Even in the early days, we used to write things separately, because Paul was always more advanced than I was. His dad played the piano.

Usually, one of us wrote most of the song and the other just helped finish it off, adding a bit of tune or a bit of lyric.

He provided a lightness, an optimism, while I would always go for the sadness, the discords, a certain bluesy edge. There was a period where I thought I didn't write melodies, that Paul wrote those, and I just wrote straight, shouting rock and 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.

Paul wrote the main structure to ' Love Me Do ' when he was 16, I helped him with the middle.

' Please Please Me ' is my song completely. It was my attempt at writing a Roy Orbison song, would you believe it? I wrote it in the bedroom in my house at Menlove Avenue, which was my auntie's place. I heard Roy Orbison doing 'Only The Lonely' or something. That's where that came from. And also I was always intrigued by the words of 'Please Lend Your Ears To My Pleas,' a Bing Crosby song. I was always intrigued by the double use of the word 'please.' So it was a combination of Bing Crosby and Roy Orbison.

' Do You Want To Know A Secret ', I wrote for George. I thought it would be a good vehicle for him, because it only had 3 chords, and he wasn't the best singer in the world.

' Bad To Me '. I wrote it for Billy J. Krammer.

' There's a Place ', was my attempt at a sort of Motown, black thing. It says the usual Lennon things: 'In my mind there's no sorrow...' 'It's all in your mind'.

We wrote ' From Me To You ', together in a van. The first line was mine and then after that we took it from there. It was far bluesier than that when we wrote it. The notes, today.. you could rearrange it pretty funky.

' Thank You Girl ', was one of our efforts at writing a single that didn't work. So it became a B-side or an album track.

' She Loves You ', was both of us. We wrote it together on tour.

' I'll Get You '. That was Paul and me trying to write a song, and it didn't work out.

' I Call Your Name ', was started when I was 15 and I finished the middle eight years later, around 'Help!' or 'Hard Day's Night' time.

' Hello Little Girl '. Another very early song of mine, recorded by the Fourmost.

' It Won't Be Long ', I wrote on the second album. It was the song with the so called Aeolian cadences, the same as in a Mahler symphony, at the end. I don't know what the hell it was about.

' All I've Got To Do '. That's me trying to do Smokey Robinson again.

' Not A Second Time '. That's me trying to do something. I don't remember. (laughs).

' Little Child '. Both of us wrote it. This was a knock-off between Paul and me.

I like ' I Want To Hold Your Hand ', we wrote that together and it's a beautiful melody. We wrote a lot of stuff together, one on one, eyeball to eyeball. Like in ' I Want To Hold Your Hand ', I remember when we got the chord that made the song. We were in Jane Asher's house, downstairs in the cellar playing on the piano at the same time. And we had, 'Oh you-u-u / got that something...' And Paul hits this chord, and I turn to him and say, 'That's it!' I said, 'Do that again!' In those days, we really used to absolutely write like that - both playing into each other's noses.

' This Boy '. Just my attempt at writing one of those three-part harmony Smokey Robinson songs. Nothing in the lyrics... just a sound and a harmony.

' A Hard Day's Night '. I was going home in the car and Dick Lester suggested the title, ' Hard Day's Night ', from something Ringo had said. I had used it in ' In His Own Write ', but it was an off-the-cuff remark by Ringo. You know, one of those malapropisms. A Ringo-ism, where he said it not to be funny... just said it. So Dick Lester said, 'We are going to use that title.' And the next morning I brought in the song... cuz there was a little competition between Paul and I as to who got the A-side - who got the hits. If you notice, in the early days the majority of singles, in the movies and everything, were mine... in the early period I'm dominating the group.

' You Can't Do That '. That's me doing Wilson Pickett. You know, a cowbell going four-in-the bar, and the chord going 'chatoong!'

' If I Fell '. That was my first attempt at a ballad proper. That was the precursor to ' In My Life. ' It has the same chord sequences as ' In My Life ' - D and B minor and E minor, those kinds of things. And it's semi-autobiographical, but not consciously. It shows that I wrote sentimental love ballads - silly love songs - way back when.

' And I Love Her '. Both of us. The first half is Paul's and the middle eight is mine.

' Any Time At All '. An effort at writing ' It Won't Be Long ' - same ilk. C to A minor, C to A minor, with me shouting.

' I'll Be Back '. Me, a nice tune, though the middle is a bit tatty.

' I Feel Fine ', I wrote, and this was the first time feedback was used on a record. I defy anybody to find a record, unless it's an old blues record in 1922, that used feedback that way. I claim it for the Beatles, before Hendrix, before The Who, before anybody.

' I'm A Loser '. Is me in my Dylan period, because the word 'clown' is in it. I objected to the word clown, because that was artsy-fartsy, but Dylan had used it, so I thought it was all right, and it rhymed with whatever I was doing.

' Baby's In Black '. Written together in the same room.

' Eight Days A Week '. Both of us wrote it. I think we wrote this when we were trying to write the title song for ' Help! ' because there was at one time the thought of calling the film, 'Eight Arms To Hold You.'

' Help! ', is real, I meant it. The lyric is as good now as it was then. It's no different, you know, and it makes me feel secure to know that I was aware of myself then. It was just me singing help and I meant it. I don't like the recording that much; we did it to fast, trying to be commercial.

' I'm Down '. That's Paul, with a little help from me, I think.

' Yes It Is '. That's me trying a rewrite of ' This Boy ', but it didn't quite work.

' It's Only Love '. That's the one song I really hate of mine. Terrible lyric.

' Norwegian Wood ' is my song completely. It was about an affair I was having. I was very careful and paranoid because I didn't want my wife, Cyn, to know that there really was something going on outside of the household. I'd always had some kind of affairs going on, so I was trying to be sophisticated in writing about an affair... but in such a smoke-screen way that you couldn't tell. But I can't remember any specific woman it had to do with.

' Michelle ', was both of us. Paul and I were staying somewhere and he walked in and hummed the first few bars with the words. Then he said,'where do I go from here?'. I'd been listening to the blues singer Nina Simone, and that made me think of the middle eight to ' Michelle ' ... I love you, I love you, I lo-o-ove you.

' The Word ', was written together, but it's mainly mine. You read the words, it's all about gettin' smart. It's the marijuana period. It's love. It's a love and peace thing. The word is 'love,' right?

' In My Life '. I was trying to write about Penny Lane when I wrote it. It was about places I remembered. A nice song. Jose Feliciano did a nice version of it. This was one where I wrote the lyrics first and then sang it.

' Nowhere Man '. I'd spent 5 hours that morning trying to write a song that was meaningful and good, and I finally gave up and lay down. Then, ' Nowhere Man ' came, words and music, the whole damn thing, as I lay down.

In ' We Can Work It Out ', Paul did the first half, I did the middle-eight. But you've got Paul writing ' we can work it out, we can work it out ', real optimistic y'know and me impatient, ' life is very short and there's no time; for fussing and fighting my friend '.

' Day Tripper '. That's mine. Including the guitar lick, the guitar break, and the whole bit. It's just a rock 'n roll song.

The ones that really meant something to me - look, I don't know about ' You've Got To Hide Your Love Away ', that's so long ago - probably ' Strawberry Fields ', ' She Said ', ' Walrus ', ' Rain ', ' Girl ', there are just one or two others, ' Day Tripper ', ' Paperback Writer ' even. ' Ticket To Ride ', was one more. I remember that. It was a definite sort of change.

' Eleanor Rigby ', was both of us. I wrote a good lot of the lyrics, about 70%. The first verse was his, and the rest are basically mine. The violin backing was Paul's idea. Jane Asher had turned him on to Vivaldi, and it was very good.

' Tomorrow Never Knows '. This was my first psychedelic song. That's me in my ' Tibetan Book of the Dead ' period. I took one of Ringo's malapropisms as the title, to sort of take the edge off the heavy philosophical lyrics.

Usually we'd spend hours doing little detailed cleaning-ups of Paul's songs, but when it came to mine, especially if it was a great song like ' Strawberry Fields Forever ' or ' Across The Universe ', somehow this atmosphere of looseness and casualness and experimentation would creep in; subconcious sabotage.

Yoko and I once signed a guy's violin in Spain after he played us ' Yesterday '. He couldn't understand that I didn't write the song. But I guess he couldn't have gone from table to table playing ' I Am The Walrus '.