John Lennon was never one to give up his songs when he was in The Beatles.
He was always proud to be the owner of whatever song he worked on, and even if Paul McCartney had a large hand in putting the melody together, he was much more likely to say that the whole thing was his creation if he felt strong enough about it. But he could be more liberal with his songwriting credits, and there are more than a few that he never forgave himself for after the fact.
But when looking at all of the great tunes that Lennon wrote with McCartney, it was much better for them to see their music as a package rather than two solo artists working together. They were joined at the hip when they first started, and it wasn’t out of the question for Lennon to hand off a draft to McCartney and have him come back with the perfect counterpoint to what he had been working on.
By the time the late 1960s rolled around, though, Lennon was far more accustomed to working on his own or with Yoko Ono. McCartney’s optimistic attitude towards every song he wrote didn’t exactly appeal to him anymore, and even if they were sharing writing credits on The White Album, you could clearly tell when Lennon was making the experimental excursions like ‘Revolution 9’ and when Macca was penning classic ditties like ‘Blackbird’.
Even outside his band, Lennon was already halfway out the door working with Ono on their experimental projects. Two Virgins and The Wedding Album were never going to infringe on the Fab Four’s territory since they were way too weird, but when Lennon started to write tunes like ‘Give Peace A Chance’, something felt different. This was a pop song that broke away from The Beatles completely, but he did have a few warm feelings lingering around when he decided to give McCartney a writing credit.
Then again, McCartney had absolutely nothing to do with the song. There’s no doubt he could have added a great middle eight to the song instead of the basic chant if given the opportunity, but that’s not what Lennon wanted. He needed to make a tune that could be sung by crowds of people trying to protest the Vietnam War, but looking back, Lennon felt that he should have never given too much of the song away.
The Lennon/McCartney label was tradition by this point, but Lennon felt that his old mate’s name shouldn’t have been on the record, saying, “I didn’t write it with Paul; but again, out of guilt, we always had that thing that our names would go on songs even if we didn’t write them. It was never a legal deal between Paul and me, just an agreement when we were fifteen or sixteen to put both our names on our songs. I’d put his name on ‘Give Peace A Chance’ though he had nothing to do with it.”
While Ono arguably had a stronger hand in writing the tune, giving McCartney credit was probably a nice way of Lennon paying him back for standing in his corner for so long. After all, the world was already turning on Ono pretty quickly, so McCartney’s willingness to work on ‘The Ballad of John and Yoko’ with Lennon without the rest of the band was as good a sign as any that the camaraderie was still there.
But even if Lennon couldn’t stand McCartney’s name being on this song, it’s not like they were at each other’s throats at that point or anything. They were simply growing apart, and that one credit was practically Lennon trying to assure everyone that the Fab Four were on good terms, even if they weren’t.