Paul McCartney Said He and John Lennon Would ‘Police Each Other’ Over Plagiarizing Other Songs
Plagiarism is often a problem in music and has plagued many rock bands, including The Beatles. The Beatles were influenced by many artists, and sometimes their sound would be too similar to other artists. Paul McCartney and John Lennon would pull from other artists but learned to “police each other” to avoid plagiarizing other artists.
The Beatles were influenced by many artists
The Beatles took inspiration from many artists of their time. Their rock n’ roll style took influence from early rock stars like Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Elvis Presley. Often, the artists came close to imitating the rockers and McCartney once admitted to stealing the guitar riff from Berry’s “I’m Talking About You” for “I Saw Her Standing There.”
Lennon’s songwriting was also heavily influenced by Bob Dylan. Lennon liked the honesty and vulnerability expressed in Dylan’s music and he tried to emulate that same style. In the 1980 Playboy interview, Lennon admitted he imitated Dylan on the track “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away.”
“That’s me in my Dylan period again,” Lennon explained. “I am like a chameleon… influenced by whatever is going on. If Elvis can do it, I can do it. If the Everly Brothers can do it, me and Paul can. Same with Dylan.”
Paul McCartney and John Lennon stopped each other from plagiarizing
In a conversation with Phoebe Bridgers for her Instagram live, Paul McCartney said he is cautious about committing plagiarism and admits it’s harder now since he doesn’t have John Lennon to check him. When the two wrote songs together, they would regularly catch each other quoting other songs or artists and would correct it, whether it was intentional or not.
“I do that occasionally and try and check it out. ‘Which word is that from?’ And if I can’t think of it, I think it’s okay. I remember talking to John Lennon once about that. I’ve done something that was a little bit like something else. He said, ‘it’s okay, it’s a quote.’ You’re quoting someone else, you know. But the good thing about writing with John in the old days was if he would write a line, that I would go, ‘Oh, no, no, wait a minute, that’s from West Side Story,’ or ‘that’s a Bob Dylan song,’ he would say ‘okay.’ And similarly, he did it with me, you know, if I was going somewhere who’s a little bit plagiarizing. So it was good because we could police each other.
The Beatles were sued by Chuck Berry for ‘Come Together’
Shortly after the release of “Come Together” from Abbey Road, The Beatles were sued by Chuck Berry. The incident arose when Berry noticed the opening riff with “Here come old flat top” was similar to a line from Berry’s “You Can’t Catch Me.” In an interview with the Fly on the Wall podcast with David Spade and Dana Carvey, Paul McCartney recalled when John Lennon introduced the song and told him they had to change it because it sounded too similar to Berry’s song.
“I said, ‘No, you gotta do something with it.’ So, that was a case where we head to get it out of that Chuck Berry tempo,” McCartney shared. “You couldn’t change that opening line. It’s just such a good opening line and John had to pay Chuck Berry for using that later.”
