{"id":759423,"date":"2026-06-25T13:28:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T13:28:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/759423\/"},"modified":"2026-06-25T13:28:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T13:28:12","slug":"brian-ray-when-paul-mccartney-and-john-lennon-got-writers-block","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/759423\/","title":{"rendered":"Brian Ray: When Paul McCartney and John Lennon got writer’s block"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today is Global Beatles Day.<\/p>\n

As Paul McCartney\u2019s longtime guitarist and occasional bass<\/a> player, Brian Ray<\/a> has gained unique insights into the former Beatle\u2019s songwriting process. Over his 24 years with McCartney, Ray says he learned just how prolific \u2014 and instinctive \u2014 the songwriting partnership<\/a> between McCartney and John Lennon really was.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cI asked Paul if he wrote to a title or a little melody, or a riff or something, and he said, \u2018No. It was always lyrics, music, melody and guitars all at once,\u2019\u201d Ray told Guitar Player in 2005.<\/p>\n

Latest Videos From<\/p>\n

As a result, Lennon and McCartney worked quickly \u2014 and had to. \u201cYou have to remember that the Beatles did a record every six months,\u201d said Ray, a veteran electric guitar<\/a> player known for favoring a 1957 Les Paul Goldtop.<\/p>\n

For all their productivity, however, McCartney told Ray there was one occasion when the pair hit a creative roadblock.<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

\n

\"British\n<\/p>\n

McCartney and John Lennon rehearse on the set of The Ed Sullivan Show, in New York City, February 8, 1964. (Image credit: UPI\/Bettmann via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cPaul said that in the more than 300 songs he and John wrote, he could only remember one time where they got stuck, and that was when they were writing \u2018Drive My Car.\u2019 They thought the title wasn\u2019t working, but they liked the song. So they took a break, had some tea, and changed it.\u201d<\/p>\n

What exactly changed during that tea break? Ray wasn\u2019t saying.<\/p>\n

All the latest guitar news, interviews, lessons, reviews, deals and more, direct to your inbox!<\/p>\n

\u201cI won\u2019t tell you the lyric they tossed, because that\u2019s Paul\u2019s right to do that. I don\u2019t want to be the guy who tells everybody what \u2018Drive My Car\u2019 was originally written as. And, you know, even with the rewrite they still finished the song at the end of the day.\u201d<\/p>\n

As some Beatles fans know, the discarded lyric centered on \u201cgolden rings.\u201d McCartney had mined similar imagery before with the phrase \u201cdiamond rings,\u201d notably in \u201cCan\u2019t Buy Me Love\u201d and \u201cIf You\u2019ve Got Trouble,\u201d a Help!-era outtake later released on Anthology 2. Lennon had also referenced them in \u201cI Feel Fine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Drive My Car (Remastered 2009) – YouTube
\n\"Drive<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

As McCartney explained to Barry Miles in Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, \u201c\u2018Drive My Car\u2019\u201d was \u201cone of the songs where John and I came nearest to having a dry session.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe lyrics I brought in were something to do with golden rings, which is always fatal,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

When McCartney presented the song to Lennon, neither could come up with a satisfactory replacement. \u201cSo we had a break, maybe had a cigarette or a cup of tea, then we came back to it, and somehow it became \u2018drive my car\u2019 instead of \u2018golden rings,\u2019\u201d he recalled.<\/p>\n

Which means Ray was faithfully protecting a secret that McCartney himself had revealed years earlier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Today is Global Beatles Day. As Paul McCartney\u2019s longtime guitarist and occasional bass player, Brian Ray has gained…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":759424,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,134,136],"class_list":["post-759423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=759423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/759424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=759423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=759423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=759423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}