The lyric John Lennon detested but Paul McCartney adored: “He wrote some beautiful ballads”

When the potential of The Beatles was realised, there was no rest for the band. Once the label clocked just how much money the music of Paul McCartney and John Lennon could make, they were pressured into writing the equivalent of two albums every year. Even for the best songwriters in the world, this is an incredibly difficult thing to do, and The Beatles struggled a great deal to keep up with the demand.

Due to the massive number of songs that the band was pressured into writing, they ended up creating a number of tracks that they weren’t particularly happy with. Some of the songs they didn’t like were given to other artists, some were dismissed, and then others had to be released without the whole backing of the band.

There were a lot of tracks that The Beatles weren’t particularly happy with. You’d be surprised going through their catalogue just how many songs the band made that each member ended up detesting. Tracks spanning throughout their career have since been looked down upon by members of the Beatles, who would have preferred they never released the song in the first place.

For instance, the band despised the Abbey Road track ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’. Paul McCartney was writing a lot for the band during this period, and while friction increased, McCartney wanted to ensure each song was perfect. This meant laborious recording techniques for songs that most people in the band weren’t that passionate about.

“The worst session ever was ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’,” said Ringo Starr. “It was the worst track we ever had to record. It went on for fucking weeks.” George Harrison agreed as he told Crawdaddy in the ‘70s, “Sometimes Paul would make us do these really fruity songs […] I mean, my God, ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ was so fruity.”

Perhaps some of the most frustrating songs for The Beatles, though, weren’t the songs that they ended up hating, but rather the ones they thought had potential but had been released without fully realising that potential. John Lennon wrote a lot of songs that he felt could go somewhere, but that he wasn’t particularly happy with in hindsight. One of these tracks was ‘This Boy’, with which he wound up falling out. As such, he tried to rewrite the song, but hated the revised version as well.

The song ‘Yes It Is’ was released by the band in 1965, and a lot of people enjoyed hearing a more ballad-driven side to Lennon. Lennon admitted that the track was him trying to rewrite ‘This Boy’, but he still didn’t think it worked. The lyric “I would remember all the things we planned / Understand it’s true / Yes it is, it’s true,” resonated with a lot of fans, and with other members of the band, but not with Lennon.

“That’s me trying a rewrite of ‘This Boy’, but it didn’t work,” said Lennon, shrugging off the song and its subsequent lyrics. Paul McCartney, on the other hand, was a lot more positive about the song. “I was there writing it with John, but it was his inspiration that I helped him finish off,” he said, “’Yes It Is’ is a very fine song of John’s, a ballad, unusual for John. He wrote some beautiful ballads but I’m known generally as the balladeer.”