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.

Having completed both of their divergent objectives in Round Five, John and Paul were no left to decide what to do next. Both Lennon and McCartney then decided to return to their rock’n’roll roots.  But this too meant completely different thing to them.  For Paul it meant once more getting a band, going tour, releasing records, getting on the radio with their latest singles, playing larger and larger venues until you’re finally headlining your own arena tour.  For John it meant going back to singing songs by Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry, with or without Phil Spector.

Paul found some anonymous lackeys to fill the holes in the Wings line-up so that they co start playing live shows again.  From there, McCartney quickly wrote and recorded a follow-up to Band On The Run while he was still on a hot streak.  The album, Venus & Mars, was clearly designed to be played live at shows so that the audience could go home and buy the new record after they saw the concert.  Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, but it did feel a little mercenary, even if the singles were catchy as hell and very effective.

John on the other hand, was a little more reluctant to continue on as a rock-star.  However, he had a number of commitments that just were not going to go away.  For nicking the line about an old flattop in Come Together from Chuck Berry’s You Can’t Catch Me, part of the settlement included Lennon promising to record three tunes from Morris Levy’s music publishing catalog.  In that vein John first decided to record an album of covers titled Oldies But Mouldies after finishing work on Mind Games.  And who better to helm this type of record but John’s old pal Phil Spector.

Only it turns out that Phil Spector is completely nuts (shocking!) and before the album was done Phil had absconded with the master tapes and disappeared completely.  So John moved on, first producing Harry Nilsson’s Pussy Cats album (and destroying his vocal cords in the process) and then recording his own Walls & Bridges which ended with a brief snippet of Ya-Ya to appease Morris Levy.  Unfortunately, this was insufficient, so John was going to have to get the tapes back from Phil Spector and finish the album himself.  Adding to this drama, someone else had managed to get to Phil Spector’s tapes first and was advertising a bootleg titled Roots on TV.  If that wasn’t enough, Elton John had gotten Ono and Lennon back together and now Yoko was pregnant.   If John wanted to stay home and raise the child Yoko was carrying, he still had one album left on his Apple contract, and he wanted to get that discharged before the baby was born. 

And so the Rock’n’Roll album is both drawn-out and chaotic (under Spector) as well as quick and methodical once Lennon got the tapes back and knocked the rest out.  It is a confusing, underwhelming mess.  John was not in the best state of mind while recording many of these songs and Phil was simply overwhelming him with his characteristic Wall of Sound.  While Lennon is a great vocalist, he’s a better songwriter.  Even under the best of circumstances, a covers album feels a little like a stop-gap solution to a case of writer’s block.  In fact, the most disappointing thing about the final album is how little of that drama chaos makes it onto the record as John’s additions and revisions to Spector’s first pass usually tighten everything up and leave us with a half-hearted shrug of an album that could’ve been a moment of John really reconnecting for the first time in a long while.  There is little to no investment in these songs, and it is clear John wasn’t interested in playing music anymore.

Paul on the other hand is clearly relishing his moment.  Writing songs about how great it is to go see a rock show (subtly imply how great it is to go to his rock show), as well as breaking out all the usual Paul McCartney-isms.  There’s his usual Honey Pie soft shoe shuffle with You Gave Me The Answer.  There’s the childish whimsy of Magneto And Titanium Man that wasn’t going to make any sense whether or not you were actually familiar with the X-Men villain.  In an attempt to placate his lesser Wings-mates, he lets Denny, and even new guy Jimmy, sing a song apiece – although that may be part of the patterning of this album for the stage.  McCartney was going to need a song or two to rest his vocal cords, so throwing them a bone helps him out too. 

Paul has bombastic rockers and weepy ballads on the album, he’s also got stabs at New Orleans cool and R&B and even a country song that didn’t make the cut.  Probably the least calculated and commercial moment of Venus & Mars is the final song, a one-minute cover of an instrumental theme song from a British soap opera.  There still has never been any good explanation for why Paul covered this; much less released it on his album.  As usual for Paul, there are enough non-album singles and B-sides and outtakes this could’ve easily be extended to a double album.  That does always mean that Paul has plenty of material to choose from when he re-releases all of his albums in various deluxe or archive versions.

While John rebounded from Some Time In New York City with the slightly better if bland Mind Games, and Paul came back from Wild Life with the slightly better if bland Red Rose Speedway, George decided to follow-up Dark Horse with the slightly better if bland Extra Texture.  Nobody told George that he didn’t need to release an album every year and that waiting for a couple of years might help him build up a stockpile of worthwhile songs.  Once again George dip back into the unreleased Ronnie Spector album he was working on during All Things Must Pass and replaces her vocals with his.  Not only that, but he pads the album out with the cleverly titled A Bit More Of You which is just another 45 seconds of the song You.  For this album George has decided to use his blown vocal cords to his advantage by leaning heavily into a blue-eyed soul with lots of ARP synthesizers for Extra Texture.  He includes the first of his two tributes to Smokey Robinson on this album, as well as writing the first of his two Beatle-sequels with This Guitar (Can’t Keep From Crying).  There are some cool jazzy tunes on this album, but it is hardly the comeback that George needed after Dark Horse.

In addition to Smokey Robinson, there is a tribute song to comedian (I think) Larry “Legs” Smith.  I am not familiar with his work, but considering that George was also hanging out with Monty Python, you would assume he has good taste.  However, there is no way to tell from this track as there are two simultaneous track of spoken going on simultaneously in either ear, making it impossible to understand anything that “Legs” is saying, much less determine if it is funny at all.

While George had a sequel to While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Ringo decided to redo the whole Ringo album with Ringo’s Rotogravure.  All three of his ex-Beatle mates are on this album as well a couple of oldies covers alá You’re Sixteen and Only You.  There’s also a song written by Eric Clapton, as well as the only songwriting collaboration between Ringo and his girlfriend at the time, Las Brisas, an attempt at mariachi music.  Overall the album was seen to be as much of a step down from Goodnight Vienna as that album was seen to be a step down from Ringo.  Plus no one really knew what a rotogravure was.  It’s not a terrible album per se, but there’s not much on there that is particularly notable or enjoyable on there.  It does feature one of the last songs written by John before retreating into his househusband phase, although there’s so little going on in Cookin’ (In The Kitchen Of Love) that it’s hard to imagine that John spent  more than ten minutes on it.

I open the playlist with one of the few original songs attempted during the Rock’n’Roll sessions, the Phil Spector co-write Here We Go Again.  In essence it shows John’s attitude during this era as well as setting us up for another record.  Plus, it’s one less cover I have to put on this playlist.  From here we get the single edit of Venus & Mars/Rock Show which also tees up the album and Paul’s feelings as well.  From here we get the closest thing to a hit from Extra Texture, You – which may be one of the dumbest things you can name a song.

From one All Things Must Pass leftover to another, we get Ringo’s I’ll Still Love You.  While George did allow Ringo to record this for his album, unlike Paul or John, he did show up to play on the recording sessions for his song.  Something must’ve really irked him because George ended up suing Ringo over this version of this song, although I was never able to quite parse out what Harrison was so upset about.  But while we’re talking about lawsuits, the next track, You Can’t Catch Me is the tune that led to the lawsuit that led to the creation of Rock’n’Roll.  Ironically it’s also one of the best songs on that album.

Since we’re rocking out, we next have the slinky cool groove of Paul’s Letting Go.  Sure Listen To What The Man Says was a bigger hit, but I just can’t stand that tune.  I think I may be allergic to the soprano sax.  While Band On The Run’s Bluebird might be Paul’s answer to Blackbird and he had to be thinking about Yesterday when he wrote Tomorrow for Wild Life, there is no sequel as direct as This Guitar (Can’t Keep From Crying) – except for maybe Here Comes The Moon.  While it does come across as a bit of a desperate gambit to remind listeners of his former glory days, the song itself is really good.  It is not nearly as good as the White Album original, but it is one of the best tracks on Extra Texture.

Side Two opens with John’s biggest hit from Rock’n’Roll the straightforward cover of Ben E. King’s Stand By Me.  It’s as good as the original, although the original isn’t that great to begin with either.  Still it is a competently done cover and features John’s most engaged vocals.  From there we have one of the trippier ballads on Venus & Mars, Love In Song.  It’s got a little bit of a spooky vibe to it, elevating it above Treat Her Gently or Call Me Back Again.  “Can’t Stop Thinking About You” is a fairly standard Extra Texture track, but it does have a little more life to it than say Grey Cloudy Lies or World Of Stone so it get a place on this playlist.

Neither John’s Cookin’ (In The Kitchen Of Love) or Paul’s Pure Gold are particularly good and feel more like leftover given to Ringo rather than tailor-made for him.  Instead I went with the single A Dose Of Rock’n’Roll as it fits in well with John’s Rock’n’Roll covers.  From there I just picked and of John’s covers almost completely at random.  I went with Be-Bop-A-Lula but it could’ve been Ain’t That A Shame or Peggy Sue for all I cared.  The best thing that can be said about John’s Rock’n’Roll is that it’s better than the Beach Boys 15 Big Ones.  From there we get another Paul rock anthem in the non-album single Junior’s Farm.  I’m not sure what the lyrics are about, but it’s a strong song.  We wrap up the album with what has always been the hidden gem of Extra Texture Tired Of Midnight Blue.  I’m not sure why all the elements coalesced to work on this track when they failed everywhere else, but I love this song.

And I needed to end on some sort of high note as this was one of the toughest rounds to put together.  There were very few connections between any of the albums or songs in this period.  Of all the playlists so far, this is the one most illustrative of why they couldn’t keep making music together.  Sure, they were angrier at each other on previous playlists, but they don’t even have enough common ground to attempt a compromise at this point.  And they were never going to get any closer to each other again musically.