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1. Early songs.

As early as 1958, (two years before they became ‘The Beatles’), Paul McCartney had written ‘In spite of all the danger’ a very early song finished off by him and lead guitarist George Harrison at Harrison’s Upton Green home in Speke, with John Lennon on lead vocal.

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As Beatles expert Mark Lewisohn notes, by then, McCartney was already ‘in full flow as a songwriter.’ And by the time Brian Epstein became their manager around December 1961, the Beatles were already (somewhat reluctantly it has to said), starting to play their own, self composed songs on stage at The Cavern in Liverpool.

 

According to Lewisohn too, as many as eight Lennon-McCartney originals were written in 1959-60 as well as five McCartney instrumentals. – In no particular order, the Lennon-McCartney Originals from this period include:

* Love Of The Loved. Paul remembers coming up with this on the his Zenith guitar as late one night he walked home to Allerton, braving the dark short-cut home over the local golf course. He recalls he’d either taken a girl out or been at John Lennon’s house as he played guitar and ‘sang at the top of his voice into the scary pitch blackness’. Structurally and harmonically, the middle-eight leaned on the same section of the Teddy Bears’ (Phil Spector’s) To Know Him Is To Love Him. The title was probably a phrase Paul had heard and seized on – a technique he’d already used with

* Thinking Of Linking. A song Inspired by a cinema advert for Link Furniture, Paul composed the song in 1958. The lyric consists of only three lines, whilst the music is influenced by the sound of Buddy Holly and the Crickets song Peggy Sue Got Married.

* I’ll Follow The Sun. An absolutely great McCartney Beatles’ track, written solely by Paul, composed again on his Zenith guitar during the late 1950’s.

* What Goes On. Written by John Lennon and showcased on the Beatles’ 1965 Album Rubber Soul, Almost certainly composed at Lennon’s Mendips home and influenced again by Buddy Holly.

* A World Without Love. A song fragment conceived by Paul during another dark, late-night walk home. He rarely made any bold claims for this one because of John and George’s reaction to the opening line when he first demonstrated it. As Paul remembers, ‘I came in and said, “Listen to this song, fellers. ‘Please lock me away…’” and everyone laughed. And that was it.’ Paul never did change the opening line, and on the occasions he played it, when he sang ‘Please lock me away’ John would interject ‘Yes, OK’, and end it there.

* I’ll Be On My Way. A Paul song with which John always happily declared no association. Written on the Zenith, with an attractively simple melody but the kind of lyric these writers usually spurned (‘When the June light turns to moonlight’).

* Like Dreamers Do. Another interesting McCartney song. George felt it exuded the influence of Jim McCartney, in the vein of his Gershwin favourite I’ll Build A Stairway To Paradise.

* You’ll Be Mine. A 1960 recording of this Paul song was performed with overblown drama, but it’s not clear if it was intended that way.

Several guitar instrumentals, mostly and perhaps entirely composed by Paul. It seems they were created this way, that they weren’t merely songs lacking a lyric:

* Hot As Sun, Cayenne, Catswalk, Looking Glass, Winston’s Walk. (Though Winston was John’s middle name it isn’t known for certain if this was his tune.) Some of these would remain unheard but – along with the already written Love Me Do, I Call Your Name and the tune of what would become When I’m Sixty-Four – several went on to become very well known, and one an American number A few early Lennon-McCartney Originals were undoubtedly unsophisticated and unpolished – as the work of beginners, aged 16 to 18, they were bound to be – but quite patently there was also something very special happening here. The tune of Michelle at Liverpool Philharmonic Hall musician Austin Davis’s party with his wife, dramatist and author Beryl Bainbridge.

It is Lewisohn again who speculates that as early as January 1957, the inspiration for their first single Love Me Do may well have come from the Elvis Presley film Love Me Tender (shown in Liverpool in January 1957) or from music press adverts for a single which was actually called Love Me Do and which was released in Britain in February 1957. Either at Lennon’s home in Menlove Avenue or at McCartney’s Forthlin Road house, (when John’s Aunt Mimi and Paul’s Father Jim were absent), John and Paul began to write together or offer advice on the other’s songs/lyrics. So at least 8 full songs and 5 instrumentals were written in the late 1950’s-early 1960’s. The Nerk Twins were on the march.

The pre-Beatles Quarry Men (some months before Paul McCartney joined) first played The Cavern (initially a Jazz Club ) in 1957. However, when John Lennon started singing rock ‘n’ roll Club owner Alan Sytner handed him a note to ‘Cut out the bloody rock.’ Here, (and not for the first or last time), the rebel in Lennon came to the fore. On stage or off, he did his own thing and if others didn’t like it, (especially when it came to his music), John Lennon hardly ever backed down.

Lewisohn, Mark. The Beatles – All These Years: Volume One: Tune In (p. 108). Little, Brown Book Group. Kindle Edition.