3 Beatles songs Paul McCartney said were inspired by other bands

The music created by The Beatles’ Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr influenced almost every Rock and Roll artist that came after the 1960s, either directly or indirectly.

They reinvented the genre and showed future generations of musicians the countless possibilities that existed in songwriting. However, like every artist, they were also influenced by many other musicians and bands. Paul McCartney once mentioned three Beatles songs that were inspired by other artists.

The 3 Beatles songs Paul McCartney said were inspired by other bands

“Not a Second Time” and “In My Life” – The Miracles

The first two songs Paul mentioned were “Not a Second Time” and “In My Life”, which he said were inspired by the American group The Miracles. “We were the biggest nickers in town. Plagiarists extraordinaire,” he told Musician magazine in the 1980s. Although “Not a Second Time” was credited to Lennon–McCartney, the song was written by John Lennon, who once said he was “trying to write a Smokey Robinson or something at the time.” As for “In My Life”, McCartney has said that he contributed the melody to the song. According to him, he took Lennon’s lyrics and set them to music from beginning to end, drawing inspiration from Smokey Robinson & The Miracles.

“Ill give my memories of writing ‘In My Life’. I arrived at John’s house for a writing session and he had the very nice opening stanzas of the song. As many of our songs were, it was the first pangs of nostalgia for Liverpool. Not that we longed to return there but, like everyone, you look at your youth, as Maharishi used to say, through a golden glass, and it looks much better than it was. ‘Remember those times when we used to walk with guitars and strum at night?’ and they were good but they sound much better in retrospect, it was just walking along the street with a guitar.”

Paul McCartney continued:

“Once the Beatles had happened, us two little waifs walking along strumming quite openly on the street suddenly becomes a romantic legend, something they would definitely not miss in a film. That was what John had. But as I recall, he didn’t have a tune to it, and my recollection, I think, is at variance with John’s. I said, ‘Well, you haven’t got a tune, let me just go and work on it.’ And I went down to the half-landing, where John had a Mellotron, and I sat there and put together a tune based in my mind on Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. Songs like ‘You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me’ and ‘Tears of a Clown’ had really been a big influence. You refer back to something you’ve loved and try and take the spirit of that and write something new.”

“So I recall writing the whole melody. And it actually does sound very like me, if you analyse it. I was obviously working to lyrics. The melody’s structure is very me. So my recollection is saying to John, ‘Just go and have a cup of tea or something. Let me be with this for ten minutes on my own and I’ll do it.’”

Paul McCartney continued:

“And with the inspiration of Smokey and the Miracles, I tried to keep it melodic but a bit bluesy, with the minors and little harmonies, and then my recollection is going back up into the room and saying, ‘Got it, great! Good tune, I  think. What d’you think?’ John said, ‘Nice,’ and we continued working with it from then, using that melody and filling out the rest of the verses.”

“As usual, for these co-written things, he often just had the first verse, which was always enough. It was the direction, it was the signpost and it was the inspiration for the whole song. I hate the word but it was the template and in my memory we tagged on the introduction, which I think I thought up. I was imagining the intro of a Miracles record, and to my mind the phrases on guitar are very much Smokey and the Miracles.”

He continued:

“So it was John’s original inspiration, I think my melody, I think my guitar riff. I don’t want to be categorical about this. But that’s my recollection. We then finished it off and it was a fine song which John sang,” Paul McCartney said as featured in his biographical book “Many Years from Now”, written by Barry Miles.

The Miracles were formed in Detroit, Michigan, in 1955 and featured the legendary Smokey Robinson in their lineup. Among their biggest hits are “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me” (Covered by The Beatles on their second album), “The Tracks of My Tears”, and “Shop Around”. During the same conversation with Musician magazine, McCartney also said that The Beatles’ early close-harmony style was inspired by the Liverpool band The Fourmost, whose biggest hit was “A Little Loving”, released in 1964, the same year The Beatles released their first three studio albums.

“Good Day Sunshine” – The Lovin’ Spoonful

The third song Paul McCartney said was inspired by another band was “Good Day Sunshine”, which he revealed was influenced by the Canadian-American group The Lovin’ Spoonful. Their song “Daydream” had been a major hit in the UK during the summer of 1966, and it became an inspiration for both McCartney and The Beatles.

“Around that time there was quite a spate of summer songs. ‘Daydream’ and ‘Summer in the City’ by The Lovin’ Spoonful, The Kinks’ ‘Sunny Afternoon’. I think all those came out during the same year, 1966. We wanted to write something sunny. Both John and I had grown up while the music hall tradition was still very vibrant. So it was always in the back of our minds. There are lots of songs about the sun, and they make you happy. ‘The Sun Has Got His Hat On’ or ‘On the Sunny Side of the Street’”.

“It was now time for us to do ours. So we’ve got love and sun, what more do we want? ‘We take a walk, the sun is shining down / Burns my feet as they touch the ground’. That was a nice memory of summer. ‘Then we’d lie beneath a shady tree / | love her and she’s loving me’. It’s really a very happy song.”

He continued:

“I have talked to classical composers who puzzle over the time signature, but we never laid out the time signature. We just went, ‘It goes like this…’  Classical people can’t say, ‘It goes like this’, because they’re invested in formalised notation – they’ve got to know whether it’s 3/4 time or 5/4 or something else – and that was definitely the tradition with all the groups. Sure, we’d all had piano lessons, but none of us had enjoyed them. I was talking to Jeff Lynne, of E.L.O, about this kind of thing many years later. He said, ‘Well we just made it all up, didn’t we?’ If George Harrison wrote, ‘Here comes the sun, de-de-de-de’, we would all just have to remember that.”

“It’s worth recalling that there was no sheet music to look at. It’s quite tricky, but our method was just to listen to a song and learn it. That was where our investment came from. If someone is just reading off the notes- ‘one two three, one two three four’. I always feel as if they don’t enjoy it as much. It’s a job,” Paul McCartney said in his book “Lyrics: 1956 to the Present”. The track was released by The Beatles on their 1966 album “Revolver”. Curiously, it was George Harrison who recorded the bass guitar in the song.

The Lovin’ Spoonful was formed in 1964 and was active until 1968, reuniting in the 90s. Some of their biggest hits are “Do You Believe in Magic?”, “Summer in the City” and “Daydream”.