John Lennon Said 2 Beatles Songs Proved He Could Write All-Time Great Melodies
John Lennon said he lied about writing Beatles songs without Paul McCartney. One of his tunes became a hit when George Martin turned it into an instrumental.
John Lennon wasn’t always concerned with writing melodies. Despite this, he said two of The Beatles’ songs showed he could write melodies “with the best of them.” One of these tunes was a hit — but only after George Martin created an instrumental recording of it.
In a 1980 interview from the book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, John discussed his role in The Beatles. “My contribution to Paul’s songs was always to add a little bluesy edge to them,” he said. “Otherwise, y’know, ‘Michelle’ is a straight ballad, right? He provided a lightness, an optimism, while I would always go for the sadness, the discords, the bluesy notes.” This balance between Paul’s sensibilities and John’s was the main magic of the Fab Four’s sound.
John didn’t always care about melodies. “There was a period when I thought I didn’t write melodies, that Paul wrote those and I just wrote straight, shouting rock ‘n’ roll,” he remembered. “But of course, when I think of some of my own songs — ‘In My Life,’ or some of the early stuff, ‘This Boy’ — I was writing melody with the best of them.”
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
