Paul McCartney Borrowed the Lyrics to Climactic 'Abbey Road' Song From a 400-Year-Old Poem
Paul McCartney drew inspiration from many different sources as a songwriter. It is a technique he still employs over 60 years after starting his music career. However, the ideas for some of Paul’s songs came from unlikely origins, including a 1789 poem published by Elizabethan poet Thomas Dekker that he used to write a climactic Abbey Road song.
Of all The Beatles, Paul takes a very pragmatic approach to songwriting. He viewed it as a job, a means to an end to a new song. It was an approach he used when first writing songs with John Lennon.
“If I were to sit down and write a song, now, I’d use my usual method: I’d either sit down with a guitar or at the piano and just look for melodies, chord shapes, musical phrases, some words, a thought just to get started with,” he said in an interview with NPR.
“Then I sit with it to work it out, like writing an essay or doing a crossword puzzle. That’s the system I’ve always used that John [Lennon] and I started with,” he continued.
Source: Lucille Barilla/cheatsheet.com
