{"id":262415,"date":"2025-07-13T20:08:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-13T20:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/262415\/"},"modified":"2025-07-13T20:08:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-13T20:08:11","slug":"john-lennon-was-insecure-after-paul-mccartney-beatles-song-caused-a-shift-in-the-band","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/262415\/","title":{"rendered":"John Lennon was ‘insecure’ after Paul McCartney Beatles song caused a ‘shift’ in the band"},"content":{"rendered":"

It became one of The Beatles’ biggest hitsDan Haygarth<\/strong><\/a> Liverpool Daily Post Editor and Regeneration Reporter<\/p>\n

19:37, 13 Jul 2025<\/p>\n

\"JohnJohn Lennon and Paul McCartney in 1963(Image: Fox Photos\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Though John Lennon and Paul McCartney worked closely together as songwriters, there was rivalry between them as they both tried to out-do each other. Paul and John wrote the vast majority of The Beatles’<\/a> songs and in the early days they would compose their work together at Paul’s childhood home on Forthlin Road in Allerton<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, as the 1960s went on and artistic differences emerged, John and Paul tended to write independently, composing songs before presenting them to each other for tweaks. Despite this, every song they wrote while members of The Beatles<\/a> had the joint credit of Lennon-McCartney – the result of a pact made before they rose to fame.<\/p>\n

John explained there was rivalry between them when he discussed the track ‘A Hard Day’s Night’<\/a> in a 1980 interview with Playboy. He said: “There was a little competition between Paul and I as to who got the A-side \u2013 who got the hits. If you notice, in the early days the majority of singles, in the movies and everything, were mine.”<\/p>\n

He added: “In the early period I’m dominating the group \u2026 The reason Paul sang on ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ (in the bridge) is because I couldn’t reach the notes.”<\/p>\n

Paul<\/a> also revealed in a 2018 interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes that he felt the competition. He explained: “We were competitive, yeah. Not openly, but we later admitted”. Impersonating John<\/a>, Paul added: “yeah, so Paul\u2019s written a good one there, I better get going.”<\/p>\n

He continued: “And I would similarly, ‘that’s a bit good, right’. Here we go, come on. If he\u2019d written ‘Strawberry Fields’<\/a>, I would write ‘Penny Lane’<\/a>, you know, he\u2019s remembering his own area in Liverpool, so I’ll remember mine.”<\/p>\n

In that interview, Paul<\/a> was asked if John ever complimented him for his song writing. He answered: “Once – in the whole time.<\/p>\n

“I think it’s ‘Revolver’, it was ‘Here, There and Everywhere’<\/a>, (it) was one of my songs on it but John sort of just (said) when it finishes, ‘that’s a really good song that, I love that song’.”<\/p>\n

Paul said his response to that was: “‘Yes he likes it’. You know, I\u2019ve remembered it to this day. It\u2019s pathetic really.”<\/p>\n

It seems Paul was kinder to John<\/a>, however. Asked if he would praise his bandmate’s writing, he said: “Yeah, I would tell him his stuff was great. You\u2019d normally have to be a little bit drunk, it helped.”<\/p>\n

Despite the competition, Paul and John did work very closely together. However, one writer thinks there was a particular song which changed this relationship for good.<\/p>\n

In his book ‘John and Paul<\/a>: A Love Story in Songs’, Ian Leslie said there was one song which changed John and Paul’s dynamic – the 1965 hit ‘Yesterday’, which was written by Paul.<\/p>\n

Ian explained: “Yesterday’ feels like a shift in the balance of power. From the beginning they were equals, and ‘Yesterday’ wasn\u2019t only just a hit, but the song that more artists covered than any other Beatles song. Paul even sang it onstage by himself when they performed. And it triggered John\u2019s insecurities.\u201d<\/p>\n

The love song was released on the band’s 1965 album ‘Help!’ and was issued as a single in the United States. It is a sad song about the break up of a relationship, longing and regret, which was voted the best song of the 20th century in a 1999 BBC<\/a> poll.<\/p>\n

It was written by Paul<\/a>, after he said its melody came to him in a dream fully formed in around 1964. As a result, he worried he had plagiarised it.<\/p>\n

\"JohnJohn Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr rehearse their appearance on the Ed Sullivan show in 1964(Image: Daily Mirror\/Mirrorpix\/Mirrorpix via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u200cPaul<\/a> recalled: “I was living in a little flat at the top of a house and I had a piano by my bed. I woke up one morning with a tune in my head and I thought, \u2018Hey, I don\u2019t know this tune \u2013 or do I?\u2019<\/p>\n

“It was like a jazz melody. My dad used to know a lot of old jazz tunes; I thought maybe I\u2019d just remembered it from the past.<\/p>\n

\u200c”I went to the piano and found the chords to it, made sure I remembered it and then hawked it round to all my friends, asking what it was: \u2018Do you know this? It\u2019s a good little tune, but I couldn\u2019t have written it because I dreamt it.”<\/p>\n

Paul<\/a> sat on the song for the month, such were his worries. He said: “For about a month I went round to people in the music business and asked them whether they had ever heard it before.<\/p>\n

“Eventually it became like handing something in to the police. I thought if no one claimed it after a few weeks then I could have it.”<\/p>\n

When Paul<\/a> was finally convinced it was his original work, the song had a working title of ‘Scrambled Eggs’ while he and John<\/a> searched for the right lyrics. About that, John<\/a> recalled: “The song was around for months and months before we finally completed it. Every time we got together to write songs for a recording session, this one would come up.<\/p>\n

“We almost had it finished. Paul wrote nearly all of it, but we just couldn’t find the right title. We called it ‘Scrambled Eggs’ and it became a joke between us.<\/p>\n

“We made up our minds that only a one-word title would suit, we just couldn’t find the right one. Then one morning Paul woke up and the song and the title were both there, completed. I was sorry in a way, we’d had so many laughs about it.”<\/p>\n

Paul<\/a> said he nailed the lyrics during a holiday to Portugal in May 1965. He explained: “I remember mulling over the tune ‘Yesterday’, and suddenly getting these little one-word openings to the verse.<\/p>\n

“I started to develop the idea … da-da da, yes-ter-day, sud-den-ly, fun-il-ly, mer-il-ly and Yes-ter-day, that’s good. All my troubles seemed so far away.<\/p>\n

“It’s easy to rhyme those a’s: say, nay, today, away, play, stay, there’s a lot of rhymes and those fall in quite easily, so I gradually pieced it together from that journey. Sud-den-ly, and ‘b’ again, another easy rhyme: e, me, tree, flea, we, and I had the basis of it.”<\/p>\n

Paul then presented the finished composition to the band for them to record. For the first time ever, they suggested he treat it as a solo song, believing they couldn’t add to it.<\/p>\n

About that, Paul<\/a> said: “I took the song to the band, and although we did sometimes play it as a four-piece in concert, for the recording Ringo<\/a> said, \u2018I don\u2019t think I can really drum on that.\u2019 George<\/a> added, \u2018Well, I\u2019m not sure I can put much guitar on it either.\u2019<\/p>\n

“And then John<\/a> said, ‘I can\u2019t think of anything. I think you should just do it by yourself. It\u2019s really a solo song.’ Now, this was kind of a big deal at the time, because we\u2019d never recorded like that before. It had always been the band.”<\/p>\n

Paul<\/a> then recorded his guitar and vocals in just two takes on June 14, 1965. The song performed well as a single in America, becoming The Beatles’<\/a> fifth successive number one.<\/p>\n

It was also very well received by critics and won the Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Song of 1965. It has become one of the most covered songs of all time, with more than 2,000 versions recorded by various artists.<\/p>\n

Despite John’s role in encouraging Paul to back himself to record it by himself, he was not very kind about it in a later interview. Speaking to Playboy in 1980, John<\/a> said: “Although the lyrics don’t resolve into any sense, they’re good lines. They certainly work … but if you read the whole song, it doesn’t say anything”.<\/p>\n

He added that ‘Yesterday’ was: “Beautiful \u2013 and I never wished I’d written it”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It became one of The Beatles’ biggest hitsDan Haygarth Liverpool Daily Post Editor and Regeneration Reporter 19:37, 13…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262416,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[77,8345,269,11693,4162,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-262415","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-john-lennon","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-paul-mccartney","12":"tag-the-beatles","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114847737788598053","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}