They were good filters of each others' crap, well except for some of the stuff on "The White Album".
“They were good filters of each others’ crap, well except for some of the stuff on “The White Album”.”
By that point a songwriting credit of “Lennon & McCartney” was really more like “Lennon OR McCartney”. And you could usually figure out which one it was according to who sang lead.
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By then they were no longer collaborating much, as Yoko had come on the scene. John was doing heroin, which also did not help.
IMHO, one of the gaps in the Beatles collection is an album of cover songs. I would have loved to hear their voices on rock, R&B and vocal standards of the 40's and 50's. If they had done so, they might have stayed together longer as a band, as there would not have been the pressure to write the songs. They probably could have come up with some great sounding stuff in a couple weeks in the studio.
Despite his leftism and atheism, it's too bad he died so young. I think he would have fit right in with the 90's grunge movement. Eventually there would have been some kind of a Beatles reunion; it would not have had the magic of the 60's, but it would have been fun nonetheless.
In the end, John's fatal flaw was the leftist's inability to recognize the evil in human nature. When talking about how he and Yoko strolled around NYC without bodyguards, he said something like, "Oh, they're just fans, they don't want to hurt you."