As a working stage act, the Beatles were gigging non-stop through 1962, with the Cavern the main focus of events. From this period, we can identify two new numbers in the expanding Lennon-McCartney …

list of songs The list gives the relevant page on which each song is detailed. In nearly all cases this is the year it was composed.

In the year-by-year pages, we look at the early songs written by the Beatles, which specifically means those composed (or in some cases begun, but not completed) before the start of 1963 – prior to the …

The Beatles returned to England at the start of July, without Stu Sutcliffe, who had now quit the band, leaving a group line-up of Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Best.

Three quarters of what would become the Beatles was now in place, and the Quarry Men gained a handy lead guitarist. What of the songwriting? Lennon and McCartney continued into 1958, although …

But the group had finally found their mojo, and in an indication of their new impetus, they decided to ditch the out-dated name “Quarry Men” and find a new identity: Beatals (or Beatles, depending who …

In 1956, he seems to have come up with his first original songs on that instrument. Since this was prior to the arrival of rock and roll, and since his musical grounding was more towards music hall, these …

This supports the idea that he and Lennon did not regard songwriting as part of their group activity, and we know that they relied mostly on cover versions until 1962.

Here they wrote down all their new songs along with the letters of the associated chords, meaning they could retain their compositions in some form, without having to memorise them.

Given these sub-headings, and what we know of the songs, the names refer to the lead singer. The list was first pictured in a re-issue package of Paul's Flaming Pie album, and includes several original …