Chapter 2: Songwriters

“John and Paul were so different. And George was bringing a certain peace into this set-up… George was right in the middle of those two characters.”

Klaus Voorman

The first songwriting sessions between the band’s two principal composers occurred in 1958. Lennon was 18, an art school student, and McCartney, only 16, a grammar school student. Their musical idols were Elvis Presley, Little Richard, the Everly Brothers, and Buddy Holly. Each had worked on writing their own songs before, trying to imitate their heroes. It turned out they became each other’s most significant influence. In their early days, they wrote together in their parlors or bedrooms. Later, while on tour, they wrote in hotel rooms and buses. While performing in their early days in Liverpool, they were one of many competing bands, but “we thought from the start we were better,” recalled Lennon. “We were the only group then writing songs, so we used to say we had written about a hundred, even though it was only thirty.”29

Their intense friendship served as the backbone for their songwriting partnership. The fact that their voices blended so well together was quite simply icing on the cake. Geoff Emerick, who engineered some of their later albums, noted how their voices, personalities, and musical approaches were so different yet still complemented each other.30 Their producer, George Martin, equally, though more poetically, spoke of Paul’s voice as sweeter, but Lennon “gave the combination its interest and sharpness. He was the lemon juice against the virgin olive oil.”31 An interesting side note to the relationship between Lennon and McCartney was that the left-handed McCartney could play the right-handed Lennon’s guitar, and he, in turn, could play McCartney’s. “Together, they were ambidextrous, and in their personalities as well. John could finish a Paul song and vice versa.”<