The Beatles

PLAYBOY: Then let's talk about the work you did together. Generally speaking, what did each of you contribute to the Lennon-McCartney songwriting team?

LENNON: Well, you could say that he provided a lightness, an optimism, while I would always go for the sadness, the discords, a certain bluesy edge. 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. 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. Paul had a lot of training, could play a lot of instruments. He'd say, "Well, why don't you change that there? You've done that note 50 times in the song." You know, I'll grab a note and ram it home. Then again, I'd be the one to figure out where to go with a song -- a story that Paul would start. In a lot of the songs, my stuff is the "middle eight," the bridge.

[...]

"...in the early days, we didn't care about lyrics as long as the song had some vague theme -- she loves you, he loves him, they all love each other. It was the hook, line and sound we were going for. That's still my attitude, but I can't leave lyrics alone. I have to make them make sense apart from the songs."

"I think Paul and Ringo stand up with any of the rock musicians. Not technically great -- none of us are technical musicians. None of us could read music. None of us can write it. But as pure musicians, as inspired humans to make the noise, they are as good as anybody."

on George Harrison:
"I remember the day he called to ask for help on "Taxman," one of his bigger songs. I threw in a few one-liners to help the song along, because that's what he asked for. He came to me because he couldn't go to Paul, because Paul wouldn't have helped him at that period. I didn't want to do it. I thought, Oh, no, don't tell me I have to work on George's stuff. It's enough doing my own and Paul's. But because I loved him and I didn't want to hurt him when he called me that afternoon and said, "Will you help me with this song?" I just sort of bit my tongue and said OK. It had been John and Paul so long, he'd been left out because he hadn't been a songwriter up until then. As a singer, we allowed him only one track on each album. If you listen to the Beatles' first albums, the English versions, he gets a single track. The songs he and Ringo sang at first were the songs that used to be part of my repertoire in the dance halls. I used to pick songs for them from my repertoire -- the easier ones to sing."

[...]

"I worked for money and I wanted to be rich."

[...]

LENNON: Sean and I were away for a weekend and Yoko came over to sell this cow and I was joking about it. We hadn't seen her for days; she spent all her time on it. But then I read the paper that said she sold it for a quarter of a million dollars. Only Yoko could sell a cow for that much. [Laughter]

PLAYBOY: For an artist, your business sense seems remarkable.

ONO: I was doing it just as a chess game. I love chess. I do everything like it's a chess game. Not on a Monopoly level -- that's a bit more realistic. Chess is more conceptual.

[...]

ONO: The society will do away with the roles of men and women. Babies will be born in test tubes and incubators...

LENNON: Then it's Aldous Huxley.

[...]

Sean's not going to public school, by the way. We feel he can learn the three Rs when he wants to -- or when the law says he has to, I suppose. I'm not going to fight it. Otherwise, there's no reason for him to be learning to sit still. I can't see any reason for it. Sean now has plenty of child companionship, which everybody says is important, but he also is with adults a lot. He's adjusted to both. The reason why kids are crazy is because nobody can face the responsibility of bringing them up. Everybody's too scared to deal with children all the time, so we reject them and send them away and torture them. The ones who survive are the conformists -- their bodies are cut to the size of the suits -- the ones we label good. The ones who don't fit the suits either are put in mental homes or become artists.

[...]

PLAYBOY: John, does it take actually reversing roles with women to understand?

LENNON: It did for this man. [Nathan: this reminds me of my idea of having immersive videos on the oculus rift that allow you to experience another person's life]

[...]

PLAYBOY: Briefly, what about the statement on the new album?

LENNON: Very briefly, it's about very ordinary things between two people. The lyrics are direct. Simple and straight. I went through my Dylanesque period a long time ago with songs like "I am the Walrus:" the trick of never saying what you mean but giving the impression of something more. Where more or less can be read into it. It's a good game. [Nathan: It's amazing to read him acknowledging the technique so frankly.]

[...]

I enjoy the B-52s, because I heard them doing Yoko. It's great. If Yoko ever goes back to her old sound, they'll be saying, "Yeah, she's copying the B-52s."

ONO: We were doing a lot of the punk stuff a long time ago. [Nathan: it's very interesting to think about how a genre that people associate with a particular time (like punk and the 80s) could have existed in periods that people associate with very different types of music, but it just hasn't spread very far. It's also like when I read about homosexuality in Napoleon's time (late 1700s?); it seems so far removed from the typical images I've gotten of what that era was like.]

PLAYBOY: Lennon and Ono, the original punks.

ONO: You're right.

PLAYBOY: John, what's your opinion of the newer waves?

LENNON: I love all this punky stuff. It's pure. I'm not, however, crazy about the people who destroy themselves.

[...]

ONO: In fact, we really don't enjoy listening to other people's work much. We sort of analyze everything we hear. [Nathan: I definitely noticed that happening when I started to study film and music; I couldn't gloss over mistakes in other people's work anymore. I actually got upset that I had lost the ability to enjoy it all which had attracted me to making my own stuff in the first place.]

[...]

PLAYBOY: How does it feel to have influenced so many people?

LENNON: It wasn't really me or us. It was the times. It happened to me when I heard rock 'n' roll in the Fifties. I had no idea about doing music as a way of life until rock 'n' roll hit me.

PLAYBOY: Do you recall what specifically hit you?

LENNON: It was "Rock Around the Clock," I think. I enjoyed Bill Haley, but I wasn't overwhelmed by him. It wasn't until "Heartbreak Hotel" that I really got into it. [Nathan: that was in '56]

[Nathan: it's very interesting to hear him describe getting caught up in the times. It makes his rise seem more human, easier to relate to, easier to emulate.]

[...]

LENNON: We tuned in to the message. That's all. I don't mean to belittle the Beatles when I say they weren't this, they weren't that. I'm just trying not to overblow their importance as separate from society.

[...]

PLAYBOY: Do you have any interest in the pop historians analyzing the Beatles as a cultural phenomenon?

LENNON: It's all equally irrelevant. Mine is to do and other people's is to record, I suppose. [Nathan: Be action-oriented. Don't be content standing on the sidelines. This is a common theme among successful people.]

[...]

PLAYBOY: What about the walrus itself?

LENNON: It's from "The Walrus and the Carpenter." "Alice in Wonderland." To me, it was a beautiful poem. It never dawned on me that Lewis Carroll was commenting on the capitalist and social system. I never went into that bit about what he really meant, like people are doing with the Beatles' work. Later, I went back and looked at it and realized that the walrus was the bad guy in the story and the carpenter was the good guy. I thought, Oh, shit, I picked the wrong guy. I should have said, "I am the carpenter." But that wouldn't have been the same, would it? [Singing] "I am the carpenter...."

[Nathan: I remember being younger and assuming that songwriters with well-executed songs were very wise, and I would try to understand what they were talking about. Nowadays I feel like they're really just like fortune-tellers, selling people vague answers that they can read into however they like.]

[...]

PLAYBOY: How about "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window?"

LENNON: That was written by Paul when we were in New York forming Apple, and he first met Linda. Maybe she's the one who came in the window. She must have. I don't know. Somebody came in the window. [Nathan: It's remarkable to me that these guys could be working together on a piece of music and not understand and not ask each other about the meaning of the lyrics. My preconception of the Beatles was that they all understood everything about the music. I definitely pictured them as being more knowing.]

[...]

PLAYBOY: May we continue with some of the ones that seem more personal and see what reminiscences they inspire?

LENNON: Reminisce away.

PLAYBOY: For no reason whatsoever, let's start with "I Wanna Be Your Man."

LENNON: Paul and I finished that one off for the Stones. We were taken down by Brian to meet them at the club where they were playing in Richmond. They wanted a song and we went to see what kind of stuff they did. Paul had this bit of a song and we played it roughly for them and they said, "Yeah, OK, that's our style." But it was only really a lick, so Paul and I went off in the corner of the room and finished the song off while they were all sitting there, talking. We came back and Mick and Keith said, "Jesus, look at that. They just went over there and wrote it." You know, right in front of their eyes. We gave it to them. It was a throwaway. Ringo sang it for us and the Stones did their version. It shows how much importance we put on them. We weren't going to give them anything great, right? That was the Stones' first record. Anyway, Mick and Keith said, "If they can write a song so easily, we should try it." They say it inspired them to start writing together. [Nathan: Lesson - You may not need to sweat for weeks / months / years to produce something that will be of interest to people. Don't be too much of a perfectionist.]

[...]

In those days, when the Beatles were depressed, we had this little chant. I would yell out, "Where are we going, fellows?" They would say, "To the top, Johnny," in pseudo-American voices. And I would say, "Where is that, fellows?" And they would say, "To the toppermost of the poppermost." It was some dumb expression from a cheap movie -- a la "Blackboard Jungle" -- about Liverpool. Johnny was the leader of the gang. [Nathan: So they were very clearly gunning for the top.]

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PLAYBOY: What about "Because?"

LENNON: I was lying on the sofa in our house, listening to Yoko play Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" on the piano. Suddenly, I said, "Can you play those chords backward?" She did, and I wrote "Because" around them. The song sounds like "Moonlight Sonata," too. The lyrics are clear, no bullshit, no imagery, no obscure references. [Nathan: So it seems clear that musicians very frequently get their ideas for music by modifying existing music instead of trying to understand the fundamental principles at work.]

[...]

PLAYBOY: Why were the compositions you and Paul did separately attributed to Lennon-McCartney?

LENNON: Paul and I made a deal when we were 15. There was never a legal deal between us, just a deal we made when we decided to write together that we put both our names on it, no matter what.

[...]

Paul and I always wrote both sides. That wasn't because we were keeping him [George Harrison] out but simply because his material was not up to scratch. I made sure he got the B side of "Something," too, so he got the cash. Those little things he doesn't remember. I always felt bad that George and Ringo didn't get a piece of the publishing. When the opportunity came to give them five percent each of Maclen, it was because of me they got it. It was not because of Klein and not because of Paul but because of me. When I said they should get it, Paul couldn't say no.

[...]

I think subconsciously we -- I thought Paul subconsciously tried to destroy my great songs. We would play experimental games with my great pieces, like "Strawberry Fields," which I always felt was badly recorded. It worked, but it wasn't what it could have been. [...] The same thing happened to "Across the Universe." The song was never done properly. The words stand, luckily. [Nathan: This is very useful, because you can now listen to "Across the Universe" and try to figure out what John doesn't like about it. It gives you more insight into how their process of improving a song. From listening to the song on YouTube, I think he's probably referring to how well the song is sung (the quality of his vocal performance), the quality of the vocal recording (ie good mic / bad mic), the quality of the guitar recording, etc. This also makes me feel much better about thinking Fiona Apple's version is way, way better than the Beatles' version.]

[...]

ONO: I had a daddy, a real daddy, sort of a big and strong father like a Billy Graham, but growing up, I saw his weak side. I saw the hypocrisy. So whenever I see something that is supposed to be so big and wonderful -- a guru or primal scream -- I'm very cynical. [Nathan: That's very insightful. I hadn't thought of that before.]

[...]

LENNON: Maharishi was a father figure, Elvis Presley might have been a father figure. I don't know. Robert Mitchum. Any male image is a father figure. There's nothing wrong with it until you give them the right to give you sort of a recipe for your life. What happens is somebody comes along with a good piece of truth. Instead of the truth's being looked at, the person who brought it is looked at. The messenger is worshiped, instead of the message. So there would be Christianity, Mohammedanism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Marxism, Maoism -- everything -- it is always about a person and never about what he says.