Paul McCartney defends classic song as ‘not a John Lennon pastiche’

Having worked with one another for so long, a song or two in the solo careers of Paul McCartney and John Lennon were bound to sound like one another’s.

Such a criticism was once levelled at McCartney, who was told a Wings track sounded a little too much like his Beatles bandmate’s work. While the pair would write together for eight years the duo would split off and form successful solo careers. But there were traces of one another’s work in their solo songs, and a little overlap too. When McCartney released his second studio album, Ram, he poked fun at Lennon with his Too Many People track. Lennon responded with How Do You Sleep?, a song that featured fellow Beatle George Harrison and was released on his Imagine record. Drummer Ringo Starr took issue with the song, asking Lennon to tone it down a little.

The harsh response to the Ram track was explained by Lennon at the time of its release. He said: “I heard Paul’s messages in Ram – yes there are dear reader! Too many people going where? Missed our lucky what? What was our first mistake? Can’t be wrong? Huh! I mean Yoko, me, and other friends can’t all be hearing things.” Lennon would later claim he was just “poking fun” at McCartney.

McCartney did say, however, that the song was intended to poke fun at Lennon and Yoko Ono after their fallout over the appointment of Allen Klein as The Beatles’ manager. McCartney explained: “In one song, I wrote, ‘Too many people preaching practices,’ I think is the line. I mean, that was a little dig at John and Yoko. There wasn’t anything else on it that was about them. Oh, there was ‘You took your lucky break and broke it in two.”

Their back and forth only deepened when, in 1973, McCartney was fielding criticisms for a Wings song that had a “Lennon pastiche,” according to critics of the time. Let Me Roll It was hit by critics for sounding like a song Lennon would have written and recorded. McCartney strongly disagreed with this interpretation of the song, and shared as much in an interview given at the time.

He said: “Let Me Roll It was not really a Lennon pastiche, although my use of tape echo did sound more like John than me. But tape echo was not John’s exclusive territory! And you have to remember that, despite the myth, there was a lot of commonality between us in the way that we thought and the way that we worked.”

Ironically enough, it would be Lennon who found inspiration in Let Me Roll It, using the riff in his song, Beef Jerky. Let Me Roll It also has connections to Harrison, according to Far Out Magazine, as McCartney got the title from the song I’d Have You Anytime.