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The Beatles collaborated closely with one another for almost a decade, writing songs together, swapping ideas, and switching their instruments to get the most creativity out of each record as possible. But one of the Fab Four noticed that once Paul McCartney had stopped working on his own music, he stopped caring about anyone else’s songs. And, eventually, it got too much for the Beatles singer.
John Lennon and McCartney wrote the bulk of the songs for The Beatles. Making up the Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership, the long-time friends penned such iconic tracks as Help!, Ticket to Ride, Eleanor Rigby and In My Life.
But they also wrote many songs on their own, separately, before bringing their work to their pals.
Lennon spoke to Playboy in 1980 shortly before he died where he confessed McCartney sometimes irritated him during the recording process.
“Usually we’d spend hours doing little detailed cleaning-ups of Paul’s songs,” he admitted. “When it came to mine, especially if it was a great song … somehow this atmosphere of looseness and casualness and experimentation would creep in.” (Via Far Out)
It got to the point where Lennon felt McCartney was purposefully singling out his music.
Lennon said: “He’ll deny it because he’s got a bland face and he’ll say the sabotage doesn’t exist.”
Later in the same interview, Lennon explained that a perfect example of this was the Let It Be song Across the Universe.
The 1969 track became one of The Beatles’ most popular tracks after its release, even though it was never dropped as an official single.
“Paul would sort of subconsciously try and destroy a great song usually,” Lennon opined. “Subconscious sabotage.”
Not every songwriting session between Lennon and McCartney was fuelled by frustration, however.
Once again in the same interview, Lennon praised McCartney’s work in their songwriting partnership, noting how he provided the perfect contrast to his own writing style.
“[McCartney] provided a lightness,” Lennon gushed. “An optimism. While I would always go for the sadness, the discords, the bluesy notes. There was a period when I thought I didn’t write melodies, that Paul wrote those and I just wrote straight, shouting rock ‘n’ roll.”
He added: “But, of course, when I think of some of my own songs – In My Life, or some of the early stuff, This Boy – I was writing melody with the best of them.”
With that said, Lennon also explained that his favourite songs were written alone.
Pointing at Across the Universe in particular, Lennon said: “It’s one of the best lyrics I’ve written. In fact, it could be the best. It’s good poetry, or whatever you call it.
“See, the ones I like are the ones that stand as words, without melody. They don’t have to have any melody, like a poem, you can read them.”
Lennon continued to write incredible songs long after The Beatles split up in 1970. Included in his repertoire of solo tracks was Imagine, Give Peace a Chance and Working Class Hero.
