The Beatles' Song Paul McCartney Couldn't Remember Writing (But He Probably Did)
When you write as many songs as Paul McCartney has, it’s understandable if you might have forgotten a few of them. It’s even more understandable if they’re Beatles’ songs, since he was often collaborating with John Lennon on them.
In the case of “What You’re Doing,” a hidden gem from The Beatles‘ 1964 UK album Beatles for Sale, McCartney has said that he didn’t really remember too much about its creation. But all evidence points toward it being one of his, and a sneakily great one at that, even if he didn’t think too much of it.
Beatles for Sale, the second album released by the Fab Four in the UK in 1964 and their fourth overall, found the band scrambling for material. Their schedule, always intense, reached a fever pitch in 1964, what with their usual recording and touring augmented by the creation of their first movie, A Hard Day’s Night.
On the A Hard Day’s Night album, John Lennon and Paul McCartney had written every song, marking the first time the band would release an album without any covers. They weren’t quite able to pull that off on Beatles for Sale. And maybe the busy nature of the time explains why McCartney didn’t remember much about the origins of “What You’re Doing,” as he explained in the book Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now:
Source: Jim Beviglia/americansongwriter.com
