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By Root 773 0

the whites only listened to Jan and Dean and all that. We felt that we had the message which was, “Listen to this music.” It was the same in Liverpool; we felt very exclusive and underground in Liverpool, listening to Richie Barret and Barrett Strong, and all those old-time records. Nobody was listening to any of them except Eric Burdon in Newcastle and Mick Jagger in London. It was that lonely, it was fantastic. When we came over here and it was the same—nobody was listening to rock & roll or to black music in America—we felt as though we were coming to the land of its origin, but nobody wanted to know about it.

What part did you ever play in the songs that are heavily identified with Paul, like “Yesterday”?

“Yesterday” I had nothing to do with.

“Eleanor Rigby”?

“Eleanor Rigby” I wrote a good half of the lyrics or more.

When did Paul show you “Yesterday”?

I don’t remember—I really don’t remember, it was a long time ago. I think he was . . . I really don’t remember, it just sort of appeared.

Who wrote “Nowhere Man”?

Me, me.

Did you write that about anybody in particular?

Probably about myself. I remember I was just going through this paranoia trying to write something and nothing would come out, so I just lay down and tried to not write and then this came out, the whole thing came out in one gulp.

What songs really stick in your mind as being Lennon-McCartney songs?

“I Want to Hold Your Hand,” “From Me to You,” “She Loves You”—I’d have to have the list, there’s so many, trillions of ’em. Those are the ones. In a rock band you have to make singles; you have to keep writing them. Plenty more. We both had our fingers in each other’s pies.

A song from the ‘Help’ album, like “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away.” How did you write that? What were the circumstances? Where were you?

I was in Kenwood, and I would just be songwriting. The period would be for songwriting, and so every day I would attempt to write a song, and it’s one of those that you sort of sing a bit sadly to yourself, “Here I stand, head in hand . . .”

I started thinking about my own emotions—I don’t know when exactly it started, like “I’m a Loser” or “Hide Your Love Away” or those kinds of things—instead of projecting myself into a situation, I would just try to express what I felt about myself, which I’d done in me books. I think it was Dylan helped me realize that—not by any discussion or anything but just by hearing his work—I had a sort of professional songwriter’s attitude to writing pop songs; he would turn out a certain style of song for a single, and we would do a certain style of thing for this and the other thing. I was already a stylized songwriter on the first album. But to express myself I would write Spaniard in the Works or In His Own Write, the personal stories which were expressive of my emotions. I’d have a separate songwriting John Lennon who wrote songs for the sort of meat market, and I didn’t consider them—the lyrics or anything—to have any depth at all. They were just a joke. Then I started being me about the songs, not writing them objectively, but subjectively.

What about on ‘Rubber Soul,’ “Norwegian Wood”?

I was trying to write about an affair without letting me wife know I was writing about an affair, so it was very gobbledygook. I was sort of writing from my experiences, girls’ flats, things like that.

Where did you write that?

I wrote it at Kenwood.

When did you decide to put a sitar on it?

I think it was at the studio. George had just got his sitar and I said, “Could you play this piece?” We went through many different sort of versions of the song; it was never right, and I was getting very angry about it, it wasn’t coming out like I said. They said, “Well, just do it how you want to do it,” and I said, “Well, I just want to do it like this.” They let me go, and I did the guitar very loudly into the mike and sang it at the same time, and then George had the sitar and I asked him could he play the piece that I’d written, you know, dee diddley dee diddley