In the journey from Liverpudlian suburbia to global stardom, Paul McCartney and John Lennon’s friendship went through its fair share of ups and downs. The budding songwriters first met in the late 1950s, when they would join musical forces in The Quarrymen, Lennon’s pre-Beatles band. Unbeknownst to them, they were now on the path to becoming the most accomplished songwriting partnership in music history.
They didn’t necessarily find widespread success with The Quarrymen, but this all changed when they became The Beatles – or, at first, The Silver Beatles – in 1960. McCartney’s friend George Harrison was recruited as a lead guitarist, while drummer Ringo Starr would join the band a couple of years later. The lineup was complete, and Beatlemania would soon sweep the globe.
Lennon and McCartney shared a genuine love for songwriting, so they naturally became the group’s leading lyricists. Initially, this shared passion served them well. They worked together to pen some of the band’s first hits, from their debut single ‘Love Me Do’ to the gorgeous ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’, but their relationship soon soured through creative differences and other tensions.
As Beatlemania evolved, The Beatles grew apart, and the central lyricists began to prefer writing alone. Although everything they created would be attributed to their partnership due to an earlier agreement, later hits like ‘Let It Be’ and ‘All You Need Is Love’ were written separately as their creative interests separated. Lennon was more interested in collaborating with his romantic partner, Yoko Ono, than with his Beatles bandmate.
The internal issues in the group proved unsolvable and the band broke up in 1970, after which Lennon threw some harsh insults in the direction of his former songwriting partner in the press. Despite his biting criticism, the pair were forever connected and there was an underlying respect for one another. They reconciled their relationship by the mid-1970s, prior to Lennon’s tragic death.
Rather than remembering the critiques Lennon had hurled at him in the media, there was one compliment that McCartney received from his songwriting partner that really stuck with him. During the filming of Help!, McCartney recalled in a Q&A session, he and Lennon sat and listened to their own music in an Austrian cabin. When ‘Here, There and Everywhere’ came on, Lennon was moved to compliment McCartney.
“I remember John saying: ‘You know, that’s probably my favourite song of yours,’” McCartney recalled, “So that was a good compliment. I always remember that.” The tune later appeared on the band’s seventh record, Revolver, amidst more experimental offerings like ‘I’m Only Sleeping’ and ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’. At odds with the more psychedelic leanings of the wider record, ‘Here, There and Everywhere’ was classic McCartney.
The song featured soft twangs and achingly romantic lyrics. McCartney declares his wishes for his love to go everywhere with him. “To lead a better lie, I need my love to be here,” McCartney sings in the opening moments, “Here, making each day of the year.” It’s easy to see why Lennon admired the song so much.
‘Here, There and Everywhere’ isn’t just Lennon’s favourite McCartney song — it’s McCartney’s, too. Though he, understandably, finds it difficult to pick out a favourite from his extensive catalogue, ‘Here, There and Everywhere’ seems to be his go-to choice, perhaps influenced by the admiration it earned him from Lennon.
