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Quotes about the Lennon-Mccartney rivalry & John's insecurity

A long one!!

Pre-fame

“Paul was very good,” said Eric [Griffiths, of The Quarrymen]. “We could all see that. He was precocious in many ways. Not just in music but in relating to people.” […] His charm also worried John, according to Eric. “We were all walking down Halewood Drive to my house to do some practising. I was walking ahead with John. The others were behind. John suddenly said: ‘Let’s split the group, and you and me will start again.’ “We could hear Paul behind us, chatting to Pete [Shotton] as if he was Pete’s best friend. John knew we were all his pals, but now Paul was trying to get in on us. Not to split us up, just make friends with us all. I’m sure that was all it was, but to John it looked as if Paul was trying to take over, dominate the group. I suppose he was worried it could disrupt the balance, upset the group dynamics, as we might say today. “I said to him: ‘Paul’s so good. He’ll contribute a lot to the group. We need him with us.’ John said nothing. But after that the subject was never mentioned again.”

Eric Griffiths, c/o Hunter Davies, Sunday Times: A Beatle’s boyhood. (March 25th, 2001)

"It was uncanny. He could play and sing in a way that none of us could, including John," Eric Griffiths recalls. "He had such confidence, he gave a performance. It was natural. We couldn't get enough of it. It was a real eye-opener." After listening to Paul play, John recalled, "I had thought to myself, 'He's as good as me.' Now, I thought, if I take him on, what will happen? It went through my head that I'd have to keep him in line if I let him join [the band]. But he was good, so he was worth having. He also looked like Elvis. I dug him."

Bob Spitz, The Beatles: The Biography, 2005

Mimi remained resolutely unimpressed by anything her nephew composed with his ‘little friend’. ‘John would say, “We’ve got this song, Mimi, do you want to hear it?”’ she recalled. ‘And I would say, “Certainly not… front porch, John Lennon, front porch.”’ What she overheard that clearly wasn’t ‘caterwauling’ became another way of discomfiting John. ‘[He] got very upset with me when I mentioned one night that I thought Paul was the better guitar player. That set him off, banging away on his own guitar. There was quite a bit of rivalry going on there.’

Philip Norman, Paul McCartney: The Life. (2016)

Friends looked to Paul to control the damage, but it was beyond even his know-how. When John “went off like that,” Paul usually waited for the storm to pass or humored John to keep him from turning up the heat. And unbeknownst to Paul, some considered his presence in these situations more problem than solution. “It was obvious that John had big reservations about Paul, too,” says Hague, who absorbed his friend’s harangues during their drinking binges. “Even then, there was great jealousy there. He was all too aware of Paul’s talent and wanted to be as good and grand himself. After a while, you could see it, plain as day: the subtle body language or remarks that flew between them. He wasn’t about to let someone like Paul McCartney pull his strings.”

The Beatles – Bob Spitz

Yesterday

Barrow describes an incident from 1965 where McCartney ran through a dress rehearsal of “Yesterday” for a live evening performance on Blackpool Night Out. “Beatles Book editor Johnny Dean sat in the stalls close to comperes Mike and Bernie Winters and the other three Beatles, and watched Paul in solitary rehearsal on the stage, singing the song to his own guitar accompaniment. At the end, everybody heard John’s loud and decidedly sarcastic comment.” The nasty remark from John was said to upset Paul for several hours afterwards.

Beatles publicist Tony Barrow

At the end, everybody heard John’s loud and decidedly sarcastic comment. He made no secret of the fact that he thought ‘Yesterday’ was a slice of sentimental rubbish, and this led to several heated exchanges between John and Paul in the privacy of the group’s dressing room after the rehearsal.

Tony Barrow, c/o The Best of the Beatles Book (ed. Johnny Dean). (2005)

Following Paul's rendition of 'Yesterday', a comedy link was rehearsed for when the others reappeared on stage: John clutched a plastic bouquet of flowers which came away as Paul accepted them, leaving him holding only the bottom stems. As if to further puncture any pompous formality, John announced "Thank you Ringo, that was wonderful." "The Beatles were in a terrific mood..." Sean O'Mahony wrote in his editorial (Beatles Book #26), "laughing and gagging their way through rehearsals as though they were preparing for a private Beatle People Telly Show for the fan club rather than a national networked performance to millions of viewers." However, he now remembers a charged atmosphere at Blackpool that day after Lennon sarcastically roared "Thank you, Paul, that was bloody crap!" following McCartney's debut of the song during the afternoon rehearsal. If there was any tension it was swiftly diffused as Bryce's photographs reveal the two relaxed and joking in each other's company. Paul and John rode back to London together in comfort that night in Lennon's new black Phantom V Rolls-Royce.

Looking Through You: The Beatles Book Monthly Photo Archive

Throughout the Beatles’ 1965 summer concert tour of North America, Paul avoided doing the number on stage, partly in order to avoid further unpleasant conflict with John [and partly because nobody would be able to hear it in open air stadiums full of screaming fans]. it was the danger of giving added strength to the ‘Paul is leaving’ rumour that helped to prevent ‘Yesterday’ from being released there and then as a single in the UK. As Paul knows, it could have been a smash hit at home as well as all over the world but it would have annoyed the rest of the group, and their hostility in such circumstances would have caused him a lot of personal grief which he didn’t need.

Tony Barrow, c/o The Best of the Beatles Book (ed. Johnny Dean). (2005)

"John came to my loft and he was all excited," Smith recalls. "He said, 'I think I finally wrote a song with as good a melody as Yesterday.' Yesterday drove him crazy. People'd say, 'Thank you for writing Yesterday, a beautiful song...' He was always civil, but it drove him nuts."Sat at Smith's piano, Lennon revealed a title - Imagine - but only a smattering of lyrics. For the rest he sang "scrambled eggs" - just as McCartney had when inspired to write Yesterday. "He played it through and asked me what I thought. 'It's beautiful.' 'But is it as good as Yesterday?' 'They're impossible to compare.' So he played it again. And again. And he said, 'You'll see, it's just as good as Yesterday."

Howard Smith (DJ), interview w/ Danny Eccleston for Mojo: The Lennon tapes. (July, 2013)

After a particularly heavy session with the lawyers (he was also fighting deportation) Lennon would flop into his music room, pick up a guitar and tear into a primal-scream version of ‘Yesterday’. Sometimes he tried a little writing of his own. Usually he just sank further into the one Beatles song he never quite got over. Friends would find him sitting in the dark, lost in Paul’s ballad.

Christopher Sandford, McCartney. (2005)

PAUL: [laughs; mock-indignant] No. The worst thing for John was, that he didn’t write ‘Yesterday’, I wrote ‘Yesterday’, and he used to get really quite miffed, because he’d be in New York and he’d go into a restaurant, and the pianist would go du-du-du… [sings tune of ‘Yesterday’] And he’d go, “Oh… [grumbling] It’s Paul’s.”

September 19th, 2019: On BBC Newsnight

“Once we were in a Mexican restaurant, in a back room. We’d just been to see the musical Lenny, about Lenny Bruce. In the main room John spotted this strolling guitar player, which used to be standard in Mexican restaurants. He turned to me and said, “Howard, in five minutes that guitar player is gonna come in, stand next to me and play Yesterday. And sure enough, it wasn’t even three minutes. We had hardly settled down, and the guy came in and played Yesterday, a ridiculous over-the-top version. And I said, ‘John, that really does happen to you everywhere…’ And he said: ‘Everywhere.’ It drove him nuts.”

2013 Mojo article

Well, it’s difficult to choose the favourite. It’s one of my favourites. You look at your songs and kinda look to see which of the ones you think are maybe the best constructed and stuff… I think ‘Yesterday’, if it wasn’t so successful, might be my favourite. But, you know, you get that thing when something is just so successful… people often don’t want to do ‘the big one’ that everyone wants them to do. They kind of shy away from it. So… ‘Here, There and Everywhere’ with ‘Yesterday’ as a close second.

Paul McCartney, interviewed by Scott Muni (16 October 1984).

Here are Paul and John sparring in the dressing room following the remark that John made while they were rehearsing for their Blackpool Night Out TV show in August '65. The sparring between John and Paul continued while they were getting ready for the final recording. John and Paul continue their heated discussion with George as piggy-in-the-middle. The two-handed gesture clearly reveals the mood John was in, but Ringo and Brian still refused to join in the argument. Ringo poured himself a fizzy drink before the final show but John clearly decided he needed something a bit stronger before they went into the television studio.

228 of The Beatles Book Monthly Magazine - John and Paul’s argument after the Blackpool Night Out rehearsal

We never released Yesterday' as a single because we didn't think it fitted our image. In fact it was one of our most successful songs. "Michelle' we didn't want to release as a single. They might have been perceived as Paul McCartney singles and maybe John wasn't too keen on that.

The Beatles Recording Sessions The Official Abbey Road Studio Session Notes, 1962–1970

Productivity

But I was still under the false impression that – still felt, every now and then – Brian would come up and say, “It’s time to record,” or, “It’s time to do this.” And Paul started doing that. “Now we’re gonna make a movie. Now we’re gonna make a record.” And, uh, he assumed that if he didn’t call us, nobody would ever make a record. But it’s since shown that we’ve managed quite well to make records on time. [Now] I don’t have any schedule – I just think, “Now, I’ll make it,” you know. But those days, Paul would say, well, now he felt like it, and suddenly I’d have to whip out twenty songs. He would come in with about twenty good songs and say, “We’ll record next Friday.” And I suddenly had to write a stack of songs, like – [Sgt] Pepper was like that. And Magical Mystery Tour was another one of them.

September 5th, 1971 (St Regis Hotel, New York)

SHEFF: You say you haven’t really listened to Paul’s work and haven’t really talked to him since that night in your apartment— JOHN: Really talked to him, no, that’s the operative word. I haven’t really talked to him in ten years. Because I haven’t spent time with him. I’ve been doing other things and so has he. You know, he’s got twenty-five kids and about twenty million records out—how can he spend time talking? He’s always working.

John Lennon, interview w/ David Sheff for Playboy. (September, 1980)

You’d already have 5 or 6 songs so I’d think fuck it, I cant keep up with that. So I didn’t bother, you know, and I thought I don’t really care whether I was on it or not, I convinced myself it didn’t matter. And so for a period if you didn’t invite me to be on an album personally, if you three didn’t say ‘write some more songs because we like your work’, I wasn’t going to fight. There was no point in turning em out, I didn’t have the energy to turn them out and get them on an album as well.

John Lennon, MMT sessions

“John did not let Yoko’s foot-dragging slow him down. He kept working on the album, refining songs and coming up with new ones. He joked that he was becoming more and more like Paul McCartney, whose prodigious musical output had sometimes been a source of friction in their relationship. John wondered if Yoko might be feeling intimidated by his current period of fertility, just as he had once been intimidated by Paul’s greater musical productivity. Still, John kept up the pressure on Yoko over the phone, playing her his songs and encouraging her to play hers for him.”

The Last Days of John Lennon by Frederic Seaman (1991)

“He next expressed concern that Yoko was not giving the album her undivided attention because of the many ‘distractions’ she faced in New York, and even made a snide reference to her being surrounded by ‘useless sycophants.’ He again likened their situation to his old songwriting partnership with Paul McCartney, who had always been the more prolific writer and had frequently prodded John to come up with new material. ‘Paul never stopped working,’ John said with grudging admiration. ‘We’d finish one album and I’d go off and get stoned and forget about writing new stuff, but he’d start working on new material right away, and as soon as he had enough songs he’d want to begin recording again. I would have to scramble to come up with songs of my own. I wrote some of my best songs under that kind of pressure.’”

The Last Days of John Lennon by Frederic Seaman (1991)

We only spoke briefly about Paul and his comments at the time were, 'Yeah, well, you know, that's just Paul.' I think John was deeply hurt by their differences and the fact that their partnership wasn't a partnership. He felt the competition with Paul who would come in with 15 songs and want to record them all. John told me, 'I don't want to be in, you know, "Paul & the Beatles". I don't want to be a sideman for Paul. It's not what I want to do anymore.'

David Cassidy on John from Could it be forever? -My Story

Fear of abandonment

I was sort of answering him here, asking, ‘Does it need to be this hurtful?’ I think this is a good line: ‘Are you afraid, or is it true?’ – meaning, ‘Why is this argument going on? Is it because you’re afraid of something? Are you afraid of the split-up? Are you afraid of my doing something without you? Are you afraid of the consequences of your actions?’ And the little rhyme, ‘Or is it true?’ Are all these hurtful allegations true? This song came out in that kind of mood. It could have been called ‘What the Fuck, Man?’ but I’m not sure we could have gotten away with that then.

Paul McCartney, on “Dear Friend”. In The Lyrics (2021).

JOHN: [Paul] even recorded that all by himself in the other room, that’s how it was getting in those days. We came in and he’d – he’d made the whole record. Him drumming, him playing the piano, him singing. Just because – it was getting to be where he wanted to do it like that, but he couldn’t – couldn’t – maybe he couldn’t make the break from The Beatles, I don’t know what it was. But you know, I enjoyed the track. But we’re all, I’m sure – I can’t speak for George, but I was always hurt when he’d knock something off without… involving us, you know? But that’s just the way it was then.

August, 1980: interview with Playboy writer David Sheff

He is the least independent Beatle, leaning upon the group’s strength as a source for his own fundamental security.

Profile of John written by Tony Barrow (Beatles Press Officer) and published in March of 1968.

During the spring of 1968, John was as confused, lonely, and unhappy as I'd seen him in years. Though his relationship with the other Beatles was still free of serious strain, he was seeing increasingly less of Paul and George, both of whom were now pursuing independent lives and interests of their own.

In My Life, Pete Shotton

Insecurities

If you notice, in the early days the majority of singles—in the movies and everything—were mine. And then only when I became self-conscious and inhibited, and maybe the astrology wasn’t right, did Paul start dominating the group a little too much for my liking. But in the early period, obviously, I’m dominating the group. I did practically every single with my voice except for “Love Me Do.” Either my song, or my voice, or both.

David Sheff - All We Are Saying, The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono

Do I want him back, Paul? … [D]o I want it back, whatever it is, enough? Then if it is, you know, I’ve had to smother my ego for you, and I’ve had to smother me jealousy for you to carry on, for whatever reasons there is.

Jan. 13: The Lunchroom Tape

I’ll tell you a story about John. He often used to wake up in the middle of the night and ask me, ‘Why do people cover Paul’s songs so much, but never mine?’ I used to tell him, ‘It’s because you are a talented songwriter. You don’t just rhyme June with spoon. And you are a very good singer – lots of people would be too afraid to cover one of your songs.’ Then I would make him a cup of tea, and he would be okay. I just miss that sort of moment that we had.

Yoko Ono, Q Magazine Awards. (October 10th, 2005)

“[John] was much misunderstood but mostly through his own fault. He put up his brick wall of sheer bravado to screen off a chronic fear of inadequacy.”

Beatles publicist Tony Barrow

“Most people in Britain think I’m somebody who won the pools, you know,” he says drily, drawing on a Gauloise. “Won the pools and married a Hawaiian dancer or actress somewhere. Whereas in the States, we’re treated like artists. Which we are! Or anywhere else for that matter,” he added. “But here, it’s like, the lad who knew Paul, got a lucky break, won the pools and married the actress.”

John Lennon, Melody Maker’s Oct 2nd 1971 issue. (no wonder he was so upset by Too Many People if he internalized the concept of 'a lucky break' this much...)

It was Paul who showed John how to play chords properly, instead of banjo chords, which were all John knew. I think John was quite defensive when he realised that through much of his "career" with the Quarrymen, he had been playing two-fingered banjo chords on a guitar. The thought was tempered by the fact that nobody had noticed. John once told me, "Only that fookin' McCartney sussed me out. I love him, but he's such a good musician I could kill him."

Tony Bramwell, Magical Mystery Tours: My Life With The Beatles, 2005

INT: In this song, in the “I Found Out”, “I seen through junkies, I been through it all, I seen religion from Jesus to Paul.” Now a lot of people are wondering which Paul you were talking about? JOHN: (Chuckle) Whichever one you want to mention. I think the Beatles were a kind of religion. And that uh, Paul manifest or, sort of, I can’t think of the word you know — epitomized, the Beatles and the kind of things that–the kind of hero image more than the rest of us in a way. Like he was more popular with the kids, girls and things like that. So it’s in that way it’s Paul. But it’s also the other Paul, who screwed up whatever Jesus said, that one… It’s a double entendre you know, for all the fanatics who like to play things backwards and hear words of wisdom which nobody ever thought of…

WABC-FM New York, Howard Smith interviews John and Yoko (December 12, 1970).

JOHN: I expected… just a little more, you know. I mean, because if Paul and I are sort of disagreeing, and I feel weak, I think he must feel strong, you know. That’s in an argument. Uh, not that we’ve had much physical argument, you know – more a mental, like when we’re talking— But you would expect the opposition. So called. So I was just surprised, you know. And, uh, I was glad too. [laughs; hesitating] I thought, yeah, I – you know. I suddenly re– got it all in perspective, you know.

Rolling Stone December 8th, 1970

SCHOENBERGER: How is it for an 11-year-old boy to have John Lennon as a father? JOHN: It must be hell. SCHOENBERGER: Does he talk about that to you? JOHN: No, because he is a Beatle fan. I mean, what do you expect? I think he likes Paul better than me… I have the funny feeling he wishes Paul was his Dad. But unfortunately he got me…

John Lennon, interview w/ Francis Schoenberger. (Spring, 1975)

SHERIDAN: I guess he realised somewhere along the way, “Well, I’ve got to do something other than just be a rock ‘n’ roll musician if I want to impress the whole world.” He never saw himself as a very good singer, for instance. INTERVIEWER: Really? SHERIDAN: No. He never saw himself as comparable to Paul McCartney, even. Which, you know, he was playing with a guy, writing songs with a guy whom he thought was better than he was in many ways. So he had this immense ego and this immense sort of – it was like a motor in him that had to go to new lengths and reach new heights in order to impress someody or the whole world or whatever. I think the peace movement – maybe he invented it, I don’t know.

2003: Tony Sheridan

We all went through a depression after Maharishi and Brian died; it wasn’t really to do with Maharishi, it was just that period. I was really going through the “What’s it all about?” type thing – this songwriting is nothing, it’s pointless, and I’m no good, I’m not talented, and I’m shitty, and I couldn’t do anything but be a Beatle. What am I going to do about it? It lasted nearly two years and I was still in it during Pepper. I know Paul wasn’t at the time; he was feeling full of confidence, and I was going through murder during those periods. I was just about coming out of it around Maharishi, even though Brian had died – that knocked us back again. Well, it knocked me back.

John Lennon, interview w/ Barry Miles, (partially) unpublished. (September 23rd, 1969)

We’d be cutting a record and he’d say, “Yeah, I remember trying to do this part in ‘Penny Lane’. I couldn’t play it and I got so pissed because Paul could always learn things so fast.”

Andy Newmark (drummer), interview w/ Rick Mattingly for Modern Drummer. (February, 1984)

When John’s first solo album Plastic Ono Band was released I went down to Tittenhurst Park several times. Sometimes, in reaction to the general dismay over the Beatles’ break up, he would ask rhetorical, and I thought slightly absurd, questions such as “Why should I work with Paul McCartney when I can work with Yoko or Frank Zappa?”, or became irritated when I happened to say “Paul has a good voice”. “He has a high voice,” John snapped back. At others, however, he would admit to an admiration for some of Paul’s songs.

Ray Connolly (journalist), Evening Standard: John... ‘performing flea’ or ‘crutch for the world’s social lepers’. (December 10th, 1970) c/o Ray Connolly, The Beatles Archive. (2011)

“His [John] moods were particularly vacillating when he talked about Paul McCartney. While he might be scornful of Paul’s romantic musical streak on one day, on another he would be insisting, ‘Paul and me were the Beatles. We wrote the songs’ – putting down, by inference, the contributions of Ringo and George. He knew how good Paul was, but he couldn’t hide a rivalry and jealous streak that nibbled away at him. ‘Paul has a good voice,’ I once commented as we were discussing singers. ‘He has a high voice,’ came his instant correction.

Ray Connolly, The Sunday Times Magazine: John Lennon, Yoko and Me. (December 9, 2018)

I was wondering whether the relationship had kind of snapped. I believe it was always there. He was very jealous and so was I and it was all stupidity on the surface.”

Paul (Record Mirror, April 1982).

Paul was the one Beatle who posed any challenge to John’s authority and preeminence within the group. Much as John might have found it easier to handle those who—like George and Ringo—seemed to take it for granted that he was the king of the castle, Paul was the only one he considered more or less his equal. John particularly admired and respected—yet at the same time slightly resented—Paul’s independence, his self-discipline, and his all-round musical facility: all qualities in which John felt relatively lacking.

Pete Shotton, John Lennon: In My Life. (1983)

He grew even more paranoid as the acid took effect, and Derek Taylor ended up sitting by him till well after daybreak. In an attempt to rebuild John's shattered ego, he persuaded him to recount his entire life story, from early childhood onwards. Derek even went through every Lennon-McCartney song, line by line, to demonstrate to John the extraordinary scope of his contribution to the Beatles* music. By the time John and I finally left, John's spirits had been lifted considerably.

In My Life, Pete Shotton

“Bit by bit over a two-year period, I had destroyed me ego. I didn’t believe I could do anything. I just was nothing. I was shit… and she (Yoko) made me realize that I was me and that it’s all right. That was it; I started fighting again, being a loudmouth again and saying, “I can do this. Fuck it. This is what I want,” you know. “I want it, and don’t put me down.”

Rolling Stone

"John's complaint to Paul was actually an attempt to get his songs on to albums without the usual democratic vetting by the others, as the conversation between John and Paul recorded by Anthony Fawcett in September 1969 reveals. John tells Paul: If you look back on the Beatles' albums, good or bad or whatever you think of "em, you'll find that most times if anybody has got extra time it's you! For no other reason than you worked it like that. Now when we get into a studio I don't want to go through games with you to get space on the album, you know. I don't want to go through a little manoeuvering or whatever level it's on. I gave up fighting for an Aside or fighting for time. I just thought, well, I'm content to put 'Walrus" on the "B" side when I think it's much better ... I didn't have the energy or the nervous type of thing to push it, you know. So I relaxed a bit nobody else relaxed, you didn't relax in that way. So gradually I was submerging. Paul protested that he had tried to allow space on albums for John's songs, only to find that John hadn't written any. John explained, "There was no point in turning 'em out. I couldn't, didn't have the energy to turn 'em out and get 'em on as well." He then told Paul how he wanted it to be in the future: "When we get in the studio I don't care how we do it but I don't want to think about equal time. I just want it known I'm allowed to put four songs on the album, whatever happens."

Many Years from Now

Everyone settled down in their seats. Paul McCartney tried to make peace with Chris. Chris said, “Paul sat by me and said, ‘Come on, Chris, let’s be friends….’ “I said, ‘Paul, just get away from me, I don’t want nothing to do with you guys. You know, you pissed me off!” As for Lennon, Chris recalled, “John? I guess he was a wise guy. But I got the sense that, I shouldn’t say this, that he was jealous of who I was or what I did. I don’t know what his problem was, but I didn’t like it too much.”

THE TRUTH BEHIND THE BRAWL BETWEEN JOHN LENNON AND CHRIS MONTEZ IN 1963! EXCLUSIVE!

Lifestyle

I introduced Yoko to John through my own interest in the avant-garde. John wasn’t avant-garde till later. Then John became wildly avant-garde because he was so fucking constricted living out in Weybridge. He’d come into London and say, ‘What’ve you been doing, man, what have you been doing?’ and I’d say, ‘What’ve you been doing?’ ‘Well, watching telly, smoking pot.’ ‘I went out last night and saw Luciano Berio at the Italian Embassy, that was quite cool. I’ve got this new Stockhausen record, check this out. We went down Robert [Fraser]’s, got this sculpture, it was great, dig this. Wow, Paolozzi, great …’ I think John actually said, ‘I’m fucking jealous of you, man’ – he just needed to get out of Weybridge. It wasn’t his wife’s fault, she just didn’t understand how free he needed to be.

Paul McCartney, c/o Jonathon Green, Days in the Life. (1988)

Living in the Asher house gave me the base and the freedom and the independence. That, alongside all the other things, because I wasn’t married to Jane. I was pretty free. I remember John very much envying me. He said, ‘Well, if you go out with another girl, what does Jane think?’ and I said, 'Well, I don’t care what she thinks, we’re not married. We’ve got a perfectly sensible relationship.’ He was well jealous of that, because at this time he couldn’t do that, he was married with Cynthia and with a lot of energy bursting to get out. He’d tried to give Cynthia the traditional thing, but you kind of knew he couldn’t. There were cracks appearing but he could only paste them over by staying at home and getting very wrecked.

Paul McCartney, Many Years from Now

In the beginning, art was what we talked about. [John] told me he thought he was like [surrealist painter René] Magritte. Why? Because, you know, you have the image of Magritte with the bowler hat and the suit, looking very square, but really his work was very surreal and far out. John was living in suburbia, and he was very embarrassed about that, because he felt as if he was not very hip. When he invited me to his house the first time, the first thing he said when I got there was, “I think of myself as Magritte.”

Yoko Ono, New York Times: An exhibition of drawings celebrates Lennon at 64. (October 7th, 2004)

“I was never in the London scene in the 60’s whereas George and Paul be going around to everybody’s sessions, playing with everybody. I never played anywhere without the Beatles. I never jammed around with people at all. Q: Loyalty, or just didn’t interest you? A: No, just shyness, insecurity, and ah, I couldn’t go in a session and play like George plays; you know I have limited vocabulary on the guitar and piano, so what could I do going in with Cream, or whatever they were doing in those days.”

John Lennon interview

The musician countered the perception of Lennon as the only artistic Beatle, asserting his own powerful avant-garde influence on Sgt. Pepper. “I’m not trying to say it was all me, but I do think John’s avant-garde period later was really to give himself a go at what he’d seen me having a go at.”

Paul Du Noyer, The Paul McCartney World Tour Booklet: 1989–1990 (New York: EMAP Metro, 1989)

Women

“Have you noticed that it’s always men with moustaches and beards who ask me for my autograph?” I said I hadn’t but that I’d watch out in future and, sure enough, it seemed he was right. Only men with moustaches and beards asked John for his autograph. “It was always the same,” he said. “Me and George got the guys with beards wanting to know the meaning of life, while Paul and Ringo got the women!” Inevitably, perhaps, a short while later a girl came to ask John for his autograph. Much to our amusement, though doubtless to her amazement, John grabbed her around the waist and sat her down on his knee. “Where are you now McCartney?” he shouted. “I’ve got a girl at last.””

Chris Charlesworth (journalist), Rock’s Backpages: Memories of John Lennon. (2001)

“I idolized John. He was the big guy in the chip shop. I was the little guy. As I matured and grew up, I started sharing in things with him. I got up to his level. I wrote songs as he did and sometimes they were as good as his. We grew to be equals. It made him insecure. He always was, really. He was insecure with women. You know, he told me when he first met Yoko not to make a play for her.

Paul and Hunter Davies, 1981

In the mirror I looked dreadfully pale and drawn. I still couldn’t believe it. John would never be there again. I kept getting flashbacks to when he was young and awkward. He liked women, but was always a bit uncomfortable, a bit nervous in their company – always a man’s man. Paul was beautiful – still is – and I know John thought, ‘God, with him around, I don’t stand a chance.’ It’s one of those things young lads have to put up with. They’re all dead worried about whether or not they’re going to get the girls, and John, as a teenager, saw Paul as his rival. That made him moody, but it was his moodiness that gave the songs they wrote together an edge. When he was four, John had been abandoned by his dad, deserted by his mum and brought up by his Auntie Mimi. He’d always felt rejected, but that gave his writing depth, a darkness. Paul was the counterbalance, the light. You could see this in Paul’s eyes and the girls just tumbled in and were washed away. What John never really appreciated was that he, too, had charisma, and that women did think he was sexy.

Cilla Black, What’s It All About. (2003)

SALEWICZ: Oh, he was presumably very paranoid. PAUL: I think so. I mean, he warned me off Yoko once. You know, “Look, this is my chick!” ’Cause he knew my reputation. I mean, we knew each other rather well. And um, I felt… I just said, “Yeah, no problem.” But I did sort of feel he ought to have known I wouldn’t, but. You know, he was going through “I’m just a jealous guy”. He was a paranoid guy. And he was into drugs. Heavy.

Paul, September, 1986 (MPL Communications, London)

That’s typical Paul [wanting me to stay inside the George V Hotel with the band instead of going out by myself to see Paris]. It’s just so silly of me to stay at the hotel. It’s just that he’s so insecure. For instance, he keeps saying he’s not interested in the future, but he must be because he says it so often. The trouble is, he wants the fans’ adulation and mine too. He’s so selfish, it’s his biggest fault. He can’t see that my feelings for him are real and that the fans’ are fantasy. Of course, it’s the trouble with all boys. When I first met [the Beatles], I liked them all. Then, when I found out that I liked Paul more, the others became angry with me.

Jane Asher, c/o Michael Braun, Love Me Do!: The Beatles’ Progress. (1964)

"Q: "Now that Paul is the only bachelor Beatle, do you find that the girls gravitate more to him than they do to the rest of you fellas? How do you feel about that?" JOHN: "They always did!" RINGO: "Yeah." PAUL: "Well, the thing that we found... We found after all this business, of all the buttons that say 'I love Ringo,' "I love John,' John's were outselling everyone's." JOHN: "A rather distinctive Beatle." PAUL: "A distinctive Beatle.""

Press conference, New York, August 22, 1966

JOHN: Well, uh… [distracted] There was a lot of – [inaudible] I suppose, but I was so full of myself then, I didn’t give a shit what he did. HILBURN: Full of what? JOHN: Full of meself. Centered, in other words. So I just— HILBURN: So in a sense, you weren’t comparing as much as you might have— JOHN: [matter-of-fact] There’s no comparison for me. ‘Cause we’re— HILBURN: You mean comparing artistically, or you mean comparing sales-wise and stuff? JOHN: Oh, sales-wise, forget it. He always had more fans than me, in the Cavern… So there’s no comparison on that level. And on the other level, I don’t think it counts. I think it’s like comparing… I don’t know, Magritte and, er – Picasso, if you want to put it on that level. Or whatever. How can you compare it?

October 10th, 1980 (Hit Factory, New York)

The same popularity, meaning Paul was always more popular than the rest of us, was going down in the dance halls in Liverpool so it didn’t cause any big surprise. I mean the kids saw him, the girls would go ooh, you know, right away.

John Lennon on The Tomorrow Show – 04/08/1975

Breakup/post breakup

"There was amazing competition between us and we both thrived on it. In terms of music, you cannot beat a bit of competition. Of course, there's times when it hurts, and it's inevitably going to reach a stage where it's hard to live with. Sooner or later, it's going to burn itself out. I think that's what happened at the end of The Beatles.

Paul - Uncut, July 2004

I felt sad, you know. I also felt that film was set up by Paul, for Paul. That’s one of the main reasons the Beatles ended, you know, cause... I can’t speak for George but I pretty damn well know. We got fed up with being sidemen for Paul, after Brian died that’s what began to happen and the camera work was set up to show Paul and not to show anybody else and that’s how I felt about it. And on top of that, the people who cut it, cut it as Paul is god and we’re just lying around.

John Lennon: The Rolling Stone Interview, Part One

Though thinking of Paul caused John pain, he could never get McCartney out of his head; Paul’s music was everywhere, and it always made him jealous, even the songs he enjoyed. In Bermuda, John was listening to all kinds of things on the radio, not just the Muzak and classical he listened to in New York. Coming Up, Paul’s hit single from McCartney II, was unavoidable. Every time he tuned in the BBC or one of the local stations, there it was. It began to drive John crackers; every word of the song was addressed directly to him. Ultimately, he came to admire it and draw inspiration from it.”

Robert Rosen, Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon, (2000)

At that moment, John was at his most unpredictable. Suddenly his fears that his money was going to be taken away from him, that he was going to be cheated, that he had to have as much money as possible, had all come into play. This was also John’s way of resisting the reality that the Beatles were officially about to come to end, and that Paul was about to prevail.

Loving John, MAY PANG (1983)

“The funny part is that I let him get away with it for so long. You know, I used to dread it when he was in town, but I never had the sense to go out to the island or just not answer the door. He’d come striding in with a guitar under one arm and Linda under the other, asking me what was new, knowing nothing was new. Then he’d always ask if I’d heard his latest, which I usually hadn’t. The guitar was so we could sing together, but that was never going to happen. I’d just tell him that I was really busy being a father. He must have seen through that because he’s a father many times over and that certainly doesn’t tie him down. It wasn’t till I told him that I was real busy that if he wanted to see me he’d have to call first that he got the message to leave off. I have your tarot advice to thank for that.”

John Green, Dakota Days. (1983)

COSTAS: if somebody didn’t, mixed in with it all, genuinely love somebody, genuinely care about their feelings about them, they wouldn’t go to the lengths, in whatever strange way, that John did to lash back at you! They wouldn’t hold a pig on the cover to parody you holding a sheep in ‘RAM’! They wouldn’t, you know, call your stuff rubbish and write ‘How Do You Sleep’. They wouldn’t do it! PAUL: Oh, I think that’s right. I think that’s right. He was- he was very hurt, there were people turning him against me. It was his way of defending himself. He was- he was quite pissed off about the ‘McCartney bandwagon’ as he once called it, you know? [mimicking John] ‘Oh, bloody- he’s gettin’ on all the telly, he’s sellin’ records!’ Yeah, he was- he was a jealous guy! But I understood that! That was John! You love it or you leave it! And I stuck with it for many, many years!

Paul McCartney, Interviewed by Bob Costa, 1991.

It was a weird time. The people who were managing us were whispering in our ears and trying to turn us against each other and it became like a feuding family. In the end, I think John had some tough breaks. He used to say, ‘Everyone is on the McCartney bandwagon.’ He wrote ‘I’m Just A Jealous Guy’ and he said that the song was about me. So I think it was just some kind of jealousy. I had to try and forgive John because I sort of knew where he was coming from. I knew that he was trying to get rid of the Beatles in order to say to Yoko, ‘Look, I’ve even given that up for you. I’m ready to devote myself to you and to the avant-garde.’ I don’t know if it’s true. One thing I’m really glad about is that I didn’t answer him back. It’s very difficult to do that when someone is attacking you. But I would have felt sick as a dog now if I had.

Paul McCartney, interview w/ Diane de Dubovay for Playgirl. (February, 1985)

PAUL: He was into heroin, and – see, which I hadn’t realised [the extent of] till just now. It’s all [starting to click a bit] in my brain. I was just figuring, oh, there’s John, my buddy, and he’s turning on me, ’cause he perceives that I’m... “McCartney bandwagon,” he once said to me. “Oh, they’re all on the McCartney bandwagon.” And to me, I was just releasing a record, okay. So you can call it the McCartney bandwagon, but it’s no harm. It’s no more than anyone else does when they put out a record. And yet things like that were hurting him, and looking back on it now I just think that it’s a bit sad really.

September, 1986 (MPL Communications, London)

Lennon’s jealousy of McCartney continued throughout the rest of his life. Lennon’s staff at the Dakota, where he spent his final years, attest to frequent tirades about his former partner. In his personal journals, Lennon wrote about Paul “almost every day” according to author Robert Rosen, who read the diaries in 1981 after they were stolen by Dakota employee Fred Seaman. When asked, in 2010, about the most disturbing takeaway of the diaries, Rosen replied “That’s easy. His jealousy of Paul, his love of money and his obsession with the occult.”

Robert Rosen

RR: Obviously I knew about the rivalry with McCartney, and the jealousy, but I think the extent of it...how often he thought about McCartney, and how jealous he was...I found that pretty shocking. I found it shocking that he was so into money. And the emphasis that was put on the occult was pretty shocking. The extent that they got into it.

An Interview with Robert Rosen

On one McCartney photo, Lennon scribbled the words, “I’m always perfect” as coming from McCartney’s mouth. He drew a Hitler-style moustache on another photo of McCartney. In an entry noting McCartney’s marriage to Linda Eastman, Lennon crossed out “wedding” and wrote “funeral”, the Observer said. But in a final tender moment, the Observer said, Lennon wrote under a photo of himself with McCartney: “The minutes are crumbling away.”

Associated Press: Lennon’s resentment of McCartney reflected in book notes. (July 20th, 1986)

So we went through a lot of those problems. But the nice thing was afterwards each one of them in turn very, very quietly and very briefly said, ‘Oh, thanks for that.’ That was about all I ever heard about it. But again, John turned it round. He said, ‘But you’re always right, aren’t you?’ See, there was always this thing. I mean, it seemed crazy for me because I thought the idea was to try and get it right, you know. It was quite surprising to find that if you did get it right, people could then turn that one around and say: ‘But you’re always right aren’t you?’ It’s like moving the goal posts.

Paul McCartney: An Innocent Man? (October, 1986)

So, here we sit, watching the mighty Dylan and the mighty McCartney and the mighty Jagger slide down the mountain, blood and mud in their nails. Well, that’s the way the world is, ha ha ha, that’s the way the world is, oh yes. The difference between now and a couple of years back is that whenever there was a new thing out by any of the aforesaid, I used to feel a sense of panic and competition. And now, I just feel like even the last few months it’s changed. I would send out for their albums or something just to hear it. There doesn’t seem any point now. Let’s take a break. How do we break? Just put it off. Still, even now, talking about them or thinking about them is still really being involved in it, because the ultimate dissociation would be not even to know they had an album out! [laughs] But now at least I get pleasure in it instead of panic. The main pleasure being of course that it’s all a load of shit. So I suppose I’ll always feel competitive with them, because they were from that same generation, but when I hear something like “Pop Muzik” by Robin Scott or the Blondie single, I really enjoy it, you know. I don’t feel competitive about it.

Lennon audio diaries

“They [Lennon & McCartney] saw each other again in 1977. The Lennons and McCartneys ate dinner together at Le Cirque, Paul’s favourite French restaurant in New York. John regretted going; it was a loathsome night. Paul and Linda blathered on and on about how perfect their lives were, how they had everything they’d ever wanted, and how they were as happy as they’d ever been. Something very paranoid suddenly occurred to John. Maybe Lorraine Boyle was spying on him for the McCartneys! He woke up the next morning still feeling disturbed; he consulted the Oracle. Swan assured him that Paul and Linda were frustrated and unsatisfied. Their marriage was in trouble, he said, predicting it would break up within the year. Lately Swan’s visions had been astonishingly accurate. Relieved, John began composing a song—a little ditty, really, that would never be released—in praise of the Oracle’s powers. But he still couldn’t understand why Paul and Linda had been together for as long as they had. There appeared to be a psychic connection between John and Paul. Every time McCartney was in town, John would hear Paul’s music in his head.”

Robert Rosen, Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon, (2000)

We agreed that if the press got hold of this record we’d pull the plug on it. I’d tell the musicians that John wasn’t sure if he could do it. He was very, very insecure. He didn’t think he had it anymore, you know. He thought he was too old, he just couldn’t write, he couldn’t sing, he couldn’t play, nothing. It took a while.

Jack Douglas on working with John Lennon on Double Fantasy.

“Yoko was an extremist and was even more intense than John taking any idea or comment of his to the limit. If, for example, he complained about any of his fellow Beatles she would hint that that Beatle had always been an enemy implying that John should never deal with that person again. Her extreme positions fascinated John and help him take his mind off himself but when she became self-involved and paranoid herself -her paranoia usually dealt with her career, her fame and the fact that even though she had always been famous everyone conspired to keep her from getting even more famous- he had no place to turn. His insecurity about his solo career, his childhood, his relationships with the other Beatles, the way the public perceived Yoko overwhelmed him and he became more and more involved with drugs.”

May Pang, Loving John (1984)

Klein, on his first meeting with John: “I thought John was losing confidence in himself, and I really didn’t know who had written exactly what, so I couldn’t give John the encouragement he needed. If Paul was really the main factor in the making of records — I mean, if things were really going to fall apart without him — I needed to know that and be able to deal with it. It turned out, of course, that John had written most of the stuff. He’d forgotten a lot of what he’d contributed … John wrote … 60 or 70 percent of Eleanor Rigby. He just didn’t remember till I sat down and had him sort through it all … Everybody thought McCartney was the genius songwriter who did it all by himself and it wasn’t true.”

Allen Klein, Playboy: A candid conversation with the embattled manager of the Beatles. (November, 1971)

Few people disagreed, however, that McCartney always cared deeply about Lennon’s opinion of him. He was still insecure enough on this point to invite Andy Peebles, the Radio 1 DJ who interviewed John the weekend before his death, to join him early on the morning of 10 December. Peebles went to AIR, where he found Paul both ‘deeply shocked [and] obsessed about what John and Yoko had said about him.’ An irony not lost on Peebles, among others, was that Lennon himself had repeatedly tried to find out what Paul had thought of Double Fantasy. “For public consumption,” says another of his final interviewers, “John seemed not to care. The fact that he mentioned McCartney’s name on average ten times an hour suggests otherwise … The strong feeling was that Paul and Yoko were the only two people in the world whose approval he gave a toss for.” Time passed. Paul locked the door of his home studio and played (Just Like) Starting Over, the first single from Double Fantasy. Top volume. For days.

Christopher Sandford, McCartney. (2005)

He became so jealous in the end. You know he wouldn’t let me even touch his baby. He got really crazy with jealousy at times.

Paul McCartney, “off the record” conversation with Hunter Davies. (May 3rd, 1981)

“If you do two LPs there might be a little change!” John laughs. “But until then I don’t mind. When she wants the A side, that’s when we start fighting.

John Lennon, interview w/ Jonathan Cott for Rolling Stone: Yoko Ono and her sixteen-track voice. (March 18th, 1971)

Paul's competitiveness

“My role in [Tug of War] was to goad Paul a bit. I think when he and John Lennon split up, he missed John’s goading enormously. It’s almost like they collaborated by means of competition. John would often say cruel things to Paul and Paul would come back and say, ‘I’ll show him what I can do,’ and Paul could be equally cruel to John and then John would come up with something. Despite the love they had for each other, they would still egg each other on in a funny kind of way. I think Paul missed that spur.”

George Martin, interview w/ Paul Grein for Billboard: Martin/McCartney ‘Tug’ team scores. (February 2nd, 1983)

SMITH: Were you closer to any one of them than the others? GEORGE M.: Not really – certainly not in those days, no. Gradually, as things changed, then they went into their little spheres and they became much more – the rivalry between John and Paul became much more marked. So they were never great cooperators. They were never great – they were never Rodgers and Hart. They never collaborated in the sense of sitting down to write a song together. One would have the idea for a song, and take the other guy and say, “Look, I need your help here on this line, can you give it to me?” And that was the way they collaborated. And generally speaking their songs were pitched against each other, [in the sense of] “Well, you’ve written that, hey, listen to mine,” so it was a competitive collaboration. And it was valuable nonetheless, because – in fact Paul misses it terribly now. He misses that spark of John being rude to him and saying, “You can’t write that, Paul, that’s awful,” you know. He needs that. And only John could say that most effectively.

October 22nd, 1986: George Martin

"Paul McCartney was the most competitive person I've ever met. John [Lennon] wasn't competitive. He just thought everyone else was s-h-*-t."

Ray Davies

TV GUIDE: At the time of Wings, how competitive were you with your former Beatles band mates? PAUL: Really competitive. I don’t think any of us would have ever admitted it. I know we would listen to what each other was doing and [think], “Oh, my God, that’s good.” I know for a fact John did once with [my] song ‘Coming Up’. It was on a documentary, I think, about John, where his recording manager at the time said John listened to it and went, “Oh, I’ll have to go back to work.” I found that a very nice fact that I egged John into doing something.

Paul McCartney, interview w/ Lisa Bernhard and Steven Reddicliffe for TV Guide: Listen to what the man says. (May 1st, 2001)

#the beatles #paul mccartney #john lennon #mclennon #to be clear paul has his own serious jealousies and insecurities #primarily about whether or not john loved him #but this is more about what lead to the breakup than how it affected him afterwards #paul thrived with someone to compete against but it hurt john a lot and seemed to wear him down #i personally believe it's the number 1 cause of the breakdown of their relationship and the breakup itself #because it lead to john stacking his deck with allies like yoko and klein and looking for his own niches to succeed in without paul there

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