The song Paul McCartney claims to be the “humble beginnings” of The Beatles
In the mid-1950s, when a young Paul McCartney was understanding his place in the world, the prospect of developing any appetite you had for songwriting was bleak, particularly in the UK. While Elvis Presley was quivering the knees of young music fans across the pond and Little Richard was shaking the hips that remained, Britain was lacking in songwriters whose work helped make sense of a post-war society.
Fortunately for The Beatles and, in fact, the rest of the world, it wasn’t an established star that McCartney would lean on for creative inspiration, but rather his future co-writer John Lennon. During his podcast, A Life In Lyrics, McCartney recounted that fateful meeting and what happened thereafter:
“The first time I ever saw John Lennon, he got on the bus … he was like this slightly older guy with this sort of rocker hairdo — lots of grease — black jacket, sideburns, sideboards as we call them. And I just remember thinking, ‘Well, he’s a cool guy. No idea who he is,’” he told co-host Paul Muldoon in an exclusive clip obtained by Rolling Stone.
McCartney continued: “And what would happen is when I would talk to people, they’d sort of say, ‘What are your hobbies? What do you like to do?’” he continued. “And then inevitably, I’d say, ‘Well, I’ve written a couple of songs.’ And they’d go, ‘Oh.’ And we’d pass that pie, and we’d carry on a conversation. But I met John, (and) we were just chatting, and ‘Well, I’ve written a couple of songs.’ And he said, ‘Well, so have I.’”
“So that was like a full stop,” he said. “So then it was like, ‘Let me hear what you’ve done, and I’ll show you what I’ve done.’ So that started us getting together. I think I was possibly the first person he’d met who’d said that to him. So that was the start of our relationship”.
As two creative lightning bolts collided, the course of music history changed, and a prolific partnership began. By the early 1960s, The Beatles had established themselves as songwriting powerhouses with a string of hits that showcased their penchant for blending rock-a-billy melodies with catchy hooks to define a new era of pop and rock.
Amid the development of that sound were songs that no doubt didn’t work or rather teethed at what The Beatles’ sound could be without penetrating fully. However, a particular song that has circulated among The Beatles folklore is ‘Just Fun’. Rumoured to have been written in 1957 and said to be one of McCartney and Lennon’s first pieces, it was never published and remained in the halls of their minds until a snippet of it found its way into their 1970 documentary, Let It Be.
Appropriately bluesy for a riff written in 1957, its sonic profile is that of a band experimenting with already-established trends and adding personal flourishes to them. While the riff could have been from anything of that decade, the faint yet unmistakable McCartney vocal adlibs trigger an instant sense of Beatles nostalgia.
Explaining the track to Rolling Stone in 2016, McCartney said: “I had a little school-exercise book where I wrote those lyrics down. And in the top right-hand corner of the page, I put ‘A Lennon-McCartney original.’ It was humble beginnings,” he admits. “We developed from that.“
In the opening verse, Lennon sings, “They say that our love is just fun / the day that our friendship begun”. While the subject of ‘Just Fun’ could be someone unknown, it seems fair that The Beatles could speculate on it’s reference to McCartney and Lennon’s friendship, that began that fateful day on the bus and was then injected into the creative process of their newfound co-writing partnership.
Despite The Beatles’ extensive back catalogue covering most sonic bases, it’s these nuggets of discovery that keep die-hard fans satiated. They were a band who shaped modern music so deeply that brief insights into their creative process feel like the discovery of a time portal, taking us into the musical unknown.
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