Maybe I am too much of a noob, but my band and me are just starting writing our first material, this is the first time we sit down and jam/write together and so far it's going great.
One of us one day has an idea, and writes some stuff for it, and then presents it to us and we work on it. Other times, for example myself, I wrote a song totally by myself, but I couldn't push it forward without showing it to the other guys because I feel it certainly needs other influences. I'm this Angra/DT/Nightwish/Stratovarious musician and another bandmate is very Coldplay/Nirvana/Jazz fellah and another guy is this Muse/PinkFloyd and the last one is just a straightforward metalhead, so we get this interesting fusion which so far I'm loving. The point is, when I present the product, they all go like "Sure this is great, but what if we try this?" and they would try something else to play along with it, without altering all from what I had. I sincerely can't understand those guys who belong in a band and write everything by themselves and just teach the other bandmembers how to play it. I honestly can't imagine myself just "forcing" my bandmates to play what I want without hearing their thoughts first.
Which is why I hope TA, which as much as I consider it to be a masterpiece, goes as just as a temporal experiment and it doesn't mean JP and JR will write everything from now on. JM and MM are much more experimented musicians than we are, so their inputs and ideas must be truly colossal.
Just thoughts.