John Lennon Said a Song From The Beatles’ ‘Abbey Road’ Proved Paul McCartney Could Think
TL;DR:
- John Lennon said The Beatles’ Abbey Road represented Lennon-McCartney at its most mature.
- He said the songs on the album had no connection to each other.
- He praised a cosmic lyric from one of the tracks on Abbey Road.
John Lennon felt The Beatles‘ Abbey Road didn’t have a throughline. Despite this, he praised a lyric from the album. He said it proved Paul McCartney had the capacity to think.
John Lennon compared The Beatles’ ‘Abbey Road’ to the band’s earlier work
The book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono includes a 1980 interview. In it, John discussed the evolution of the Lennon-McCartney partnership. “The early stuff — the ‘Hard Day’s Night‘ period, I call it — was the sexual equivalent of the beginning hysteria of a relationship,” he opined. “And the Sgt. Pepper–Abbey Road period was the mature part of the relationship.”
John said the Lennon-McCartney partnership could have continued in interesting ways. It definitely would have changed as time went on. In addition, John said the end of the partnership might have been for the best.
John elaborated on Abbey Road. “Abbey Road was really unfinished songs all stuck together,” he said. “Everybody praises the album so much, but none of the songs had anything to do with each other, no thread at all, only the fact that we stuck them together.”
John Lennon said 1 lyric from The Beatles’ ‘The End’ was ‘philosophical’
John was asked about The Beatles’ “The End.” “That’s Paul again, the unfinished song, right?” he replied. “We’re on Abbey Road. Just a piece at the end.”
The “Imagine” singer praised one of the lyrics from “The End.” “He had a line in it [sings] ‘And in the end, the love you get is equal to the love you give,’ which is a very cosmic, philosophical line,” John said. “Which again proves that if he wants to, he can think.” The actual lyric is “And in the end / The love you take / Is equal to the love you make.”
How ‘The End’ and ‘Abbey Road’ performed on the pop charts in the United States and the United Kingdom
“The End” was not a single, so it did not chart on the Billboard Hot 100. On the other hand, Abbey Road was a huge hit. It topped the Billboard 200 for 11 weeks, staying on the chart for 478 weeks in total.
The Official Charts Company reports “The End” did not chart in the United Kingdom either. Meanwhile, Abbey Road reached No. 1 in the U.K. for 17 weeks. It remained on the chart for 97 weeks altogether.
“The End” was not a hit — but John enjoyed one of its lyrics.
