Paul McCartney and John Lennon were a formidable song-writing partnership. As the primary creative force behind The Beatles, Paul and John published around 180 songs credited to the two of them as Lennon-McCartney, most of which were recorded by the Fab Four.

Having met at a church fete in Woolton in 1957, when John was performing with The Quarrymen, the two became firm friends. John invited Paul to join the band and they began writing lyrics and music together at Paul’s childhood home on Forthlin Road in Allerton and John’s aunt Mimi’s house on Menlove Avenue.

They became incredibly successful, with their contrasting approaches and moods often meeting in the middle to create something special. In a 1980 interview, John said: “Paul provided a lightness, an optimism, while I would always go for the sadness, the discords, the bluesy notes.”

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Despite their roaring success, the two didn’t always see eye to eye – and their work went in very different directions. Creative differences between John and Paul were among the primary reasons for the band’s 1970 split but there were earlier occasions when the two wanted to do things very differently.

The ECHO recently reported how Paul’s work on The White Album’s ‘Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da’ sent John storming out of the studio. John was said to never be a fan of the song, but his anger reportedly reached boiling point during its recording. Writing in his 2006 memoir, Geoff Emerick, a recording engineer at Abbey Road studios, recalled the moment. He claimed that John had ‘openly and vocally detested the song’, labelling it ‘more of Paul’s granny music.’ Emerick claimed John went ‘ballistic, ranting and raving’ before storming out of the studio, with Yoko Ono following closely behind.

But a track released three years earlier also suggested that cracks may have emerged in the partnership. 1965’s ‘In My Life’ is credited to Lennon-McCartney and was named the best song of all time by music magazine Mojo in 2000.

The Beatles take a break from their rehearsals for the Royal Variety Performance in November 1963
The Beatles take a break from their rehearsals for the Royal Variety Performance in November 1963(Image: Fox Photos/Getty Images)

The song reminisces on a childhood in Liverpool but John hated the original lyrics he had written. He called it “the most boring sort of ‘What I Did on My Holidays Bus Trip’ song”.

The song was tweaked, with John claiming ownership of the new lyrics. He said that Paul helped with the middle eight – eight bars of different music designed to introduce new elements.

However, according to Chris Ingham’s ‘The Rough Guide to The Beatles’, Paul very much disputes John’s version of events. John is quoted as saying: “The whole lyrics were already written before Paul had even heard it” and he described the song as his first ‘real major piece of work’.

On Paul’s disagreement, Ingham writes: “Paul McCartney claims it as a more collaborative effort than Lennon depicts it. McCartney remembers arriving at Kenwood to find Lennon had ‘the very nice opening stanzas for a song’ but no tune, and that Paul himself composed the song on Lennon’s Mellotron on the landing. In My Life is one of the few pieces about which Lennon and McCartney’s respective memories significantly differ.”

Paul said he took inspiration from Smokey Robinson and The Miracles for the melody. About the track, he said in 1976: “I liked ‘In My Life’. Those were words that John wrote, and I wrote the tune to it. That was a great one.”