“I said that [that they wrote separately in early Beatle days] but I was lying. [laughs] By the time I said that, we were so sick of this idea of writing and singing together, especially me, that I started this thing about, ‘we never wrote together, we were never in the same room.’ Which wasn’t true. We wrote a lot of stuff together, one-on-one.” [7]
During this period, John and Paul were publicly and heatedly disagreeing about many things, and attacked each other in interviews, at the same time that they were discussing authorship of songs. Naturally, bias would be present during a time of such heated emotional conflict.
So in period two, the misinformation is the mirror image of the distortions in the first period. Collaboration might be under-emphasized.
Period three: 1980s to the present. When, in 1980, John admitted overemphasizing separate authorship in period two, in theory he presented a more balanced picture. At this time, he commented on the entire Lennon-McCartney canon once again.
Paul, on the other hand, also reacted against Lennon’s characterization of the authorship of many specific Beatles songs in period two. The biography of Paul by his friend Miles, Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now (published in 1997, but based on interviews from previous years), includes quotations from hours of interviews in which Paul commented on the writing of the Lennon-McCartney songs in detail.
Paul has said that he disagreed with Lennon on song attribution on only two songs. [8] This is a curious, even bizarre statement — Paul actually disagreed with John on dozens of songs, as we will see. (Of course, Paul disagreed with himself on numerous songs, as did John.)
Interestingly, Paul in the Many Years From Now interviews, has tended to emphasize collaboration in the writing of many Beatles songs, but only in selected songs. Others he fully admits were individually written.
In theory, then, by the standards of bias, period three should contain the most reliable evidence. But by the standards of chronology and memory, this period is the least reliable. (And John’s tragic death in December 1980 robbed us of any further comments on the Beatle songs from him.) When, in 1988, Paul was asked about “Hold Me Tight,” from 1963’s With the Beatles album, he said, “I can’t remember much about that one. Certain songs were just ‘work’ songs, you haven’t got much of a memory of them. That’s one of them.” [9] If Paul and John had discussed the writing of the song, in a holistic and frank way in the sixties, obviously, we would have been better off.
Another way writers have analyzed authorship of Lennon-McCartney songs is by performance: the person who sings lead in a song. This method obviously has some validity — when Paul or John wrote songs more or less separately, they usually sang their own songs — but in some cases the lead singer was not the main writer. Only in interviews do we find this out.
For example, if a song was a collaboration with a Paul emphasis, and if Paul and John sang it together, often Paul would sing the harmony, as he enjoyed working out harmony parts, or because his voice could sing in a higher range than John’s. “Q: “Who decides who’s going to sing the lead of a particular song you may do? John: It depends on a lot of things. . . . If we write ‘em together, he sings higher than me so basically I normally sing lead and he sings harmony. If I can’t make it he sings on-tone.” (laughter ).” [10] A simplistic analysis, then, might conclude, incorrectly, that since John is singing lead on a song, it was necessarily written primarily by John (and vice versa).
The following songs show that it is impossible to judge from lead vocals alone:
“In Spite of All the Danger” was entirely a Paul song. However, John sings the lead, Paul sings harmony. [11] Paul and John both worked on “Love Me Do,” but John referred to the song as mainly Paul’s (“Paul’s song”). However, Lennon sang the lead on a crucial section of this until Martin switched him to harmonica.
John said, of “Every Little Thing”: “His (Paul’s) song; maybe I threw something in.” Nevertheless, again, Lennon sings lead.
Partially because of such complexities in the evidence, and partially because many writers on the Beatles have not been too interested in the Beatles’ actual songwriting, when we look at work previously done on this issue, we find a long list of typical errors:
1. Authors state that Paul or John was the main writer of a song without citing any source. Whatever they may base their opinion on, conclusions without evidence are not valid. We should trust no unsupported ascription of a Beatle song.
2. Authors assume the authorship of a song based on the song’s lead singer. As I’ve stated above, for many songs, especially in the early Beatles albums, this method can lead one astray.
3. Sometimes an author will quote useful evidence on the authorship of a song — a quote by Lennon or McCartney, say — but will not date it. A date for a quote is necessary to establish crucial chronological context.
4. Sometimes an author will quote useful evidence on the authorship of a song, but will not give a source for it (by a footnote or its equivalent). This is better than no evidence at all, but is still far from the ideal. For example, we cannot check the quote against its original source to make sure that the writer has transcribed it correctly. (And when checking quotes from Lennon and McCartney interviews, I have found many statements have been misquoted, sometimes in significant ways.) And, for a controversial quote, it is important to read it in its full context. In addition, a footnote usually gives a date for the quote.
Many Beatle books that are otherwise valuable lack footnotes. For example, Turner’s A Hard Day’s Write , an important book that focuses on the Beatles’ songwriting, has no footnotes, so the researcher can’t check quotes. Sometimes Turner might tell you that a quote came from an interview in a certain year. Similarly, Badman’s The Beatles: Off the Record is a treasure chest of Beatle data, and includes quotes on specific songs for the entire Beatles canon. But the quotes are undated and unfootnoted.
A Hard Day’s Write and The Beatles: Off the Record remain valuable, and I have been indebted to them, but the researcher can’t check their quotes to make sure the writer has reproduced them accurately, the researcher can’t check context, and there is no chronological placement. Why not provide a footnote? When using these books, a researcher is forced to try to find the original source through detective work.
5. Sometimes a writer, instead of providing evidence that Lennon or McCartney wrote a song, will appeal to authority. The writer may cite Ian MacDonald or Tim Riley, writers of important books on the Beatles, on who wrote a song. But then you find that neither MacDonald nor Riley has given actual primary evidence on the songwriting process. So the “appeal to authority” fallacy turns out to be a circular path to nowhere instead of a path to actual evidence.
6. Sometimes a writer will cite a valid piece of evidence for a song’s authorship. He or she may even footnote it. But he or she cites only that one quote. When there are ten relevant quotes, some of them more or less contradictory, citing one quote may give a view of the topic that is holistically not correct, or possibly reflects partisan bias.
For example, if you happen to come across one of the easiest, most accessible sources for the authorship of the Beatles songs, Lennon’s 1980 Playboy interview, and are writing on “Eleanor Rigby,” you might quote Lennon’s statement that “the first verse was his [Paul’s] and the rest [of the verses] are basically mine.” As we have seen above, McCartney, in a 1981 interview, strongly disputed that Lennon wrote more than a few words of the song. An author, when discussing “Eleanor Rigby” seriously, should reflect both points of view. And if there are six contrasting quotations, he or she should reflect the range of opinion. (Incidentally, since Lennon has given a number of easily available book-length interviews, his views on the Lennon-McCartney songs have been very influential. However, they should be tempered with McCartney’s views, especially now that Miles’ Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now has been published.)
7. Since the breakup of the Beatles, there has been an inescapable parti
san element to the Beatles phenomenon, both among rock critics, and among fans. When Lennon and McCartney had their public feud, Beatle fans often took sides, and love for the Beatles as a whole became splintered. Lennon sought to position himself with the counter-culture, and associate Paul with the commercial musical mainstream. In the same interviews in which John credited the Beatles songs to himself or Paul, he often took the opportunity to criticize Paul’s songs, and portrayed many of them as trivial and shallow. (And these critiques garnered more attention that John’s generous praise for some Paul songs.) Rock critics have often viewed Paul’s songwriting through Lennon’s eyes.
Ideally, the Beatle historian should not be swayed by pro or anti-Lennon or pro- or anti-McCartney bias. This is obviously easier said than done, for many fans of these great, but very human, songwriters.
Hopefully, we are in the third period of Beatle appreciation now, when we can enjoy and respect the songs of both Lennon and McCartney. Both men (as Beatles) had admirable traits, and both had major character flaws. Both wrote great songs and lesser songs. There is nothing wrong with a critic leaning toward the music or lyrics of one or the other; but in assessing the authorship of the Beatle songs, statements by both should be considered in an evenhanded way.
Incidentally, some have criticized McCartney for taking the opportunity to describe his contribution to the Beatle songs, in the Miles book. However, Lennon went over the Lennon-McCartney corpus three times , at least, once when the feud between him and Paul was at its height, and these interviews were widely published — why shouldn’t McCartney go over the same territory? Any reasonable historian will gratefully welcome two sides of a story, especially such an important story.
In the interest of full disclosure, and as a case history of one Beatle fan’s response to the Lennon-McCartney feud after the breakup, my experience is as follows. I was a fan of the Beatles since I saw them on the Ed Sullivan show when I was in sixth grade. I followed them as a fan through their increasingly mature albums. I didn’t think deeply or critically about their songwriting during this period. They were the Beatles, with songs written by Lennon-McCartney, and Harrison.
My favorite Beatle was John, whom I perceived as being more intellectual than Paul. His offbeat verbal humor was also very appealing to me.
When the Beatles formally broke up, I shared the pain of millions of Beatle fans. However, since I’ve always been interested in songwriting, I waited for the early solo albums with great interest.
The first Lennon single, “Instant Karma,” didn’t do anything for me, musically. The lyrics were striking.
Then the McCartney album was released, and when I heard it, I was floored. Though in format it is often an unassuming, homemade album, the music was brilliant, melodic, deeply felt at times, playful at times, often with remarkably complex, unexpected harmonies. It was a revelation to me. (And, viewing the Paul solo albums from a musical perspective, they have continued to strike me in the same way. His main weakness as a songwriter is his lyrics, which are sometimes good and carefully wrought, but sometimes seem quickly written, an afterthought to the music.)
Lennon’s first solo album, Plastic Ono Band , was brilliant, especially on the level of lyrics. The music was curiously non-Beatlish.
So as the Lennon-McCartney feud developed, I found myself unexpectedly on Paul’s side — I believe mainly because of my interest in music. Most rock critics however, ended up on John’s side, for a number of reasons — his emphasis on lyrics (which coincided with the interests of many critics), his counter-cultural, avant-garde positioning, his search for high seriousness, rather than for commercial success. And because John attacked Paul, John’s adherents saw Paul and his music as the opposite of these things.
As an admirer of Paul’s music, I was amazed at how his complex talent came to be viewed simplistically. He, too, had his counter-cultural, avant-garde component. He certainly was often a comic artist, but I saw him as a great comic artist in the popular, Charlie Chaplin tradition, doing light-hearted farce at times, then turning to moments of penetrating seriousness.
For example, in the schematic view of John and Paul as good and bad opposites, John wrote and performed the screaming hard rock songs (for the rock community, “good”), while Paul sang and wrote the ballads (for the rock community, “bad”). However, in reality, from the early Beatle days, Paul sang both screamers and ballads and John sang both screamers and ballads.
Though I came to object strenuously to oversimplifications and misinformation related to Paul, I probably ended up viewing John too unsympathetically, at first.
Throughout the post-Beatle period, as the Beatle albums continued to have an astounding impact, the Beatle songs became contested territory. John gave his three interviews in which he discussed song authorship. These interviews, though they overemphasized individual authorship in the Beatle songs, were an important step in understanding more fully the creativity of the Beatles.
I started to emerge from the Paul-John partisan divide when I read Paul’s interviews in response to John’s. He often mentioned John’s positive impact on many songs that were mostly his (Paul’s) own. However, he also ascribed a number of songs fully or mainly to John, and I was reminded that these were some of my favorite Beatles songs: “I’m Only Sleeping,” “I’m So Tired,” “Dear Prudence,” along with famous songs such as “Strawberry Fields Forever” “Because,” and “Across the Universe.” Turning to more collaborative compositions, John was the main writer of a number of obvious great songs: “Please Please Me,” “I Call Your Name,” “If I Fell,” “Girl,” and “Norwegian Wood.”
So I came to see both John and Paul as great, complex, songwriters, as well as complex human beings. Hopefully this book will help to solve the enigmas behind the personalities and songs of John and Paul; and will draw us away from the many still-prevalent oversimplifications concerning them.
8. We should be skeptical of numerical attributions for Beatle songs — for example, saying that a certain song is 70% Lennon and 30% McCartney. This is the method used by William Dowlding in his Beatlesongs (a book, which, again, I am indebted to). Songwriting is not such an exact, numerical science. In addition, often simple numerical attributions do not take into consideration the relative importance of music and lyrics. For instance, if the music is written by one writer, and there is collaboration on the lyrics, shouldn’t you say that the song is a 100/0 collaboration on music and a 50/50 collaboration on lyrics? If you believe that music is the most important part of popular songwriting, you might say that the song, holistically, is 80-20; but if you think that lyrics are dominant, you might say the song is 80-20 toward the other writer. Such numerical summaries do not reflect the complexity of the Beatles’ songwriting.
McCartney himself used numerical attributions sometimes in Many Years from Now . I think he would have been well advised to avoid them, but since he used them, we can only try to interpret them as best we can.
9. One reason that the question of the Beatles as songwriters has not been treated fully is because of disinterest in songwriting, as opposed to treatments of the Beatles as people, or as performers. These latter subjects are obviously important and interesting (and can be treated responsibly or shallowly), but they are arguably not as central to the Beatles phenomenon as their music and lyrics.
Songwriter Steve Earle has written,
In retrospect, some have attributed the boys’ preeminence to a simple twist of fate, the right band coming along at the right moment in history. As a songwriter who grew up on the Beatles, I subscribe to an alternate theory. It was the songs. [12]
Clearly, many writers have been more or less uninterested in the Beatles’ songwriting. Sometimes even purported serious analysis of the Beatles’ music rests on oversimplifications of Paul and John as people.
Serious treatment of the Beatles, as an artistic phenomenon, should look first at their songwriting, their music, their lyrics. Clearly, other parts of their lives a
re important, and related to their songwriting, but this is where the focus should be.
10. And as a subcomponent of accepting the importance of songwriting, we must go one step further, and look at music and lyrics separately. It is possible to have a song that has great music and hackneyed, run-of-the-mill lyrics. Or it is possible to have great music and lyrics that are good, not especially great. The song will still work. In fact, I am very used to pop songs with good music and bad lyrics. Bad lyrics can be part of the charm of popular music.
And it is possible to have bad music and good, striking lyrics. I draw the line there, as I find bad music actively off-putting.
Of course, the ideal is to have great music and great lyrics, a remarkable accomplishment, when actually achieved, by people such as Paul Simon, Richard Thompson, and Bruce Springsteen.
Thus, a critic or listener might be interested in music or lyrics separately. This will depend on the interests and focus of the critic. For example, if you are interested in Schubert, the lyrics of his lieder are important and contribute to the total effect of the song. However, Schubert didn’t write the lyrics; if we are assessing Schubert, we will be more interested in the music. He, and other great lieder composers, often chose lyrics by mediocre poets, and made great songs with them.
In the same way, George and Ira Gershwin worked together on songs, but if you’re interested in music, you will be primarily interested in George Gershwin and his gift for melodies, harmonies, rhythm, his use of the idioms of jazz and popular music. If you’re interested in lyrics, you will look at Ira Gershwin and his interests, life and gifts.
If you’re interested in a sociological study of the cultural content of lyrics in a certain era and place, analysis of music might be entirely secondary.
Composer Ned Rorem, in a classic 1968 article, “The Music of the Beatles,” argued that the “essential quality” that set the Beatles apart from their competition was the high quality of the music they composed. “Most of the literary copy devoted to the Beatles extols the timely daring of the group’s lyrics while skirting the essential quality, the music,” he wrote. [13] Rorem was a classical musician, and so was naturally interested in music, though he also composed songs, so would have been attuned to the aesthetic heights that a combination of word and music can achieve. [14]
Who Wrote the Beatle Songs Page 2
