‘He’d never seemed that interested’: Paul McCartney still marvels at George Harrison’s songwriting growth

Monday, October 21, 2013

For Paul McCartney, the decision to fill most of the Beatles’ albums with songs composed alongside John Lennon — rather than those of George Harrison and Ringo Starr — came down to productivity.

“There’s only four people,” McCarney told Howard Stern. “So you’ve got to go: ‘Well, two of us will do this.’ Or you’ve got to say: ‘We’re all going to write equally.’ Well, in that case, Ringo better up his game a bit — because John and I were writing; George and Ringo weren’t.”Over time, of course, Harrison began grow by leaps and bounds as a songwriter. By 1969, he’d crafted a No. 1 single for the Beatles in “Something.” “He’d written a couple before that on some of the earlier albums,” McCartney says. “They were really good. He was starting to shape up. But he’d never seemed that interested — I suppose, because John and I were kind of dominating it.”

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