They started in the front rooms of their respective Liverpool homes, progressed to vans and hotel rooms up and down the UK and finally perfected their craft in Abbey Road studios: creating long-chain molecules of stories from atoms of experience.
Their initial common experience and vocabulary was that of love, an evolution of the work of earlier greats such as Sinatra and most powerfully for the lads: Elvis. But as Lennon and McCartney grew from teenagers to young men to crafters of pop to fully-fledged artists the two diverged, creating a rubber-band like tension (captured in song in later years by the superbly lyrically adept McCartney in his solo Tug of War album): Paul went outer world: people, activities, experiences; his construction for The Liverpool Concept album-which was never to be-was Penny Lane, a gorgeous description of everyday Life. John's Strawberry Fields offering went inner and deeper, creating an equally powerful experience but at the other end of the dimensional scale. Eventually this continuing divergence of scale meant Paul would embrace London life and all that the Art world could offer him, while John would continue to explore his inner perspective in whatever ways possible. And that ultimately they would need to write separately just topping and tailing each others work.
That’s another reason we love The Beatles.
The Back-Story
Reason 1: Story-tellers; 2: Sgt. Pepper; 3: Eternally optimistic; 4: Still cool; 5: George Harrison.; 6: Love Me Do
7: Work Ethic ;8: Synchronicity; 9: The Roof-top Concert; 10: Candlestick Park; 11: Lennon & McCartney
12: I Saw Her Standing There; 13: Liverpool; 14: Black & White; 15: Album Covers; 16: John Lennon
17: Lennon & McCartney; 18: Rock 'n Roll; 19: They Never Made it Easy; 20: Ringo
21: Meditation & Massage; 22: The Back of a Commer Van; 23: George Martin.
24: Simply Different
25: A Time to Think
26: Revolver
27: Yeah, Yeah, Yeah
28: The B Side
29: The Philosophy
30: December 1960: A Turning Point
31: What really, really motivated The Beatles?
32: 1961
33: Their last rock 'n roller.
34: From road to studio
35: The Magnum Opus
36: Mr Brian Epstein
37: Just Ordinary Lads
38: 1962
39: Yesterday
40: The Encouragers
41: 1963
42: Peace & Love
43: Abbey Road 1
44: Abbey Road 2
45: Always Cool
46: Did Paul break up The Beatles?
47: Timeless
48: The Seven Stages of Love
49: A Space in their Hearts
50: It Was 1964
51: Masters of Simplicity
52: Both