Who Wrote the Beatle Songs

by Todd M Compton

  Thus this is a song substantially written by John, but finished off with some minor collaboration from Paul.

  “Strawberry Fields” was intended to be the first song on the next album, which ended up being titled Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band . However, because it was decided to make this and “Penny Lane” a single, and the Beatles sometimes kept songs on singles separate from albums, it was not included on Sgt. Pepper . It later ended up on the U.S. Magical Mystery Tour album, which became the “canonical” album home for it. Three versions of the song can be found on Anthology 2 .

  Penny Lane — (McCartney-Lennon)

  (lead vocals: Paul with John) (recorded December 29, 1966 to January 17, 1967)

  In 1966, Paul, perhaps influenced by John, was thinking about writing a song about his childhood. “I still want to write a song about the places in Liverpool where I was brought up,” he said. “Places like The Docker’s Umbrella which is a long tunnel through which the dockers go to work on Merseyside, and Penny Lane near my old home.” [25] Penny Lane is a road, but Paul was specifically thinking of the “bus roundabout” (a circular traffic exchange) and terminus that was sometimes called the Penny Lane Roundabout or simply Penny Lane. This terminus indeed has a barber shop and a “shelter in the middle of the roundabout.” [26] Paul and John often caught buses there.

  Paul and Jane Asher moved into a new home at 7 Cavendish Avenue, in St. John’s Wood, near Abbey Road, in March 1966, and he wrote “Penny Lane” here in December, in the music room at the top of the house, on a piano which had recently been painted with a psychedelic rainbow. [27]

  “Strawberry Fields” and “Penny Lane,” both about childhood places in Liverpool, seemed linked together. In 1985, Paul thought the songs influenced each other, but was not sure how: “We were often answering each other’s songs so it might well have been my version of a memory song,” he said. It seems likely that John’s “Strawberry Fields,” written first, inspired Paul to write his own “memory song,” though it was entirely unlike John’s. [28]

  This was substantially Paul’s song, as both Paul and John stated. John, when talking about the journalist who suggested he write about his childhood, said, “Which manifests later as ‘Penny Lane’ from Paul — although it was actually me who lived in Penny Lane — and ‘Strawberry Fields.’” [29] In 1985, Paul said, “We were always in competition. I wrote ‘Penny Lane,’ so he wrote ‘Strawberry Fields.’” [30]

  Nevertheless, there was some limited collaboration with John to finish the song. In 1995, Paul said that “When I came to write it, John came over and helped me with the third verse, as often was the case. We were writing childhood memories.” [31] And again, in 2007, Paul remembered, “I had kind of done ‘Penny Lane’ and ‘Yesterday’, when he’d done ‘Strawberry Fields’ at his place. We’d get together and polish them.” [32] Much earlier, in 1967, John said, “I did bits for ‘Penny Lane’.” [33]

  And we see how even a Beatles insider can be wrong. In 2004, George Martin said, “‘Penny Lane’ was entirely a Paul composition; ‘Strawberry Fields’ was entirely a John composition.” [34] Actually, there was slight collaboration for each. [35]

  Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band , album, June 1, 1967

  After the quantum stylistic leaps of Rubber Soul and Revolver , what? The album that is often regarded as the greatest rock album ever. [36] It would combine John’s increasingly surreal lyrics, George’s Indian leanings, Paul’s interest in experimental and classical music, the Beatles’ encyclopedic knowledge of the styles of rock and popular music, and create something that was acclaimed as uniquely unified and powerful. Unlike much experimental music, the body of the work is based on solid musical craftsmanship, Paul and John’s mastery of melody, harmony, striking lyrics, superb performance musicianship, and the popular idioms of rock, music-hall song and ballad. George Martin, was, as always, the irreplaceable fifth Beatle in this album, serving as the mediator between Paul, John, George and the world of orchestral, classical, and experimental sound.

  This album reflects the Beatles’ growing artistic maturity. Nevertheless, it is also a record of changing dynamics within the group. Paul and John, who had started as a self-conscious songwriting duo, were writing increasingly apart, and so this brought additional tension and competition. Paul, as songwriter, was becoming more and more productive, while John had a tendency to write fewer songs, and polish them over a length of time, as he had done with “Strawberry Fields.” John would either have to equal Paul’s productivity or contribute fewer songs to an album, and the latter eventuality is what happened during this period. John said, in 1971,

  And then Paul started doing that — “Now we’re going to make a movie,” or “Now we’re going to make a record.”. . . He’d come in with about 20 good songs and say “We’re recording.” And I had to suddenly write a fucking stack of songs. Pepper was like that. Magical Mystery Tour was another. So I hastily did my bits for it. [37]

  And so John, though he made significant contributions to both Sgt. Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour , felt ambivalent about these albums. “I always kept saying I prefer the double album, cause my music is better on the double album,” he said in 1970. “I don’t care about the whole concept of Pepper .” [38]

  Paul was becoming increasingly prolific as a songwriter, but he was also increasingly acting as a producer and arranger in the recording studio. Journalist Hunter Davies, who witnessed the Sgt. Pepper studio sessions, said:

  They knew at the time that Sgt. Pepper was going to be bigger and better and different, with a new concept of the “album,” all together and connected. Paul was definitely in charge of Sgt. Pepper . . . . It seemed to be all coming from Paul’s house, and he seemed to be the total inspiration and the main motivator. John was becoming bored by the Beatles by then and was getting lazy and thinking of ideas and half-songs and not finishing them. So Paul forced him to finish things off, or to bring them to Paul half-done and they’d knock them out together. There was no resentment, though. He was just waiting for Yoko or something else to come along in his life. [39]

  The other Beatles both relied on Paul’s increasing presence as producer, manager, and creative nagger, and were deeply annoyed by it. Davies’s generalization that “there was no resentment” has been contradicted by many statements from the other Beatles.

  Paul came up with the idea of the album as concept, the St. Pepper framework band. When asked if the album had originated as a “fantasy thing,” Paul replied, “Yeah, I had this idea that it was going to be an album of another band that wasn’t us — we’d just imagine all the time that it wasn’t us playing. It was just a nice little device to give us some distance on the album.” [40]

  So, in the same way that the early Beatle albums were recorded like the early live shows, with covers, and a screamer at the end, this album was also set up as a “live” show.

  Earlier, songs such as “If I Needed Someone,” “Good Day Sunshine” and “Here There Everywhere” had been influenced by American folk, rock and pop (Dylan, the Byrds, the Lovin’ Spoonful and the Beach Boys). Sgt. Pepper was influenced by America also. When Paul was asked in 1980 how the album came about, he answered:

  I think the big influence was Pet Sounds [released May 1966] by the Beach Boys. That album just flipped me. Still is one of my favorite albums — the musical invention on that is just amazing . . . When I heard it I thought, “Oh dear, this is the album of all time. What the hell are we going to do?” My ideas took off from that standard. [41]

  Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band — (McCartney)

  (lead vocals: Paul) (recorded on February 1, 1967)

  The first big surprise about the songwriting on the Sgt. Pepper album is not discovering how much of the title cut was written by Paul and how much by John; it is that we have to judge whether the lyrics of some songs were co-written by the bearlike roadie, assistant and friend Mal Evans.

  Paul remembers the genesis of “Sgt. Pepper�
��s” taking place when he had an epiphany while flying home to London from Nairobi, Kenya, on November 9, 1966, after a vacation he took with Evans. [42] Paul thought, for the Beatles’ next album, they would become another group, with another name:

  It was an idea I had, I think, when I was flying from L.A. [sic] to somewhere. I thought it would be nice to lose our identities, to submerge ourselves in the persona of a fake group. We would make up all the culture around it and collect all our heroes in one place. So I thought, a typical stupid-sounding name for a Dr. Hook’s Medicine Show and Traveling Circus kind of thing would be Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Just a word game, really. [43]

  And in 1995, he said:

  We were fed up with being Beatles. We really hated that fucking four little mop-top boys approach. We were not boys, we were men. It was all gone, all that boy shit, all that screaming, and we didn’t want anymore, plus, we’d now got turned on to pot and thought of ourselves as artists rather than just performers. . . . Then suddenly on the plane I got this idea. I thought, Let’s not be ourselves. Let’s develop alter egos so we’re not having to project an image which we know. It would be much more free. [44]

  He immediately began to work on a song, and in a brainstorming session with Evans, came up with the name of the group, as Miles reported in 1995. Paul got the title while “bantering words” with Mal Evans, as they talked about salt and pepper shakers. He believes he came up with “Sergeant Pepper” not Mal. “I started writing the song: ‘It was twenty years ago today, Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play.’” [45] (If this took place on the plane ride from Nairobi, then apparently the original brainstorming session with Evans took place on the plane.)

  The obvious inspiration for the name was surrealistic west coast band names in America. [46] A less obvious influence was the marching band tradition in northern England. “I started writing the song: ‘It was twenty years ago today, Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play,’” Paul said, in 1995. “Okay, so I was leading myself into a story. What was this about? Well, he’s some guy, then, and I always imagined him as associated with a brass band; we’ve always liked brass bands. So again it was northern memories.” [47] The marching brass band is one of the persistent influences on Paul’s musical style, from “Sgt. Pepper” to “Family Way,” “Thingumybob,” “Let ‘Em In,” and other solo songs.

  When he got back to London, Paul introduced the alter ego idea to the rest of the Beatles who willingly agreed to the Sgt. Pepper personae for the record. Paul in 1989, said:

  I remember hitting upon this idea and saying to the group, “OK, for this one album we won’t be the Beatles. This is going to be our safety valve. We’re going to think of a new name for ourselves, a new way of being, a new way of recording, everything fresh, and by the way, I’ve written a song about something called ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.’” And we agreed that we weren’t the Beatles anymore. [48]

  Both Paul and John ascribed this song to Paul alone. “‘Sgt. Pepper’ was Paul’s song, with little or no input from John,” wrote Miles. [49] “See Paul said, ‘Come and see the show,’ I didn’t,” John said wryly, in 1970. [50]

  The contribution of Mal Evans to this song is more interesting. We have a bit of evidence from Miles, but it is also supported by Paul, Ringo, and other Beatles insiders. Paul/Miles described Paul coming up with the title while brainstorming with Mal. Ringo, in an undated interview, remembered Mal as an actual collaborator: “Paul wrote a song with Mal Evans called ‘Sgt Pepper.’ I think Mal thought of the title. Big Mal, super roadie!” [51] George Martin also mentioned that some gave Mal credit for the name “Sgt. Pepper.” [52]

  There are interviews by Mal Evans claiming his contribution to the song, and this supporting evidence makes his claims more credible. Evans stated that he was a full collaborator on this song, and that Paul promised him royalties, though the Beatle later told him the song had to be published with the sacrosanct “Lennon-McCartney” attribution. [53] “The first song I ever wrote that got published was ‘Sgt Pepper,’” he said in an undated interview. “At the time I was staying with Paul as his housekeeper.” [54] In another interview, he said, “I stayed with him for four months and he has a music room at the top of his house with his multi-coloured piano and we were up there a lot of the time. We wrote ‘Sgt Pepper.’” [55]

  There is a diary written by Evans, which would support his interviews. Unfortunately, this document’s authenticity has been disputed. [56]

  It is possible that Mal overemphasized his contribution to the song. Paul was the only other person present and he remembered “bantering” with Mal to arrive at “Sgt. Pepper,” not actual collaboration. The Ringo statement shows that one of the Beatles regarded the process as collaboration, though Ringo was not a firsthand witness.

  If Mal did contribute significantly, this is close to the familiar pattern we have seen: Paul has the beginnings of a song, then turns to someone (usually John, but sometimes friends and acquaintances) to fill out the rest of the lyrics. Perhaps this time he turned to Mal, who happened to be there, to help fill in the blanks.

  Neil Aspinall also mentioned being present on one occasion when Paul was writing the song (as was Mal). He said that he suggested that Sgt. Pepper should introduce the band and close it at the end, an idea that was later accepted. [57]

  With a Little Help From My Friends (McCartney-Lennon)

  (lead vocals: Ringo) (recorded on March 29–30, 1967)

  After the fictional band is introduced in the first song of the Pepper album, the next cut continues without a break, with Ringo singing as the fictional “Billy Shears.” [58] Shears was to be “a character in this operetta, this whole thing that we were doing,” said Paul. [59]

  The songwriting for this song was dominated by Paul, but Paul and John both contributed to it. Hunter Davies, in an extraordinary passage, recorded a “work” session on this song at Paul’s house, Paul and John playing together as if in a trance, but stopping now and then to write something down. He described thoroughgoing collaboration:

  John started playing his guitar and Paul started banging on his piano. For a couple of hours they both banged away. Each seemed to be in a trance until the other came up with some­thing good, then he would pluck it out of a mass of noises and try it himself. They’d already established the tune the previous afternoon, a gentle lilting tune, and its name, “A Little Help From My Friends.” Now they were trying to polish up the melody and think of some words to go with it. [60]

  Davies describes them working out a verse. They finally got four lines and wrote them down. They now had a verse and the chorus.

  It was written during multiple songwriting sessions, partially at John’s house at Weybridge (per Paul), and partially at Paul’s St. John’s Wood house (Davies describes this session). [61]

  How much John helped write this song varies in three interview statements he made. In 1970, he reported it as an equal collaboration, based on Paul’s idea and some structure: “Paul had the line about ‘little help from my friends.’ I’m not sure, he had some kind of structure for it and — we wrote it pretty well fifty-fifty but it was based on his original idea.” [62] The following year John said it was Paul’s song, but stated that he helped with “some” of the words. “Paul. It was Paul’s idea. I think I helped with some of the words. In fact, I did. Hunter Davies was there when we did it and mentioned it in the book. “What do you see when you turn out the light. I can’t tell you but I know it’s mine.” That was mine.” [63] In 1980, he remembered, “That’s Paul with a little help from me.” [64]

  Paul’s only comment on writing the song is late, 1995, but he described equal collaboration: “I think that was probably the best of the songs we wrote for Ringo actually. . . . It was pretty much co-written, John and I doing a work song for Ringo, a little craft job.” [65]

  George Martin described “With a Little Help” as a Paul song, in an undated interview. “Paul wrote that and wrote it beautif
ully simple with just five notes. Terribly simple and terribly effective.” [66] Once again, Martin is off slightly, not understanding that there was collaboration, but he did pick up that the song leaned toward Paul.

  Despite Paul’s late memories, I accept John’s statements that Paul brought the idea of the song and the beginning of the music to the work session; after which I accept Paul’s and John’s (and Hunter Davies’) de-scription of thorough collaboration.

  Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds — (Lennon-McCartney)

  (lead vocals: John) (recorded on March 1-2, 1967)

  This song started from one of John Lennon’s most brilliant “found” titles. His son Julian came home one day with a picture and John asked what it was. The boy answered, “Lucy” (one of Julian’s school friends) “in the sky with diamonds.” John thought “That’s beautiful,” and recognized that this would make a good song title. “I immediately wrote a song about it.” [67] So he came up with the beginnings of the song at this point.

  Soon Paul visited, and John told him about the new song. They went upstairs to the music attic and, Paul said, “he played me the idea he had for it,” starting with “Picture yourself.” They discussed Alice in Wonderland and mentioned how the title “would make a great psychedelic song.” So even if John denied that the title “meant” LSD, he and Paul saw the images of the song as relating to psychedelic experiences. They began to trade images: Paul came up with “cellophane flowers” and “newspaper taxis,” which John approved of, then John replied with “girl with the kaleidoscope eyes.” [68]