Mick and me.

The letter I gives us plenty of songs to choose from, that’s for sure. But first I am going to tell you a story.

When my parents offered Paul McCartney the spare bedroom on the top floor of our family home (next to my bedroom), it became his London residence for the next couple of years. So that allowed me the pleasure of getting to know him, becoming friends with him, and occasionally hearing songs in progress. My mother had a music room in the basement, where there was a small upright piano, a little sofa, and a music stand. When we first moved in, she used to give private oboe lessons there quite often. But as her job at the Royal Academy of Music grew more demanding and she spent more time teaching there, she used the room less frequently. She told Paul that if he ever wanted a piano to write on or to practise on, he was welcome to use the piano in the basement music room. And he often did.

Quite soon after Paul moved in, I remember one particular day when John Lennon came over; they were intending to write together that day. And the two of them went down to the basement music room, interestingly with no guitars—the guitars were upstairs, in Paul’s bedroom and mine. John and Paul were just playing the piano down there, and they wrote a song. And when it was written, Paul stuck his head out of the door, called up the stairs, and asked me whether I would like to come down and hear the song they had just finished. I said yes. I went downstairs. I sat on the sofa. The two of them sat side by side on the piano bench and played their new song for the very first time anywhere. It was “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” Just John and Paul, just one piano, and it sounded great.

I remember very distinctly the feeling of hearing that song for the first time. I remember how much I loved it and how astonishing it was. Hearing them sing together at full voice while both hammered away on the piano was impressive in itself—and of course they were singing this amazing song neither I nor anyone else had ever heard before. I told them how brilliant I thought it was, and I begged them to play it again, which they gladly did. And, of course, it turned out to be the song that would launch the Beatles’ astonishing American career.

An almost equally famous I song which preceded “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was “I Saw Her Standing There,” a similarly memorable and instantly appealing song. It was one of the first Beatles songs everyone got to hear because it was the first song on their first album recorded in their first sessions at EMI Studios. A song which had not only cool and evocative lyrics and a classic rock and roll melody, but also a defining bass line that Paul invented and played. It has become an iconic bass line; every bass player learns how to play it. I’ve always thought of it as part of the very essence of that song.

But something interesting happened decades later, when Neil Young performed at the MusiCares tribute concert to Paul McCartney. He did a great version of “I Saw Her Standing There” with Crazy Horse and made a drastic change to the arrangement: he left out the legendary bass line. And guess what? It’s still a great song. I love Neil’s version, too. It’s much more chunky and punky and simplified; the new bass line is just a one-note part and it totally rocks.

Now, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “I Saw Her Standing There” are both happy and optimistic I songs. But there are certainly some miserable I songs as well, including John Lennon saying, “I’m a Loser,” and Paul McCartney saying, “I’m Down.” These two depressing songs have very bouncy tracks, and yet each outlines unhappy circumstances and even self-doubt. But the nature of their pessimism is different in each song. In “I’m Down,” Paul outlines specific situations which could cause disappointment and sadness (“Man buys ring, woman throws it away, / Same old thing happens every day”) or profound frustration, both mental and physical (“We’re all alone and there’s nobody else, / You still moan ‘Keep your hands to yourself!’”). Whereas John’s song “I’m a Loser” outlines self-doubt of a more existential nature (“I’m not what I appear to be”), and though ostensibly the sentiment is wrapped within a story of lost love, one gets the feeling that John’s concerns may be much more general. These same differences can be seen in the songwriters Paul and John might have been trying to emulate (or at least pay tribute to) as they wrote each of these songs—Paul aiming for Little Richard and John for Bob Dylan. Both are worthy heroes for any songwriter but in very different ways.

After wallowing in these depressing songs, let me revive you by assuring you that in reality “I Feel Fine.”

I love the feedback at the beginning of this tune, the legendary Gibson J-160E guitar leaning against the Vox AC30 amplifier. (I still have one of each myself and love them.) It may well have been the first use anyone made of deliberate feedback on a mainstream pop record. And all the people who used feedback a lot later, like Jimi Hendrix and the Yardbirds and all the others, might have heard that feedback on “I Feel Fine” and felt inspired or even liberated. Some people used it onstage, but more often than not, feedback happened by mistake, and it was something one usually avoided. One might accidentally lean a guitar against an amp without twisting the volume knob down and walk away—only to be brought running back by a growing crescendo of unpleasant noise as the guitar sound started to loop through the amp back into the guitar and then back into the amp and so on with no end in sight until someone mercifully turned it down. The Beatles made a real virtue out of it, and indeed it became a key element of that song.

In contrast to “I Feel Fine,” which has a real rock and roll feel to it, another Lennon-McCartney I song from 1964, “If I Fell,” offers a different musical style. I mentioned in the letter B that John and Paul, like so many of us at the time (Peter & Gordon, Chad & Jeremy, Simon & Garfunkel, and others) idolized the Everly Brothers, with their impeccable close harmonies that gave their songs richness and emotional power. And even though the Beatles had four great singers, all of whom sang different parts and sang lead at various times, John and Paul could certainly be said to have comprised a duo within the band. They sang a lot of Everly-style thirds, close harmony singing, and did it exceptionally well. In fact, I would say that John Lennon and Paul McCartney were one of the best duos in the history of rock and roll even as they were also part of the best band in the history of rock and roll. They instinctively found the right notes (sometimes traditional thirds and sometimes more adventurous intervals) and phrased together impeccably, which takes a lot of practice. And perhaps the best example of John and Paul singing together in the Everly style and doing it so well is “If I Fell.” The song is a relatively rare example of a brilliant and almost sentimental Lennon ballad—in a way a precursor to the masterpiece “In My Life,” recorded a year later. One interesting structural note on “If I Fell” is that the opening section (“If I fell in love with you, / Would you promise to be true”) is effectively a kind of preface to the main body of the song—very reminiscent of all those songs from the ’50s and earlier which had an introductory “verse” before the song got going properly. Paul has often expressed his fondness for this device, and I think the opening section of “If I Fell” probably constitutes his contribution to what is essentially a Lennon composition.

John and Paul were not the only Beatles to write great I songs. George Harrison also wrote some excellent songs that begin with the letter I, including “I Want to Tell You,” from Revolver. We all know that the issue of George’s songs was, at times, a troubling one for the band—how many songs was he “allowed” to have on any given album? Was as much attention and hard work devoted to non-Lennon-McCartney songs? And so on. Yet hearing a great track like this one makes such concerns seem irrelevant. It is not only an excellent and well-written song but a beautifully executed arrangement and production. George must surely have been delighted with Paul’s piano part, which is brilliantly conceived and fits the song so well. The startling half step piano lick F/E/F/E/F/E/F/E/F/E/F/E/F/E/F/E which first occurs after “things to say” is bold, original, and effective. The background vocal blend is precisely right, and Paul’s overdubbed bass part perfectly offsets George’s inimitable arpeggios. As with so many Beatles songs and Beatles arrangements, the more closely one examines them, the more their originality and collective genius becomes clear.

Another I song from George is “If I Needed Someone.” Here George acknowledged a debt to Jim McGuinn—or Roger McGuinn, as he became later—the legendary lead guitar player from the Byrds. McGuinn’s electric twelve-string style was in many ways the backbone of the Byrds’ sound (along with their great vocal blend) and was something we all admired. George used some of that guitar sound in “If I Needed Someone,” and it works very well. Much of the song explores the notes and the spaces around one chord (in this case an A major) in a way almost anticipatory of the Indian music George would come to appreciate and understand so well. The verse drops down to G only briefly (though the bass stays where it is) and quickly comes back up—but suddenly we get a full-on and impressive pop bridge as the lyrics move in a new direction, then back to the drone in A. And great harmonies throughout.

Finally, I would like to mention one more great George song, one of my favourites, “I Need You.” A terrific song. There is a cover version of it I like, but I freely admit I am prejudiced because I love the song and the artists, and I produced it myself for a George Harrison tribute record. The singers are Charley and Hattie Webb, the Webb Sisters. You might have caught up with them on the road with Leonard Cohen or with Tom Petty over the last few years, though both these great artists have now sadly left us. The Webb Sisters sing incredibly well on their own, too, as they do in their cool version of “I Need You.” On this cover version, though, I did leave out one of the signature sounds of the Beatles version which I do love but which seemed too specific to steal. That is the “mwa mwa” effect with which George’s guitar part echoes the “need you” melody. This kind of effect can be created by a volume pedal operated with one’s foot—but I am not sure whether George had one at that time. Some guitarists manage to twiddle the volume knob on the guitar itself with their little finger while playing—but the leading theory about “I Need You” seems to be that George played the part and Paul turned the knob up and down at the same time to create the perfect crescendo and decrescendo for each two-note phrase.

There is another pair of I songs that revolve around a particular theme, both of them written by John. After he sings “I’m So Tired,” what else is there for him to say but “I’m Only Sleeping”?

“I’m So Tired” is from the White Album, a late-night composition written while John was tortured by insomnia in India and without alcohol or drugs around to address the problem—and it’s certainly the only song to curse Sir Walter Raleigh specifically and directly for the introduction of tobacco!

“I’m Only Sleeping” features some brilliant backwards guitar from George Harrison. It is very difficult to record backwards parts because one has to figure out the exact phrase (in terms of both notes and rhythm) one wants to create when the recorded phrase is reversed. Then the notes must be played precisely as specified, after which the tape is run through the machine backwards. Not only does one get this cool peculiar sound of each individual note being reversed in terms of its attack and decay, but the notes now appear in the originally intended order and (if one has got it right) fit the track. George clearly did get it right. These kinds of tricks are relatively easy now with the flexibility and speed of digital technology, but back then it meant streamers of tape hanging from various places in the control room (and around one’s neck) and could be quite a lengthy and confusing process.

To get to our next I song, I shall have to leave the Beatles aside for a minute and take you to a club in London called Ken Colyer’s Jazz Club, where in 1963 and 1964 I used to go every Monday, on R&B night, when it was renamed Studio 51. There I would see another band who became, in some sense, the Beatles’ rivals, at least in terms of public perception, and that was the Rolling Stones.

In truth, the Stones and the Beatles were mutual admirers. I remember going with Paul one night to see the Stones at the Scene club in London, and he expressed great admiration. His only complaint was that he was jealous that the Stones were allowed to wear whatever they wanted onstage—they had not been nagged by their manager (as the Beatles had) into wearing matching suits!

The Stones sang songs by Chuck Berry, Arthur Alexander, Jimmy Reed, the Miracles, Muddy Waters, all kinds of Chicago blues, lots of great stuff. But what they did not do at that time was write songs of their own. The Beatles, of course, were writing songs, and at one point, John and Paul wrote a song for the Stones.

It was called “I Wanna Be Your Man,” eventually recorded by Ringo with the Beatles but written originally for the Rolling Stones. And the Stones made a very good record of it, which came out before the Beatles’ version. The Stones used to perform this song quite often when I saw them live. And I must confess that Gordon and I also used to perform a folk-rock acoustic version of that song—probably just before the Stones started doing it live. We were just a guitar duo playing bars and clubs and pubs and coffee bars. But it was such an infectious song that after I heard Paul sing it (as soon as it was written) and teach it to the Rolling Stones, Gordon and I couldn’t resist learning it ourselves. We never recorded it, but we did tell our audiences that it was going to be a Rolling Stones single and eventually it was. Of course, nowadays one could not do that because if one sang the song live, somebody would film it on their phone. It would be up on YouTube the next day and everyone would be furious. But we just did our little private version at our gigs and nobody knew.

I’d like to switch now from song titles and talk about a person whose name begins with the letter I, who has a distinct role in Beatles history, and that is Neil Innes.

You may be aware of Neil because of his contributions to the Rutles, the brilliant and hilarious Beatles parody invented by Eric Idle of Monty Python—himself an I name, a brilliant writer, and one of my best friends. Eric has significant Beatles connections, having been one of George’s closest friends and a major figure in the “Concert for George” in 2002. But Neil Innes was also a member of the legendary Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, of whom we were all devoted fans back in the ’60s, to such an extent that Paul also worked with them in the studio. Their big hit record was “I’m the Urban Spaceman,” with Vivian Stanshall on lead vocals. It was an odd but very appealing song written by Neil Innes and produced by Paul McCartney and Gus Dudgeon. It is a cool record and was a hit. If you get a chance, I highly recommend some exploration into the work of the Bonzos (“The Intro and the Outro” is another favourite) and into the fascinating life of Vivian Stanshall, whose brilliance and humour (and adventures with Keith Moon and others) are greatly missed.

Writing these chapters, I admit, can be a little bit nostalgic. Perhaps reading them has the same effect. So, let’s take this moment to almost wallow in nostalgia and end the chapter with one of the Beatles’ most poignant songs. A great song that begins with the letter I and talks about remembering things that happened in each of our lives.

“In My Life” is a Lennon masterpiece, though Paul did tell me that he came up with the beautiful little guitar and bass intro, which is also used as a turnaround between the two verses. He was apparently inspired by the guitar and bass intro to the Miracles’ “The Tracks of My Tears,” a brilliant Smokey Robinson song. I find these kinds of revelations so interesting in that one would never make that connection spontaneously—the two intros sound very different—but when the source of inspiration is identified, one can hear a progression from one musical work to the other.

When writing about music, one is indeed often circling around one of the most mysterious questions—where does great art come from? What we learn is that art of any kind, and perhaps music in particular, is in a continuous state of evolution. Musicians borrow from each other and are inspired by each other all the time—and when a great musician does it, the results of that inspiration or homage turn out very different from the original source and become inspirational themselves, opening new musical avenues for musicians of the future. It is abundantly clear that the Beatles belong in that elite company of musicians, including Bach and Mozart and Charlie Parker (to name but three of my favourites), who have changed music forever and opened artistic pathways which we lesser mortals dare to try to follow.