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Intro.3 Lennon-McCartney, George, Ringo: How Many Songs Did The Beatles Write?
Learn the technical skills Lennon-McCartney spent years acquiring before they ever wrote a song. By the time they started recording original songs, they had absorbed an awful lot of songwriting technique. Then they wrote 160 songs for The Beatles (George Harrison wrote a couple of dozen, and Ringo Starr a couple).
The technical knowledge did not come to Lennon-McCartney magically. Growing up in Liverpool in the 1940s and early 1950s, they absorbed a good deal of their musical know-how from the classic songs of masters such as the Gershwin brothers, Noel Coward, Cole Porter, and Irving Berlin. McCartney learned much about how music works from his father, a proficient amateur pianist who also played trumpet in a jazz band.
Additionally, the lads devoured the best of American country, folk, and blues, thanks to young Liverpool sailors who brought home the latest records. Lennon and McCartney met in 1957, a couple of years after rock ’n’ roll (as it was known then) had become an international phenomenon. An early poster of Lennon’s pre-Beatles band, The Quarry Men, advertises the band’s repertoire in this order:
