Paul McCartney played an early Beatles song for John Lennon while they smoked tea in Paul’s father’s pipe. The songwriting partners were just starting to pen originals.
Paul McCartney and John Lennon started their songwriting sessions as teenagers
During an interview on The Howard Stern Show, Paul said no one had been interested in his songwriting until he met John. He was the first person Paul knew who had their own songs.
Once Paul joined John’s band, The Quarry Men, the pair were inseparable, living inside each other’s pockets. In The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, Paul wrote that he showed his new friend how to tune his guitar. The pair taught themselves how to play their heroes’ songs but, most importantly, their own.
“I would have played him ‘I Lost My Little Girl‘ a while later when I’d got my courage up to share it, and he started showing me his songs,” Paul wrote. “And that’s where it all began.”
Paul and John wanted to be known as Lennon-McCartney. “It was because we’d heard of Gilbert and Sullivan, Rodgers and Hammerstein,” Paul added. “Lennon and McCartney. That’s good. There are two of us, and we can fall into that pattern.”
They put their early songs in a notebook, the first Lennon McCartney manuscript. However, Paul claims he lost it.
The early Beatles song Paul McCartney played John Lennon while they smoked tea in Jim McCartney’s pipe
In The Lyrics, Paul wrote that he first played “I Saw Her Standing There” for John when they got together to smoke tea in his father’s pipe. When he says tea, he means tea.
Paul sang the original lyrics, “She was just seventeen. She’d never been a beauty queen.” John didn’t think much of that lyric, and Paul agreed. So, they took some time trying to eliminate the “beauty queen” bit.
They struggled a bit, but eventually, they fixed it. Maybe they weren’t smoking tea.
They knew how to help each other in the songwriting process
A dry songwriting session was rare for Paul and John because they knew how to help each other, although it almost happened once. If one were stuck, the other would know how to help.
“A lot of what we had going for us was that we were both good at noticing the stuff that just pops up, and grabbing it,” Paul wrote. “And the other thing is that John and I had each other. If he was sort of stuck for a line, I could finish it. If I was stuck for somewhere to go, he could make a suggestion.
“We could suggest the way out of the maze to each other, which was a very handy thing to have. We inspired each other.”
Many times, one would add something the other hadn’t thought of that made the whole song. “One of us would come up with that little magic thing. It allowed the song to become what it needed to be,” Paul added.
Paul and John usually met at Paul’s home to work on their music because John’s Aunt Mimi didn’t approve. However, Jim McCartney was happy to have the boys work at his home on Forthlin Road. He even helped sometimes… and supplied a pipe.
