John Lennon Vs. Paul McCartney

There is an assumption by many less knowledgeable folks (including many who are actually quite big fans of The Beatles music) that John Lennon was the principle songwriter of a great majority of The Beatles work.

I think this myth has grown over the years since Lennon's untimely death at the hands of a madman assassin because Lennon's persona (his peace activism, etc) has become such a huge part of the public consciousness that people just assume that he must have been the main guy behind The Beatles music.

The truth is that Paul McCartney was at least as responsible for The Beatles music as was John Lennon. In fact, you can make a strong argument that McCartney was more responsible as he was easily the best musician of The Beatles (did you know that Paul played the drums and lead guitar on some Beatles recordings in place of Ringo & George?) and he was also easily the most knowledgeable of advanced music theory concepts.

It was also Paul who was mainly behind the some of The Beatles most famous ideas including the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album, the Magical Mystery Tour album, and the side two suite of Abbey Road.

And of course McCartney wrote many of The Beatles biggest hit songs. In fact in this examination of who wrote more of The Beatles #1 singles, we see that Paul wrote about twice as many #1 hits as John did!

Paul wrote "Yesterday," "Let It Be," "Hey Jude," "Can't Buy Me Love," "We Can Work It Out," "Paperback Writer," "Yellow Submarine," "Eleanor Rigby," "Penny Lane," "Get Back," "Lady Madonna," "Hello, Goodbye," & "The Long & Winding Road."

I do not mean to make the case that John's contributions to the band were in anyway insignificant (obviously that is not the case) but only that Paul's are too often overlooked or ignored.

John's songs such as "I Am The Walrus," "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," & "Come Together" often had more of an "edge" to them than Paul's did. But we shouldn't take that idea too far either. Remember that it was Paul who wrote "Helter Skelter."

And what about George Harrison? George is often completely overlooked because of the overpowering talents of Lennon/McCartney. George's melodic lead guitar lines, his introduction of Indian music to The Beatles (and thus the western pop/rock world in general,) and his own brilliant songs (including "Here Comes The Sun," "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," "If I Needed Someone," "Taxman," "Within You Without You," "It's All Too Much," & "Something") added much to The Beatles classic albums.

When it comes down to it, it's the combination of The Beatles talents that made their music so great. It's not about Lennon's gift for inventive lyrics, it's not about McCartney's gift for melody, it's not about Harrison's lyrical guitar solos, it's not about Ringo's unusually distinctive drumming (which I think is very underrated.) It's about all of these things (and much more) in combination.

As great as their individual talents were, the sum of their talents was much more when they worked together.

Lennon adding "It couldn't get much worse" to "Getting Better" added just the right amount of cynicism to an otherwise upbeat song.

Harrison's beautiful guitar solo in "Let It Be" made Paul's great song that much greater.

McCartney's brilliant bass lines were an essential part of many Lennon penned songs (most obviously "Come Together," "Dear Prudence," & "Rain.")

And of course there were the amazing songs that Lennon & McCartney wrote together as a team, particularly in the early years when they wrote classics like "I Want to Hold Your Hand" together but also later on when they added song ideas together ("A Day in the Life" & "I've Got a Feeling" for very good examples) to make something whole out of each of their parts.