The only Beatles song credited to George Harrison and John Lennon
It’s a pretty well-established fact that most of The Beatles‘ songs were written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who were the dominant creative forces in the band. That’s not to say that George Harrison and Ringo Starr weren’t important, of course, the former wrote 25 songs for the band, including some of their biggest hits, such as ‘Here Comes The Sun’ and ‘Something’. Starr, meanwhile, only wrote two – but he contributed his unique drumming skills that have been admired by some of the all-time greats.
As a foursome, the individual talents of each member united to produce some of the greatest songs of all time. For the majority of the band’s early career, Lennon wrote the most tracks, only being overtaken by McCartney a handful of times, most notably on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. There has been much debate over who actually wrote what in The Beatles’ discography, despite most being attributed to Lennon-McCartney.
In an interview with Lennon, one of his last before he died, the musician claimed that he had written most of ‘Eleanor Rigby’, despite it largely being attributed to McCartney. Similarly, the track ‘In My Life’ from Rubber Soul caused disagreements between the two over who contributed what. Whilst Lennon believed that McCartney was responsible for the melody and bridge, the latter believed he was the sole creator of the entire musical structure.
Yet, before the band had released their debut album, Please Please Me, they recorded a few tracks in 1961 as part of English singer Tony Sheridan’s backing band under the name The Beat Brothers. One song to be produced during this period, ‘Cry For A Shadow’, actually has a vast amount of Beatles trivia behind it.
The song, originally called ‘Beatle Bop’, was intended to be a B-side to ‘Why’, another Sheridan-Beatles collaboration. The song was switched out in the end but eventually ended up on Sheridan’s 1962 French EP ‘Mister Twist’. This marked the first original recording by the band to be released commercially.
When ‘Cry for a Shadow’ was released in Britain, Germany, and Australia, it became an A-side, while ‘Why’ was moved to B-side territory. It was also one of two songs officially released by the band to feature drummer Pete Best.
But the most interesting piece of Beatles trivia to be found behind ‘Cry for a Shadow’ is the fact that it was the only song to be credited solely to Lennon and Harrison. The pair intended the track to be a parody of The Shadows, who were Cliff Richards’ backing band at the time. Harrison set out to imitate Hank Marvin’s distinctive guitar sound, whereas Lennon yelps just like bassist Jet Harris.
Harrison explained the song’s creation in 1987: “In Hamburg, we had to play so long, we actually used to play ‘Apache’… But John and I were just bullshitting one day, and he had this new little Rickenbacker with a funny kind of wobble bar on it. And he started playing that off, and I just came in, and we made it upright on the spot.”
Listen to the track below.
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