The 1960s anthem that connects Paul McCartney and John Lennon: “It’s that dope song”
The moment John Lennon and Paul McCartney met is as close to musical fate as you can get.
You could call it a chance encounter at the garden fete of St Peter’s Church, Woolton, Liverpool or a connection of god’s design in his own back garden, two of the most important musical minds connecting to change music forever.
While many things bonded them together over the years, the very first thing they shared was a love for songwriting. In an era where music was exclusively performed via covers, the pair thought they had struck gold when they found someone who had a penchant for originality.
“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.’”
From that moment on, the pair shared ideas with frightening coalescence, understanding exactly where one another’s musical ideas would head. Their first known song written together ‘Hello Little Girl’ laid the foundations for the likes of ‘Twist and Shout’ and ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ which took the blues format of their idols into the stratospheric realms of pop.
The success these early songs gave them only seemed to cement their decision to pursue originality. But of course, let’s not act like their musical habits were solely built around their own music. They, of course, had musical idols who helped craft their voices of innovation, and rather unsurprisingly, there was one specific artist and song over which McCartney and Lennon bonded.
While they publicly expressed their shared love for Bob Dylan, it was a more unknown artist of the 1960s who ignited their shared admiration. Procol Harum’s song ‘Whiter Shade of Pale’ became the source of John Lennon’s obsession.
In his book Lennon: The Definitive Biography, Ray Coleman talks about a party at Brian Epstein’s house, just before the release of the Beatles’ album Sgt. Pepper, where Lennon expressed his love for the song, “We spoke a little about the state of the music scene, and he (Lennon) said there was one ‘dope’ record which he couldn’t get off his mind. He couldn’t remember the title. All other pop music of that period was ‘crap’, one of his favourite words at that time.”
The story goes that the next morning Lennon remembered the song in question and called Coleman to let him know. “It’s that dope song, Procol Harum’s ‘’Whiter Shade Of Pale’ It’s the best song I’ve heard for a while. You play it when you take some acid and … whoooooooo.’”
Back in the church fete, McCartney and Lennon bonded innocently, then in the 1960s when the two of them got a hold of mind-altering substances, they refused to stray away from each other. Together, their minds connected in the cosmic world and McCartney too, found himself loving the song.
In her 1992 book, Linda McCartney’s Sixties, Macca’s first wife agreed that both she and Paul “fell in love” with the track. “We all thought it must be Stevie Winwood,” she recalled. “But it turned out to be Procol Harum.”
