' All My Loving ', is Paul, I regret to say, because it's a damn fine piece of work. But I play a pretty mean guitar in back.

' I Wanna Be Your Man ', was a kind of lick Paul had - 'I wanna be your lover, baby. I wanna be your man.' I think we finished it off for the Stones. They wanted a song and we went to see what kind of stuff they did. Mick and Keith heard we had an unfinished song. We sort of played it roughly to them and they said, 'Yeah, OK, that's our style.' But it was only really a lick, so Paul and I went off in the corner of the room and finished the song off while they were all still sitting there talking. We came back, and that's how Mick and Keith got inspired to write... because, 'Jesus, look at that. They just went in the corner and wrote it and came back!' You know, right in front of their eyes we did it. So we gave it to them. It was a throw-away. The only two versions of the song were Ringo and the Rolling Stones. It shows how much importance we put on them. We weren't going to give them anything great, right? I believe it was the Stones' first record.

' I Should Have Known Better '. That's me. Just a song. It doesn't mean a damn thing.

' Tell Me Why '. We needed another upbeat song and I just knocked it off. It was like a black, New York girl-group song.

' Can't Buy Me Love '. John and Paul, but mainly Paul.

' I'll Cry Instead '. I wrote that for 'A Hard Day's Night,' but Dick Lester didn't even want it. He resurrected 'Can't Buy Me Love' for that sequence instead. I like the middle-eight to that song, though that's about all I can say about it.

' I Don't Want To Spoil The Party '. That was a very personal one of mine.

' Help! ' The whole Beatle thing was just beyond comprehension. When 'Help' came out, I was actually crying out for help. Most people think it's just a fast rock 'n roll song. I didn't realize it at the time; I just wrote the song because I was commissioned to write it for the movie. But later, I knew I really was crying out for help. So it was my fat Elvis period. You see the movie: He, I, is very fat, very insecure, and he's completely lost himself. And I am singing about when I was so much younger and all the rest, looking back at how easy it was. Now I may be very positive, yes, yes, but I also go through deep depressions where I would like to jump out the window, you know. It becomes easier to deal with as I get older; I don't know whether you learn control or, when you grow up, you calm down a little. Anyway, I was fat and depressed and I was crying out for help.

' You've Got To Hide Your Love Away '. It's one of those that you sort of sing a bit sadly to yourself, 'Here I stand/Head in hand.' I started thinking about my own emotions. I don't know when exactly it started, like 'I'm A Loser' or 'Hide Your Love Away,' or those kind of things. I had a sort of professional songwriter's attitude to writing Pop songs, but to express myself I would write 'Spaniard In The Works' or 'In His Own Write' the personal stories which were expressive of my personal emotions. I'd have a separate 'songwriting' John Lennon, who wrote songs for the sort of meat market, and I didn't consider them, the lyrics or anything, to have any depth at all. Then I started being me about the songs, not writing them objectively, but subjectively.

' You're Going To Lose That Girl '. That's me!

' Rain '. That's me again, with the first backwards tape on record anywhere. I got home from the studio and I was stoned out of my mind on marijuana... and, as I usually do, I listened to what I'd recorded that day. Somehow it got on backwards and I sat there, transfixed, with the earphones on. I ran in the next day and said, 'I know what to do with it, I know... listen to this!' So I made them all play it backwards. The fade is me actually singing backwards with the guitars going backwards. (sings) 'Sharethsmnowthsmeanss!' That one was the gift of God, of Ja actually, the god of marijuana, right? So Ja gave me that one.

' Doctor Robert '. Another of mine. Mainly about drugs and pills. It was about myself. I was the one that carried all the pills on tour, later on the roadies did it. We just kept them in our pockets, loose, in case of trouble. I think Paul helped with the middle.

' Getting Better '. It is a diary form of writing. All that 'I used to be cruel to my woman, I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved' was me. I used to be cruel to my woman, and physically... any woman. I was a hitter. I couldn't express myself and I hit. I fought men and I hit women. That is why I am always on about peace, you see. It is the most violent people who go for love and peace. Everything's the opposite. But I sincerely believe in love and peace. I am a violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence. I will have to be a lot older before I can face in public how I treated women as a youngster.

' When I'm Sixty Four ', was something Paul wrote in the Cavern days. I helped Paul with some of the words, like 'grandchildren on your knee,' and 'Vera Chuck and Dave.' It was just one of those ones that he'd had, that we've all got, really, half a song. And this was just one of those that was quite a hit with us. We used to do it when the amps broke down, just sing it on the piano.

' All Together Now '. I enjoyed it when football crowds in the early days would sing 'All Together Now'.

' Lady Madonna '. Paul. Good piano lick, but the song never really went anywhere. Maybe I helped him on some of the lyrics.

' Dear Prudence ', is me. Written in India. A song about Mia Farrow's sister, who seemed to go slightly balmy, meditating too long, and couldn't come out of the little hut we were livin' in. They selected me and George to try and bring her out because she would trust us. If she'd been in the West, they would have put her away. We got her out of the house. She'd been locked in for three weeks and was trying to reach God quicker than anybody else. That was the competition in Maharishi's camp, who was going to get cosmic first. What I didn't know was I was 'already' cosmic. (laughs)

' Glass Onion '. That's me, just doing a throwaway song, a la 'Walrus' a la everything I've ever written. I threw in the line 'The walrus was Paul' just to confuse everybody a bit more. It could've been the fox terrier is Paul, you know. I mean, it's just a bit of poetry. It was just thrown in like that... The line was put in because I was feeling guilty because I was with Yoko and I was leaving Paul. I was trying, I don't know. It's a perverse way of saying to Paul, you know, 'Here, have this crumb, this illusion, this stroke, because I'm leaving.

' The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill '. Oh, that was written about a guy in Maharishi's meditation camp who took a short break to go shoot a few poor tigers, and then come back to commune with God. There used to be a character called Jungle Jim, and I combined him with Buffalo Bill. It's a sort of teenage social comment song, and a bit of a joke. Yoko's on that one, I believe.

' I'm So Tired ', was me, in India again. I couldn't sleep, I'm meditating all day and couldn't sleep at night. The story is that. One of my favorite tracks. I just like the sound of it, and I sing it well.

' Revolution 1 '. Completely me. We recorded the song twice. The Beatles were getting real tense with each other. I did the slow version (Revolution 1) and I wanted to put it out as a single: as a statement of the Beatles' position on Vietnam and the Beatles' position on revolution. The first take of 'Revolution' ...well, George and Paul were resentful and said it wasn't fast enough. Now, if you go into the details of what a hit record is and isn't, maybe. But the Beatles could have afforded to put out a slow, understandable version of 'Revolution' as a single, whether it was a gold record or a wooden record.

' Goodnight ', was written for Julian, the way 'Beautiful Boy' was written for Sean, but given to Ringo and possibly overlush.

' Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except For Me And My Monkey '. That was just a sort of nice line that I made into a song. It was about me and Yoko. Everybody seemed to be paranoid except for us two, who were in the glow of love. Everything is clear and open when you're in love. Everybody was sort of tense around us, you know, 'What is SHE doing here at the session? Why is she with him?' All this sort of madness is going on around us because we just happened to want to be together all the time.

' Julia ', was my mother. But it was sort of a combination of Yoko and my mother blended into one. That was written in India. We wrote tons of songs in India.

' I Saw Her Standing There '. I wrote it with John. We sagged off school and wrote it on guitars. I remember I had the lyrics, 'Just seventeen/Never been a beauty queen,' which John, it was one of the first times he ever went, 'What? Must change that!' And it became, 'you know what I mean.'

' All You Need Is Love ', was John's song. I threw in a few ideas, as did other members of the group, but it was largely ad libs like singing 'She Loves You' or 'Greensleeves' or silly little things like that at the end, and we made those up on the spot.

' Magical Mystery Tour ', was co-written by John and I, very much in our fairground period. One of our great inspirations was always the barker: 'Roll up! Roll up!' The promise of something, the newspaper ad that says 'guaranteed not to crack' the 'high class' butcher, 'satisfaction guaranteed' from Sgt. Pepper. You'll find that pervades alot of my songs. If you look at all the Lennon/McCartney things, it's a thing we do alot.