The Beatles were some of the most creative people who have graced popular culture. So, what inspired the Beatles songwriting and how might we use this to inform our own creativity? Here are some examples I recorded from Paul and John’s biographies, TV documentaries and articles.

Dreams: Paul had an anxious dream then in it, he hears his deceased mother telling him to Let It Be.

Paul also dreamed the tune of Yesterday. At first he believed it was someone else’s song because he literally woke up with the whole tune in his head.

Play: ‘The Beatles were just playing all the time. George Martin kept telling us we shouldn’t do this it do that but we just did it anyway. We’d take stuff we liked and mix it up in new ways.’ Paul

‘We all knew we had the freedom to goof around.’ Paul

They would leave recording accidents in the mix if they liked them.

McCartney played with the opposites of words Lennon called out. ‘Hello-goodbye-yes-no-stop-go’ became the resulting lyric.

They were constantly playing around, being daring, being brave, taking risks, having fun, doing the unexpected, discovering and exploring.

Memory: Paul has an incredible memory! He says that was never able to tape record his tunes back then and didn’t always write them down though he did have a songwriting book. Memory was key to his ability.

‘We had to be able to remember our songs when we wrote them because we didn’t have recording facilities.’ Paul McCartney

Imagination: Paul credits his listening to radio plays as a boy as one of the ways his imagination developed. He said he would imagine what the characters looked like.

Real events & experiences: ‘She came in through the bathroom window’ was a song about a fan who’d tried to break into Paul’s flat.

Paul’s Dad was a vaudeville musician and much of the his songwriting incorporates old music hall melodies.

‘Golden Slumbers’ is derived from a setting of ‘Cradle Song’, by the Elizabethan pamphleteer Thomas Dekker, which Paul’s nine-year-old stepsister, Ruth, happened to have been learning on the piano.

John Lennon’s son gave him a picture he’d done at school of his friend Lucy. It had a background of diamonds as stars.

External Sources: Paul’s song ‘She’s Leaving Home’, was inspired by the TV drama Cathy Come Home.

Get Back was an anti-racist song inspired by Enoch Powell and the upsurge of racism.

Back in the USSR was written in the Cold War and was an inversion of Beach Boy songs of the times that were about the USA.

McCartney was dating Jane Asher who introduced him to high-culture, including classical music. Lots of what he saw, heard and read found its way into Beatles music.

Lennon was inspired by nonsense poetry and Beat poetry, psychedelia, Surrealism, Fluxus art and Dada.

The Sgt Pepper albums artwork was devised by Paul and was based around the 1960s fashion for all things Victorian.

Something in the way she moves was a line George Harrison liked from a James Taylor song.

Amalgamation: I got a feeling was a combination of separate Lennon and McCartney songs.

Conflict: Lennon and McCartney had written together in the early days of the Beatles, but then wrote separately later. They were very competitive, always trying to write better songs than each other. John had written Strawberry Fields, so Paul went away and wrote Penny Lane. Paul was the optimist, John was the pessimist. Paul provided an optimistic middle eight on John’s song A Day in the Life.

Memories/Nostalgia: Penny Lane was written by Paul about a childhood street he knew.

Strawberry Fields is about Lennon’s childhood playing in the field in Liverpool.

Improvisation: The Beatles were always jamming together in the studio, playing old rock ‘n roll songs and riffing. Many songs came out of that or were developed during it.

Knowledgeable Mentor: They had an expert classically trained teacher (George Martin) producing their work. He guided them, played complex parts for them, taught them, introduced them to new ways of working and steered their music.

Other’s music: The Beatles favourite composer was Bach and they regularly played with his cord patterns.

Paul heard a piccolo solo he liked on a Brandenberg concerto and so he hired the best player to record a solo on Penny Lane.

The song Michelle was inspired by Edith Piaf songs. Paul had been shown a jazz chord as a teenager and wrote a short guitar phrase using it that he played to impress girls. Years later, John encouraged him to turn it into a song.

Boredom: Paul came up with the idea for Sgt. Peppers Lovely Hearts Club Band on a long flight from Africa. A technician had asked him to pass the salt and pepper and Paul thought he’d said pass the Sgt. Pepper.

Single minded, focus, tenacity, determination, resilience: Paul was the one who drive the band forward. John was laid back, George lacked confidence, Ringo didn’t have the drive. Paul made many management and leadership decisions. So much so that other Beatles became resentful at his bossiness. He didn’t see it. He thought John led the band but this clearly wasn’t so.

Conceptual Blending: On Dear Prudence John Lennon mixed folk music with pop rock.

George watched a BBC drama about a man whose brain is uploaded into another body. This drama was followed by a Come Dancing style tv show featuring a Vienese Waltz. He wrote his song I Me Mine in Waltz time about self-identity.

Negative influences:

Drugs

Laziness (Lennon was very laid back, McCartney very driven.)

Lack of motivation or need, due to huge success

Poor management, logistical struggles

Jealousy – internal struggles, not feeling listened to artistically

Lack of confidence due to new stars competing

Wives, girlfriends

Other projects and interests pulling them away from the band.