“It would have been nice”: The song John Lennon thought Paul McCartney needed sing

The entire rivalry between John Lennon and Paul McCartney is far more embellished than most people realise. Anyone could pick certain sound bites from interviews and claim that the two geniuses behind The Beatles hated each other’s guts by the time they called it quits, but if they didn’t acknowledge each other at all after the breakup, it would have ended up hurting that much more. And while Lennon could be especially vicious regarding some of his one-liners, that didn’t mean he didn’t have some degree of affection for his old bandmate.

Because looking at how they operated, they were the closest thing to brothers they had outside of their families. With every song they wrote, they could practically finish each other’s sentences, so when they finally split apart, it was easy to hear something missing when McCartney made his demo solo album or when Lennon started to unleash his own demons on Plastic Ono Band.

Did they still work fine on their own? Absolutely. They both had grown into seasoned songwriters, but it was also easier to point out their weaknesses when they were on their own. No matter how hard each of them tried, Macca would always be known as the kind of lighthearted pop writer behind some of the best ballads the band ever made, and Lennon managed to play up the role of the quasi-revolutionary more than a few times when calling for change in the world.

Even when they were apart, though, Lennon could find some of McCartney’s influence seeping into his songwriting. He had always claimed that he was more interested in the lyrics of the song before anything else, but judging by how well he could write melodies on tunes like ‘Love’ and ‘How’, he could certainly give his old mate a run for his money when the time called for it. But that didn’t mean that everything fit his voice, either.

While Lennon swore up and down that he would have done a better version of songs like ‘Oh! Darling’, there are moments when McCartney could have helped out his old friend. And when it came to some of the overlooked gems in Lennon’s solo career, he felt that ‘God Save Us’ was the closest thing to McCartney’s style of songwriting as he would ever get.

Despite Lennon giving the song away to be sung by Bill Elliott, he felt that it would have been a good idea to see what his old mate might have done with the tune, saying, “I thought, ‘That’s a commercial sound,’ – it would have been nice to have Paul’s voice singing ‘God Save Us’ – but the guy imitated more my demo, so he sounds like himself because he doesn’t sound like me really, but he doesn’t sound like Paul either.”

Since Macca was already working on his kooky masterpiece RAM, though, it would have had to go through some drastic changes if he were to embrace it. He was already testing the limits of his voice on songs like ‘Back Seat of My Car’ and ‘Monkberry Moon Delight’, so going back into familiar territory may have felt like a step backwards compared to everything else he was singing.

Even though fans would be clamouring to hear what a Lennon/McCartney collaboration would have sounded like going into the 1970s, it’s best to have kept the legacy where it was. Because had ‘God Save Us’ not gone over well with the public, the last thing that fans wanted to see was them teaming up again and seeming like they were going through the motions.