The Paul McCartney song John Lennon instantly approved: “That’ll do”
The song that is widely believed to mark the shift in The Beatles‘ sound that led to Revolver is also the archetype of the synchronised songwriting camaraderie shared by John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
“There weren’t many disputes,” recalled McCartney while promoting his 2021 memoir and song commentary ‘The Lyrics’. Their method of songwriting had become established after years of practice, and “there was never so much battling, because if someone said, ‘I like this better’, it was generally a better idea, so you’d give into each other…just ping-ponging ideas.”
Paul would make the commute down to South West London, sit down at Lennon’s table with a cup of tea, and start coming up with a line each. This time, it was all Macca’s idea: “Sometimes I’d bring something in, and he’d go, ‘Well, there you are’, that’s it, I just got the stamp of approval, and I think ‘Paperback Writer’ was a bit like that.” Lennon credited it to be his bandmate’s version of his own ‘Day Tripper’, almost like a sequel to it – “but it is Paul’s song”.
The mutual respect in their songwriting bromance allowed the pendulum to swing both ways, so that with Lennon’s writing, too, McCartney would hear a song and sometimes immediately “go, ‘Great, lovely’, and then that was that one done.” It was moments like that, like when Lennon wrote ‘Nowhere Man’, that the two were really in sync. “I look back on it and think, ‘Yeah, you were a good collaborator,’” remarked Paul.
The 1966 UK number one ‘Paperback Writer’ was believed to be a turning point in the young Scousers’ careers. The boys’ production team had set them on a schedule of four releases per year for the first few years of intense commercial demand, and this song closed the foreseen schedule, effectively releasing them into creative freedom. Shifting their focus from maintaining a ‘boyband’ image to actual musical development, their later psychedelic sound emerged out of ‘Paperback Writer’ as a declaration of the band’s artistic growth.
The song’s experimental creation started from the jamming point, since the song was written using a single chord – much like ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ or ‘If I Needed Someone’. This was an early symptom of their fascination with Indian sound, with a stronger bass and a reduced emphasis on a melody. The result is a bluesy, heavier sound that’s still rock and roll but “with a guitar lick on a fuzzy, loud guitar,” according to Lennon.
As Macca took the lead after reading a story in the Daily Mail about an ambitious author, “I proceeded to write it just like a letter in front of him, occasionally rhyming it. And John, as I recall, just sat there… amused smile, saying, ‘Yes, that’s it, that’ll do.’” The lads would head upstairs to make instrumental magic and intuitively click into each other’s thinking. They later layered in some heavy studio effects, and in-studio harmonies like an a cappella counter-melody take on ‘Frère Jacques’.
Although their greater use of studio technological advancements didn’t translate so well when the track was performed live, the interesting new song narrative and initial experimentation away from pop rendered it an instant success, leading the way for The Beatles to find their voice in folk raga rock.
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