Paul McCartney claims that the absence of portable recording devices during the band’s heyday meant that songs he co-wrote with John Lennon were frequently forgotten the morning after
Paul McCartney tells the London Evening Standard (via The Guardian) that there were even more Beatles songs in the early days of the group, but fans will never hear them. When the singles were part of the band's repertoire, they simply existed in the minds of McCartney and John Lennon. Back then, the two didn't have portable recorders to preserve them. And their brains could only hold so much music.
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"John and I didn't have them when we first started writing, we would write a song and just have to remember it," McCartney says. "And there was always the risk that we'd just forget it. If the next morning you couldn't remember, it was gone. There must have been dozens lost this way."
Things have changed quite a bit. You’ve got recording devices now which change the songwriting process. For instance, John and I didn’t have them when we first started writing, we would write a song and just have to remember it. And there was always the risk that we’d just forget it. If the next morning you couldn’t remember it – it was gone. There must have been dozens lost this way.”
He continued: “We didn’t have tape recorders. Now you can do it on your phone. So you would have to form the thing, have it all finished, remember it all, go in pretty quickly and record it. Now, because you can get things down on a device, I’ve got millions of things I want to record and do.”
!About the songs that went on recording i can recall that We Can Work It Out” is “a girlfriend song,” I wrote it about an arguiment i had had with my girlfriend Jane Asher. I don’t remember the circumstances, but I’m clearly saying, ‘Try and see it my way, because I’m obviously right.’ It may be arrogant, but it’s what every man wants to say to every girl. ‘Please think of this from my point of view. It might make things easier. It’d certainly make it easier for me. “
We Can Work It Out” is the moment when Lennon’s dominance of the band ended and McCartney became “ascendant not only as a songwriter, but also as instrumentalist, arranger, producer and de facto musical director of The Beatles
“Love is a great thing to write a song about,: ‘You left me, I hate you.’ ‘I love you, please come to me.’ ‘Don’t go anywhere, because I’m coming.’ It’s what us humans are about.” But after a few years of writing love songs, i got restless. One result was “Paperback Writer,” a funny tale of ambition, frustration and a desperation to please others, inspired by a Daily Mail article i read about an aspiring novelist. “
