![Roskilde Festival 2015 - Day 8 Roskilde Festival 2015 - Day 8](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/paul-mccartney.jpeg?quality=85&w=2400)
The Beatles have one of the most impressive catalogues in music history, but fans probably missed out on “dozens” more songs that the band “forgot” before they could record them.
Paul McCartney said in a recent interview that he and John Lennon did not have recording devices when they first started writing music, explaining, “we would write a song and just have to remember it. And there was always the risk that we’d just forget it. If the next morning you couldn’t remember it—it was gone. There must have been dozens lost this way.”
McCartney said today things are very different since songwriters can record their ideas on their phone. Still, he said the technological limitation may have improved their music: “You had to write songs that were memorable, because you had to remember them or they were lost!”
All this begs the question, why didn’t anyone give the lads a pencil and some paper?
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