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Fri 12 September 2025 18:00, UK
Towards the end of The Beatles’ tenure, John Lennon always seemed to be the most cynical among the Fab Four during their time together.
None of them necessarily had warm feelings about those final days when everyone was at each other’s throats, but whereas George Harrison was content to leave it all behind, Lennon’s feelings when talking about it often felt like someone being forced to talk about their ex half the time. He certainly knew when they made a fantastic song, but there were entire albums he was glad to wash his hands of.
But Lennon’s opinions on Beatles songs should always be taken with a grain of salt. He had a ridiculously high standard for himself, and since he claimed songs like ‘Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds’ were full of throwaway lyrics, chances are he would halfheartedly agree with many modern Beatles haters that seem to say songs are garbage simply to provoke the hardcore fans.
It’s not hard to see what Lennon is talking about half the time. Many of the band’s best moments were based around experimenting with different sounds, and that normally meant having to look back on tunes that could be a little bit embarrassing. And if he thought that the era when they labelled as geniuses like Sgt Peppers were a little bit cringy, he wasn’t going to exactly have fond memories of their teenybopper period.
The band had wanted to branch out for years, and looking back at their mop-top phase often feels like listening to a totally different band. ‘She Loves You’ and ‘Please Please Me’ are still among the best pop songs that they ever made, but the one thing that can make any musician hate their own song is having to play it on repeat whenever they start touring.
While the Fabs were being run around the globe up until their final shows in 1966, not all of their performances were exactly known for being technically great. The technology of the time simply wasn’t ready for a rock and roll band that were trying to pack an arena full of screaming fans, and even though the band tried their hardest to give the kids a show at Shea Stadium, the whole thing had grown so ridiculous that they saved that time onstage for having the fun and taking the piss out of their own performance.
It may have been funny at the time, but Lennon wasn’t exactly proud when he heard the live album from the Hollywood Bowl, he was horrified, saying, “There’s one of a Beatles show at the Hollywood Bowl which was an abortion, and there’s others from everywhere we played, obscure places here in the States. It seemed someone was taping it everywhere.” While they might work for completionists to get the full Fab experience, there is a novelty to hearing the band make fools of themselves now and again.
Beatlemania had been blown way too out of proportion for any of them to take seriously anymore, and having that hour onstage to have a laugh was their only way of dealing with it. And considering how little Lennon cared about how well the group sounded, seeing him drag his elbow across the keys when playing songs like ‘I’m Down’ is almost borderline punk with how little regard he had for the mechanics of a rock and roll show.
The sound quality is still a little bit rough and the band and it’s far from the band’s finest performance, but if anything, Live at the Hollywood Bowl is a good indication of why The Beatles needed to get off the road. They had outgrown the live performance medium, and the rest of their career was an ongoing challenge to see what they could do in the studio.
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