The breakup of The Beatles was never going to be easy for fans. The Fab Four felt like family to rock and roll lovers, and watching them fall apart over business disputes felt like witnessing a painful public divorce. Any hopes of a full reunion were slim, but John Lennon never fully left his Beatles roots behind, and traces of his old bandmates surfaced in his solo work—sometimes even where he least expected them.
Ringo Starr remained a constant presence on Lennon’s early records, and George Harrison contributed guitar now and then. But with the famously bitter feud between Lennon and Paul McCartney, the idea of them working together again seemed impossible. Their falling-out played out through music, with Lennon’s ‘How Do You Sleep?’ standing as one of the most brutal diss tracks ever, written in response to McCartney’s digs at him in ‘Too Many People.’ Lennon’s original demo even featured the line, ‘How do you sleep, you cunt?’ showing just how personal the animosity had become.
Yet, despite their war of words, Lennon still seemed to long for McCartney’s musical touch. Even when he was fully immersed in his solo career, he couldn’t shake the idea that certain songs could have been better with his old partner’s voice. One striking example is ‘God Save Oz,’ a song Lennon recorded to support an anti-censorship campaign.
Reflecting on the track, Lennon admitted that he wished McCartney had been on it, saying, “We got this guy that Mal had found in a group called Half-breed or something, and he sounded like Paul.
So I thought, ‘That’s a commercial sound’—it would have been nice to have Paul’s voice singing ‘God Save Oz’—but the guy imitated more my demo.”
This wasn’t the only time Lennon subtly acknowledged McCartney’s influence. The track ‘Gimme Some Truth’ actually began during the Get Back sessions, with McCartney suggesting how the lyrics should flow in the bridge. Even after their split, McCartney paid tribute in his own way, using Lennon’s signature echo effect on ‘Let Me Roll It,’ a nod to his old friend’s production style.
While the dream of a full Beatles reunion never materialized, moments like these offer glimpses into what might have been. If McCartney had been involved in ‘God Save Oz,’ it might have had the magic of a late-era Beatles track, something out of the wilder corners of The White Album. Even as solo artists, Lennon and McCartney remained in each other’s musical DNA—whether they admitted it or not.
