Paul created songs that felt as if they had always existed

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 12:29:00 +1000

I just finished Ian Leslie’s “John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs” and one passage stopped me cold.

“No song is more McCartneyesque than ‘Penny Lane’, just as ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ is indubitably Lennonesque. Paul created songs that felt as if they had always existed; John channelled transmissions from another planet. Paul’s melodies feel like the purpose of music itself; John strains at the limits of chords and keys, trying to get past music into pure feeling or experience.”

That’s the whole book in four sentences. And once you read it, you hear every Beatles song differently.

Leslie’s argument is that the partnership worked precisely because they were pulling in opposite directions. Paul toward perfection, John toward disruption. Paul wanted to make something beautiful; John wanted to make something true. Neither instinct alone produces greatness. Together, held in tension by two men who loved and infuriated each other in roughly equal measure, they produced the most consequential body of popular music ever written.

The book traces this tension song by song. You see it in the difference between “Let It Be” and “I Am the Walrus.” Between “Yesterday” and “Tomorrow Never Knows.” Leslie doesn’t pick a side. He shows you why you need both.

What I didn’t expect was how much the book is about collaboration itself. Not the romantic version where two geniuses sit in a room and magic happens. The messy version. The version where one person writes a song and the other rewrites the bridge because it’s too comfortable. Where the best work comes from the friction, not despite it.

If you’ve ever worked closely with someone whose instincts are the opposite of yours and produced something neither of you could have made alone, you’ll recognise the dynamic. Leslie just happens to illustrate it with the greatest songwriting partnership in history.

57 years after John and Paul last collaborated the author still finds fresh perspectives. With the distance of time and the release of new material including Peter Jackson’s “Get Back” film we can see things differently.

Far from being the villain was who slammed for breaking up The Beatles, McCartney can be seen as the energetic band leader who squeezed the most out of the latter phase of the Fab Four.

While Leslie doesn’t play favourites he does help rebalance the historical scales and helps recognise Paul’s contribution which makes The Beatles as much his band as John’s. He taught John to play the guitar properly, and not just the banjo chords his mother taught him. He brought George in and picked up the bass when no-one ever wanted to be the bass player.

Ultimately none of the magic would have happened without John and Paul getting together as teenagers who then egged each other on to greater and greater heights.

It’s a good read. Grab it from the library.

John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs — Ian Leslie, Faber & Faber ISBN 9780571376124 www.google.com.au/books/edi…

Rambling Rows

Paul created songs that felt as if they had always existed