The authors behind a new book exploring the Beatles’ recording career cite what they believe was the crux of John Lennon and Paul MacCartney’s celebrated songwriting partnership.
Robert Rodriguez and Jerry Hammack Ribbons of Rustis the first in a series of new books charting the history of the Beatles’ recordings,. The first volume charts Lennon’s and McCartney’s histories alone and together from July 1954 to January 1963.
During the authors’ appearance on the Booked on Rock PodcastRodriguez says the Lennon-McCartney partnership thrived on each man’s individual natural abilities.
The origins of the Lennon-McCartney partnership pre-date the Beatles. McCartney joining Lennon’s outfit, the Quarrymen, in 1957, after seeing them perform at a church fete in their hometown of Liverpool, England.
“One of the things that impressed Paul the first day he saw John performing was that he was playing peculiar fingerings of chords using banjo chords on guitar,” Rodriguez details.
But that wasn’t all.
“Where he didn’t know lyrics he apparently was making them up on the spot,” Rodriguez adds. “And they were witty. That was something that Paul was wowed by.”
In addition, each could fill in for the other shortcomings. Where Lennon faltered, McCartney flew. Where McCartney stumbled, Lennon would break his fall.
“I think the real dynamic between them was once they figured out each other had some kind of gift that the other really admired,” Rodriguez adds. “They both were on the same page in terms of taste, in terms of being these kinds of connoisseurs of rock and roll. That out of convenience, if nothing else, they could help each other where one of them might have started the song and then got stuck. And the other would hear it and go, ‘Oh, you should go here now, and then circle back to this.’
“So it became this sort of partnership out of editing each other’s material, which would carry on all through the whole of the Beatles’ career, as well as consciously sitting down and saying, ‘Okay, we’re gonna write a song together.’”
Their camaraderie also saw the pair developing unique quirks to their skill sets. With McCartney famously being left-handed and Lennon right-handed, the pair learned to become ambidextrous through necessity.
“I can play right-handed guitar a bit, just enough for at parties,” McCartney had, with a wry smile, told Guitar Player in 1990. “Hopefully, by that point, everyone is drunk when I pick it up because otherwise, they’re going to catch me. But I could do that.
“It’s funny: John learned upside down too, because of me,” he goes on. Because mine was the only other guitar around for him, if he broke a string or he didn’t have his. That’s more unusual; left-handed guys can nearly always play a straight guitar.”
One benefit of their opposing dexterities was that, when practicing, they provided a mirror image of one another’s playing. It seems a portion of that left-handedness seeped into Lennon’s brain.
Interestingly, Lennon was the only one of the Fab Four to master fingerpicking techniques, having watched folksinger Donovan up close while they were in India studying with the Maharishi.
“John was the only one who actually stuck at it and learned it,” McCartney tells GP. For evidence, he singles out “Julia” from “The White Album”. “If you listen to ‘Julia,’ he’s playing properly with fingerpicking on that. I was always quite proud of the lad.”
But where Lennon proved patient in learning new skills, McCartney’s wanderlust proved a fruitful counterpoint.
“I could never be bothered, really, learning things. I always sort of figure something out,” he admits. “I’ve never had guitar lessons, bass lessons, piano lessons, music-writing lessons, songwriting lessons… I always jump into things, and so by the time I’m ready for my first lesson, I’m beyond it.”
The fruitfulness of their partnership was perhaps partly down to fate then, and partly due to their ability to work as a collective to turn vague ideas into works of art.
Elsewhere, Paul McCartney’s pithy songwriting got the band back to playing guitar rock and roll, but also landed the band in hot, politically-tinted waters.
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