What is the only Beatles song written by Paul McCartney and George Harrison?

When thinking of the songwriters in The Beatles, John Lennon and Paul McCartney are the first names that come to mind. Their writing—especially their early collaborations—was so central to the band that they agreed all their songs, whether written together or not, would carry the joint credit ‘Lennon-McCartney’. But they weren’t the only ones contributing, nor were they the only potential duo. At one point, it could have been Harrison-McCartney.

The reason for the ‘Lennon-McCartney’ label beautifully honours the creative relationship between the pair. After meeting as teenagers, they truly learnt how to write songs together. It was the inspiration they shared between them, the songs they introduced each other to and the early tracks they attempted to write that formed the foundation of everything that would come after.

Both recognised how important that was and how, without it, neither of them would have become the songwriters they did. So the decision was made to always label a track with both names as a way to honour the immeasurable impact they had on each other’s talent as if even if one or the other didn’t have a hand in writing that particular song, in some way, given their influence, they did.

However, way back at the start of the band, it was actually the duo of Paul McCartney and George Harrison, who were a songwriting pair, who wrote one of their most essential songs. It’s a forgotten fact, often lost in the shadows of the difficult relationship between the two that broke out later down the line. Eventually, Harrison would come to feel disrespected by McCartney, who continuously rejected his songs for the band.

Harrison, in the late 1960s, felt like it was impossible to get through to his bandmate or get his own offerings heard, stating, “At that point in time, Paul couldn’t see beyond himself.”

He told Guitar World in 2001, “He was on a roll, but… in his mind, everything that was going on around him was just there to accompany him. He wasn’t sensitive to stepping on other people’s egos or feelings.”

In the late 1950s, though, a decade prior, it was McCartney and Harrison who worked together, writing a song that would open doors for the band as the first-ever self-written track they recorded.

The only Beatles song credited to McCartney-Harrison
While McCartney and Harrison would certainly collaborate on a lot of songs in the band’s career, this 1958 track is the only one credited to them as a duo.

Typically, early Beatles songs were written by Lennon or McCartney at one or other of their childhood homes. But in this case, ‘In Spite Of All The Danger’ was written at Harrison’s, with McCartney penning the lyrics while the guitarist figured out the music. It was a song that sent them on a musical goose chase after they set off on a multi-bus trip to the other side of Liverpool to visit a boy who knew more chords than them, knowing they wanted a certain sound but not knowing how to play the B7 chord that would make it.

In the summer of that same year, ‘In Spite Of All The Danger’ would become the first song the band recorded. Also recording a cover of Buddy Holly’s ‘That’ll Be the Day’ in that same session, they were captured on a single microphone suspended from the ceiling. Though put on tape when the band were still The Quarrymen, not even yet The Beatles, that first recording takes pride of place in The Beatles’ Anthology as a key part of their history.