They may have founded The Beatles together through a mixture of charm, determination and solid gold wit, but John Lennon and Paul McCartney were rarely writing songs together by 1969.
While McCartney comments in the docuseries The Beatles: Get Back that he and Lennon were still a team during this time, it is increasingly clear that their sensibilities and styles are diverging. The dye had been cast, and the once frenetic friends were now slowly drifting apart from one another.
It wasn’t just a personal thing; professionally, they began to approach their work differently. McCartney had whimsical tracks like ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ in large numbers, while Lennon struggled to even finish a single song and dismissed the lighter fare as “granny shit”. Lennon and McCartney were on different paths and only ever really seemed to connect when smashing into one another.
Perhaps Lennon was slightly jealous of McCartney’s ability to conjure up songs out of the blue. Even though he’s not in the room at the time, Lennon must have heard McCartney’s story about writing ‘Back Seat of My Car’ overnight and bringing it into Twickenham studios the next day. George Harrison did the same with ‘I Me Mine’, and Lennon gave that track some light ridicule when Harrison presented it.
Lennon had begun to dwindle into drug addiction around this time and while his vision for a topic band seemed more resolute than ever, he seemed unable to capitalise on his fleeting thoughts and bring much of his talent to the musical table. Writing songs in mere hours used to be his and the band’s bread and butter.
McCartney took longer when it came to another song, however, as he formulated the details of ‘Teddy Boy’. Originally conceived in India during The Beatles’ trip in 1968, ‘Teddy Boy’ was refined and finished enough for McCartney to bring the track into the band’s rehearsals at Twickenham, but the atmosphere was tense and not particularly productive. Harrison left the group the following day, and all recordings came to a halt until the band could regroup.
By the time McCartney tried to restart interest in the song, it was January 24th. Relations had improved, and recording had moved to the band’s Apple headquarters. The group were still unsure about what form their project was taking, and the idea of a live show was still being pushed by McCartney and director Michael Lindsey-Hogg. ‘Teddy Boy’ certainly didn’t seem to fit with the live concept, but the group still took a few swings at it.
Well, McCartney did, while the others humoured him. McCartney can be heard reiterating at the end of the first few takes that the song is “for further consideration”, as it was clear that the other band members weren’t exactly taken with the track. It was a near-consistent theme at the time. A writer would bring in a song to have it rejected by the rest of the group.
Lennon, in particular, is doing his best to take the piss out of the song, especially once he starts turning the song into a square dance. This was how the band worked: Lennon was known to keep the atmosphere light by joking around, but he also would entertain himself by interrupting songs he was bored with.
It was clear that ‘Teddy Boy’ wasn’t going anywhere, so McCartney took it home with him. The basic track for the version of the song that eventually found its way onto McCartney was recorded at McCartney’s home in St John’s Wood, without proper recording equipment.
When he added overdubs to the song, the transfer process severely degraded the original basic track, but the lo-fi sound had a profound effect on future generations of indie musicians. The tune would become a mainstay of McCartney’s solo career and it, like ‘All Things Must Pass’ and Lennon’s own ‘Gimme Some Truth’ would be rescude from The Beatles’ cutting room floor and turned into magic elsewhere.
If you wanted proof that The Beatles were destined to fall apart, then their unwillingness to see the greatness of songs like this is all the evidence you need.