Who Wrote the Beatle Songs

by Todd M Compton

  On albums, John, in interviews, said that he dominated in song-production during the early albums, but lay “fallow” in the Sgt. Pepper / Magical Mystery Tour era. [41] Then he was productive again in the White Album. My research has basically supported those perspectives. However, we should also factor in great songs by McCartney during the early albums (such as “I Saw Her Standing There,” “All My Loving” and “Things We Said Today”), and great songs by Lennon when he was supposedly lying fallow. John’s magisterial “Strawberry Fields Forever” initiated the Sgt. Pepper era, and “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and “A Day in the Life” were key songs on the album.

  In addition, one must remember that while one writer, Paul or John, might dominate or begin a song, the other might make a significant contribution to it. So Paul wrote the middle section to John’s “A Day in the Life” and worked on the avant-garde sections in it. On the same album, John helped with the lyrics of Paul’s “She’s Leaving Home” and “With a Little Help From My Friends.” When there was well-documented collaboration on a song, we should take that into consideration. Sometimes we have the ebb and flow between Paul and John within a song.

  Songwriting and the Elusive Beatles Breakup

  A careful examination of the authorship of the Lennon-McCartney songs gives us an essential foundation for understanding and evaluating the Beatles’ music. This examination will also give us a view of the group’s breakup that differs significantly from simplistic views of the event that are based on the clichéd interpretations of Lennon and McCartney creativity.

  After the breakup of the Beatles, when the group and their music became a partisan phenomenon, rock critics tended to side with John. They viewed the Beatle songs as collaborative, with the best of the Beatles being written or influenced by John. As they had a tendency to focus on lyrics rather than music, John seemed to emerge as the genius of the group. Paul, without the collaborative link with John, was seen as lacking the key component of the Beatles’ artistic intelligence and creativity.

  Not surprisingly, the critical consensus of rock critics has been that John’s solo albums have been artistic successes, while Paul’s albums have been shallow. Jon Landau, in a Rolling Stone review of McCartney’s Ram (1971) wrote:

  If it was Paul who used to polish up Lennon’s bluntness and forced him to adapt a little style, it is by now apparent that Lennon held the reins in on McCartney’s cutsie-pie, florid attempts at pure rock muzak . . . None of the Beatles is a truly self-sufficient artist . . . in this light, Paul has simply proven to be the most vulnerable . . . McCartney and Ram both prove that Paul benefitted immensely from collaboration and that he seems to be dying on the vine as a result of his own self-imposed musical isolation. [42]

  Thus the scenario is straightforward. The Beatles formally broke up; Lennon and McCartney stopped writing together; Lennon by himself created music of almost “monomaniacal intensity”; Paul quickly degenerated to “cutsie-pie . . . pure rock muzak.” Paul was especially helpless without John, and was “dying on the vine” without him. [43]

  However, the historical facts of McCartney and Lennon’s songwriting do not support this scenario. Lennon had said earlier, in the pages of the Rolling Stone , that the breakup had not come in 1970, but years earlier, in 1968, when the White Album was being recorded. McCartney and Lennon had been writing many songs separately even in the early Beatles era. Certainly, some songs were written with thoroughgoing or “finishing” collaboration during that period. But Lennon and McCartney wrote more and more separately as they left those early albums and began producing their middle-Beatle era masterpieces.

  If Landau’s close-collaboration dependence theory had been valid, the incompleteness of McCartney’s art should have been obvious in the McCartney songs from Revolver onward, especially in the White Album, and in the McCartney songs on following albums. The worst songs should have been found on Abbey Road and this album should have been one of the Beatles’ worst.

  The opposite, of course, is true, as we’ve mentioned earlier. [44] The White Album and Abbey Road have been highly regarded by the rock critical consensus.

  Other details argue against Landau’s scenario. First, many of the songs on Paul’s first two solo albums (e.g., “Hot as Sun,” “Teddy Boy,” “Junk,” “Back Seat of My Car”) had been written much earlier, when he was a Beatle; when he was working in the physical presence of John. Some of them were even written in India.

  Second, John attacked Paul in long interviews for the influential American rock magazine, Rolling Stone . The longest interview was conducted by the main editor of the magazine, Jann Wenner, and was published as a book. The weight of Rolling Stone ’s influence was given to John and his side of the Lennon-McCartney conflict.

  Third, rock critics have had a tendency to emphasize lyrics in their reviews. In Paul and John’s early albums, Lennon’s lyrics were forceful and compelling; Paul, however, was primarily a musician, and his lyrics were often secondary, sometimes deeply felt and creative, but sometimes following the Buddy Holly school of rock lyrics.

  Fourth, Paul’s instrumentation obviously changed after the technical Beatle breakup. The concise power of a four man rock group was replaced by more intricate textures of keyboard and acoustic guitar, often with background female vocals. The “surface” of the music certainly had changed.

  Looking at the individual authorship of the Beatle songs will lead us to understand the solo Beatles better, to thoroughly re-evaluate the artistic achievement of the Beatles after the breakup. The technical dissolution of the Beatles in early 1970, after Abbey Road , is an extremely artificial line of demarcation, if we look at songwriting. The idea then, that there was a severe drop-off from the last Beatle albums to the first McCartney solo albums (as expressed by Jon Landau, among others) is a version of the popular “magical synergy” theory. But Paul and John had been writing increasingly separately for years as the Beatles produced their middle and late period masterpieces.

  Hopefully, as we progress ever further from the partisanship of the Lennon-McCartney early breakup era, we will start to look at the accomplishments of John and Paul, as individual songwriters, with fresh eyes. And this will certainly lead us to reassess the Beatles’ solo albums and solo careers. There is a positive continuity between John (as individual writer) and Paul (as individual writer) before and after the breakup, rather than a sudden, complete drop-off in spring 1970.

  McCartney and Lennon certainly influenced each other deeply. Lennon said, in 1969, “We [Paul and John] inspired each other so much in the early days. We wrote how we write now because of each other. Paul was there for five or ten years, and I wouldn’t write like I write now if it weren’t for Paul, and he wouldn’t write like he does if it weren’t for me.” [45] Linda referred to Paul and John as mirroring each other. Paul said, “The thing about me and John is that we were different, but we weren’t that different. I think Linda put her finger on it when she said me and John were like mirror images of each other. Even down to how we started writing together, facing each other, eyeball to eyeball, exactly like looking in the mirror.” [46]

  Despite this enormous mutual influence, John and Paul were individuals, and they developed in different ways. Their songs became increasingly idiosyncratic as the Beatles progressed from album to album. If we take Paul and John seriously, we will look at their individual contributions to the Beatle canon, rather than continue to accept a version of the flawed “magical synergy” theory, and a view of the breakup which is dependent on a conventional version of this theory. John, Paul, George and Ringo are all much more than their few years with the Beatles.

  * * *

  [1] As Paul tells the story. See discussion above.

  [2] For the “middle eight” in Beatle songs, see chapter two at “Love Me Do.”

  [3] There is no scientific way of isolating all full collaborative songs. The following list represents my best judgment, based on the evidence I’ve seen. Very equal collaborati
ons are “Misery,” “There’s a Place,” “I’ll Get You,” “Little Child,” “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” and “Baby’s In Black.” I also put “In My Life” in this category. In other songs, there was extensive collaboration, from the ground up, though either Paul or John may have dominated the collaboration session slightly: “From Me To You,” “Thank You Girl,” “She Loves You,” “This Boy,” and “The Word.” See Compton, “Lennon-McCartney Song Database.”

  [4] My emphasis. Lennon, Rolling Stone Interview, Dec. 1970, BBC, part 2, cf. Wenner, Lennon Remembers , 26.

  [5] Barrow, “Lennon and McCartney Songbook,” 17. See also Barrow, “The Songs John Wrote,” 17: “John confessed quite readily in private that he and Paul did all their best work alone. He could count on a single handful of fingers those few major songwriting successes which had been true Lennon-McCartney collaborations from start to finish.” Barrow, “Lennon and McCartney Songbook,” 21: “Of all these [all Lennon-McCartney songs], only a couple of dozen were written by both composers in true collaboration.”

  [6] In Hodenfield, “George Martin Recalls” (1976), 87. Cf. “George Martin on the Beatle Days,” 14.

  [7] Cf. McCartney, in Aldridge, “Beatles Not All That Turned On” (1967). The song starts out as an individual writing the song, then “playing it to the others.” Then there is the editing stage, “letting them think of bits”; then recording.

  [8] Wenner, Lennon Remembers , 83. Cf. ibid., p. 115, where John describes how he and Paul would help each other when they got “stuck.”

  [9] In Davies, The Beatles , 371.

  [10] Sheff, The Playboy Interviews , 149-50.

  [11] In Wenner, “One Guy Standing There,” 6.

  [12] Sheff, The Playboy Interviews, 149-50. See Introduction, above.

  [13] Gambaccini, Paul McCartney In His Own Words , 17. Another statement by Paul is similar: “There’s probably only about, say, twenty [Lennon-McCartney songs] that are really our own. On the rest there’s quite a lot of collaboration. I suppose you do get a little niggled, you wish people knew that was mine. But hell, how much credit do you want in a lifetime?” (Quoted in Gambaccini, “A Conversation,” 45.)

  [14] See Introduction.

  [15] As quoted in Barrow, “Why Paul and John started writing songs,” 21.

  [16] As quoted in Coleman, Lennon , 269.

  [17] The Beatles had a startling four of the top six places, a remarkable witness to the Beatles’ enormous impact. Just so we are not dependent on Rolling Stone alone, we could mention a few other polls. A 1974 poll from NME (New Musical Express ) had Sgt. Pepper’s at 1, Revolver at 4, Abbey Road at 8, and Rubber Soul at 15. A 1987 poll from OOR magazine, in Netherlands, had the White Album at 5, Revolver at 10, Sgt. Pepper’s at 13, Rubber Soul at 14, and Abbey Road at 116. Two early albums were far down in the poll: A Hard Day’s Night at 200, and Please Please Me at 265. In a 2006 Q magazine readers poll, we have the following results: Revolver at 4, Abbey Road at 14, the White Album at 17, Sgt. Pepper’s at 19, and Rubber Soul at 29. All critical and readers polls that I have seen support my main point here.

  [18] Lost Lennon Tapes, Sept. 16, 1991, cf. Sheff, The Playboy Interviews , 148.

  [19] “John Lennon: Biography.”

  [20] Wenner, Lennon Remembers , 26; Sheff, Playboy Interviews , 195. This shows both individual ownership of songs, behind the scenes, and Paul’s prolific songwriting at the time.

  [21] Baird, John Lennon, My Brother , 38; Sheff, The Playboy Interviews , 175.

  [22] Sholin and Kaye, “John Lennon’s last interview.”

  [23] Goodman, “Paul and Linda McCartney,” 104.

  [24] Lost Lennon Tapes, Sept. 16, 1991, cf. Sheff, The Playboy Interviews , 150.

  [25] Quoted in Barrow, “Songs John Wrote,” 15.

  [26] Ibid., 14.

  [27] Lost Lennon Tapes, Sept. 16, 1991, cf. Sheff, Playboy Interviews , 151.

  [28] Lennon, Rolling Stone Interview, Dec. 1970, BBC, part 4, cf. Wenner, Lennon Remembers, 100.

  [29] As quoted in Coleman, Lennon , 278.

  [30] Aldridge, The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics , 235.

  [31] In Okun, Compleat Beatles I, 114. Cf. Barrow, “Songs John Wrote,” 17: “He [John] was anxious to keep up with Paul, which was not easy because the McCartney output was usually greater than his. For every new song Lennon finished, McCartney tended to complete a couple, even if one was ditched and never made it into a recording session.”

  [32] Davies, The Beatles , 280.

  [33] We can consider cases where, in one interview, John claims a song as entirely his, while in other interviews he mentions Paul’s involvement — e.g., “Norwegian Wood,” “Day Tripper,” “In My Life.” This may be largely due to poor memory, but it may also reflect difference in artistic vision; to John, perhaps, the words were the song, and the music was simply not as important.

  [34] deCurtis, “Beatlemania strikes again,” 36. Paul said that he often contributed to middle eights for songs John had started — “those middle eights, John never had his middle eights.” Miles, Many Years From Now , 270-71. See chapter two, at “Love Me Do” for middle eights.

  [35] In Salewicz, McCartney: the Definitive Biography , 147; 177-78.

  [36] Quoted in Chris Salewicz, “Tug of War,” 62.

  [37] Sheff, Playboy Interviews , 201; cf. Wenner, Lennon Remembers, 22-26.

  [38] Coleman, Lennon , 273, 275.

  [39] Salewicz, “Tug of War,” 60.

  [40] King, “‘Shout!’: An Interview with Author Philip Norman”; Doggett, You Never Give Me Your Money , 275. I do not disagree with praise for Lennon’s songwriting; but the idea that one person in the Lennon-McCartney duo had all the brilliance does not adequately reflect the complexity of the Beatles’ story and music. This is a kind of aesthetic dualism, an unnecessary binary formulation in which the two main Beatle songwriters are seen as a pair in which one has to be all great and the other the complete opposite, and could not both be authentically extraordinary.

  [41] Sheff, The Playboy Interviews , 197.

  [42] Landau, Review of Ram .

  [43] The influential biographer Philip Norman is similar: After the breakup, Paul’s songs “were always catchy, always pleasant, always empty of real content and lacking that extra effort and edge that used to come from John peering over his shoulder.” Shout , 2003 ed., 486.

  [44] See above, for a rough consensus of rock critics. In the two Rolling Stone polls I summarize, the White Album is ranked at 10 and 5; Abbey Road is 14 and 6.

  [45] Fallon, “Will the Real John Lennon.”

  [46] Wilde, “McCartney: My Life in the Shadow of the Beatles,” 245.

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