John Lennon and Paul McCartney Created ‘In My Life’ Together During the Beatles’ Extraordinary ‘Rubber Soul’ Era — But Years Later, They Still Disagreed Over Who Actually Wrote One Crucial Part of the Beloved Song

John Lennon and Paul McCartney Rarely Disagreed Over Who Wrote What — But One Beatles Classic Left Them With Two Very Different Memories

John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote hundreds of songs together, yet remarkably few produced serious disagreement between them over who contributed what.

One of the notable exceptions was “In My Life.”

The beloved track from the Beatles’ 1965 album Rubber Soul carries the familiar Lennon-McCartney songwriting credit, but years after it was recorded, the two men offered strikingly different accounts of how its melody came together.

Both agreed that the song began with Lennon and that its deeply personal lyrics were his.

The disagreement concerned something much bigger than a few notes.

McCartney remembered composing the entire melody. Lennon remembered him helping only with the middle eight.

Lennon began with a journey through his past

For Lennon, “In My Life” started as an attempt to write specifically about places connected to his childhood.

Speaking to David Sheff in 1980, Lennon recalled initially constructing the song almost like a journey from his childhood home on Menlove Avenue into Liverpool.

He included references to places such as Penny Lane, Strawberry Fields and the tram sheds.

But Lennon quickly became dissatisfied with the idea.

He described the early version as resembling a dull account of a bus journey and decided that simply listing locations wasn’t producing the song he wanted.

Instead, he moved toward something more reflective.

The result became a meditation on people, places, memories and the way relationships change with time.

Lennon later regarded the lyrics as an important turning point in his songwriting.

Lennon called it his first ‘major piece of work’

Looking back, Lennon believed “In My Life” represented one of the first times he consciously brought a more literary sensibility into his lyrics.

He cited journalist Kenneth Allsop and Bob Dylan among the influences that encouraged him to move beyond what he considered some of his earlier, more disposable writing.

“It was, I think, my first real major piece of work,” Lennon said.

When it came to McCartney’s contribution, however, Lennon remained quite specific.

In a 1970 interview, he said McCartney had helped musically with the middle eight.

A decade later, he gave essentially the same account.

“Paul helped with the middle eight musically,” Lennon said, while insisting that the lyrics were entirely his.

McCartney remembered that day differently.

Paul McCartney said he wrote the entire melody

McCartney never disputed that Lennon brought the lyrics to the song.

But according to his recollection, those words did not yet have a completed tune when he became involved.

“As I recall, he didn’t have a tune to it,” McCartney later said.

He remembered telling Lennon to leave him alone with the lyrics for approximately ten minutes while he worked at a Mellotron.

McCartney said he approached the melody with Smokey Robinson and the Miracles in mind.

“I recall writing the whole melody,” he said.

He also believed the finished composition supported his memory because, in his view, its melodic structure sounded characteristic of his own writing.

McCartney remembered Lennon returning, approving what he had created and the pair continuing their work from there.

That account creates a substantial difference between their memories.

According to Lennon, McCartney contributed musically to one section.

According to McCartney, he composed essentially the entire melody around Lennon’s lyrics.

George Martin added another unforgettable element

There was also a third major musical contribution to the finished recording.

Producer George Martin created the distinctive instrumental passage heard in the middle of “In My Life.”

Martin later recalled that Lennon wasn’t sure what should occupy that section.

While the Beatles took a tea break, Martin recorded a baroque-style piano solo.

The part he imagined was too technically intricate for him to perform at the necessary speed, so he used a clever studio technique.

Martin recorded the piano at half speed and then sped up the tape.

The result produced the bright, almost harpsichord-like sound heard on the finished record.

According to Martin, Lennon heard it when he returned — and liked it.

Two memories of one Beatles masterpiece

Decades later, there was no definitive way to settle the disagreement between Lennon and McCartney.

Both men were recalling a songwriting session that had taken place years earlier, and memory inevitably leaves room for uncertainty.

The common ground remains significant.

“In My Life” originated with Lennon. Its lyrics were his. McCartney participated in developing its music.

Exactly how much of that music came from McCartney is where their accounts separate.

Lennon remembered his partner contributing the middle eight.

McCartney remembered Lennon handing him lyrics without a melody and leaving him alone long enough to compose the tune.

Neither version can now be established with absolute certainty from their recollections alone.

Their disagreement was remarkable because it was so rare

Perhaps the most surprising part of the story isn’t that Lennon and McCartney remembered “In My Life” differently.

It’s how unusual such a disagreement was.

The Lennon-McCartney partnership produced a vast catalog in which ideas routinely passed between the two writers. One could arrive with the beginnings of a song before the other supplied a bridge, melody, lyric or musical solution.

Years later, however, McCartney maintained that only two songs produced significant disagreement between their respective memories of authorship.

For two writers responsible for hundreds of songs together, that is an extraordinarily small number.

“I find it very gratifying that out of everything we wrote, we only appear to disagree over two songs,” McCartney said.

“In My Life” remains one of them — a Beatles classic built around memory that, fittingly, also became the subject of two very different memories from the men who created it.