Just a few notes on the listings…  Any songs that are struck through are actually sung by someone other than the specified ex-Beatles, whether it is Yoko Ono or Denny Laine.  Meanwhile songs in italics are instrumentals.  These two types of songs are far less likely to make the cut for the album, as there are not a lot of previous examples of these two types of song on the officially released Beatles albums.

After the laid-back aesthetics of McCartney and Plastic Ono Band, both Lennon and McCartney decide to add what John referred to as “sugar-coating” with much larger and more elaborate productions.  John and Paul start addressing each a directly, Paul with the somewhat oblique Too Many People while John lashed back with the unmistakable How Do You Sleep?  Both albums feature a simple twelve-bar blues with a shuffle feel for their second song (3 Legs and Crippled Inside). 

Ram was critically lambasted at the time but has since grown to cult-favorite and is now considered one of Paul’s best. Ram was technically credited to Paul and Linda McCartney, with Linda receiving co-writing credit for several songs. There is some skepticism about how much Linda actually contributed and how much of the co-writing credit was just a dodge to retain control of half of the songwriting royalties as Paul’s publishing was still tied up in Beatles-era deals. It did result in a lawsuit that was eventually settled out-of-court for an undisclosed sum. Meanwhile, Yoko only managed to belatedly get co-writing credit for the song Imagine just in the last few years.

While Ringo showed up on Plastic Ono Band, Imagine features George Harrison on several cuts.  Paul eschewed the whole one-man-band aesthetic and used a handful of session musicians for Ram (and as probably as a try-out for his next band, Wings).  In fact this is really the first time either Paul or John fired studio musicians directly rather than just getting friends to play on their records or having George Martin contract the string players or their beheast.

While Plastic Ono Band consists of newly written songs dealing with the Beatles’ break-up and John’s involvement in primal scream therapy, Imagine contains a couple of songs first started during the Beatles’ days, including Jealous Guy which was originally written for The White Album under the title Child Of Nature but left off because it was too lyrically similar to Paul’s Mother Nature’s Son as well as Gimme Some Truth which the Beatles worked on for a bit during the Get Back sessions.

While George’s three biggest hits are one disc one of All Things Must Pass, I personally prefer disc two.  It gets goofier with songs like Apple Scruffs and I Dig Love, as well as containing my favorite version of Isn’t It A Pity (since it’s the shorter version).  In fact, if you removed the empty padding of the Apple Jam disc and the extraneous version of Isn’t It A Pity, the massive-seeming All Things Must Pass is whittled down to a mere 17 songs at a little over an hour and eight minutes.  That is a little short for a double-album honestly, although if George had finished off some of the songs he either started or demoed during these sessions (I Live For You, Beautiful Girl, You, Try Some, Buy Some, Woman Don’t You Cry For Me, I’ll Still Love You, Window Window, Nowhere To Go, Cosmic Empire, Tandoori Chicken, etc.) he would ultimately have an album that earned the reputation for length as well as brilliance as All Things Must Pass is assumed to have.

Ringo finally got around to releasing his first solo rock material – even if it was just a single.  Ringo also upped the number of solo compositions he had written from three to five with this release, although, clearly George had an un-credited hand helping with the A-side.  In fact, bootlegs of George’s guide vocal on It Don’t Come Easy as well as some of Ringo’s own comments, makes one wonder if Harrison was in fact the sole author.  The B-side however is clearly Ringo’s own, as he clumsily attempts to mask the identities of the other three Beatles and humbly admit to his own shortcomings as a multi-instrumentalist.  It is one of my all-time favorite Ringo tracks.

The playlist kicks off with one of John’s political-slogans-turned-singles Power To The People.  This is certainly a better song and a fuller recording than Give Peace A Chance.  Around this time John was also threatening to release a reggae song entitled Make Love Not War.  Luckily this never came to fruition.  From here Paul chimes in with Too Many People, chiding some of Lennon’s more blatant politicking.  Despite the opposite messages of the lyrics, it’s a good one-two punch of upbeat strong rockers that show than Lennon & McCartney are going to step up their production game this time around.

From the state of the world to the state of the Beatles we get Ringo’s autobiographical Early 1970 to help relieve some of the pressures and pretensions that have accumulated thus far.  From there George lets us know that he understand the grief inherent in big changes, such as the death of a loved one (or the Beatles break-up).  But he reminds that such change is inevitable and should not be fought against.

Since we’ve all moved on now, Paul gives us Another Day.  This is simply a stunner of a single and a shame that it didn’t actually appear on Ram.  While the production may be more pop-oriented and upbeat, the way McCartney decries this poor working woman’s life of drudgery and her unsuccessful attempts at maintaining some fleeting happiness is just devastating.  I love the lines about her begging her man to stay, and he does … until the next morning.  This is a portrait of Eleanor Rigby as a young woman.  I think it’s better than Yesterday.

You know who doesn’t think Another Day is as good as Yesterday?  John Lennon.  He’s back with a vengeance.  Only slightly better veiled than Early 1970 is How Do You Sleep?  This may also be one of my favorite Lennon tracks, featuring a cutting George Harrison guitar solo.  While I can’t get behind the mean-spirited content of the lyrics, this is one of his best track musically.  It is funky and John’s vocals are impressively bitter.  Sure, I doubt Paul would’ve allowed this on any album he was on, but I couldn’t pass it up.  I even toyed with the idea of following this up with Wild Life’s Dear Friend to sort of close the whole back-and-forth between John and Paul, but I just didn’t feel it fit.  Besides, I love Ram, and would hate to have to lose any more of those songs to make room for that.

The side ends with George’s warning about too much negativity Beware Of Darkness.  Much like a pacifist unsuccessfully breaking up a fight, it’s a worthwhile effort, but completely futile and just as like to stoke the fires as it is to extinguish them.  John may not completely see the error of his ways, but he’s more than happy to tell others that they need to be more peaceful.  Thus Side Two opens with what may be John’s most famous solo song, Imagine.  It’s become a well-loved classic for a good reason.  The sentiment of the lyrics is truly hopefully (certainly after the vindictive spleen of How Do You Sleep?) and the music is an appropriately stirring anthem to match.

But since everyone is in an angry and foul mood, we next get Paul’s harshest and grittiest vocal, Monkberry Moon Delight, even if the lyrics are complete gibberish and he can’t really express why he’s so pissed off.  George wants to get in on the loud/angry bandwagon too with The Art Of Dying.  While George’s vocals have never had that kind of bite to them, the song is proto-metal with some screaming electric guitars and a kick-ass horn section.  From here things cool down a bit with Ringo’s self-effacing It Don’t Come Easy, a great little track that fits him well.

Rather than continue to get angry at McCartney, or disappointed in humanity, John decides to wrap things up on a fun positive note.  And for Lennon, that always means declaring his love for Ono.  The fun and silly song ends with some frantic wheezy on the harmonica which easily leads into the next track, Harrison’s ode to the Beatles’ fans, Apple Scruffs.  Both songs are breezy and light, which is always much more in Paul’s wheelhouse.  So Paul wraps things up with the ultimate goofy ditty Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey.  A sort of Abbey Road style suite of three or four semi-related song fragments, this so is both very complicated and yet utterly naïve and guileless.  It’s a perfect way to end the playlist.

Ultimately these songs feel much more coherent together than the last round.  Not only is George’s lushness no longer at odds with the starkness of John and Paul, but the lyrics are beginning to address some of the same topics, even if they have radically different points-of-view on them.  Enjoy this match-up, because it’s going to get rockier from here on out.