McCartney: Esquire Interview

So, is Thingumybob the same song as Etcetera?

I'd love to ask Paul about that, and what he did with his solo recording of it.

 

Why does Paul care so much, sure Lennon is on Paul's songs but Paul is on lennons too - doesn't that kind of balance it out?

 

Agree-it s an interesting quote. Also good that you pick somethibg that does not deal with the - imo -boring Lennon/McCartney or McCartney Lennon discussoon
It s a good interwiew imo

 

Regarding Paul's concern about modern technology cutting off his name today... perhaps putting 'McCartney' first on those songs he was the main writer on would work out satisfactorily for now; but what about future ways in which Paul's songs are displayed in decades to come, after Paul is gone? Who's to say that by 2050 (for example), whatever "new" technology is out there does not just say: "P --- " , or nothing? There's only so much that can be done to assure it works out right forever.

 

Makes sense to me. Were there any early solo Paul McCartney songs (performed as Paul McCartney, and not titled as performed by "The Beatles") which were credited to "Lennon-McCartney"? If Lennon had likewise gotten writing credit for, say, "Maybe I'm Amazed", then John's name should also have been removed.

 

Or a sign that the song title is too long to fit the other way (see Revolution). US Apple releases of course having a different typeface than the UK.

 

If you mean removing the McCartney name from the credit (?), it makes sense to me, too! My joking point was to say that even the obvious, most sensible, no-brainer type of stuff can evidently be used as leverage. McCartney didn't do that.

 

So John spoke at length in multiple interviews with the press about who wrote what-- in a 1971 interview, in a 1972 hit Parader interview, in the 1980 Playboy interview. And it's McCartney who gets accused of being obsessed with credit? ... Clearly they both cared about this.

 

No, by late 1969, the Lennon-McCartney songwriting credit was finished. The final songs officially credited to John AND Paul as a team turned up in the spring of 1970 on the Let It Be album, but these all dated back to early 1969. So in reality, no joint compositions were written after Abbey Road was completed. The first song to be released after Abbey Road was "Cold Turkey" and that was credited to John solely. Other songs like "Junk" and "Teddy Boy" were now solely credited (in 1970) to Paul --- although they would have carried a joint Lennon-McCartney credit if they had been released on The White Album (it was one of the Esher demos done in 1968) and the Get Back/Let It Be album (as proposed by Glyn Johns), respectively. Likewise, a song like Gimme Some Truth was rehearsed during the Let It Be sessions in January 1969 and had input from Paul. If the Beatles had done a proper take of it, that song would have been credited to Lennon-McCartney. But instead, it just was credited to John when it turned up on his Imagine album in 1971.

 

There seemed to be a bit of tit-for-tat going on. After the 'Lennon' credit on 'Cold Turkey', Paul retaliated with a 'McCartney' credit on Badfinger's 'Come And Get It' shortly afterwards (the first 'new' McCartney song released after 'Abbey Road').

 

Yes, that probably occurred.

What is interesting is that "Teddy Boy" was still slated to go onto the Let It Be album as of early 1970. Presumably, that song would have been copyrighted already as a Lennon-McCartney song. But when it turned up on Paul's solo album in April 1970, it only had Paul's name on it. I wonder if that song needed to have a new revised copyright submitted for it. Or maybe it said only Paul, but the monies still went into the "Lennon-McCartney" joint account.

Which brings up another question: Did any of their solo stuff from 1969, 1970, and 1971 (or even later) get put into separate accounts? Or was all the monies for even their solo compositions still being held by a "Lennon-McCartney" company (Maclen, I presume). When did that stop?

 

I don't think John ever publicly cared so much though, he wasn't on a crusade which sometimes it feels like Paul is.

 

Good questions. I'm not sure if the money was pooled or not, though John's 'open letter' to Paul in Melody Maker in 1971 mentions "...Two weeks ago I asked you on the phone 'Please let's meet without advisors etc, and decide what we want', and I especially emphasised Maclen which is mainly our concern..."

 

The alternating credits thing worked well- for the first two singles. Love Me Do was Lennon/McCartney, then Please Please Me was McCartney/Lennon. Fine so far, but then the Please Please Me album was ALSO McCartney/Lennon, even Love Me Do and PS I Love You. And things were even more compounded by the next single From Me To You AGAIN being McCartney/Lennon. So, clearly that aternating credits system broke down early. The 'who wrote it' alternating credit system wasn't ever considered in 1962 or 63 as all of their songs were either 50/50 or 60/40. By 1964, things were in a rush and there were more pressing things to be attended to. John, Paul, Brian, Dick James and any other interested parties should have addressed this during their two 'off' periods in Jan-May 1966 or Sept-Nov 66 when they really had begun writing songs that were more like 70/30, 80/20, 90/10 or even 100/0 for the first time.

 

Yes, I have always thought that all the songwriting monies were still shared in the early years after the break up. Maybe even until 1972-73.

 

Old men need to set the record straight, they have the luxury of time and worrying about their legacy. Young men suddenly murdered don't have a choice. If John was with us today he'd care: "Hell yes, Paul can have his name first, he wrote it, I would never have even thought of writing it, it's a nice song, my grand-daughter sings it to me all the time, she loves the lyrics. Good luck to him!"

 

Yes, possibly (maybe even until the 1974 dissolution). It's a very tangled web through the Apple years. Paul co-credited a lot of songs to his wife, whose share I suppose bypassed Apple/Maclen. The same with Yoko's co-credits.

 

I wonder, though, if it seems McCartney is in a "crusade" because Lennon already staked out, in quite a bit of detail, ground zero. McCartney can't, at this point, even make a hazy recollection without someone going back and checking Lennon's blow by blow accounting. Lennon, just by doing it first in such detail, is the go to version. The master plan. (And then there might be some slight variations permitted, but generally he laid the ground work.)

I think!

 

It is perfectly understandable why the system broke down, especially after reading your comment, but I feel that it is just as understandable why Paul would be annoyed to find Hey Jude and Yesterday credited solely to John, and I personally think that seeing as he is suggesting that they follow John's Playboy list, he should get his way on this.

 

Because he still runs into it! I still see it all over the place. In fact I read an article not too long ago that referred to the competition between Lennon and Brian Wilson that resulted in Sgt Pepper.

I think less and less people have that view now, but i still see a lot of the new hipster rock writers just default to Lennon being the heavyweight genius and McCartney being disposable.

 

I was going to post a similar comment.

John had 34.5 fewer years to discuss the subject. Would he have seemed to care as much as Paul? Maybe, maybe not, but it's impossible to say he wouldn't have discussed the topic/cared about it.

Actually, didn't John discuss songwriting credits much more than Paul between 1970-80? Wouldn't that lend credence to the notion John was more obsessed with it than Paul?

 

True. But, Macca did have more lightweight moments on Beatles albums and in his solo career - if he was going after the brooding genius thing he should have binned When I'm 64, Martha My Dear, Rocky Raccoon, Maxwell's...etc. It's hardly the critics' fault that he's prone to write lightweight fluff.

 

Well, most of the songs on McCartney were published by Northern Songs which, of course, was owned by Lew Grade so Lennon and McCartney got NO money other than a percentage (the same percentage McCartney complained he still received when Michael Jackson bought Northern Songs). McCartney openly admitted that he was happy to give Linda fair credit because she wasn't signed to Northern Songs and the McCartneys could, at least, claim half the royalties for themselves. McCartney had to extricate himself from the Northern Songs deal and, if I recall, came to a deal that allowed him to leave Northern Songs and publish himself (via McCartney Productions Limited (MPL)) in return for an ATV exclusive (the Paul McCartney Special of 1973). Some pressings of Give Ireland Back To The Irish have an unusual publishing, something along the lines of "also claimed by Kidney Punch". Not sure who Kidney Punch were, but I presume a short-lived publishing arm of MPL named by McCartney as a reference to how he felt he was being treated.

 

Shouldn't he be judged for his entire body of work? As he said, if you pick out his lesser work and compare it with John's best, of course he will lose, but it is not a fair comparison to begin with.

He should be judged for his entire, highly diverse and extremely melodic catalogue of songs, and for his work on the songs written by the other Beatles; what would Tomorrow Never Knows be without his tape loops, and let us not forget his incredible bass part on Something and his incredible piano part on While My Guitar Gently Weeps. He was a great contributor to John's songs; after all, it was Paul who suggested slowing Come Together down and turning it into a funkier song.

Yes, he dabbled in nursery rhymes (All Together Now), Standards (Honey Pie) and Ska (Ob-La-Di), but why shouldn't he? Are those genres now all considered fluff?

The fact that he wrote a song for a children's animation (We All Stand Together) does nothing to diminish his other songs, from Blackbird, Eleanor Rigby, Yesterday, For No One and Let It Be, through to Calico Skies, Somedays, Jenny Wren, Here Today and Scared.

 

Paul's father, lest we forget, was a music-hall bandleader. That type of music is just a part of his DNA.

Trying to label a song like Lovely Rita as 'bad' is just putting forward one's own preferences as if they were universally accepted, and a ridiculous position to rest an argument on.