Lennon vs. McCartney: Who was the more creative composer of this duo?

It necessarily would have to be divulged solely by either George Martin, or one of his 2 lovable and incompetent, marketing bogeys Lennon or McCartney. Lennon is strictly mum on this issue so the truth will have to come exclusively from either George Martin or McCartney by now. You have a very fat chance.

You are defending the ludicrous position that a conspiracy of this magnitude would be so competently guarded for decades that not one single historian, or biographer, or reporter has ever made even one tiny, fleeting reference to it, but it just came to you in your mind. This is not even plausible.

The reiterated and obsessive concern and the repeated references to the lack of any documentation that might exist in the popular literature on the Beatles and over the putative secretiveness of the true nature of the ghostwriting relationship that existed between George Martin and Lennon & McCartney are solely your own, not in any way mine. I don't have the least interest or confidence in the popular literature on the Beatles, it is solely you who keeps harping on documentary public references to what would by its very nature be nothing more than a dirty little marketing and trade secret between George Martin and Lennon & McCartney.

My only categorical interest and position is musicological, namely, that the unique and mutually exclusive musical structural and stylistic characteristics and differences existing between: 1) the extant body of musical work known to have been written and recorded by Lennon and McCartney during their periods of professional isolation and disassociation from George Martin, on the one hand, and 2) the extant body of musical work known to have been written and recorded from 1962-1970 under contract with George Martin exclusively to which the Beatles owe their fame and their fortune, on the other hand, demonstrate categorically and unequivocally that Lennon & McCartney could not possibly have written and indeed did not write the corpus of 1962-1970 Beatles hits that catapulted the group to fame. George Martin was the sole author of those hit songs, not Lennon & McCartney by any stretch of the imagination.

Brandon,

The guy's either unwilling or unable to enter into a reasonable dialog. Don't waste your time.

You can't tell your trolls from your crazies without a program....

Sweet and Sour.

Both are OK on their own for a while, but put them together and you get something magical.

An example of sour:
"No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of Tricky Dicky's gonna mother hubbard soft soap me with just a pocketful of hope....."

Sweet: "You'd think that people would have had enough of silly love longs
But I look around me and I see it isn't so
Some people wanna fill the world with silly love songs
And what's wrong with that ?
I'd like to know 'cause here I go again.
I love you
I love you
I love you
I loveyou......"

A classic example of putting sweet and sour together is the superb "A Day In The Life"

Of course, there was always the Chef working away behind the scenes, namely George Martin (the fifth Beatle), without whose input the Beatles would maybe not have evolved quite as spectacularly as they did.

You are correct, as was Setanta. This person is simply a classic Web troll with no honesty and no shame. I looked for a tiny vestige of one or the other, but it isn't there. This is the classic Web troll scenario and I'm not going to waste any more energy.

Commendable!

They gave him plenty of credit, calling him the "5th Beatle", which by all historical accounts is a more accurate reflection of his contribution to their work than your version, where he was the producer of a talentless boy band.

I must confess that my main interest at this point is in deciding which of the meaningless and characteristically evasive, non-responsive comments from the 'peanut gallery' above is the one that most makes me laugh out loud. It's a difficult call, but therein lies the fun of it as you may well imagine.

McCartney...hands down. It's apparent to me from reading the threads here that most of you have only ever heard a McCartney Greatest Hits cd, which do NOT do his catalog justice. I love his solo music. He has so many complete albums. Of course, there is some filler on many of them, but pop in Band on the Run, Ram, Venus and Mars, McCartney I and II (weird as hell, but worth it), Flaming Pie, Chaos and Creation, and Electric Arguments and tell me that isn't BRILLIANT work. I used to be infatuated with Lennon's work until I realized it was all about 3 things. Yoko, politics, and anger. I couldn't stand to listen to much of it after that, though I do love Double Fantasy and Instant Karma. I like his singles better than his albums.

McCartney is so versatile. You never know what he is going to sing next and in what style. One minute he's singing music hall, then he's singing a blistering rocker about comic book characters. Who else does that? His voice is also incredible. I think Lennon's is more unique, but Paul can do anything, from falsetto to some pretty low bass work. I seriously urge all of you to pick up a few of those albums I mentioned. They are all excellent, and they span his entire career.

I think Lennon sort of lost it after Imagine, with only a handful of good songs (and never a completely good album) after it.

Now, within The Beatles is a different story. I feel they basically had an even output in the Beatles, with John dominating the first half of the band's span, and Paul dominating the second half. Though they each had great material in both periods. For example, listen to Please Please Me or A Hard Day's Nigh...John is most prominently featured. Then pop in Revolver, Sgt. Pepper's, and Abbey Road. To me, Paul's songs are the best on those albums, though John obviously adds such great songs as A Day in the Life, but it wasn't a solo effort, and Come Together. George also dominates Abbey Road with two of his best songs, and two of The Beatles best songs. It's amazing how much talent was in that band!

I just think Lennon lost his drive after awhile. He went cold until inspiration hit in 1979-1980 (incidentally, after he heard Paul's Coming Up from McCartneyII). They are both great, but I guess it comes down to taste. I happen to prefer the flavor of Paul because he never gets boring!

Peregrine Pickle... you are an asshole who's invented a completely asinine theory about George Martin being sole author of the Beatles hits and the supposed conspiracy to keep this fact covered up for 40 years. Besides being a product of your imagination, your theory based on so-called evidence is utterly subjective-- you claim that the body of work produced before and after the period with Martin is inferior to the work produced with him. This is nothing but your opinion. It is the contention of reasonable people that they produced better work during this period because the collaboration among them enhanced their work, with Martin definitely making a contribution, but not what you claim. You may laugh at the comments here, but in actuality-- you are a complete joke. I don't know what kind of psychological problems you have that lead you to your idiotic conclusions, but really, you should get some therapy and stop harassing people with your ******* nonsense. Oh and by the way, kiss my ass.

Solo - Lennon, all the way. As a rider to that, I'll add that there is still some dead wood on any given Lennon album, however. When he an McCartney were together in the Beatles, they acted as quality control, one against the other, even after their true songwriting partnership ended around 65. Lennon can be a bit pretentious, overly bitter at times and McCartney can be too mawkish.

In the Beatles, I'd say it's a draw. Lennon for creativity in the sense of breaking new ground, McCartney for creativity in the sense of being an all round great tunesmith.

the only Beatles rock song was helter skelter written by Mccartney

The only beatles rock song was written by McCartney: Helter Skelter, but other rock songs were: I'm down, Drive my car, I saw her standing there, She's a woman, Oh darling, Back in the Urss, Birthday, Got to get into my life, The night before, ecc, all songs were written by McCartney

Lennon is my fav, but McCartney is a better musician and songwriter. There's absolutely no question about it.

Just come back to this thread and I think, to paraphrase Paul in the Anthology, ...



Deciding who's better is a non-starter. Air or water? Poon-tang or food? Mum or dad?

There are certain things that transcend ranking.

Amen bro