Yes, Virginia, There ARE Co-Composers: What John Lennon and Duke Ellington can teach us about the collaborative process

I’m working as production counsel on a Broadway-bound musicalization of a very famous novel. The show had a 29 hour Equity Reading in late Spring; and the plan moving forward is for an Equity Lab in late Fall and another 29 hour Equity Reading in mid-winter.As part of the development process, the entire creative team has agreed that the composer who was been working on the project for years needs some support, and the best way to get her that support is to bring on a co-composer. The team has also agreed on who that co-composer should be, and I am negotiating an agreement for that co-composer as I write this.But an issue has been pushed to the forefront. The co-composer has a creative process that requires him to write alone; the composer he is being brought in to support composes collaboratively. To the co-composer, collaborative composing is an oxymoron. He asks, “Does anyone really compose collaboratively?”And the answer is yes. In fact, I’m using this negotiation as an excuse to discuss some of my favorite songwriting teams:1. Lennon & McCartney. John Lennon and Paul McCartney are perhaps the most famous songwriting team of all time. In the 1960s, they were among the first to adopt rock and roll style in a manner that appealed to the masses. John and Paul were famous for composing collaboratively; specifically, they would write music “eyeball to eyeball,” facing each other. The reason neither is credited with either words or lyrics, and the reason why their names are connected with an “&,” is because in many cases there is no way to separate out their individual contributions to songs created collaboratively.2. Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. Similar to the Lennon/ McCartney “eyeball to eyeball” legend, Duke and Billy would often perform and record music “four hands on, “ meaning the two would play the same piano at the same time. It was extremely common for Strayhorn to write a tune for the Ellington band in AABA form, only to have Ellington completely re-order the piece into a form Ellington believed was more appropriate for jazz. It was also extremely common for Ellington to lay down some musical themes, and have those themes be fleshed out by Strayhorn, so that in the end it was impossible to know who really wrote the song. In fact, there has been great debate over who wrote many of the songs published under Ellington’s name, and in truth even Ellington and Strayhorn themselves had difficulty remembering who wrote what.3. Richard and Robert Sherman. These brothers constituted perhaps the most successful movie songwriting duo of all time. They wrote the scores for MARY POPPINS, CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG and THE JUNGLE BOOK, among others. Although their relationship became adversarial for a good portion of time, and they worked with other collaborators, these two brothers are responsible for so many songs I remember from my own childhood.All of these examples show us that when composers write collaboratively, they allow for the possibility of achieving greater success than they could ever achieve on their own, the old “two heads are better than one” approach.At times like this I feel so fortunate that I get to bring my passion for the collaborative process to bear in my work as a lawyer. Because when I say to the co-composer, “Yes, Virginia (not the co-composer’s real name), there ARE co-composers,” I get to say it from my heart.