Paul McCartney and John Lennon were an enviable songwriting duo when the Beatles first debuted. They became the pair against which every other rock band measured itself. Even today, bands aim to have a songwriting arm as strong as these two legends. However, that legacy was sullied by the fact that the duo fell apart towards the end of the band’s tenure.

By the time the Beatles announced their breakup, Lennon and McCartney were mainly name partners only. Their songwriting efforts were separate in every sense of the word. However, staying on the more positive side of their relationship, let’s take a look back at some of their first efforts together. One early release from the pair helped forge their partnership. However, both Lennon and McCartney agreed it wasn’t up to snuff as their career trekked on.

McCartney and Lennon were great at playing off and against one another. Often, they were in perfect harmony, but at other times, it was their differences that made their songs so stellar.   “If I did something that was a little bit ahead of the curve, then John would come up with something that was a bit ahead of my curve,” McCartney once said. “And then so I’d go, ‘Well, how about this?’ and there was a lot of friendly competition.”

“If you know someone that long from your early teenage years to your late 20s, that’s an awful long time to be collaborating with someone, and you grow to know each other, and even when you’re apart, you’re still thinking about each other, you’re still referencing each other,” he continued.  “I’ll Be On My Way”

Towards the end of the Beatles’ career, those differences stopped being creative sparks and started driving a wedge between the pair. They didn’t agree on much in the latter days of their collaboration.

However, one song they did agree on was an early offering called “I’ll Be On My Way.” This simple, late ’50s song was elementary compared to the music they were making in the late ’60s. Lennon and McCartney had a rare moment of agreement when discussing this song in hindsight.

“It’s a little bit too June-moon for me, but these were very early songs, and they worked out quite well,” McCartney once said.

Source: Alex Hopper/americansongwriter.com

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On February 5, 1962, Ringo Starr stepped behind the drum kit for The Beatles for the very first time at Liverpool’s legendary Cavern Club. He was filling in for the band’s drummer, Pete Best, who was sick on the day. Best had been drumming for The Beatles since 1960, with the main attraction for his recruitment being that he owned his own drums. At the same time, Starr was a familiar face on the circuit, having played with Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, who were hot in the Merseyside scene. At the substitute gig, the chemistry between the band and the new drummer was obvious, and within months, Starr was a permanent member. Looking back, the move made the four so "fab," and Starr’s unconventional approach to drumming changed rock and roll forever. The Genius of Simplicity: Ringo Starr’s Drumming Was Revolutionary.

Starr’s genius was not a flashy exhibition of technique, but was led by emotional intuition, demonstrating his musicality more sensitively. Compared to his contemporaries, Starr’s understated approach was genuinely refreshing. Keith Moon of The Who commanded chaos, Ginger Baker’s virtuosity left jaws on the floor, and Mitch Mitchell’s heavy jazz influence brought a new flavor to psychedelia. But Starr’s supposed, and even mocked, minimalism rang loudly in its impact on rock.

Ringo Starr's drumming was always anything but simple, and he quietly tore down the expectations of rock drummers. Starr was different from childhood, being naturally left-handed. At the time, this wasn’t perceived to be acceptable, so he was forced to drum on a right-handed kit. This, in itself, was enough to result in a slightly unusual, almost delayed, but very personal sound.

But what is truly so special about the style of Starr is how he approaches the drums as a melodic instrument rather than merely a time-keeping tool. In The Beatles, Starr went far beyond using the drums as a simple rhythmic accompaniment; he really entwined them as part of the arrangement. It was revolutionary in the rock world to see how the drums could be so expressive, delicate, and tuneful. This wonderful signature style is particularly prevalent in “In My Life,” “Come Together,” and “Something.”

Starr’s refusal to overplay was a defining mark of class in a band that was sometimes plagued by competitiveness. His emotional stability is evident in his playing, with a steady and reliable backbone that served the songs and band without ever making any fuss. This maturity has, sometimes, been mistaken for simplicity in the past, but Starr is exactly what The Beatles and the music-loving world needed.
Ringo Starr Helped Shape The Beatles’ Cultural Impact

Ringo Starr’s genuinely beautiful drumming is an often-overlooked reason The Beatles are so ingrained in Western popular culture. Starr’s perfectly restrained approach was guided by emotional intuition and served as a form of dialogue within the songs. This emotive drive gives many Beatles songs their well-known charm. His personality can really be felt through his playing and arrangements, relaxed, nonchalant, but very sweet and even amusing.

Source: Fiona MacPherson-Amador/collider.com

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It was perhaps the most daunting second act in pop culture history. After the Beatles‘ break-up in April 1970, the then-27-year-old Paul McCartney was suddenly faced with the question of what he would do for the rest of his career following the meltdown of the greatest pop group in history.

As evidenced by the tireless touring and recording he’s done in the half-century since, McCartney needn’t have worried about what came next. But in the new trailer for the biopic Paul McCartney: Man on the Run, which chronicles Macca’s rebirth following the Beatles, the two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Famer describes that worrisome time and his determination to punch through the fear.

“The Beatles had broken up and I was thinking, ‘what do I do now?,” McCartney says over the strains of the Paul McCartney and Wings‘ 1974 Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit “Band on the Run.” In voiceover, he continues, “‘How can I ever do anything that’s anywhere near as good as the Beatles?'”

The answers will be revealed in the film directed by Oscar-winner Morgan Neville (20 Feet From Stardom, Won’t You Be My Neighbor), which follows McCartney’s rebirth after the band’s messy dissolution. The movie will be released into theaters for one-night-only by Trafalgar Releasing on Feb. 19, with tickets on sale now here. Each screening will also include a bonus conversation between McCartney and Neville.

In addition to McCartney weighing in on the his rise from the Fab Four’s ashes, the film includes rare, unreleased archival footage and music, as well as photos from the singer’s late wife and bandmate Linda McCartney, as well as interviews with Linda, Paul and their daughters Mary and Stella, Wings band members, Sean Ono Lennon, Mick Jagger, Pretenders singer Chrissie Hynde and others.

“I was on my own for the first time,” McCartney says in the minute-long trailer. “I had to look inside myself, so I put a new band together.”

Along with the April 1974 chart topper that gives the movie its title, Wings also scored five other No. 1 singles on the Hot 100: “My Love,” “Listen to What the Man Said,” “Silly Love Songs,” “Let ‘Em In” and “With a Little Luck.” In Feb. 2024, the band’s third album returned to the Billboard charts following the 50th anniversary re-issue of Band on the Run, when it hit No. 5 on the Top Album Sales chart and No. 156 on the Billboard 200 album chart; during its initial run the LP scored four nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1 in 1974. Wings landed five albums at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 before breaking up in 1981.

Source: Gil Kaufman/yahoo.com

 Of the many famous figures featured on the iconic 1967 Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover, only Bob Dylan, Dion DiMucci, and artist Larry Bell are still alive today, aside from surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr.
Each of these three survivors—Dylan, DiMucci, and Bell—continues to be active in their respective fields of music and art, maintaining their cultural relevance decades later. Italian actress Sophia Loren, though originally intended to appear on the cover, was ultimately not visible in the final image but is also still alive at age 91.

The cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, released on June 1, 1967, is one of the most studied images in pop culture history. Packed with writers, actors, artists, gurus, and cultural rebels, for many, it became a list of the era’s most notable people.

More than half a century later, most of those faces are long gone, making the few survivors all the more remarkable. Excluding Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr of the Beatles, who are still very much with us, only three people pictured on the cover are alive today—though one additional person who was supposed to be on the cover but isn’t visible is also still around. Bob Dylan (84)

American folk pop singer Bob Dylan at a press conference in London. Dylan’s inclusion on the top row was reportedly John Lennon‘s idea, and it makes perfect sense. By 1967, Dylan had already reshaped songwriting and pushed folk into rock. These days, he’s still recording and touring. He remains very popular, as evidenced by the success of his recent biopic, A Complete Unknown.
Dion DiMucci (86)

Dion appears in the second row, included by artist Peter Blake, who admired him deeply. Long before he was known for introspective songwriting, Dion was a Bronx kid who helped bring doo-wop and early rock into the mainstream. Songs like “Runaround Sue” and “The Wanderer” were already part of the cultural fabric by the mid-1960s. He is still releasing music and sometimes playing live, though he is often seen relaxing at his home in Florida on social media. 

Artist Larry Bell attends the screening of Dennis Hopper's "The Last Movie" during Paris Photo Los Angeles at Paramount Studios on April 25, 2014 in Hollywood, California.  Larry Bell is one of the quieter names on the Sgt. Pepper cover, but his importance shouldn’t be underestimated. A key figure in the Light and Space movement, Bell was part of the West Coast art scene that was redefining perceptions of materials and minimalism in the 1960s. His inclusion reflects how wide-ranging the album’s cultural net really was. Bell is still alive today, and his work continues to be exhibited.

The famously breathtaking Italian movie star, along with Jesus, Gandhi and several others, was originally supposed to be on the cover, but didn’t make the final cut. According to behind-the-scenes photos, a cut-out of her was placed behind the wax version of the Beatles, and thus blocked in the final photo.

Source: Lauren Novak/remindmagazine.com

More than a few of us can claim, with some con­fi­dence, to know every Bea­t­les song. And indeed it may be true, in that we’ve heard every track of all their stu­dio albums. But as decade after decade of Bea­t­les schol­ar­ship has demon­strat­ed, there’s know­ing their songs, and then there’s know­ing their songs. Musi­cian and YouTu­ber David Ben­nett has made it his project to attain the sec­ond kind of knowl­edge, and on his ded­i­cat­ed series UnBea­t­led, to share it with the pub­lic. In each UnBea­t­led video he ana­lyzes just one song — “Help!,” “Here Comes the Sun,” “Pen­ny Lane,” and so on — at a lev­el of detail fine enough to neces­si­tate not just break­ing it down to its com­po­nent tracks, but also exam­in­ing the demos and unre­leased takes record­ed in the stu­dio.

This process can reveal a great deal about the Bea­t­les’ song­writ­ing process, as Ben­nett explains in the video at the top of the post. In the course of twen­ty min­utes, he cov­ers eleven songs, a selec­tion not nec­es­sar­i­ly lim­it­ed to the group’s uni­ver­sal­ly praised com­po­si­tions.

Take the first, “Yel­low Sub­ma­rine,” whose ear­ly record­ings dif­fer both lyri­cal­ly, melod­i­cal­ly, and in time sig­na­ture from the ver­sion we know (and may or may not love), begin­ning with an idea of John’s and being fur­ther shaped by Paul through its iter­a­tions. Anoth­er of John’s musi­cal seeds is “Every­body Had a Hard Year,” whose fin­ger­pick­ing pat­tern (orig­i­nal­ly learned from Dono­van in India) is also heard in “Julia” and “Dear Pru­dence,” and which evolved, with dif­fer­ent chords, into the mid­dle sec­tion of “I’ve Got a Feel­ing.”

Such inter­con­nec­tions come as rewards of close and deep lis­ten­ing to the Bea­t­les canon. And cer­tain songs turn out to be worlds of their own: “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er,” for instance, was assem­bled out of two com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent record­ings, then adjust­ed in tem­po and pitch to match in the mid­dle. One of those takes includes the voice of pro­duc­er George Mar­tin count­ing in the orches­tra, the pitch of which sug­gests that its mem­bers had orig­i­nal­ly played in a dif­fer­ent key than the one we hear. As Ben­nett notes, using the then rel­a­tive­ly nov­el tech­nol­o­gy of “vari-speed” had become prac­ti­cal­ly stan­dard in the Bea­t­les’ stu­dio process, as such tech­no­log­i­cal lay­er­ing and adjust­ment itself became a key part of their song­writ­ing process. It con­tributed much to their sig­na­ture “vibey, psy­che­del­ic, uncan­ny sound”: sought after by many bands over the past six decades, but nev­er tru­ly repli­cat­ed.

Source: Colin Marshall/openculture.com

People likely assume that John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote The Beatles’ hit “Twist And Shout”. They wrote nearly all of their music, so why wouldn’t they write this one? We can’t answer that question for you, but what we can say is that Phil Medley and Bert Berns wrote this iconic single.(The Top Notes intitially performed “Twist And Shout” in 1961, two years before The Beatles go a hold of it.)

Back to the story, both writers were incredibly influential in the development of modern popular music, yet their names are known merely by those who fancy themselves as music historians and super fans. Medley and Berns wrote “If I Didn’t Have a Dime (To Play the Jukebox)”, “Killer Joe”, “These Worldly Wonders”, and “Anything You Wanna Do”.

Aside from his collaborations with Medley, Berns was a producer, writer, and record label executive; he co-founded Bang Records with a few other colleagues in 1965. Some of the artists signed to that label include The McCoys, The Strangeloves, Paul Davis, Neil Diamond, and Van Morrison. Berns is often credited with starting the careers of both Morrison and Diamond. Additionally, some of Berns’ other credits include “Piece of My Heart”, “Cry Baby”, and “Heart Be Still”. Bert Berns Accomplished All of This in Seven Short Years

Years after the writing of “Twist And Shout”, Bert Berns co-founded Bang Records in 1965. Tragically, just two years later, Berns passed away at 38 years old from cardiovascular disease. There are artists who unfortunately come and go like the wind, but Berns’ has posthumously stuck around.

“Bert Berns should be recognized as one of the most important record men of the 20th century. He was responsible for bringing Latin music into rock and roll. He was a founding father of New York uptown soul. Unlike most of his peers, he would often write and produce his songs alone,” said his son, Brett Berns.

Source: Peter Burditt/americansongwriter.com

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