Ian Leslie: belief

Transcript context

…All Things Must Pass is a great album, but we never would’ve had it if George was rationed to two cuts per whatever. That is doubtless true. I think the better version, better alternative history might have been George does All Things Must Pass, John does Imagine, and Paul does Ram, and then the next year, they do a Beatles album. Then the year after that, they do their solo projects, and they come back and do a Beatles album. They would be going back and forth, and they did discuss something like that very briefly. You see it in the Get Back documentary. I’m kind of glad they didn’t. I think part of the eternal power and resonance of the Beatles’ story is that they are seven years and out. There’s this incredible narrative tightness to what happens. They get famous, they change the world, they change music, and then they split at the top of their game. I can’t think of many other groups, if any, who split up after recording one of the best albums. Abbey Road is the last album they record, right? It’s not like they’ve just declined in form, and they’re thinking, “Well, we’re not that good anymore. We’ve got to split up.” Which is what most groups do. They’re making this really, the first album of the ’70s, and then they split up. They split up after “The End,” at the end of a medley. I think the god of narrative just said, “This is the way it shall be.” I’m very glad that they didn’t then dribble on, as you say, reforming and forming, getting back together, maybe getting another member in, maybe someone leaves. All that narrative junk that most bands go through — they didn’t do that. They just exploded, and then they flamed out. There’s this free rider problem, which they already had toward the end, that if you’re getting back together again, you save your best songs for your solo album. Maybe George was doing a bit of that.…

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