The Beatles dominated the pop world between 1962 and 1970 in a way which had not been seen before and will probably never be seen again. That unprecedented international success was due in no small measure to the driving ambition and personality of John Lennon. But the bedrock on which their stardom was founded was the songwriting partnership of Lennon and Paul McCartney, a rare blending of equal and complementary talents.

I think this quote from Billy Preston just about sums up the Lennon and McCartney phenomenon.....
"John had his thing, and Paul had his thing, and they were two different things altogether.... but they fit ".

And the fit was so perfect that the result was a musical revolution in the form of the Mersey Sound, which spawned many imitators but no equals, and one to which you could almost attach the label "Modern Popular Music Starts Here".

The Fab Four started out when popular music was in it's infancy - the raw, primitive and, let's face it, rather formulaic entity that was 1950's rock & roll. In less than a decade Lennon & McCartney transformed not only that sound, but also it's scale, form, ambition and language. In doing so they rescued a western harmonic tradition which had been abandoned by the classical avant-garde, showing in the process that the music of the new rock & roll revolution could be both sophisicated and popular, opening up new vistas for both popular and classical songwriters and composers.

Many I think would share my opinion that neither Lennon nor McCartney wrote anything comparable to their best as a partnership, particularly the output from their peak years 1963-68, John lacking Paul's supreme melodic gift, Paul suffering as a solo writer without John's harder-edged input.

But as a pair they revolutionised modern music by fusing the traditions from of both sides of the Atlantic in a modern version of alchemy, producing pure musical gold.