Yesterday and Today
By Hunter Davies
Found in the Southern Illinoisian
(originally published in a British women's magazine "Woman." )
December 26, 1985
The Editor's Note: After the Beatles broke up, John Lennon was openly critical upon McCartney, but McCartney chose to remain silent. Later, McCartney opened up to writer Hunter Davies, who wrote The Beatles. What has appeared in recent news accounts is a quote by McCartney who said Lennon was a "maneuvering swine and has become Martin Luther Lennon." McCartney has since said his quote was taken out of context. What follows is the story behind the headlines. The feelings McCartney had for Lennon, whom he called "a jealous man who was paranoid about McCartney's songwriting abilities."
Written by Hunter Davies
Not long after John's death, I had some strange conversations with Paul. He seemed so upset by so many things, not least of which was John's death. This was in May 1981, and I jotted down in a diary some of the things he told me.
John's death on December 8, 1980, had grown into a sort of cult, with instant books appearing, and the papers were still full of it. Many people in praising John were putting down Paul, or so it appeared.
Paul rang me on May 3, 1981, and went on for over an hour, all about how hurt he was. He said he was fed up with all these people going on about him and John and getting it all wrong, only he knew the truth. It wasn't anything like the things being said.
Paul had a go at me for having gone on some TV news program after John's death. In my tribute to him, I had said that John was more the hard man with the cutting edge, while Paul was more soft and melodic.
But what had really got Paul upset that day was an interview with Yoko in which Yoko was quoted as saying that Paul had "hurt John more than any other person." Paul thought they were amongst the cruelest words he had ever read. "No one ever goes on about the times John hurt me,"said Paul, "when he kept calling my music 'muzak'. People keep on saying I hurt him. But where's examples? When did I do it?
"No one ever says. It's just always the same, blaming me. Could I have hurt John more than anyone in the world? More than the person who ran down Julia, John's mother, in a car?
"We were always in competition. I wrote Penny Lane, so he wrote Strawberry Fields. That's how it was. But that was in competitions.
"I can't understand why Yoko was saying this. The last time I spoke to her, she was great. She told me she and John had just been playing one of my albums and had cried."
What did he think then might have hurt John? "There's only one incident I can think of which John has publicly mentioned. It was when I went off with Ringo and did, "Why Don't We Do It In the Road?" It wasn't a deliberate thing. John and George were tied up finishing something, and me and Ringo were free, just hanging around. So I said to Ringo, 'Let's go and do this.'
"Nobody knows how much I helped John. Me and Linda went to California and talked him out of his so called Lost Weekend when he was full of drugs. We told him to go back to Yoko. And not long after he did. He never gave me an inch, but he took so many yards and feet.
"He always suspected me. He accused me of scheming to buy over Northern Songs (the company owning rights to many Beatles songs) without telling him. I was thinking of something to invest in. And Peter Brown (the Beatles personal manager) said, 'What about Northern Songs? Invest in yourself.' So I bought a few shares, about 1000 I think.
"John went mad, suspecting some plot. Then he bought some himself. He was always thinking I was cunning and devious. That's my reputation. Someone who's charming, but a clever lad.
"I do stand back at times. Unlike John, I look ahead. I'm careful. John would go on for the free guitar and just accept it straight away in the mad rush. I would stand back and think, 'but what's this bloke really after? What will it mean?' I don't like being the careful one. I'd rather be immediate like John. He was all action. John was always the loudest in any crowd. He had the loudest voice. He was the cock who crowed the loudest.
"Me and George used to call him the cockeral in the studio. I was never out to screw him, never. He could have he could be a maneuvering swine, which no one ever realized. Now, since the death, he's become Martin Luther Lennon. But that really wasn't him either. He wasn't some sort of holy saint. He was still really a debunker.
"We grew to be equals. I made him insecure. He always was really. He was insecure with women. You know, he told me, when he first met Yoko, not to play for her.
"I saw somewhere that he says he helped on 'Eleanor Rigby', yeah, about half a line. He also forgot completely that I wrote the tune for 'In My Life', that was my tune. But perhaps he just made a mistake on that, forgot.
"I didn't hate John. People said to me, when he said those things on his record about me, 'you must hate him.' But I didn't. I don't. We were once having a right slagging session. I remember how he took off his granny glasses. I can still see him. He put them down and said, 'It's only me, Paul.' And then he put them back on again, and we continued slagging.
"That phrase keeps coming back to me all the time. 'It's only me.' It's become a mantra in my mind.
"Until I was about 30, I thought the world was an exact place. Now I know that life just sputters along. John knew that he was the great debunker. He'd be debunking all this death thing now."
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