(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Tue 25 November 2025 19:30, UK
The main focus that John Lennon had throughout the Beatles’ career always came back to songwriting.
As much as Paul McCartney could get away with writing the catchiest melodies known to mankind, Lennon was far more focused on how well any of his tunes held together as a coherent piece of poetry rather than what strange new chord was thrown into the mix. And considering the number of people that the band had inspired, it was easy for the former Beatle to tell when the biggest names in music were trying too hard.
When Lennon first started, though, it wasn’t like he was going to become one of the greatest writers of all time overnight. He had his poetic side throughout the band’s career, but it was hard for him to balance the creative aspect of his life when he was forced to make the same kind of toothless pop music that he heard on the radio. It was still really good pop music, but it wasn’t until making records like ‘In My Life’ that he started to understand what his music could do.
He wanted to make songs that could document pieces of his life, and even if they were strange like ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, Lennon always revelled in doing something new. He felt that there were too many ‘I love you’ songs out there, and it was more fun writing the avant-garde nonsense of ‘I Am The Walrus’ or the stream of consciousness ‘Come Together’ than trying to write an answer to ‘She Loves You’.
But the minute that Sgt Pepper came out, Lennon saw it as an extremely mixed blessing. There were millions of people who had been turned on to the Summer of Love thanks to them, but when the psychedelic movement began, Lennon started to see a lot of people getting into the framework of peace and love for the wrong reasons. It’s one thing to quote one’s heart, but Lennon could sense when someone was desperate a mile away.
He never suffered fools gladly, but when looking at the biggest bands coming out of Los Angeles, he did see more than a few flaws in how The Doors were going about their business. Jim Morrison did have captivating imagery in every one of their songs, but Lennon couldn’t help but listen to their music and hear more than a few times where things sounded a little bit too goofy.
They certainly had their place as the dark opposite of the Love Generation, but Lennon felt that the band were trying to sell their quirky angle in some spots, saying, “They’re only trying to say something universal only they’re just heavy writers you know. It’s just like some journalists can write it like the people can read it and some journalists can’t. And I go for journalists that can say it like the Daily Mirror… cause that’s the language we’re talking.”
While there is a lot of heaviness that goes into Morrison’s performance in a track like ‘The End’, that actually helps out the song a great deal. On its own, ‘The End’ would have been a simple breakup song about Morrison leaving his girl, but hearing him sing about the greater problems with the world, it’s easy for people to see him more as a poet rather than the typical blues belter like Robert Plant or Mick Jagger.
The Doors weren’t that kind of group, and even if their music was a bit too strange for everyone to get into at the time, it’s not like Morrison was too verbose all the time. It’s easy to appreciate a tune like ‘Touch Me’ as much as ‘Riders on the Storm’, but you have to understand that both of them are going for completely different moods. One is more immediate, but if you’re in the market for tunes with more depth, it’s easy to get swept up in the journey Morrison takes his audience on.
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