News The Beatles song John Lennon “doesn’t get enough credit” for, according to Paul McCartney
When it comes to credit, The Beatles‘ pockets are positively overflowing. The band’s pop prowess is so revered that some six decades later, the Liverpool quartet is still influencing new music and is still considered the greatest band of songwriters to have ever graced the airwaves. While each member chipped in with a classic song or two, most of the best songs can be attributed to the songwriting partnership of Paul McCartney and John Lennon.
The two childhood friends found one another at a village fête. They would go on to become the most celebrated songwriting partnership in history, constantly pushing one another into new realms of brilliance. Even after the two men helped split the group up and ended their professional relationship, they would encourage one another, through their barbed releases, to write even better music than before.
Naturally, once the band split, those bitter moments would arrive more frequently, and Lennon would actively lambast some of Paul McCartney’s work as distastefully sweet. Often referring to such tracks as “granny shit”, the elder Beatle was always comfortable sharing his disdain for his partner’s work as well as tipping his hat to the tunes he really loved. Contrary to popular belief, there were plenty of McCartney originals that Lennon loved.
Likewise, McCartney was never afraid to share his admiration for his partner’s solo efforts inside and outside the band. While the duo would share credits on tracks as standard, they would later reveal that after their early days, where they would write “eyeball to eyeball”, the pair would write most of their songs separately, bringing near-finished pieces to one another for finishing touches.
While Lennon is often noted for his songwriting abilities, his improvisational and experimental skills are most notable. However, according to Macca, Lennon was always far more in charge of his work than many would expect. ‘I Am The Walrus’ is one such song that McCartney believes Lennon is criminally underrated.
“I think in a way, for instance, something like ‘I Am the Walrus’, someone like John probably doesn’t get enough credit,” McCartney told Clash in 2009. “Those sessions, those preparatory sessions, were very important because they set the style and often gave very accurate briefs of what we wanted,” he explained.
“For instance, all of John’s ‘Everybody’s got one’ and ‘Ho ho ho, hee hee hee, ha ha ha’ [from ‘I Am the Walrus’], all that stuff was from John at a session with [The Beatles’ producer] George Martin, a preparation session,” he continued. “We’d be around at John’s house or George’s house, and he’d say, ‘I want to go, ‘Ha ha ha.’ So, George would write all that in the score, and John would sort of say, ‘Well, it could go like that or like that,’ but we couldn’t write so we needed George to translate our thoughts. That was how it worked,” confirmed McCartney.
Of course, it’s hard to suggest that Lennon’s creation isn’t given the credit it deserves. Despite being one of the more experimental songs in the group’s catalogue, it is routinely included in lists of their best. But, perhaps what McCartney is more neatly centring on is that Lernnon’s vision, though often wild, was absolute.
