As title suggest, which songs did Lennon and Harrison sing together? And McCartney and Harrison? And since its up for grabs what about Lennon/McCartney?
And I have had eight days a week on my mind these last few days! Lennon was such a great writer with double entendres!
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Regrettably, the studio recording of All My Loving features Paul singing both melody and harmony on the last verse, but live George sings the melody and Paul sings the harmony - which means, technically, George sang a ‘lead vocal’ before John on their first American TV appearance on the Ed Sullivan show. They sound great together and clearly made an enormous impact. (John later sings some unison vocals with Paul in the same performance, but John doesn’t sing a solo lead vocal at all until their second Ed Sullivan performance. Paul absolutely dominates their first Sullivan appearance.)
It's a great point. Considering John was the band's leader at this point the song selection is strange. It doesn't help that John's mic is either off or very low in the mix, so you can even hear him when he is meant to be singing lead such as IWTHYH.
Except John wasn’t the band’s sole leader at that point and wasn’t since Paul joined the Quarrymen. Both Quarrymen members and their first engineer up until Rubber Soul said Paul led musically. I’ll put the quotes below.
It was also Paul’s song they first recorded as the Quarrymen and Paul’s song that got them signed. Paul was their MC on stage and sang lead on 3/5 songs on their first Ed Sullivan appearance. He did co lead on the other 2. All evidence points to Paul being every bit of a leader as John was the entire time
“I can well remember even at the rehearsal at his house in Forthlin Road, Paul was quite specific about how he wanted it played and what he wanted the piano to do. There was no question of improvising. We were told what we had to play. There was a lot of arranging going on even back then."
John Duff Lowe pianist on their first ever recording, In Spite of All the Danger
"I don’t want to take anything away from anyone, but production of the Beatles was very simple, because it was ready-made. Paul was a very great influence in terms of the production, especially in terms of George Harrison’s guitar solos and Ringo’s drumming. The truth of the matter is that, to the best of my memory, Paul had a great hand in practically all of the songs that we did, and Ringo would generally ask him what he should do. After all, Paul was no mean drummer himself, and he did play drums on a couple of things. It was almost like we had one producer in the control room and another producer down in the studio. There is no doubt at all that Paul was the main musical force. He was also that in terms of production as well. A lot of the time George Martin didn’t really have to do the things he did because Paul McCartney was around and could have done them equally well… most of the ideas came from Paul".
Norman Smith, the Beatles engineer up until Rubber Soul
Yes, Paul sings harmony to George in Here Comes the Sun
Watch the early years performances and you’ll see some different combinations.
The only songs John and George sang together are You Really Got a Hold on Me and She Said She Said (of course, they sang backing vocals on a lot of Paul songs, but I'm assuming that's not what you're looking for). I think on a lot of George-penned songs, McCartney harmonized with him e. g., While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Here Comes the Sun, I Me Mine.
Something has some great McCartney harmony singing in the bridge
You can hear Lennon pretty clearly on If I needed someone.
Savoy Truffle
When they played "All My Loving" live, on the 2nd version, George sings the lead and Paul sings the harmony.
Do you mean singing together in harmony, or trading off? Like "Wait" is a really underrated song where John and Paul split things evenly.
"Chains" features George and John harmonizing very well, but Paul is in there, too.
George and Paul sung in Love to you and basically every George's songs from the white album and on. Also All my Loving live and I think some Paul's songs in Abbey Road.
As for George and John, You really got a hold on me and She said she said.
Lennon/McCartney aside, Harrison/McCartney is such a magical duo that it sucks they rarely ever collaborated post-Beatles. Paul brings out so much out of Harrisongs and vice-versa. Too bad George didn’t like how upstaging Paul’s parts were.