A musical recording was supposed be as close to the “real thing” as possible, as if the coolest big band was playing right in your living room. You either got the take or you didn’t, and there were no alterations after the fact. If you listen to popular music of the 1920s and 1930s, it has an honest quality to it, partly due to the way it was recorded, with all the singers and band members performing together in the same room. As far as vocals are concerned, the ability to record one take, then enhance it with a second for a fuller sound, is largely indebted to the studio experiments carried out by Les Paul-best known today for the Gibson guitar that carries his name-and his wife Mary Ford in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Whether we look at their writings as a team or as soloists, it is evident that each had an influence on the other and each was/is one of the greatest songwriters to emerge in the last half of the twentieth century.At every major juncture in pop music history, musical minds have both relied on and shaped available technology to realize their ideas. So in truth, the categories tend to be somewhat meaningless. Yet Paul wrote and issued the stinging pro-IRA anthem 'Give Ireland Back to the Irish' while John was simply mouthing platitudes such as 'Imagine' and 'Happy Xmas, War Is Over (If You Want It).' John had the reputation as the political radical while Paul was seen as wimping out. And John, the supposedly cynical rocker wrote such soppy pap as 'Julia,' 'Good Night,' and 'Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy).' So Paul, the supposedly soppy sentimentalist who was once ridiculed by John for writing 'granny music,' wrote such out and out rockers as 'I'm Down,' 'Helter Skelter,' and 'Back in the USSR'. And the key is usually in who is singing the lead. What most people don't realize is that probably 98% of the songs credited to the team 'Lennon-McCartney' after 1964 were actually written solo by one or the other.

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