When they first started to write songs as teenagers in Liverpool, John Lennon and Paul McCartney decided to credit everything they wrote to “Lennon and McCartney,” no matter what or how much either of them had contributed to the words or the music.
Over time, as the Tin Pan Alley model of songmaking faded into memory and singer-songwriters became pervasive in pop music, the proposition that both Lennon and McCartney could be composers and lyricists in equal measure — as well as singers and instrumentalists — seemed easier to grasp.
The books present the words to 154 of the songs McCartney has created on his own or with various collaborators — with Lennon while they were Beatles; with his first wife, Linda, before and during their participation in McCartney’s post-Beatles group Wings; with their bandmate Denny Laine; and with a few others from time to time — over the years.
One can’t blame him for not including goofy doggerel such as “Oo You,” “Mumbo” and “Bip Bop.” Nor should one fault McCartney for the pride he takes in the lyrics selected for these books, though some are treacherously close to doggerel, too.
With the addition of melody, harmony, instruments, the human voice and studio electronics, a piece of recorded music can come together like, say, “Come Together” — a song by Lennon that McCartney transformed in the studio by radically altering the music.
The text is loose and ruminative, and it reveals a great deal about what McCartney thinks about life and music, and what he would like us to think about him.
Chaucer, Pope, Wilfred Owen.” Apropos of “Come and Get It,” the trifle he wrote and produced for Badfinger, McCartney notes, “When you’re writing for an audience — as Shakespeare did, or Dickens, whose serialized chapters were read to the public — there’s that need to pull people in.” Aaaah … we realize: Paul really is a word man, the more literary and cerebral Beatle.
As one would expect from the pop star who posed with his baby tucked in his coat on his farm for his first post-Beatles album, McCartney talks with ardor and respect for his parents, his extended family in Liverpool, and the traditional values of hearth and home in general.
While pronouncing his love for Lennon as a longtime friend and creative partner, Paul is pretty rough on him at points in “The Lyrics.” His main crime is one of omission, passing on opportunities to point out Lennon’s signature contributions to songs they wrote collaboratively, such as “A Day in the Life.” In the context of conflicts between the two of them, McCartney describes Lennon as “stupid” or an “idiot.” Yes, we all know that McCartney can’t help defining himself in relation to Lennon.