Beatles News
Though the songwriting partnership of John Lennon and Paul McCartney will go down in history as one of the greatest musical collaborations, there’s a grey area for some songs.
Songs that are registered as a Lennon-McCartney credit aren’t all that they seem, with some songs written more heavily by one songwriter than the other. Though most of The Beatles‘ songs would feature the credit, songs like Strawberry Fields Forever and Yesterday were written primarily by Lennon and McCartney separately. But there are other songs in the band’s discography that were given the joint songwriting tag despite there being little to no overlap in the writing process. Speaking of this overlap with Playboy Magazine shortly before his death, Lennon shared another song that had been swept up in the collaborative tag.
Playboy Magazine asked: “When you talk about working together on a single lyric like We Can Work It Out, it suggests that you and Paul worked a lot more closely than you’ve admitted in the past. Haven’t you said that you wrote most of your songs separately, despite putting both of your names on them?”
Lennon replied: “Yeah, I was lying. It was when I felt resentful, so I felt that we did everything apart. But, actually, a lot of the songs we did eyeball to eyeball.” Despite writing those songs “eyeball to eyeball,” the credit has long been a sore spot for McCartney, who actually tried to have the Lennon-McCartney credit flipped.
The move was not received well by Yoko Ono and Ringo Starr, who both suggested that the change wouldn’t matter. Veteran drummer Starr called McCartney’s actions “petty and silly,” and while the Wings frontman has cooled off on the credit controversy, people are still outraged.
Source: cultfollowing.co.uk/Ewan Gleadow
George Harrison’s songs were typically spiritual, folk-leaning, and harmony-driven. But that’s not the whole story of the former Beatle’s solo career. His sound is as varied as his other Beatles bandmates’. He tried on experimental synth sounds and funky anthems. Harrison left no bounds on the work he delivered during his life, and these three songs below show that perfectly.
“It’s What You Value”
“It’s What You Value” is a little funkier than Harrison’s typical fare. It’s a bright, upbeat anthem that adds something unexpected to the mix. It’s not worlds away from his top hits, but it’s different enough to shock some surface-level fans.
“But I’ve found it’s all up to what you value / Down to where you are / It all swings on the pain you’ve gone through / Getting where you are,” Harrison sings over a surprisingly commercial instrumental. This song feels a little too straight for Harrison’s conventions, yet he proved he could lean that way and get away with it.
“Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea”
This classic jazz cover was released on Harrison’s posthumous album, Brainwashed. Harrison left his classic rock tones behind for soft ukulele playing. It’s a brighter, simpler approach than most of his discography.
“I want to cross you off my list / But when you come knocking at my door / Fate seems to give my heart a twist / And I come running back for more…I should hate you / But I guess I love you / You’ve got me in between the devil and the deep blue sea,” the lyrics read. Harrison made this standard his own. Many artists have covered this track over the years, but none have done it the way the former Beatle did.
Source: americansongwriter.com/Alex Hopper
Over the past few decades, the folks in charge of The Beatles’ marketing, with input from the band members themselves, have made it a point to play up the togetherness of the Fab Four. But there’s no denying the rancor occasionally enveloped the group. This was especially true around the time their breakup was announced.
For one example, Paul McCartney penned a letter with a cease-and-desist vibe in April 1970. That missive was directed at The Beatles’ manager. Spring 1970 featured a series of incidents where Paul McCartney clashed with his Beatle brethren. He famously screamed Ringo Starr out of his house in a dispute about the release date of the McCartney album. And on April 10, 1970, he gave his “self-interview” that essentially declared the breakup of The Beatles.
In actuality, the break had occurred more than six months earlier. That’s when John Lennon announced he was leaving at a band meeting. But Macca made it official. His stunt angered his bandmates. They’d wanted to hold off on the news until a slew of Fab Four-related releases, including the Let It Be album, hit the stores.
That Let It Be album was also the source of anger and frustration for McCartney. When given an early acetate of the finished product, he heard his song “The Long And Winding Road” rendered in a manner with which he wholly disagreed. And he directed his anger at Allen Klein, who had recently taken over as the group’s business manager.
Source: americansongwriter.com/Jim Beviglia
At this point, Paul McCartney squarely falls into the category of “living legend.” At 84, he's still going strong, releasing new music, and entertaining audiences the world over.
Even if it weren't for his hugely successful solo career, he would, of course, have earned his place in the history books as part of the Beatles alone. That band has arguably influenced more musicians across the last six decades than any other, with seminal albums such as Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band permanently changing the face of popular music.
The unexpected Beatles track Paul McCartney loves
In an interview in 2020, the man himself picked out some of his favorite Beatles tracks, and among some expected choices, one selection caught many by surprise. “You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)” is a lesser-known Fab Four song that was originally released as the B-side to “Let It Be.” It's a decidedly oddball song that veers from primal, mantra-like rock to tongue-in-cheek vaudeville style with strong comic overtones. McCartney described it as “…a zany, zany little B-side that nobody knows, but we had so much fun making it."
The A-side, “Let It Be,” was a more obvious choice. This beautiful song appeared as the title track to the band's final studio album. It was co-written by John Lennon and McCartney, with the latter explaining that the idea came to him via a dream, in which his sadly deceased mother appeared—hence the line, “When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me.” Released as a single, “Let It Be” hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and holds the distinction of being the last Beatles single released before McCartney formally left the group.
More of Paul McCartney’s favorite Beatles songs
Other nominations McCartney cited include the luminous psychedelic classic,
“Strawberry Fields Forever,” which was first issued as a double-A single in 1967, backed with “Penny Lane.” At the time, the song's radical departure from the band's previous rock-pop-oriented sound proved divisive. Over the ensuing years, it has been justly acknowledged as a landmark in innovation.
Source: mentalfloss.com/Chris Wheatley
Paul McCartney wrote his iconic Bond song, “Live and Let Die,” without having seen the script.
In his book The Lyrics, McCartney spoke about writing the iconic rock song on instinct, with very little knowledge about the plot.
“Writing a Bond song is a bit of an accolade, and I always had a sneaking ambition to do it,” he shared. “Ron told me the film was called Live and Let Die. The screenplay wasn’t finished at that point, so I got the Ian Fleming book, and it’s a real page-turner.”
The music icon was originally approached to make music for the 1971 film Diamonds Are Forever. While McCartney had no idea what the Roger Moore film was about, he had an idea for the Bond theme.
“I didn’t want the song to be, ‘You’ve got a gun. Now go kill people. Live and let die.’ That’s just not me,” he shared. “I wanted it to be, ‘Let it go. Don’t worry about it. When you’ve got problems, just live and let die.’ Once I had that thought in my head, the song almost wrote itself,” the Beatle explained.
McCartney and Wings recorded “Live and Let Die! at the end of the sessions for 1973’s Red Rose Speedway. It was produced by his frequent Beatles collaborator, George Martin. While Eon was keen to have McCartney write the theme song, the production company’s producer Harry Saltzman wanted Shirley Bassey or Thelma Houston to record the final version.
“The film producers found a record player. After the record had finished they said to George, ‘That’s great, a wonderful demo. Now when are you going to make the real track, and who shall we get to sing it?’ And George said, ‘What? This is the real track!’” McCartney explained, per Far Out Magazine.
McCartney would only allow “Live and Let Die” to be used in the Bond flick if it was the Wings version of the track, something that Eon eventually agreed to.
Source: mensjournal.com/Amelia Harvey
It’s no secret that The Beatles weren’t seeing eye to eye by the end of their tenure. That tension was especially a shame in the collaborative partnership between John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Though they still shared ideas even as they fell out, it wasn’t like their early years, when the Lennon-McCartney credit more accurately reflected the writing process.
One example of how their working relationship changed came when Lennon was working out “Come Together.” This classic hit features all four Beatles, but it wasn’t without pushback. Lennon reportedly dismissed McCartney from his typical duties on this track.
“Come Together” is one of the most beloved songs on Abbey Road. By the time this album came out, the band was all but done. Despite breaking at the seams, this album proved a stellar body of work. It wasn’t thrown together, even though the band wasn’t in the best headspace while working on it.
“Here come old flat-top, he come grooving up slowly / He got ju-ju eyeball, he one holy roller / He got hair down to his knee / Got to be a joker, he just do what he please,” the off-kilter lyrics to “Come Together” read. For all its weirdness, this song became one of The Beatles’ most beloved late-career tracks.
Source: americansongwriter.com/Alex Hopper
Just like the Beatles influenced countless musical contemporaries, the Fab Four drew inspiration from many of the other talented artists of the era. One of those legendary peers was Bob Dylan, particularly in the case of George Harrison's songwriting (which makes sense, considering the pair would later become bandmates in the Traveling Wilburys).
In fact, a song Dylan stayed up all night writing during the recording of his 1966 album Blonde on Blonde inspired Harrison to write a classic track which appeared on the so-called White Album.
The Dylan song in question? "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands."
Sean Wilentz (author of Bob Dylan in America) shared firsthand accounts of the night "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" was written in a 2007 essay for the Oxford American.
"I saw Dylan sitting out in the studio at the piano, writing all night long by himself. Dark glasses on," recalled Kris Kristofferson (who was working as a studio janitor at the time). With the aid of Coca-Cola and chocolate bars, Dylan stayed up until four o'clock in the morning working on the lyrics, which have been said to be about his first wife, Sara Lownds.
It wasn't the lyrics of "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" that Harrison took his cue from while writing "Long, Long, Long," however…it was the chords themselves. "I can't recall much about it ['Long, Long, Long'] except the chords, which I think were coming from 'Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands' – D to E minor, A, and D – those three chords and the way they moved," Harrison explained in an interview shared by uDiscoverMusic.
Source: yahoo.com/Jacqueline Burt Cote
Ringo Starr is often ignored or underappreciated, but his influence on The Beatles' sound is larger than a lot of people realize. Much like George Harrison, when the band first started, he stayed away from songwriting, since John Lennon and Paul McCartney had a monopoly over it. Harrison quickly started writing his own songs, but Starr was a late bloomer, but eventually, he also decided to try.
As all Beatles fans know, it was almost a rule to have Ringo Starr take the lead vocal on a song. There were very few albums that don't include a cover of a Beatles original sung by the drummer. And today, we're ranking all of them, from the early covers, to Starr-penned hits.
11 "Good Night" (1968)
10 "I Wanna Be Your Man" (1963)
9 "Matchbox" (1964)
8 "Honey Don’t" (1964)
Clearly, Ringo Starr's voice was great for Carl Perkins' covers. Another iconic track that Starr sang lead on for the band was "Honey Don't," a short and upbeat rockabilly track that Lennon used to sing before Starr joined, but that the drummer was clearly a better fit for. In addition to the album version included on Beatles for Sale, Starr also sang it for the On Air – Live at the BBC Volume 2 compilation, and he sounds just as great live as he did in the studio.
7 "Act Naturally" (1965)
6 "What Goes On" (1965)
5 "Boys" (1963)
"Boys" is a great example of how unafraid The Beatles were to push boundaries. They were a revolutionary group in many ways, and the way they easily dismantled what was considered as music for women and music for men was one of them. In 1963, for their debut album, Please Please Me, they decided to do a cover of The Shirelles' 1960 track, "Boys," and it was a big hit. McCartney later spoke about their decision to do a song by an all-girl group: "It was a Shirelles hit, and there were girls singing it, but we never thought we should call it ‘Girls’, just because Ringo was a boy. We just sang it the way they’d sung it and never considered any implications." It really worked, and it was a great way to help dismantle stereotypes in the music industry.
4 "Yellow Submarine" (1966)
The ultimate Ringo Starr classic. "Yellow Submarine" was not, as people might think, first released on the 1968 Yellow Submarine album. Instead, it was a part of the 1966 masterpiece that was Revolver. It is, to this day, the most popular Starr song which makes sense, most likely thanks to the beautiful imagery and catchy chorus. And, of course, the fact that it was especially made for him. "'Yellow Submarine' is Paul's baby," Lennon explained. "I helped with the lyrics too. We virtually made the track come alive in the studio, but based on Paul's inspiration. Paul's idea. Paul's title... written for Ringo."
Source: collider.com/Val Barone
No one can blame Paul McCartney for being a bit trepidatious about starting another band venture after breaking up with the world’s biggest outfit. That kind of heartbreak must have stung every time he got on stage, at least for a little while. Nevertheless, McCartney built a second life as frontman of another band, Wings. They may not have earned the recognizability or the cultural cachet of The Beatles, but they were successful in their own right; even if McCartney couldn’t always see that.
According to the rock legend, one of his peers, David Bowie, helped put things into perspective for him. The avant-garde star made
Wings always had a big burden to overcome. The Beatles’ success was unprecedented. Fans expected a lot from McCartney’s follow-up, and that pressure certainly weighed on him. ”Anything Wings did had to be viewed in the light of The Beatles,” McCartney once said.
Under that constant lens, McCartney struggled to block out the noise. Even though Wings did well for themselves, they didn’t go toe-to-toe with The Beatles, and that sullied any hope of reveling in that success.
“The interesting thing is that, looking back on some of the work, some of the stuff, it’s better than you think it was, but because it got such harsh criticism…from me,” McCartney once explained.
“The critics gave us a hard run, but I was particularly hard on us,” he added. “I remember looking at a book, there was an album we did, I think it was Back To The Egg, which didn’t do well, and I remember thinking, ‘God, complete disaster.’”
David Bowie’s Help
It wasn’t until he revisited that time in his career with Bowie that he realized things weren’t all that grim. Bowie, who experienced some momentary downslides himself, helped to put things in perspective.
“Years later, I remember looking at it with Bowie in this old book—one of these who-did-what Hit Parade books, looking it up—and it was like number eight in America,” McCartney continued.
“And I thought most people would give their right bloody arms to be number eight,” McCartney continued. “But eight, and I wasn’t satisfied. The Beatles had been number one. This is all right, keeps you going. But yes, a lot of the stuff is underrated, because of that.”
Understandably, McCartney couldn’t see the forest for the trees as he tried to make his second band work. However, time has been kind to Wings. Surely now, McCartney can revel in the unlikely success of his post-Beatles band. Not just any band could have stepped out of that monumental shadow as much as Wings did.
Source: americansongwriter.com/Alex Hopper
There has never been a band with more influence over popular music than The Beatles. It is an inarguable fact. They incorporated countless genres into their work, pushing the boundaries and exponentially expanding what was possible for music. Over their decade-long career as a group (can you believe it was only ten years?) they produced a vast variety of music that literally changed the world.
5 “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” (1967)
Starting off on a wonderfully strange note: “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” As iconic as it is perplexing, the otherworldly track is the third on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – hands down the most psychedelic album in The Beatles' catalog. The song was inspired by a drawing Lennon’s nursery-aged son, Julian, brought home from school one day. It is also often posited that the first letter of each noun in the title, which spell out “LSD” when put together, is an obvious drug reference. Lennon refuted this theory emphatically. That being said, it was no secret that The Beatles’ music was influenced by hallucinogens during this time.
4 “In My Life” (1965)
John Lennon called “In My Life” his “first real major piece of work,” despite its being released halfway through the band's career. It was the first time he had written autobiographically, approaching songwriting from a literary angle rather than as a means to an end for a pop song. This song, and the entire Rubber Soul album upon which it appears, marks a departure from traditional Western music.
Source: collider.com/Audrey Connelly
