Off The Beatle Track

In 2024, Peter Brown and Stephen Gaines published All You Need Is Love: The Beatles in Their Own Words. The book contains interviews with Paul, George, and Ringo; Beatle spouses (Pattie Boyd Harrison Clapton, Cynthia Lennon Twist, Yoko Ono, and Maureen Starkey); members of The Beatles’ inner circle (Alistair Taylor, Dick James, Neil Aspinall, and Derek Taylor); and other notable actors in The Beatles’ story (Nat Weiss, Alexis Madras, Robert Fraser, John Dunbar, May Pang, John Eastman, and Allen Klein). Brown and Gaines conducted their interviews for their 1983 book The Love You Make: An Insider’s Story of The Beatles.

I may write a post on The Love You Make later; for now, I’ll mention that in his 2010 book Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney, Howard Sounes writes that

The new year started badly for Paul, when, on 28 January 1983, the Sun splashed the story of a Liverpool typist who claimed the former Beatle was the father of her son. . . . [T]he Sun ran with the tale thanks to one of Paul’s former employees, Peter Brown, who revealed it in his new memoir, The Love You Make. . . . [Paul] and Linda were furious at Peter Brown. When Brown sent them a copy of the book they burnt it ritually, Linda taking photographs as it went up in flames.*

In their book of interviews–published 41 years after The Love You Make–Brown and Gaines state that their interview with Paul “is the last he gave before John was killed in December of 1980.” It’s been reported that Paul’s interview was “conducted a month before the murder of Lennon.”

So what did Paul have to say about his relationship with John in the autumn of 1980?

While answering a question about Allen Klein, Paul mentions Yoko’s “sitting on our amps.”

Looking at it now, I feel a bit sorry for her because, if only I had been able to understand what the situation was and think, wait a minute, here’s a girl who’s not had enough attention. I can now not make this into a major crisis and just sort of say, ‘Sure, what harm is she doing on the amps?’

Gaines asks Paul whether the other Beatles were “anti-Linda.” Paul says “[Y]eah. . . . Like we were anti-Yoko.” He goes on,

But you know John and Yoko. . . the way to get their friendship is to do everything the way they require it. To do anything else is how not to get their friendship. This is still how it is with John and Yoko. I know that if I absolutely lie down on the ground and just do everything like they say and laugh at all their jokes and don’t expect my jokes to ever get laughed at, and don’t expect any of my opinions ever to carry any weight whatsoever, if I’m willing to do all that, then we can be friends. But if I have an opinion that differs from theirs, then I’m sort of an enemy. And naturally, paint myself a villain with a big mustache on, because to the ends of the earth, that’s how they both see me.

Oof. Given what happened shortly after the interview, that’s difficult to read. Paul says that John and Yoko considered him “an enemy” and “a villain”–and this was in 1980, not in 1970 (when John gave his Rolling Stone interview) or ’71 (when John wrote How Do You Sleep?).

Later in the Brown and Gaines interview, Paul apologizes for “that business about where I turned up at [John’s] flat” without phoning first and for buying “some of our [Northern] song shares” without John’s knowledge:

They’re very suspicious people [John and Yoko], and one of the things that hurt me out of the whole affair was that. . . I’d still never managed to impress upon them that I wasn’t trying to screw them. I don’t think that I have to this day.

I can’t profess to understand the complexities of their relationship, but Paul rarely spoke as forthrightly about the difficulty in trying to maintain his friendship with John as he did in the Brown and Gaines interview.** Relationships have peaks and valleys, and Paul sure seems to be describing a valley. Which isn’t to say that he and John ever stopped loving each other, merely that John was easier to love on some days than on others. I’d bet that John would say the same about Paul.

In Barry Miles’ 1997 Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, Paul discusses the months following John’s death:

It was a tough period but luckily, once that had subsided, I was able to think, At least we parted on good terms. Thank God for that.

Maybe Paul’s right. Maybe despite what he said in the 1980 interview, Paul really did consider that he and John were on good terms at the time of John’s death. Maybe his love for John overwhelmed his complaints about John. Or maybe Paul’s telling a story to make himself–and us–feel better.

*Brown responded, “Paul was always a drama queen.”

**I encourage you to read the entire interview. You may conclude that I’m guilty of cherry-picking and that Paul was not nearly as negative as I portray him to be.