Who Wrote the Beatle Songs

by Todd M Compton

  However, in the 1980 interview, John went on to describe finishing the song as a collaboration on the lyrics, not as him writing them alone. “Oh he had the whole thing about [sings first lines of song] . . . and he had the story and knew where it was going. So then we had to work out, ‘Well is there anybody else in this?’” [61] John even remembers Paul working out the chorus with both him and George Harrison. George also remembers contributing to the lyrics. “I gave them lyrics. I helped out on ‘Eleanor Rigby,’” he said. [62]

  Paul, on the other hand, in his “angry” interview with Davies in 1985, curtly described Lennon as contributing “about half a line” to the song. [63] In a 1966 interview, he also described finishing the lyrics at Lennon’s house, not at the studio, as Lennon remembered in 1980. [64] In 1988, he said he brought the song to John for help with the third verse only. [65] His memories are no different in 1995: John only helped with “a few words.” [66] In 1973, however, Paul seemed to view the song as more collaborative, when he included it in a short list of favorite songs he wrote with John. “Do you have any favourites that you wrote with John? [He mentioned ‘In My Life,’ and ‘Norwegian Wood.’] . . . I like ‘Eleanor Rigby’ too, I thought that was a fair one.” [67]

  It seems probable that both Beatles were swayed by emotion in their conflicting accounts; John tells the story of the song’s completion with some bitterness (for Paul had not come to him to finish the last verse of the song), and Paul reacts in a similar fashion. The truth of John’s contri­bution probably lies somewhere between “half a line” and “70 per cent.” A likely scenario would be, Paul comes in with the music and first verse and ideas for the rest; he then collaborates with John on all the lyrics except the last verse. Then he took it into the studio and opened it up to everyone there (though John reports that he then took Paul aside to do the serious finishing of the song).

  We should emphasize: all of this collaboration took place on lyrics, not on music. This is generally true of Beatle collaboration with “outsid­ers.” Paul would never come to Ringo, Neal or Mal and say, could you help me write the melody for a chorus? But he often did that with lyrics.

  I see this as a Paul song finished in collaboration with John, and to a lesser extent, with George and Ringo. Minor contributions from other Beatle insiders apparently occurred.

  I’m Only Sleeping — (Lennon-McCartney)

  (lead vocals: John) (recorded on April 27-29, and May 5-6, 1966)

  Paul used to come over to John’s house at noon or the early after­noon and wake him up. One day this gave John the idea for a song on sleeping, and the idea was taken up in a songwriting session with Paul. Ac­cording to McCartney, the song was begun and finished in one multi-hour session. [68]

  John claimed the song in 1971 and 1980: “That’s me — dreaming my life away.” [69] Unfortunately, he didn’t comment much on it. In 1995, Paul described it as a song that started out as a John idea, but then there was collaboration — it was “co-written.” And in the same interview, according to Paul, “One day I led the dance, like ‘Paperback Writer,’ and another day John would lead the dance, like ‘I’m Only Sleeping.’ It was nice, it wasn’t really competitive as to who started the song.” [70] In 2004, Paul emphasized John’s “ownership” of the song, saying, “For those early years, the competition was great . . . I’d come up with ‘Paperback Writer’ and John would come back with ‘I’m Only Sleeping.’” [71]

  Paul definitely regarded it as a John song, despite his input in finishing it. I accept it as a Lennon song, finished with Paul, in Lennon-dominated collaboration.

  Love You To (Harrison)

  (lead vocals: George) (recorded on April 11, 1966)

  While the Beatles were filming Help! , one of the Hindu cast members gave each of the Beatles a book on reincarnation. During a break in the Beatles’ 1965 American tour, from August 23 to 27, they rented a luxuri­ous house in Benedict Canyon, near Los Angeles, owned by Zsa Zsa Gabor, and invited friends to visit, among whom were the Byrds, Joan Baez, and Peter Fonda, not yet a star. There Byrd member Roger McGuinn introduced George to the sitar style of Ravi Shankar. As we have seen, in October 1965, the Beatles recorded “Norwegian Wood” with sitar. In just a few months, in June 1966, George would meet Shankar in London and start taking lessons from him.

  George said that this, the first major Indian song in the Beatles’ canon, was one of the first songs he wrote for sitar. [72] In 1966, he explained, “On the new album I developed it [sitar music] a little bit. But I’m far from the goal I want to achieve. It will take me 40 years to get there. I’d like to be able to play Indian music as Indian music instead of using Indian music in pop.” Asked how an Englishman got so involved in Indian music, he replied: “A whole lot of things got me interested. The more I heard it, the more I liked it. It’s very involved music. . . . Indian music is hip, yet 8,000 years old.” [73]

  Here, There and Everywhere — (McCartney-Lennon)

  (lead vocals: Paul) (recorded on June 14, 16-17, 1966)

  Paul came to John’s house one early afternoon and found him asleep. So he took a guitar and went to sit outside, by the pool. He started strum­ming in E and soon had a few chords, then a tune, and most of the lyrics. John eventually showed up, and they “took it indoors and finished it up. . . . John might have helped with a few last words.” [74]

  A number of influences came together as they were writing this. First, John’s mother Julia had taught them old standards, such as “Ramona” and “Wedding Bells are Breaking Up That Old Gang of Mine.” Paul said that he and John “often tried to write songs with that same feeling to them. ‘Here, There and Everywhere’ was one we wrote along those lines.” [75]

  This song also reflects a new major influence on Paul: Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys. “‘Here, There and Everywhere’ was supposed to be a Beach Boys song, but you wouldn’t have known,” Paul said in 1973. [76] Pet Sounds , Paul’s favorite rock album, which included “God Only Knows,” Paul’s favorite song, had been released just two months earlier, on May 16, 1966.

  John ascribed this song to Paul in 1971: “Paul. This was a great one of his.” [77] In 1980 he said, “Paul’s song completely, I believe. And one of my favorite songs of Beatles.” [78] John could be generous in his appraisal of selected Paul songs.

  Paul claimed the song in 1984: “I wrote that by John’s pool one day.” [79] In 1995, he gave it as an example of a song he’d written in the tradition of old melodic standards: “And I continued to write those tunes with things like ‘Let It Be,’ ‘Here There and Everywhere,’ ‘The Long and Winding Road.’’ [80] However, as we have seen, in two interviews, in 1988 and 1995, Paul spoke of collaborating with John to finish the song.

  If we turn to non-Beatles, roadie Mal Evans claimed that he contributed a phrase to “Here, There.” One day Paul showed up at Neil and Mal’s house in the morning, said he was stuck for a line in one of his songs, and played this, with the blank. Mal said he suggested, “‘Watching her eyes, hoping I’m always there.’ I’m very eye conscious.” [81] As always, such statements by Beatles insiders are hard to assess without further support.

  So this is a Paul song, with minor collaboration from John.

  Yellow Submarine — (McCartney-Lennon-Donovan)

  (lead vocals: Paul) (recorded on May 26 and June 1, 1966)

  Paul wrote the beginning of this as he faded away into sleep one night in the Asher house. He was trying to write a children’s song, so made the lyrics extremely simple. He thought of colored submarines, blue, green and yellow ones, but finally narrowed it down to a yellow submarine.

  Some collaboration followed. Either John helped with the lyrics, or he contributed a song fragment, words and music, to help create the verse.

  At some point, when the song was still missing some lines, Paul vis­ited the apartment of folk-pop songwriter, Donovan, and asked for help. Donovan went into a different room and came up with “Sky of blue and sea of green.” “They had always asked
people for help with a line or two, so I helped with that line,” said Donovan. “He knew that I was into kids songs and he knew that I could help.” [82] Donovan’s claim to those lines is supported by John. [83]

  According to Neil Aspinall, Paul and John added the last lyrics just before the song was recorded. [84]

  John also contributed in a major way to the song’s recording (including the voice in the funnel), which is unique enough to be regarded as experimental music. “We virtually made the track come alive in the studio,” he said. [85] George Harrison said, “every time we’d all get around the piano with guitars and start listening to it and arranging it into a record, we’d all fool about.” [86] Which is one way of composing experimental music. George Martin remembered that they used chains and bowls of water. They would blow through straws into bottles of water to replicate the sound of submarines surfacing. “It was nice to do because it, we were all being very inventive. And it was fun, it was like a party almost.” [87] He also said, “It must have been one of the most unusual Beatles sessions ever. It was more like the things I’ve done with The Goons and Peter Sellers.” [88] Sometimes we think of the fantasy-Lewis Carroll side of the Beatles as coming from Lennon, but this song shows that Paul had leanings toward surrealism also.

  A major problem in assessing the songwriting for this song is that the earliest interview contradicts all other interviews. In a March 1967 inter­view with Paul and John, Brian Mathew said, “John, earlier before we started recording, you said it was in effect written as two separate songs.” John responded:

  Yeah. I seem to remember, like, the submarine . . . the chorus bit, you coming in with it. Paul: Yeah. John: And wasn’t the other bit something that I had already going, and we put them together? Paul: Well, yeah. Right. Yeah. John: And it made sense to make it into . . . Paul: Yeah, the bit . . . [sings melody to verse ] ‘Dut-ta-da, da-dut-ta-da.’ [89]

  So, by this account, it was a song like “A Day in the Life,” “Baby I’m a Rich Man,” or “I’ve Got a Feeling,” in which two entirely separate songs were combined. Paul wrote the chorus, while John wrote the verse.

  However, unlike the situation with “A Day in the Life,” “Baby I’m a Rich Man,” or “I’ve Got a Feeling,” in subsequent interviews, neither Beatle remembered it that way. Did they forget? Or was that 1967 inter­view somehow mistaken? For example, in 1995, Paul remembered writing the story of the verse in that initial half-waking composing session: “I just made up a little tune in my head, then started making a story, sort of an ancient mariner, telling the young kids where he’d lived and how there’d been a place where he had a yellow submarine. It’s pretty much my song as I recall.” [90]

  There was definitely collaboration on it. In 1966, Paul said: “We were trying to write a children’s song.” [91] In the same year, he remembered, “Originally we intended it to be ‘Sparky’ a children’s record. But now it’s the idea of a yellow submarine where all the kids went to have fun.” This represents the song as a joint effort. However, Paul continued, “I was just going to sleep one night and thinking if we had a children’s song, it would be nice to be on a yellow submarine where all your friends are with a band.” [92]

  Thirty years later, he stated, “I think John helped out; the lyrics got more and more obscure as it goes on.” Nevertheless, Paul explicitly claimed the verse and chorus, and the story of the lyrics: “the chorus, melody and verses are mine.” [93]

  This is written from Paul’s perspective, and it reflects memories some thirty years after the time of composition. However, John, though he al­ways claimed that he helped with the song, sometimes described the song as mainly Paul’s. For example, in 1980, he remembered, “‘Yellow Submarine’ is Paul’s baby. Donovan helped with the lyrics. I helped with the lyrics, too. . . . but based on Paul’s inspiration. Paul’s idea, Paul’s title. So I count it as a ‘Paul’ song.” [94] Here John seems to be limiting his contribution to the lyrics. Paul also sometimes seems to limit John’s contribution to the lyrics. [95] This would fit with the standard pattern of one of the Beatles having the music, verse and middle (AB), of a song, and the beginning of lyrics, then finishing it off with the other Beatle (or with the Beatles and insiders).

  In 1984, Paul seems to describe writing the song outright (“I wrote that in bed one night” [96] ), and he often described it as his song. “I told them we’d just got a song, Yellow Submarine, which I’d written for Ringo, very childrensy, but it could be great,” he said in 1989. [97] But in the same year he again describes collaboration, developing his original idea: “You see with John and I, certain songs would nearly always be the idea of one of us. One of us had actually said, ‘Ooh, Yellow Submarine would be good.’ The other one would say, ‘Ok, that’s what we’ll write today.’” [98]

  John usually ascribed the song mainly to Paul, but with some collaboration added. “Both of us. Paul wrote the catchy chorus. I helped with the blunderbuss bit,” he stated in 1971. [99] (No one has yet explained what he meant by “blunderbuss,” an archaic gun, in this context. Perhaps he meant the funnel, or perhaps the transcriber got the word wrong.)

  It is possible that John applied lyrics that he had written before to Paul’s melody in the verse.

  To sum up: the evidence for the writing of this song is quite ambiguous. If we look at the 1967 dual interview as the earliest substantial record of the song’s composition, one might ascribe the chorus to Paul, and the music and lyrics of the first verse to John. However, if that were the case, it is odd that this view was never repeated, either by John or Paul. The other possibility is that this song was substantially begun by Paul, with the music of both chorus and verse, and perhaps the words of the first verse, then John and others helped fill in the words of the subsequent verses. All the evidence outside of the 1967 interview supports this perspective, and it is a very common pattern in Paul and John’s collaboration during this period. This is supported by a George Harrison statement: “‘Yellow Submarine’ was written by Paul and John, but even in the early days they were writing large portions on their own. Then one would help the other one finish it off; but that became more apparent later on.” [100]

  It was certainly finished with collaboration on the lyrics from John and Harrison and Donovan. The rest of the Beatles, with George Martin, were major contributors to the experimental sections of the song. [101]

  She Said She Said — (Lennon-Harrison)

  (lead vocals: John) (recorded on June 21, 1966)

  At the house in Benedict Canyon, on August 24, 1965, [102] the sun was shining, girls were dancing, and John was high on acid. As John tells the story, Peter Fonda, wearing sunglasses, sat next to him and said “I know what it’s like to be dead.” This was not what John wanted to hear, but Peter kept repeating this unnerving message to him. [103] As Fonda recalls the incident, he simply told the Beatles about surviving an operation in which he had been declared legally dead. “‘I know what it’s like to be dead,’ I said, and just then John walked past and said, ‘Who put all that shit in your head?’” [104]

  Later, in London, John took this experience, changed Fonda into a fictional female, and wrote “She Said She Said.” There are some striking contrasts in tempo in this song; as John remembered it, the “middle eight” came when he just “wrote the first thing that came into my head and it was ‘When I was a boy,’ in a different beat.” [105] However, according to George Harrison, he helped John “weld” three different unfinished songs together to create this song: “‘I was at John’s house one day, and he was struggling with some tunes,’ recalled Harrison, ‘loads of bits. . . . The middle part was a different song — ‘I said no, no, no, you’re wrong’ — then it goes into the other one, ‘When I was a boy.’ That was a real weld!’” [106]

  John and Paul agree that Paul did not collaborate on this. In 1968, John put it on a list of his personal songs. [107] Paul said the song was “Very much John. It’s a nice one. . . . John brought it in pretty much finished, I think.”
[108]

  SIDE TWO

  Good Day Sunshine — (McCartney-Lennon)

  (lead vocals: Paul) (recorded on June 8, 1966)

  Paul wrote this at Kenwood on a bright sunny day, [109] modeling it on “Daydream” by the Lovin’ Spoonful, which had the line, “I’m blowin’ the day to take a walk in the sun.” [110] John did help to finish this up: “John and I wrote it together at Kenwood, but it was basically mine and he helped me with it,” said Paul. [111] John also ascribed this song to Paul, but remembered some possible collaboration. “Paul. But I think maybe I helped him with some of the lyric,” he said in 1971. [112]

  While the Beatles were enormously influenced by Motown, soul, girl groups, early rock such as Elvis, Little Richard and Buddy Holly, early duos like the Everly Brothers, and Brill Building songwriters like Goffin and King, they were also significantly influenced by American rock that was contemporary to them — the Byrds, the Mamas and Papas, the Lovin’ Spoonful, the Beach Boys, and Dylan.

  And Your Bird Can Sing — (Lennon-McCartney-Harrison)

  (lead vocals: John) (recorded on April 26, 1966)

  John claimed this exuberant rock song, though for some unaccountable reason he didn’t like it much. “Me. Another horror,” he said in 1971. [113] And nine years later, he described it as one of his “throwaways.” [114] Paul agreed that it was written by John, but remembered some collaboration: “‘And Your Bird Can Sing’ was John’s song. I suspect that I helped with the verses because the songs were nearly always written without second and third verses. I seem to remember working on that middle-eight with him but it’s John’s song, 80-20 to John.” [115]