One credit, two writers
Almost every Beatles song written by Lennon or McCartney was credited to “Lennon-McCartney”, whoever actually wrote it. The arrangement dated from their earliest days as teenage writers in Liverpool and was kept after they became famous, even when they were mostly writing alone. In 1967 the partnership was therefore more a business and creative bond than a literal one: many songs of the year were largely the work of one man, with help from the other.
Their later recollections sometimes differed about who contributed what, which is why careful accounts talk about “mainly” and “largely”. It is generally accepted that they wrote less often side by side in 1967 than they had in 1963, and more often brought half-finished songs to each other.
Two temperaments
Broadly, Paul McCartney tended toward melody, characters and scenes, often drawn from observation and often with an eye for arrangement. John Lennon tended toward a more personal, sometimes more abrasive or surreal voice, with word play and memory as sources. These are generalisations, and there are exceptions, but they help to explain why the 1967 material is so varied.
McCartney’s songs of the year
“Lovely Rita” is an affectionate story about a female parking-meter attendant, a “meter maid” in the phrase McCartney used. It is a light, playful number with a lively arrangement, and it uses everyday detail as its subject. In the studio, the band reportedly added inventive sounds, including comb-and-paper effects and vocal noises.
“Fixing a Hole” is quieter and more inward-looking, a song about the freedom to think and daydream. It was recorded, unusually, at a studio other than Abbey Road, Regent Sound in London, in February 1967.
“She’s Leaving Home” tells of a teenage girl who leaves her parents’ house at night, apparently inspired by a newspaper report of a runaway. The song moves between the girl’s view and her parents’ bewilderment. McCartney wrote it, and Lennon contributed the parents’ lines, the repeated “we sacrificed most of our life” refrain, which gives the piece the feel of a conversation. It was recorded with harp and strings arranged by Mike Leander, and none of the four Beatles played on it.
Lennon’s songs of the year
“Strawberry Fields Forever” was a very personal song rooted in Lennon’s childhood memories of Liverpool, and “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” took its words almost directly from an old circus poster that he owned. “Good Morning Good Morning” was said to have started from a television advertisement for breakfast cereal. In each case an ordinary object became the raw material for a song.
“I Am the Walrus”, recorded in September 1967 for the Magical Mystery Tour project, took this to an extreme. Lennon combined nonsense images with phrases from different sources. The walrus itself was inspired by Lewis Carroll’s poem “The Walrus and the Carpenter”, and Lennon said later that he had been amused by the idea of school pupils analysing Beatles lyrics for hidden meanings, so he deliberately wrote lines that would resist a tidy explanation. The recording features strings, cellos, a choir and, at the end, a snatch of a radio broadcast of a play that happened to be on air during mixing.
Where the two met
The most celebrated meeting of the two voices in 1967 is “A Day in the Life”. It joins a Lennon section, based on newspaper stories, to a McCartney middle part about a morning routine, linked by a huge orchestral climb. Together they show the strengths of the partnership more clearly than any song written by one person alone.
Other songs on the Sgt. Pepper album show a similar pattern of collaboration at a distance. “With a Little Help from My Friends” was written by both men, and Lennon and McCartney shaped it so that it suited Ringo Starr’s voice. A third writer also appeared: George Harrison contributed “Within You Without You”, which stands outside the Lennon-McCartney credit altogether.
Credit and its consequences
The shared credit gave both men a reason to support each other’s songs in the studio even when their tastes differed, and the Beatles’ habit of using each other’s ideas was part of their strength. Later in their careers it caused argument over who deserved credit for particular lines or songs, but in 1967 the agreement worked in its favour. It produced a body of songs written in at least two distinct manners, and listeners at the time did not need to know which was which to enjoy them.