Beatlemania used to mean screaming teenagers going crazy over She Loves You. Now it means watching a pair of sexagenarians, Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono, fuss and fight over the writing credits of some of pop music's most enduring songs.

Lawyers for Ms. Ono, the widow of John Lennon (who died 22 years ago this month), are looking into suing Mr. McCartney because he tinkered with the famous "Lennon-McCartney" byline on 20 of the 36 songs found on the Cute Beatle's latest CD-DVD, Back in the U.S. Live 2002, released Nov. 26.

The tinkering consisted of transposing the credit line on such classics as Can't Buy Me Love, I Saw Her Standing There, Fool on the Hill and We Can Work It Out to "Paul McCartney and John Lennon" from the well-known "Lennon-McCartney."

Mr. McCartney's supporters say it's all being done to better reflect the true authorship of particular titles and amounts to nothing more than a spot of "historical housekeeping."

But Peter Shukat, Ms. Ono's New York lawyer, called it "ridiculous, absurd and petty."

Moreover, he said, the switcheroo was done against the wishes of Ms. Ono, whom Mr. Lennon's will named as the sole beneficiary of his estate.

It's not the first time Mr. McCartney, who turned 60 in June, has attempted to alter the Lennon-McCartney tag. Last year, he revealed that in the mid-1990s he asked Ms. Ono, "as a favour," whether he could get sole writing credit for Yesterday when it was placed on one of the Beatles Anthology compilations. Ms. Ono, who turns 70 next year, refused.

Nobody denies that Yesterday, a huge hit for the Beatles in 1965, is almost wholly a McCartney creation. Indeed, throughout their songwriting partnership and afterward, the two musicians often acknowledged, sometimes affectionately, sometimes caustically, which songs were "more" Lennon than McCartney, and vice versa. Each also said that the Lennon-McCartney tag was an informal ad hoc arrangement, not an ironclad deal.

In a recent interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Ms. Ono said Mr. McCartney might be doing his own legacy a disservice by transposing the credits.

"If those songs are credited to 'McCartney-Lennnon' and the rest of the 200 or so are credited to 'Lennon-McCartney,' people may think Paul wrote those songs and John wrote the rest," she said. When Mr. McCartney first made the suggestion, Ms. Ono advised him not to do it, saying it's "like opening Pandora's box."

At this point, it remains unclear exactly what grounds Ms. Ono has for a suit. Calls to her Manhattan law firm, Shukat Arrow Hafer & Weber, were not returned yesterday, and no release was issued by the firm or by Ms. Ono, who is reportedly in Japan.

Donald Passman, a prominent music-industry lawyer in Los Angeles, told a Los Angeles newspaper recently that he believes the only cause for serious legal action would be if Mr. McCartney omitted Mr. Lennon's name altogether from the songs on which they've had co-credit for 40 years. Transposing a credit doesn't seem to misrepresent authorship or damage the song as a piece of revenue-generating property, he said. Moreover, there seems to be general agreement that on his own releases, Mr. McCartney can rearrange the heretofore standard byline as he sees fit.
Taking credit
The 20 songs whose credits were transposed:
All My Loving
Back in the U.S.S.R.
Blackbird
Can't Buy Me Love
Carry That Weight
Eleanor Rigby
The End
The Fool on the Hill
Getting Better
Hello Goodbye
Here, There and Everywhere
Hey Jude
I Saw Her Standing There
Let It Be
Lady Madonna
The Long and Winding Road
Mother Nature's Son
Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
We Can Work It Out
Yesterday