was called to join. But he was also the only one who considered it a stroke of pure luck to be part of it all.
Paul was the young man who had become a celebrity, rubbing shoulders with the upper crust of London society thanks to his then-girlfriend, actress Jane Asher (and also thanks to Brian Epstein, it should be noted), fully stepping into his role as a songwriter. Nothing any other new-money kid wouldn't have done at the time. But Paul also cared about maintaining the family unit that had kept them together during those bread-and-water days in Liverpool and the sordid, almost marginal life in Hamburg. Of all of them, Paul attached the most importance to the core they had built.
John Lennon felt he owed nothing to anyone and that, in fact, life owed him way too much (which was partly true). Lennon was disgusted by the rot of show business and knew that celebrity surrounded by privileges wasn't who he really was. His raw edge and cruelty were more of a defense mechanism; he rejected anything that seemed hypocritical—his most laudable virtue, we must admit.
Finding Yoko Ono in a London full of extreme fashions and sudden sexual liberation was more than just finding another woman for Lennon; he had found something completely different from everything else, something that fit his need for affection as a creator, not just as a man.
Nobody within the Beatle universe understood at the time why the leader, John, became so infatuated with a conceptual artist living out her existentialist-experimental phase—someone who had been through many arms in the visual arts underground and was, ironically, intellectually and culturally more mature than John. This was the moment where Paul tried to protect the whole beehive under his frustrated "protective older brother" complex (because if anything characterizes McCartney, it's his British pride). Yet, as rare as it might seem, he was also the only one who didn't try to stir up hatred toward Yoko.
The unfair part of all this is that both George and Ringo were openly Anti-Yoko, making jokes ranging from subtle to ruthless. Like a weed session in the EMI studio bathroom where George cracked one of his boldest lines to Mal Evans and Ringo:
—Does she have an oblique vagina?
The period surrounding the making of The Beatles—also known as the White Album—was perhaps the most morally complicated for Paul. Almost all the songs on the album stemmed from their trip to India, from which they returned with new ideas, but also with a marked sense of apathy toward working together again.
According to Philip Norman (Shout! The True Story of The Beatles), George Harrison barely remembered he was a Beatle, wandering around with Eric Clapton and Pete Townshend, sometimes drinking at the Marquee Club when Jimi Hendrix performed. Ringo had thrown himself into acting, playing a Mexican gardener in Christian Marquand’s film Candy, thinking that even as a supporting actor he’d have a less secondary role than in The Beatles.
John, meanwhile, gave free rein to his new romance with lysergic acid and Yoko, breaking away from the traditional framework of the Englishman and the prefabricated rock idol image (something that destroyed figures like Elvis Presley, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, and Brian Jones).
When the White Album sessions began, Paul was the only one trying to keep his feet on the ground so as not to alienate their fans' pockets, while George rebelled by demanding space as a songwriter (which he turned out to be brilliant at) and supporting Ringo in the same department. At this point, only Ringo was still taking his role as a Beatle seriously, besides Paul. John, in contrast, was smashing the plastic era that had carried them around the world.
It would be unfair to omit that John’s songs on this album are considered sacred jewels and that he re-established himself as the leader, but it is also true that the most polished (though more commercial) work fell on Paul’s shoulders. To stay relevant, they recorded two singles during those sessions: Hey Jude and Revolution. By far, Paul’s song took the top spots on the radio, while John’s took a decade to achieve the same stature.
To this day, people say John was the leftist idealist who confronted the U.S. government when he became a resident (and it is believed in the shadows that this is why he was murdered), but the first one who actually dared to challenge the establishment was Paul. Back in the U.S.S.R. wasn't just a veiled jab at Chuck Berry for selling out to the system; it was an open parody of the two most powerful governments in the world at the time: the USA and the Soviet Union. Furthermore, to this day, he was the first to use his rivals' signature sounds (the Beach Boys-style harmonies), and they eventually covered the song themselves.
Get Back: The Acid Test?
In the 1970s, the band's movies screened for years at fan club conventions, but Let It Be was a rare piece. John had his career with Yoko and the Plastic Ono Band. He played few concerts and made few appearances. His life read like a Fellini script, remaining within rock's elite surrounded by musicians as irresponsible as himself (Joe Walsh, Keith Moon, Ringo Starr), as well as figures who always took care of their image and well-being (Steve Cropper, Harry Nilsson, Elton John, David Bowie and Mick Jagger). But he never descended into the hell of tours sponsored by Budweiser or Pepsi-Cola—something Paul did do.
That decade was peculiarly strange, and it marked the beginning of visceral hatred from Lennon fans toward Paul McCartney. Paul’s tours with Wings, television appearances, and silly love songs made him the antithesis of a John Lennon cloaked in his legend as a musical guru—a guru who only had to snap his fingers to bring an equally resentful George Harrison into the studio. One command was all it took for the two of them to spew venom at Paul with How Do You Sleep?, their response to Paul's goofy track Too Many People, where he had mocked their intellectual pretensions.
The generations that enjoyed the Beatles in real-time are now retired, elderly, or gone. But those of us who grew up listening to them (now in our fifties and sixties) witnessed every era, at least from Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da to the present day. None of us took pleasure in Paul’s duets with figures like Michael Jackson, nor his attempts to regain the spotlight in the 1980s (his film Give My Regards to Broad Street was terrible). But it is true that the commercialization following John’s death backed Paul into a corner. That is a truth many try to hide, yet it reveals itself deeply.
It was the relatively recent release of the Get Back documentary that reignited the debate, both against and in favor. Those of us who watched Let It Be and then watched the full Get Back series saw two different versions of the same story. In the former, we saw four Beatles struggling to pull a project together, including the argument between Paul and George. But in the latter, we saw Paul McCartney trying to keep a sinking ship afloat, a John who didn't mind going back to where it all started, a George who was fed up to his teeth with being a Beatle, and a Ringo beginning to accept that none of this was going to last.
The irony in all this is that it also showed Paul already considering Yoko and his wife Linda Eastman as part of the family. This proves how unfair it is to single out either Yoko or Paul as the sole cause of the Beatles' breakup. In reality, the musicians themselves had lost their way without realizing it. Well... Lennon knew.
All of this brings us back to the point where, as fans, we construct an idyllic idea of how we wish things were. The Beatles we all love are those magnificent Yeah! Yeah! friends in gray suits, playing Rickenbacker and Gretsch guitars, Höfner basses, and Ludwig drums—or the moustachioed icons in Sgt. Pepper suits with beautiful wives like Cynthia Powell, Maureen Cox, Pattie Boyd, and the no less stunning Jane Asher. Our minds remain anchored to that era of apparent perfection. In the end, few of us accept that John and Paul were as human as anyone else, and that neither George nor Ringo were as submissive or easygoing as history painted them.
The Right to Separate the Work from the Author
When we demand that our musical heroes be perfect—beings of light without shadows, or people whose personal decisions always align with our own ethics—we miss the fundamental point. We are consuming the myth instead of the music. We are trying to force an idealization created in our own minds into reality.
Admiring someone doesn't mean canonizing them. You can recognize John Lennon’s genius, Paul McCartney’s melodic mastery, George Harrison’s skill and intelligence, or Ringo Starr’s unmatched pocket without putting their private lives on trial. The Beatles' breakup, the friction, the arguments, and the career choices were complex, human processes separate from us.
Back to the Grooves
The next time we put a Fab Four record on the turntable, let's leave the "good vs. evil" narratives behind. Let's stop trying to justify our personal tastes by demonizing others. At the end of the day, the Beatles left us a technical and emotional legacy that transcends their egos. We don't need them to be perfect for their music to remain, quite simply, the best.
In the end, Paul is as much a Beatle as John, George, or Ringo ever were. None of them were perfect, and that is precisely why we remain fascinated by them. Their music wasn't born out of perfection; it was born out of an unrepeatable human friction that achieved the unthinkable—it became our universal language. Children, grandparents, soldiers, police officers, convicts, broken hearts, and joyful souls: no matter who we are or where we come from, there is always a place for us in their songs. That is, perhaps, the greatest proof that their legacy belongs to all of us, far beyond any myth or judgment we try to impose on them.
That's all for now,
Messy Blues
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