All throughout his career, John Lennon was the last thing apologetic. Lennon was known for speaking his opinion and occasionally incorporating something that was irking him into his lyrics. Being one of the most successful composers in the world makes it easy to develop a tiny air of pretentiousness, but the outcome was that a few musicians created timeless songs by making fun of Lennon’s writing style.
Lennon started getting deeply involved with Bob Dylan’s work about the time The Beatles were initially becoming popular. While recording A Hard Day’s Night, the band is infamous for playing Dylan’s songs endlessly; Lennon’s harmonica solo on “I Should Have Known Better” is a charming homage to Dylan’s fondness for the instrument.
Even though there were a ton of other Dylan imitators on the scene at the same time, Mr. Zimmerman paid heed when he penned the song “4th Time Around,” which is taken from Blonde on Blonde. The chord progression of the iconic Dylan song that follows the Fab Four has the identical guitar lick to John Lennon’s “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” song.
Even while several people saw the Dylan parallels, he always believed they were merely accidental. The remark about Dylan never wanting to be someone’s crutch, on the other hand, may refer to Lennon depending on Dylan’s writing. Even though Lennon was a musical chameleon with The Beatles, his bandmates were just as snarky about his solo endeavors.
Lennon’s old bandmate started to feel strongly about the continual political propaganda as they started creating more pointed songs with Yoko Ono. Lennon’s preaching irritated McCartney, who urged followers not to follow his example by writing the song “Too Many People” to that effect.
Since McCartney was his bandmate, Lennon refused to give up and take the criticism. He soon wrote the song “How Do You Sleep?” as a rejoinder, which is essentially one continuous diss track directed at McCartney for all of his issues. However, on the same Lennon album, he also wrote a song that was ripped to shreds by one of the titans of jazz-rock.
Steely Dan penned ‘Only a Fool Would Say That‘ as a response to Lennon’s reasoning because they felt that the billionaire musician’s song ‘Imagine‘ came out as a little out of touch. Steely Dan was not wanting to hear that type of dogma from the incredibly renowned Lennon, so they swiftly changed the perspective to that of a man on the street. There was nothing wrong with writing a song about the concept of living in peace one day.
Despite the fact that Lennon was amusing to his fellow artists, he never shied away from speaking his thoughts, even after taking a break and coming back with Double Fantasy, an album of uplifting middle-aged rock tunes. No matter how many times Lennon’s reputation has been tarnished, no one can contend that he was ever reluctant to express his opinions.
