Rivalry worked for The Beatles, so let it be

By GRAHAM REID

In the second Greatest Story Ever Told - or at least the one told almost as often as the Big One - the Beatles went from being loveable moptops and good friends to jaded adults and sometimes litigious enemies.

The rivalry between Paul McCartney and John Lennon for the control and direction of the band after the death of manager Brian Epstein in 1967 might have been at the heart of it - although both George Harrison and Ringo Starr walked out at various times before the major and final breakup.

When McCartney told the media he had quit Lennon tartly described as it as a guy standing on a stage alone saying, "I'm leaving."

By that time all was not well within the house of pop.

The premise of tonight's History Channel documentary in the Rivals series, however, is that Lennon and McCartney were always grappling for control of the group, and "the seeds of rivalry were sown when they met" says the darkly foreboding monotone voice-over. Really? As far back as that?

What the programme subtitle "Lennon v McCartney" suggests is some kind of heavyweight bout, which the evidence hardly supports.

Even when the group appeared to tear itself apart during the fraught making of the album which became Let It Be, their last release, they got together for Abbey Road, an album which many consider among their best and certainly one which has a sense of camaraderie and optimism about it.

Photos taken at that time show some very happy chappies in the studio.

But with the premise of conflict established in Rivals, it remains only for familiar Beatle-watchers such as Liverpool journalist Bill Harry, former manager Allan Williams, press officer Tony Barrow and Beatle expert the late Mark Lewisohn to line up for bite-sized quotes to support the idea that Lennon and McCartney were frequently trying to direct the group down their own paths.

To some small extent that seems true - certainly McCartney was more willing than Lennon to compromise their look to get an audience - but the rivalry was also the productive spark of the band, as when McCartney would appear for a recording session with a handful of song ideas and Lennon, realising he had very few, had to push himself to produce.

What became increasingly evident during their career was how much individual songs belonged to the sole writer - McCartney recently asserting his sole right to Yesterday which no other Beatle contributed to - and that the myth of the songwriting duo was faltering by the mid-60s.

Yet it is possible to argue that even then, without the input or critical ear of the other, Lennon and McCartney were co-dependents.

McCartney has frequently told the story of Hey Jude and wanting to dump what he considered the clumsy line, "the movement you need is on your shoulders." Lennon told him it was the best bit, so it stayed.

This documentary doesn't address such inconveniences which don't conform to the dramatic arc it has set up.

Certainly their separation was very bitter when Lennon, Starr and Harrison wanted lawyer Allen Klein to look after their interests and McCartney argued for Lee Eastman, his soon-to-be father-in-law.

And yes, during those years after the breakup Lennon and McCartney sniped at each other publicly through their music (Lennon being the hands-down winner for sheer nastiness).

But that is a different kind of rivalry from a discussion about whether they should wear suits.

The creative conflict at the heart of the group and which made them such great songwriters is not what the tone and content of this doco - with evocative footage, Beatle soundbites and re-enactments - wants you to believe. But the truth is something different from a story shoehorned into the conceptual catch-all title Rivals.

Mark Antony v Brutus, maybe.

Lennon v McCartney is a harder case to sustain when all the facts are considered.

Rivalry can bring out the best in the protagonists. It did with the Beatles. Just listen to Abbey Road.