Paul McCartney said 'I succumbed to the temptation' as he revealed John Lennon 'incentive'
Paul McCartney and John Lennon were the driving creative force behind The Beatles. The majority of the band's songs were written by the two and credited to Lennon-McCartney, irrespective of how collaborative the writing process was.
In the early days, John and Paul wrote together. But as the 1960s went on and creative differences between them came to the fore, they often wrote independently before presenting songs to one another for final tweaks. They began writing together after meeting at a Woolton church fete in 1957. Their first works were composed at Paul's childhood home on Forthlin Road in Allerton and at John's aunt Mimi's house on Menlove Avenue. They wrote hit after hit until The Beatles went their separate ways in 1970.
Every song written by John and Paul for The Beatles received that joint credit.
About their partnership, Music and Musicians magazine's Wilfred Mellors wrote in 1972: "Opposite poles generate electricity: between John and Paul the sparks flew. John's fiery iconoclasm was tempered by Paul's lyrical grace, while Paul's wide-eyed charm was toughened by John's resilience."
In a 1980 interview with Playboy, John said about working with Paul: "(He) provided a lightness, an optimism, while I would always go for the sadness, the discords, the bluesy notes. There was a period when I thought I didn't write melodies, that Paul wrote those and I just wrote straight, shouting rock 'n' roll.
"But, of course, when I think of some of my own songs - 'In My Life', or some of the early stuff, 'This Boy' - I was writing melody with the best of them."
Source: liverpoolecho.co.uk/Dan Haygarth
