Songwriting is about getting the demon out of me. It's like being possessed.

' No Reply '. I remember Dick James coming to me after this one and saying, 'you're getting much better now, that was a complete story'. Apparently, before that he thought my songs tended to, sort of, wander off.

' Ticket To Ride ' . That was one of the earliest heavy-metal records made. Paul's contribution was the way Ringo played the drums.

' Good Day Sunshine ', is Paul's. Maybe I threw in a line or something.

' And Your Bird Can Sing '. Another horror. Another of my throwaways.

' Taxman '. I remember the day he ( George ) called to ask for help on ' Taxman ', one of his first songs. I threw in a few one-liners to help the song along because that's what he asked for. He came to me because he couldn't go to Paul. Paul wouldn't have helped him at that period. I didn't want to do it. I just sort of bit my tongue and said OK. It had been John and Paul for so long, he'd been left out because he hadn't been a songwriter up until then.

' Yellow Submarine '. Both of us. Paul wrote the catchy chorus. I helped with the other blunderbuss bit.

' She Said, She Said '. That's mine. It's an interesting track. The guitars are great on it. That was written after an acid trip in L.A. during a break in the Beatles tour where we were having fun with the Byrds and lots of girls. Peter Fonda came in when we were on acid and he kept coming up to me and sitting next to me and whispering, 'I know what it's like to be dead.' I used it for the song, but I changed it to 'she' instead of 'he.' It was scary... I don't want to know what it's like to be dead !

' Paperback Writer ' is son of 'Day Tripper' ... meaning a rock 'n' roll song with a guitar lick on a fuzzy loud guitar.

' With A Little Help From My Friends '. Paul had the line about 'a little help from my friends'. He had some kind of structure for it, and we wrote it pretty well fifty-fifty from his original idea.

' Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds '. My son Julian came in one day with a picture he painted about a school friend of his named Lucy. He had sketched in some stars in the sky and called it 'Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds'. Simple. It was nothing to do with LSD

' Good Morning, Good Morning '. Me, a bit of a goobledegook one, but nice words.

' She's Leaving Home '. Both of us. Paul had the basic theme. But all those lines 'We sacrificed most of our life'... 'we gave her everything money could buy'... 'never a thought for ourselves', those were the things Mimi used to say. It was easy to write.

' A Day In The Life '. Just as it sounds: I was reading the paper one day and I noticed two stories. One was the Guinness heir who killed himself in a car. That was the main headline story. He died in London in a car crash. On the next page was a story about 4000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire. In the streets, that is. They were going to fill them all. Paul's contribution was the beautiful little lick in the song ' I'd love to turn you on '. I had the bulk of the song and the words, but he contributed this little lick floating around in his head that he couldn't use for anything. I thought it was a damn good piece of work.

' Penny Lane '. I helped with the lyrics. We really got into the groove of imagining Penny Lane. The bank was there, and that was where the tram sheds were and people waiting and the inspector stood there, the fire engines were down there. It was just reliving childhood. Penny Lane is not only a street but it's a district, a suburban district where, until age four, I lived with my mother and father. So I was the only Beatle that lived in Penny Lane.

' Baby You're A Rich Man '. We just stuck two songs together for this one, same as ' A Day In The Life '.

' Revolution '. I should never have put that in about Chairman Mao. I was just finishing off in the studio when I did that.

' Birthday '. Both of us. We wrote it in the studio.

' Sexy Sadie '. Me, that was all about the Maharishi.

' Across The Universe '. One of my best songs. Not one of the best recordings, but I like the lyrics.

' Happiness Is A Warm Gun '. Another one I like. The title came from an American gun magazine. It was put together from bits and pieces, of about three different songs.

' Hey Bulldog. ' It's a good sounding record that means nothing.

' Come Together ', is me writing obscurely around an old Chuck Berry thing. I left in the line ' Here comes old flat top '. It's nothing like the the Chuck Berry song, but they took me to court. The song remains independent of Chuck Berry or anybody else on earth.

I was lying on the sofa in our house, listening to Yoko play Beethoven's - Moonlight Sonata, on the piano. Suddenly I said, 'can you play those chords backwards'. She did, and I wrote ' Because ', around them. The lyrics are clear, no bullshit, no imagery, no obscure references.

' Polythene Pam '. That was me, remembering a little event with a woman in Jersey, and a man who was England's answer to Allen Ginsberg, who gave us our first exposure. I met him when we were on tour and he took me back to his apartment, and I had a girl and he had one he wanted me to meet. He said she dressed up in polythene, which she did. She didn't wear jackboots, and kilts, I just sort of elaborated. Perverted sex in a polythene bag - Just looking for something to write about.

' Dig A Pony '. Another piece of garbage. I was just having fun with words. It was literally a nonsense song. You just take words and you stick them together, and you see if they have any meaning. Some of them do and some of them don't.

' One After 909 '. That was something I wrote when I was about seventeen. I lived at 9 Newcastle Road. I was born on the ninth of October - the ninth month. It's just a number that follows me around, but numerologically, apparently i'm a number six or a three or something, but it's all part of nine.

' Cold Turkey '. The song is self-explanatory. It got banned even though it's anti-drug.

You know give peace a chance, not shoot people for peace. ' All You Need Is Love '. I believe it. It's damn hard, but I absolutely believe it. We're not the first to say ' Imagine No Countries ' or ' Give Peace A Chance ', but we're carrying that torch.

' Instant Karma '. I wrote it for breakfast, recorded it for lunch, and we're putting it out for dinner.

' Imagine ', ' Love ', and those Plastic Ono Band songs stand up to any song that was written when I was a Beatle.

' Hold On '. I'm saying, ' Hold on John ', because I don't want to die ... I don't want to be hurt and please don't hit me. Hold on now, we might have a cup of tea, we might get a moments happiness, any minute now. So that's what it's all about, moment by moment.

I used my resentment and withdrawing from Paul and the Beatles and the relationship with Paul, to write ' How Do You Sleep ? '. I don't really go round with those thoughts in my head all the time. I think Paul died, creatively, in a way.

' I'm The Greatest '. It was the Muhammad Ali line of course. It was perfect for Ringo to sing. If I said ' I'm the greatest ', they would all take it so seriously. No one would get upset with Ringo singing it.

' Imagine ', was a sincere statement. It was ' Working Class Hero ' with chocolate on. I was trying to think of it in terms of children.

' Woman Is The Nigger Of The World '. It was actually the first women's liberation song that went out. I felt the lyrics didn't live up to Yoko's title. It's such a beautiful statement. Woman still is the nigger. Under the whole crust of it, is the women and beneath them the children.

' Angela '. We got a request: 'Will you please write a song about Angela [Davis, a UCLA lecturer and Black Panther]?' from the Angela Davis people. So there, how do you write a song about somebody you don't really know?

' Happy Xmas ( War Is Over ) '. I always wanted to write a Christmas record. Something that would last forever. We're very proud of that one and we both played and sang together on that one, might have been our first pop, you know, straight pop record together and Phil Spector was the producer and it was a beautiful session and the kids singing were beautiful.

' Mind Games '. That was a fun track because the voice was in stereo and the seeming orchestra on it was me playing three notes on slide guitar. And the middle eight is reggae.

' Whatever Gets You Thru The Night '. That was a novelty record. It's the only one i've done since I left the Beatles to get to number one. Imagine should have been number one, and ' Whatever Gets You Thru The Night ', should have been number 39. It just doesn't make sense.

' # 9 Dream '. It got to number nine actually. That's what I call craftmanship writing, meaning, you know, I just churned that out. I'm not putting it down, it's just what it is, but I just sat down and wrote it, you know, with no real inspiration based on a dream i'd had.

' Woman ', came about because, one sunny afternoon in Bermuda, it suddenly hit me. What women do for us. Not as the sex object or the mother, but just their contribution.

' Dear Yoko '. It says it all. The track's a nice track and it happens to be about my wife, instead of Dear Sandra or some other person that another singer would sing about, who may or may not exist.

The bells on ' Starting Over ', the head of the album, is a wishing bell of Yoko's. And it's like the beginning of ' Mother ', which had a very slow death bell. So it's taken a long time to get from a slow church death bell, to this sweet little wishing bell. And that's the connection. To me, my work is one piece.

How can you beat Shakespeare or Beethoven or whatever? I go through all that, and, in my secret heart, I wanted to write something that would take over, ' We Shall Overcome '.