Fab Foundations # 20: “The Grace in Passivity”

(Personal reflections inspired by Beatles songs)

Song: “Two of Us”

Album: Let It Be

Release Date: May 1970

Early in my career with the US Geological Survey (~ 30 years ago), office management was approached by the Cape Cod Commission – the principle environmental regulatory agency on Cape Cod Massachusetts, and a familiar cooperator at the time - to see if the USGS could develop a way to map the Cape for potential public groundwater-supply-well locations for drinking water. In turn, office management approached me because I had the digital-mapping (GIS) experience to lead such an effort. Over the next 3 years I worked on the project part time and devised a screening overlay process in GIS to essentially mask areas - based on factors such as landcover, hazardous waste, and saltwater intrusion zones - with a ranking scheme from least favorable to most. Quarterly meetings with the cooperator were always gratifying as I could sense they were pleased with developments.

About halfway thru the project, a hydrologist was hired to assist me. With an education more suitable for surface-water studies, her groundwater-hydrology knowledge was limited, but fine enough for the general understanding of groundwater movement that was needed to round out the project objectives (my formal education did not include hydrology). We collaborated well together. My primary focus was to teach her aspects of what I was doing. This was necessary since 1) GIS consisted of a vast majority of the project workload and 2) I was multitasking on other projects, which made it a struggle to deal with all the short-term deadlines related to data development on my own. What was most ideal about the arrangement, however, was that the new hire (who was rapidly becoming a friend) showed a great aptitude for GIS and appeared to enjoy learning it.

When it came time to write the report, my project partner took the initiative. I was happy for this development, because frankly, technical writing was not my forte (I still struggle with it, to this day). However, because the core of the report would have to describe what I had dreamed and schemed up over the course of those 3 years, my colleague needed my input. I gave it to her in my own unique writing style. She then edited and weaved my feedback into her narrative. 

One day near the end of the project, the associate director called me into his office. He had the draft manuscript in his hand, which he was reviewing. He asked me why I was not listed as the lead author. After chewing on his question for a moment (he surprised me with it) I told him that my partner wrote the bulk of the report, and that I was fine with the situation. He then said something to the effect of: “But you came up with the key ideas, you wrote the programs, you gave most of the presentations, and you designed the final map plate. You are the visionary. You deserve to be lead author.”  He then asked me to contemplate this some.

I did contemplate, but in the end, never acted on it (other than asking my co-author to remove text from the report’s announcement letter that referred to her as “principal author”, which probably touched a nerve, seeing as we never collaborated again in the 2 years that she remained in the office). In the grand scheme of things, I was simply not compelled enough to make a big deal of the matter. Besides, the authorship status was a nice way for my colleague to launch her career. I already had a boatload of momentum in this regard. It was a wrap in my mind, and I was already on to the next best thing by the time the report was published.

I had reflected on that memory very little in the past 25 years. But as I struggled to think of a way to broach my talking points this week regarding the Lennon/McCartney songwriting team, it all came flooding back. 

What made “Lennon/McCartney” work so well? I don’t believe it could have been better if they authored songs individually, nor do I think it would have been better if the songwriting credit read “McCartney/Lennon”. Why?  Because you can’t get much better than what the Beatles did in the decade they worked together. That’s the easy answer. For the remainder of this entry I’ll take on this premise in more detail in order to make things harder on myself (hey, that’s what this blog site is all about).

Partnerships. Collaborations. Success. Credit. Recognition. These are abstractions all of us can relate to, which is why so many of my generation (and other generations) can relate to the Beatles. Their story covers the gambit with these terms. And at the heart of it all is the “Lennon/McCartney” partnership.

The mystery of a songwriting partnership is so much deeper than songs that have an individual credit. You find yourself asking questions like; who came up with the seed of the idea? The tempo? The best lyrical lines? The chords? How did the song evolve as it bounced between the songwriters? Who was the impetus when it all gelled? Some of this is easy to decode with the Beatles, seeing as a vast majority of the songs that John Lennon sings originated with him. Same for Paul McCartney. From there, it gets a bit more interesting in terms of who contributed what to any given song, but generally in the case of “Lennon/McCartney”, the singer is the “principal author”. 

However, this factoid is not what I’m really driving at in this entry. It’s been covered ad-nauseam (one of the reasons it took me so long to get to the Beatles on this blog site was that I was intimidated by how much has already been written about them). I’m seeking more of the “why” here than the “how”, which may help to explain how I have approached collaborations in my own life story, and maybe that of others too.

Every endeavor with a partner will find one person being more passive, and the other being more aggressive (however lurid or subtle that aggression may be). The roles may switch over time, or maybe even oscillate back and forth regularly, but there will always be that element at play. I don’t care if it’s a songwriting team, a scientific team, or a marriage. That’s just the way it is.

On the surface, the two roles may not appear to be of equal importance. After all, does not the aggressive role dictate the results in any particular endeavor? Ahh, but there is much more to the role of passivity than meets the eye. It’s like the Id (primitive, instinctual) and the Super-Ego (moral conscience) sides of our persona. These can actually be amazingly complimentary. To take on the role of one or the other at any given time, depending on the circumstances, is what makes us dynamic.

The credit that is “Lennon/McCartney” started that way because John Lennon formed the Beatles, making him the de facto leader. But through the years, he would see that leadership usurped by Paul McCartney for large chunks of time. “Yesterday”, “Let It Be”, “Hey Jude”, “The Long and Winding Road” …. these are all McCartney tunes. I for one do not think that Beatle Paul could have written such enduring iconic music without taking on that aggressive leadership mantle as he composed.

But what was equally as important was what John Lennon did during these prolific-Paul periods. Lennon slipped out of his aggressive, dominant persona in the band and became relatively passive. Here lies the secret to a thriving relationship: When you knowingly or unknowingly realize when it’s time to pass that baton for a spell. If there is any insight that I have gained thus far in my Fab Foundations exploits this year, this Lennon-acceptance-of-role-reversal is it. His willingness to step out of his Id and Paul McCartney’s ability to step into his (and vice versa) is the ‘grace’ factor in what separated the Beatles from so many other bands.

At the same time, Paul McCartney was willing to retain second authorship throughout the entirety of the Beatles as a working band (even on those 4 aforementioned masterful songs that John Lennon had very little involvement in), which was beautifully passive as well. Throughout his career, McCartney has always come across to me as a leader, to the degree that it has been difficult for me to understand how he functioned in an equal-member band environment. I suppose the same thing could be said about Lennon. But McCartney took it a step further than Lennon, because he was accepting of that second author position. Perhaps this was why it was so hard for Paul McCartney when the Beatles broke up. John Lennon brought a passive quality out in him that otherwise was buried deep inside. “How else can I tap that” is an internal voice he must have feared at some level.

Many writers (including myself) have focused on the melding of musical styles and attitudes that made the “Lennon/McCartney” partnership so successful, and rightfully so. But this Id/Super-Ego dynamic between the two, this back and forth, aggressive/passive, front-seat/backseat role reversal, has not been covered nearly enough.

Paul McCartney’s (or should I say “Lennon/McCartney’s”) “Two of Us” encapsulates this partnership ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLQox8e9688 ).  When this song was written near the end of the Beatles story, McCartney was trying to rekindle an amazing dynamic, or at least reveal the magic behind it.  We would all be so fortunate to be in such a position; to be involved in a wonderfully successful partnership venture, knowing the times when it is appropriate for our role to be an aggressive one, but more importantly, to know when it is not.

- Pete