Who Wrote What In The Beatles?
-
Nancy R:
I have always thought that George Martin should have gotten writing credit for some of the Beatles' songs!
-
Raise your hand if you're reading all of this.
-
I'm getting more impressed over time with Paul's contributions to Beatles songs as we're learning more details about the song compositions. Songs that I thought Paul had nothing to do with - he actually played an important role. In 'Help' he wrote the counter melody, 'Mr. Kite' - Paul helped with the overall structure of the song, 'Dont Let Me Down' - Paul helped with the counter melody. My sense is Paul wanted to be part of all things Beatles & was more of a "helper"/"need an idea" guy to John, than vice-versa. As John said, "Paul would have all his songs done before I go to the studio..." - paraphrased.
-
JoeySmith:
I'm getting more impressed over time with Paul's contributions to Beatles songs as we're learning more details about the song compositions. Songs that I thought Paul had nothing to do with - he actually played an important role. In 'Help' he wrote the counter melody, 'Mr. Kite' - Paul helped with the overall structure of the song, 'Dont Let Me Down' - Paul helped with the counter melody. My sense is Paul wanted to be part of all things Beatles & was more of a "helper"/"need an idea" guy to John, than vice-versa. As John said, "Paul would have all his songs done before I go to the studio..." - paraphrased.
I've had the sense that John tended to think of the lyricist as the "song writer" so didn't always give credit to Paul's help on the music. Likewise, I've felt that Paul tends to downplay any help that John gave to lyrics. Just a different perspective on song writing from the two. That's just a gut feeling of mine, so don't ask me to back it up.
-
I was looking up information on Eleanor Rigby for something else but this paragraph made me want to post it here. Everybody does have a different recollection of things... "Lennon was quoted in 1971 as having said that he "wrote a good half of the lyrics or more"[17] and in 1980 claimed that he wrote all but the first verse,[18] but Shotton (who was Lennon's childhood friend) remembered Lennon's contribution as being "absolutely nil".[19] McCartney said that "John helped me on a few words but I'd put it down 80?20 to me, something like that."[20]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_Rigby
-
Yeah, as time goes on, Paul is revealing that he really wrote more of the Beatles songs than he realized!