Music
John Lennon and Paul McCartney used to laugh at a lyric from a song Paul did not think was very good.
Published on December 13, 2022
2 min readTL;DR:
- John Lennon said a song lyric Paul McCartney wrote always made the two of them laugh.
- The Beatles didn’t record the song and Paul decided it would work better for a comic musical group.
- The track became a No. 1 hit in the United Kingdom.
John Lennon said one song’s lyrics always made him and Paul McCartney laugh. Subsequently, Paul said he didn’t think the lyrics of the song were very good. Notably, Paul wrote the track and it was recorded by another classic rock group.
John Lennon said a song Paul McCartney wrote before joining The Beatles made him laugh
The book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono includes an interview from 1980. In it, John was asked who wrote the song “A World Without Love” by Peter and Gordon. He attributed it to Paul even though the song is credited to the Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership.
“He had quite a lot of material already … he was already more of a songwriter than me when we met,” John said. “So I think that was also resurrected from the past. I don’t know, I think he had the whole song before The Beatles and gave it to Peter and Gordon, one of whom is now the famous Peter Asher.” For context, Asher is a pop singer and record producer.
John revealed what he thought of the song. “I don’t know what became of Gordon,” he said. “Paul never sang it. Not on a record, anyway. That has the line ‘Please lock me away’ — which we always used to crack up at.”
Paul McCartney decided ‘A World Without Love’ would work better for another group
In the 1997 book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, Paul discussed “A World Without Love.” “The funny first line always used to please John,” he recalled. “Please lock me away / Yes, OK.’ End of song.”
Paul explained why the Fab Four never recorded the track. “It was an early song of mine that we didn’t use for The Beatles that I thought would be good for Peter and Gordon and it was,” he said.
How the song and its parent album performed on the pop charts in the United Kingdom
The song became Peter and Gordon’s biggest hit in the United Kingdom. According to The Official Charts Company, the song reached No. 1 there for two weeks, becoming the group’s only chart-topper in the U.K.
The track lasted on the chart for a total of 14 weeks. It appeared on the album A World Without Love, which never charted in the U.K.
“A World Without Love” was not one of Paul’s favorite songs but it made him and John laugh.
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