Paul McCartney once revealed the “miraculous” thing about working with John Lennon
Many things contribute to a great songwriting partnership. Naturally, talent is fundamental to the entire endeavour, but friction is the second most essential piece in the puzzle. In any partnership, whether marriage or that between centre-backs, twosomes function by each component, filling in the other’s gaps, providing a foil and making the sum of its parts stronger for it. In music, this has played out in the relationships between everyone from David Gilmour and Roger Waters to Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, but its significance was most apparent between John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
There’s no doubt that the two primary songwriters in The Beatles formed the most influential composing partnership of all time, but that’s not to say they weren’t different people; they were. While both were united in their talent and suffered immense hardships in the death of their mothers when young, Lennon was always the hot-headed one and deemed himself the Alpha of the band, whereas McCartney was characteristically more balanced and level-headed. Of course, no one’s perfect, but in several ways, the pair were a personal embodiment of yin and yang.
This bled into their music, too. Lennon had his style, and McCartney had his. Although they shared a love of many artists, they went about creating their original compositions in different ways, which would become undeniably pronounced after the breakup of the Fab Four in 1970, and each embarked upon their solo careers, which delved into diverging areas.
Every songwriter is proud, and given that both were remarkably so and wanted to do things in their own way, this created friction. This also meant that each had a hand in songs that they openly said they would have done differently or outright hated because the other assumed a domineering role in the creative process. However, despite the list of misgivings their partnership produced, both knew, deep down, that they needed the other to reach the soaring heights that they did.
Even in the years following their acrimonious split and the volley of bitter barbs they included in their work about each other, the two would refrain from trashing the other’s creative prowess, as it was key to their unlocking their world-famous stature.
Over the decades following Lennon’s tragic 1980 murder, McCartney’s view of the partnership with his late friend has taken on a candid light. In the book The Lyrics: 1956 to Present, he revealed that their dynamic was what gave their songs such longevity. He said: “The climate that the two of us created in writing wasn’t a soppy pop song climate. We created an environment in which we might grow, try new things, maybe even learn a thing or two.”
More importantly, working with the far more cynical Lennon instilled in him a greater ability to self-critique. Although it has been years since his friend’s death, on the podcast series McCartney: A Life in Lyrics, he explained that he still thinks of what his old friend would say about his ideas when writing music today, with their interplay “miraculous”.
“Often I’ll sort of refer… ‘What would John think of this? He’d have thought it was too soppy,’” McCartney said, revealing that he would then change the song because of it. “That interplay was miraculous,” he continued. “You don’t have this opposing element so much [now]. I have to do that myself.”
Struggle has long been the key to success, whatever field it might be in. McCartney knows this better than most. While it might have been a challenge most of the time writing with John Lennon, together, the pair hammered out sonic treasures that have never lost their sparkle. There’s no greater example that toil makes anything worthwhile.
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