Paul McCartney Held the Early Beatles Together for His Musically Struggling Bandmates, Said a Fellow Musician

Of all The Beatles, Paul McCartney was the most invested on keeping their career on track. He called his bandmates to get them in the studio and kept John Lennon focused. In the band’s earliest days together, he also stood out on the stage. According to another musician who played shows in Hamburg, Germany, with The Beatles, McCartney was clearly the most skilled musician in the group. 

Paul McCartney outshone his bandmates in the early days of The Beatles, said another artist

One of the biggest turning points in The Beatles’ early career came when they began playing shows in Hamburg. They grew tremendously as musicians and performers because they had to learn how to keep the audience’s attention.

“They had to be good,” musician Frank Dostall said in the book Paul McCartney: The Life by Philip Norman, “or else the customers just left and went to the strip-joint or porno bookstore next door.”

According to another musician playing in Hamburg at the time, McCartney was the standout on the stage, keeping the audience invested in their performances.

“Paul was really the one keeping them together,” Liverpool guitarist Brian Griffiths said. “John in those days wasn’t such a good singer, George [Harrison] was very shy, Stu [Sutcliffe] was still a learner on the bass, and Pete Best had only just come into the band. He knew all about minor and diminished seventh chords, whereas John was still hanging round guitarists in other bands, saying, ‘Go on, show us a lick.’”

John Lennon acknowledged that Paul McCartney had the most technical knowledge of The Beatles

Even Lennon, who was in near-constant competition with McCartney, admitted that the bassist initially had more technical knowledge than him.

“Yeah, his father was a jazz musician,” Lennon said in the book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview With John Lennon and Yoko Ono by David Sheff. “When I met him he could play guitar, trumpet, and piano. Doesn’t mean to say he has a greater talent, but his musical education was better. I could only play the mouth organ and two chords on a guitar when we met. I tuned the guitar like a banjo.”

McCartney taught Lennon how to properly play the guitar. In the end, though, Lennon thought he taught McCartney more than McCartney taught him.

None of The Beatles could read music

Though McCartney had more musical knowledge than his bandmates in the early 1960s, he never learned to read music. He found his music lessons so tedious that he gave up on them.

“To this day, I never learnt to read or write music,” he said in The Beatles Anthology. “I have a vague suspicion now that it would change how I’d do things.”

His bandmates were all in the same boat.

“None of us were technical musicians,” Lennon said, adding, “None of us could read music. None of us can write it. But as pure musicians, as inspired humans to make noise, they’re as good as anybody!”