Paul McCartney Compares Songwriting With John Lennon vs. Linda McCartney
Paul McCartney has written hundreds of hit songs by himself and collaborated with other artists, including John Lennon and his late wife, Linda. While these duos created successful singles and albums, McCartney reveals that Lennon and Linda’s songwriting processes differed.
Paul McCartney wrote several hit songs with John Lennon and Linda McCartney
John Lennon and Paul McCartney were frequent collaborators during their time with The Beatles. The two were responsible for many of The Beatles’ greatest hits, including songs like “Can’t Buy Me Love,” “Eight Days a Week,” “A Hard Day’s Night,” “Hello Goodbye,” “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” and “Yellow Submarine.” There is debate on who deserved more credit for specific songs, but the two were a dynamic duo in the 1960s.
After leaving The Beatles, McCartney worked with Linda on many songs in his solo career and with Wings. The two are credited with writing the album Ram together and the song “Live and Let Die” for the 1973 James Bond movie of the same name. Linda did write some songs by herself that appeared in her posthumous album Wide Prairie.
McCartney compares writing music with Lennon and his wife
In an interview with his website, Paulmccartney.com, Paul McCartney compared working with John Lennon to working with Linda. According to the British singer-songwriter, the main difference was that the process was “looser” with Linda. He and John would gather formally to write a song, while Linda simply made suggestions while listening to something Paul had created.
“I would be writing something mainly, because Linda didn’t really play a guitar and we didn’t have a piano knocking around, so it would be me messing around with a guitar and I might say to her ‘sing along!’ and then ‘ah that’s good, we’ll put it in’. She’d make suggestions as we went along, or sing a harmony or something, but it wasn’t a formal thing like John and I where you had two people sitting down with the intention of writing a song. With Linda I’d be sat in the kitchen making it up, and she’d throw a suggestion in and that made her a co-writer.”
McCartney says his wife had excellent harmonies
While discussing Ram, McCartney talked about how he harmonized with Linda on the album. He says she was in a glee club in high school and had a natural ability to create good harmony for a song. While not a professional singer, her voice added an “innocence” to the record he enjoyed.
“Looking back at the records we made together, I think our harmonies were a really individual sound, and a very special sound,” McCartney shares. “Probably because she wasn’t a professional singer, that gave her an innocence to her tone that comes through on the records. I’d be singing ‘hands across the water,’ and she’d echo ‘water, water’ and do this funny little American accent, and we’d put it in! We were having fun.”
He and Lennon often sang together, especially on many of the choruses of Beatles songs. Even when working on something by himself, McCartney still found ways to include ideas from others, especially Linda and Lennon.
