The Beatles 1 and 1+ : DVD, Blu-ray, CD, Vinyl releases

And here is a recent photo of Mary Lu, the first graduate with a Masters Degree in the Beatles. She has been spending several years trying to figure out who sings what on "Day Tripper":

 

I was curious what Paul claims to have contributed to Mr. Kite. That song has so many of John's songwriting traits on it. The relatively flat melody lines and especially the descending chromatic voice in the verse chords is something John used a lot. Also, the lack of any real key is pure John. I can't see what Paul could have contributed other than lyrics.

 

I can't believe I have been listening to something incomplete. That is why I am hearing something different. Thanks for the correction.

 

I wonder what happened in Spring 1980 that made Paul decide to start talking about them publicly in interviews?

Of course Paul, like most people, does not have a perfect memory, but I don't think that he intentionally lies about songwriting credits at the expense of John, and I think that he tries his best to remember what happened. I fully believe that Paul thinks that he wrote the melody to In My Life; now, he may not have actually written the whole melody, but John stated that Paul wrote the middle 8, in a song that doesn't have a traditional separate middle 8, so that makes me think that Paul did write at least some of the music. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

As for Eleanor Rigby, I think that we can mostly all agree that even if John did contribute a line or two, he was not responsible for 70% of the song, and I also don't see how it is hypocritical of Paul to not say anything after being shown John's comment list in 1972; as you are saying, Paul didn't like to speak about the Beatles in the 70's, and it is very likely that he simply missed that comment after quickly skimming through the list.

 

John wasn't wearing his eyeglasses, so he couldn't actually read the poster due to his horrible eyesight. Paul thus read the poster to John. Hence, he awarded himself partial credit for it...

 

How convenient!

 

Seems like John helped himself to a few of Paul's songs too.

Given the timeframe I doubt Paul would have really countered anything or wanted to get into a passing match.

 

Yes. This is not the best example of that sort of thing, but it's handy and it'll do: [Paul, in the current issue of MOJO]: "John would bring me Glass Onion. I remember him in the garden in St. John's Wood, saying, 'Here, what do you think of this?' We would just run it past each other . . . He actually asked me, 'D'you think I should put in this line about the Walrus was Paul?' I said, 'Oh yeah! . . . It's brilliant.'"

 

Yeah, I'm curious to find out more about specifically what Paul brought to the table here, since I had always assumed that this was purely a Lennon composition. Is Paul saying that he just helped out with the circus lyrics or did he contribute musically as well? I'm guess that, much like "Eleanor Rigby" and "She's Leaving Home" were primarily Paul songs with a little lyrical assistance from John, "Mr. Kite" was likely mainly a John song with a bit of input from Paul.

 

Where is the poster now? Does Yoko have it?:

 

John helping Paul seems to be more accepted that the other way around. I don't understand why.

To me, Kite does sound like a John song, but so does Lucy, Norwegian Wood, and others but we know Paul helped with those.

 

Well I do think they co-wrote a lot more than people think, just sometimes it was little additions to each others songs and some were more or less totally written together.

 

If I am remembering properly, Paul said that he was in the room with John, when they decided to turn John's poster into a song. He said that it was John's idea and gave John something like 80% of the credit, but he did say that he helped John write the song, in the way that they often did, sitting opposite each other with their guitars.

This is not a new claim either; I think that it was also mentioned in Many Years From Now, which was released over 15 years ago.

 

Exactly; both of those songs sound so 'Lennon-esque', but the dark lyric about lighting a fire was Paul's contribution. As Linda said, they were more alike than different.

 

Yessir - I think this sums it up nicely.

 

Linda was right of course- John and Paul were both exceptionally seasoned and prolific songwriters by 1966 and could turn their talents to any kind of song. It shouldn't surprise us, therefore, that Paul could 'write like John ' and John could 'write like Paul' if they were helping out with each other's songs.

[No one listens to Michelle and says "Who on earth wrote that 'I Love you I Love you I Love you' part, it doesn't fit at all!" or listens to A Day in The Life and says "That 'I'd love to turn you on' bit was obviously written by Paul, John would never have come up with it"]

 

Well said. It is one of the most fascinating aspects of their songwriting; even to this day, Paul has said that he considers what John would think when writing new songs.

 

Paul threw some of the tape snippets of the solo up in the air before Martin edited them together

 

The Beatles 1 and 1+ : DVD, Blu-ray, CD, Vinyl releases thread?

 

Yeah, I guess someone misread a Wikipedia entry or an older SHTV comment to cut/paste. Too bad...

 

If that's the case I'm surprised that most of them don't end up in the bin, with or without the lid!

 

This is an interesting list of true Lennon/McCartney collaborations on Pepper (include Mr Kite too); Only 'Getting better' is recognisable as being 'in The Beatles style' we knew from Revolver and before. Everything else is so different it's hard to imagine they're the same two guys anyway. (Maybe 'With a Little Help' feels a bit more "traditional" too but barely!)

 

Remastering. Nothing else. Thank goodness. I am pro remixing when multitracks are available though.

 

Given the input Paul had into Don't Let Me Down (that is, helping John work out which elements could be verses and which ones could be choruses and generally helping with the arrangement) it may be that Paul simply helped him fit the various lines of prose in the poster into his melody. And I'd suggest that the section beginning "having been some days in preparation" sounds more like one of McCartney's vertical melodies than John's horizontal ones. In fact, the whole melody seems more vertical than Lennon's usual style, but I'm not about to claim that Paul wrote the tune.

 

"1" re enters the US billboard album chart at nr 5 this week, with sales of 38,641