John Lennon Said Songwriting Was Often ‘Torture’: ‘What the Hell Is It Anyway?’

Despite having written some of the best rock ‘n’ roll songs, John Lennon wasn’t the biggest fan of songwriting. He described the songwriting process as “torture” and claimed he never truly knew what he was doing. However, sometimes a higher power gave him a couple of good tunes.

John Lennon said songwriting was ‘torture’

When they were teenagers, John and Paul McCartney wrote songs together. They’d strum their guitars at one other until both of them liked a good chord or note.

“There’s no fixed way,” Paul told Rolling Stone. “People used to ask me and John, ‘Well, who does the words, who does the music?’ I used to say, ‘We both do both.’ We used to say we don’t have a formula, and we don’t want one. Because the minute we get a formula, we should rip it up.”

However, once they started living separately, the songwriting partners wrote tunes separately. When John was writing with Paul, hits seemed to come faster than when he was writing alone.

According to Far Out Magazine, John said songwriting was “torture” in his final interview.

“What I realised when I read ‘Lennon Remembers’ [John’s legendary 1970 interview with Jann Wenner] or the new Playboy interview [conducted by David Sheff September 8th-28th, 1980] was that I’m always complaining about how hard it is to write or how much I suffer when I’m writing – that almost every song I’ve ever written has been absolute torture,” John said days before Mark David Chapman murdered him on Dec. 8, 1980.

John added, “I always think there’s nothing there, it’s s***, it’s no good, it’s not coming out, this is garbage and even if it does come out, I think, ‘What the hell is it anyway?'”

At least the “gods” gifted him some hits here and there. “It’s just stupid. I just think, ‘That was tough. Jesus, I was in a bad way then.’ Except for the 10 or so songs the gods give you, and that comes out of nowhere.”

George Harrison witnessed John struggling with songwriting

Although he had trouble with his own songs, George Harrison often witnessed John struggling in the songwriting process.

During an interview with Guitar World, George explained what it was like working with John in the studio. The older Beatle often struggled with figuring out what he wanted to say.

“Basically, most of John’s songs, like Paul’s, were written in the studio,” George explained. “As you say, John had a flair for ‘feel.’ But he was very bad at knowing exactly what he wanted to get across.

“He could play a song and say, ‘It goes like this.’ Then he’d play it again and ask, ‘How does that go?’ Then he’d play it again-totally differently! Also, his rhythm was very fluid. He’d miss a beat, or maybe jump a beat…

“And he’d often do something really interesting in an early version of a song. After a while, I used to make an effort to learn exactly what he was doing the very first time he showed a song to me, so if the next time he’d say, ‘How did that go?’ we’d still have the option of trying what he’d originally played.”

George remembered how John initially played his songs so he wouldn’t forget later. However, John taught George something similar in the songwriting process. He taught the younger Beatle always to finish his songs when he first started writing them so that he wouldn’t forget his initial inspiration.

Although, John admitted he didn’t follow his own advice most of the time.

The singer-songwriter said writing tunes was about ‘getting the demon out of me’

Despite what John thought of his songwriting, he did write some of the best Beatles songs. John claimed those hits only came out of him because something possessed him.

“Songwriting is about getting the demon out of me,” he said. “It’s like being possessed. You try to go to sleep, but the song won’t let you. So you have to get up and make it into something, and then you’re allowed to sleep.”

This happened when he wrote “Across The Universe.” In David Sheff’s All We Are Saying, John said the lyrics came randomly one night but not from a spiritual place.

John was lying beside his wife in bed, irritated by whatever she was saying to him. When she went to bed, “I’d kept hearing these words over and over, flowing like an endless stream,” John said. “I went downstairs and it turned into sort of a cosmic song rather than an irritated song; rather than a ‘Why are you always mouthing off at me?’ or whatever.”

Despite the lyrics literally flowing out of John like endless rain, he never saw them as his own. “But the words stand, luckily, by themselves,” John continued. “They were purely inspirational and were given to me as boom! I don’t own it, you know; it came through like that.

“I don’t know where it came from, what meter it’s in, and I’ve sat down and looked at it and said, ‘Can I write another one with this meter?’ It’s so interesting… Such an extraordinary meter and I can never repeat it! It’s not a matter of craftsmanship; it wrote itself. It drove me out of bed. I didn’t want to write it, I was just slightly irritable and I went downstairs and I couldn’t get to sleep until I put it on paper, and then I went to sleep.

“It’s like being possessed; like a psychic or a medium. The thing has to go down. It won’t let you sleep, so you have to get up, make it into something, and then you’re allowed to sleep. That’s always in the middle of the bloody night, when you’re half awake or tired and your critical facilities are switched off.”

Whether a divine intervention occurred or some demon possessed him, John wrote many good songs, even if he didn’t think he did.