. . . it just fascinates me.
From the September 1980 Playboy interview published in January 1981:
PLAYBOY: Then let’s talk about the work you did together. Generally speaking, what did each of you contribute to the Lennon-McCartney songwriting team?
LENNON: Well, you could say that he provided a lightness, an optimism, while I would always go for the sadness, the discords, a certain bluesy edge. There was a period when I thought I didn’t write melodies, that Paul wrote those and I just wrote straight, shouting rock ‘n’ roll. But, of course, when I think of some of my own songs — “In My Life” — or some of the early stuff — “This Boy” — I was writing melody with the best of them. Paul had a lot of training, could play a lot of instruments. He’d say, “Well, why don’t you change that there? You’ve done that note 50 times in the song.” You know, I’ll grab a note and ram it home. Then again, I’d be the one to figure out where to go with a song — a story that Paul would start. In a lot of the songs, my stuff is the “middle eight,” the bridge.
PLAYBOY: For example?
LENNON: Take “Michelle.” Paul and I were staying somewhere, and he walked in and hummed the first few bars, with the words, you know [sings verse of “Michelle”], and he says, “Where do I go from here?” I’d been listening to blues singer Nina Simone, who did something like “I love you!” in one of her songs and that made me think of the middle eight for “Michelle” [sings]: “I love you, I love you, I l-o-ove you . . . .”
PLAYBOY: What’s an example of a lyric you and Paul worked on together?
LENNON: In “We Can Work It Out,” Paul did the first half, I did the middle eight. But you’ve got Paul writing, “We can work it out/We can work it out” — real optimistic, y’ know, and me, impatient: “Life is very short and there’s no time/For fussing and fighting, my friend….”
PLAYBOY: Paul tells the story and John philosophizes.