There will never be another songwriting duo who will impact the industry like John Lennon and Paul McCartney. For all of the great music that they may have made during their solo careers, the two songwriting masterminds behind most of The Beatles’ tunes provided the perfect compliment to each other whenever they played, often filling in pieces of each other’s songs, which would become staples of the rock canon. Although McCartney felt that his songwriting with John Lennon was one-of-a-kind, he thought one collaboration was the closest that he had ever come to working with his partner again.
Then again, since leaving The Beatles, Macca had spent years honing his craft as a solo artist. After a slow start to his career with albums like RAM made with his wife, Linda, the formation of Wings saw the former Beatle back on top of the world again, putting together stadium rock anthems like ‘Venus and Mars’ and ‘Band on the Run’.
McCartney kept his Beatles days at arm’s length for all of the excellent material he was making on his own. During the band’s live shows, he would only occasionally throw in a Beatles tune that he thought would sound best with his other material, performing tracks like ‘Yesterday’ and deep cuts like ‘I’ve Just Seen a Face’ during his stadium tours.
Once the punk movement started to mock McCartney’s brand of stadium rock, the sounds of new wave had a lyrical mastermind in Elvis Costello. With the help of the Attractions, albums like My Aim is True gave the world some of the most emotional lyrics to come out of a rock and roller, as Costello talked about the ins and outs of relationships on songs like ‘Allison’.
As McCartney started working his way into a new decade, he gravitated towards Costello’s songwriting brand, going so far as to work with him during the sessions for the album Flowers in the Dirt. When he sat down to write with the new wave mastermind, though, McCartney couldn’t help but get glimpses of the writer he had known all those years ago.
When talking about his collaboration with Costello, longtime Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick recalled how much McCartney enjoyed working with Costello, recalling in Here There and Everywhere, “Like John, Elvis would always come into the session with a scrap of paper with a half-finished verse scribbled on it, finishing and polishing it off in the studio. A few years later, Paul would write a few songs with Elvis and describe the experience as ‘the nearest thing to working with John’”.
Even though Costello’s music sounded much different than Lennon’s trademark style, their outlooks on the song were much more in common than many realised. When working on lines back and forth, McCartney often saw Costello contributing a sarcastic line against an earnest one, much like he and Lennon wrote the Sgt Pepper classic ‘Getting Better’.
Although no amount of songwriting expertise could replace John Lennon, hearing Costello and McCartney trade lines on the demo version of the song ‘My Brave Face’ is slightly surreal to listen to. After years without a songwriting partner, it seemed like McCartney finally found that songwriting chemistry with someone else.
