Paul McCartney's surprising 'incentive' behind Beatles classics written with John Lennon

In an unearthed interview, Sir Paul spoke about what drove he and John Lennon to write music

Paul McCartney revealed his 'incentive' for writing songs with John Lennon. The two were the driving creative force behind The Beatles, with the majority of the band's songs credited to Lennon-McCartney to represent the collaborative nature of their work.

They began writing together after meeting at a Woolton church fete in 1957, with their first work penned at Sir Paul's childhood home on Forthlin Road in Allerton and at John's aunt Mimi's house on Menlove Avenue. They wrote hit after hit together until The Beatles went their separate ways in 1970.

In a 1980 interview with Playboy, John said about the creative partnership: "(Paul) provided a lightness, an optimism, while I would always go for the sadness, the discords, the bluesy notes. There was a period when I thought I didn't write melodies, that Paul wrote those and I just wrote straight, shouting rock 'n' roll.

"But, of course, when I think of some of my own songs - 'In My Life', or some of the early stuff, 'This Boy' - I was writing melody with the best of them."

As for what they wrote the songs for, a clip from a BBC interview with Sir Paul from the 1980s that has been circulating on social media in recent days has shed some light. The clip from the BBC archive sees the now-82-year-old quizzed by Sue Lawley about approaching the age of 40, his career and the difficulties of fame.

Sir Paul was in a jovial mood during the chat and took a light-hearted approach to some of the early questions. Sue asked him about what drives him to continue to write songs, then more than a decade after achieving unimaginable success with The Beatles.

He replied: "I could’ve just dried up because there’s no incentive because that was the early incentive, if you’re honest about it. For most people it is just to be successful, to earn money. We used to talk about ‘writing a swimming pool’.

"It was one of those between John and I - you know, you need a pool here, we’d better go and write it. We’d try and write hits for the things we needed or whatever.

"But that’s not really the incentive actually. I think if I didn’t get paid for it, I think I’d still do it."

Sue then made the point that Sir Paul owns a swimming pool, to which he replied: "I have actually Sue, I succumbed to the temptation but I’ve got kids now, see, so that’s different. I never did get one until I got children."

The clip then shows a later part of the interview, in which Sir Paul is asked about his response to John Lennon's 1980 death. Sue asked him if he thought about retreating from the public eye after his former bandmate's murder.

Sir Paul said: "Oh yeah, not half, yeah. I did. But what’s the good? What can you do? You just think, you think a lot. You think for many weeks after it and you try and work it all out but you come down to, there’s nothing you can do."

Then asked if it altered his lifestyle, Sir Paul said: "No it just, I thought it all, went through it all and thought ‘is there any way that and really just decided, no."

"I think if it had been the other way around and you’d been asking John that question I think you’d find he’d say ‘No, you’ve just got to do what you do, really’."