Why this the Beatles album John Lennon hated: “Garbage”

For a long time, John Lennon was the ultimate leader of The Beatles. The more brutish member of ther group, not afraid to lose his temper or devote himself to his idyll of rock and roll rebellion, Lennon was the natural candidate to be the face of the group. Having assembled the quartet, he saw fit to rule the roost, for the most part.

However, once fame hit and the band’s popularity came with a double dose of fame and fortune, Lennon’s unwavering focus on his goals began to fall by the wayside. His previous vision of unstoppable creativity had waned yet infiltrated the minds of his Liverpudlian counterparts. Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr had begun to fill the shoes that Lennon, through a mix of debauched distraction, was beginning to vacate. It would culminate with one particular record.

In 1967, The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, changing the landscape of music and popular culture forever. While the project signified significant developments in the world of pop music and the legacy of the band as a whole, Lennon would, of course, tear the LP to pieces at a later date, picking out many of the tunes as below par.

The album has experienced a rollercoaster of appreciation in recent years. While it still holds an affection among fans of the Fab Four, the record has seen a recent downturn in adoration. Some find it on the flimsy side of whimsical and as indulgent as deep-fried ice cream. Still, there is no doubt that, as the execution of a colourful concept, there is simply no better moment in The Beatles’ discography. What was the main reason Lennon didn’t like Sgt. Pepper? Well, largely, because it was Paul McCartney’s favourite album.

In the years that followed The Beatles, Lennon seemed to grow increasingly hateful of individual tracks on the album. As the years went on and the relationship between the band’s principal songwriters became more fractured, he seemed to fall out of love with certain aspects of the album even further. The LP stood out, therefore, as a landmark moment that McCartney had begun to wrestle creative control away from Lennon.

Sgt. Pepper may well be viewed as one of The Beatles’ masterpieces, but it was primarily Paul McCartney’s baby. The singer and songwriter delved into the world of psychedelia and conceptual recording with his own perspective of music hall pop, and it influenced the album greatly. While it is often cited as The Fab Four’s greatest creation, there are facets of that album that, if it were down to Lennon, would have never made it on the final cut.

During one of his final interviews before his untimely death, Lennon sat down with Playboy‘s David Sheff and didn’t hold back from his analysis of the record, a conversation in which he claimed Sgt. Pepper was not on the same level as The White Album and labelled one song on the record “garbage”.

When picking The White Album as the superior record, Lennon revealed his theory as to why: “[Paul] wanted it to be more a group thing, which really means more Paul. So he never liked that album. It’s a record that is full of hits, from ‘Back in the U.S.S.R’ to ‘Blackbird’ to ‘Helter Skelter’ and beyond, it’s an undeniable powerhouse of an album.”

He continued with a swipe at Paul’s favourite Beatles record Sgt. Pepper: “I always preferred it to all the other albums, including Pepper, because I thought the music was better. The Pepper myth is bigger, but the music on the White Album is far superior, I think.”

Surprisingly, the song that he labelled as a “piece of garbage” was actually his own creation and seemingly one that had very little creative process behind it. The track in question is ‘Good Morning, Good Morning’. “‘Good Morning’ is mine,” Lennon later commented. “It’s a throwaway, a piece of garbage, I always thought. The ‘Good morning, good morning’ was from a Kellogg’s cereal commercial. I always had the TV on very low in the background when I was writing and it came over and then I wrote the song.”

In the very same interview, Lennon also didn’t hold back in his assessment of another track on the record which he wanted no association with saying it was “Paul’s completely” — which is ‘When I’m Sixty Four’. It was a comment which left no guesses in what Lennon’s true opinion of the song was despite using just a few devastating words, noting: “I would never even dream of writing something like that.”

Equally, in what appears to be a running theme, George Harrison was also not a fan of Sgt. Pepper. He felt the concept album had turned the band into a puppet worker bee, and with dreams of performing live once more, it was not a pleasant experience. “It became an assembly process—just little parts and then overdubbing,” he felt they had lost the edge that came with live performances.

On the contrary, McCartney later discussed why he thought it was his favourite piece of work by The Beatles, with the bassist stating: “I’d pick Sgt. Pepper’s, meself, because I had a lot to do with it.” He confirmed similarly in an interview from 1990, in which he said: “If records had a director within a band, I sort of directed Pepper.”

The album is undoubtedly a masterpiece of the highest calibre and a worthy inclusion on anybody’s desert island records. Perhaps Lennon’s comments were more a case of him having a bit of fun at his former bandmate’s magnum opus than him genuinely hating parts of the album.