Paul McCartney Had Some Choice Words For John Lennon In A Recent Interview

It’s impossible to describe just how big The Beatles were in their heyday. “Beatlemania” ruled the 1960s, and every show the band staged was packed with screaming young women desperate to get a glimpse of their idols. But then, suddenly, it was all over.

And it was McCartney who seemingly broke up The Beatles for good. In 1970 he released his debut solo record, McCartney, and with it came a press release that shocked fans. The star replied to the question, “Are you planning a new album or single with The Beatles?” by simply saying “No.”

Newspapers immediately started reporting that McCartney had quit The Beatles, and the rest of the band freaked out. They dispatched Ringo Starr to McCartney’s house to ask him to push back the release of his album until after Let It Be. McCartney reacted with anger, however, and threw Starr out.

This news came to light in 1971, when a sworn statement from Starr was heard in a courtroom as part of the legal proceedings to dissolve The Beatles. The drummer said, “I went to see Paul. To my dismay, he went completely out of control, shouting at me, prodding his fingers towards my face, saying, ‘I’ll finish you now’ and ‘You’ll pay.’ He told me to put my coat on and get out.”

McCartney later expressed regret about this. “It hadn’t actually come to blows, but it was near enough,” he said in 2000’s Beatles Anthology. “Unfortunately it was Ringo. I mean, he was probably the least to blame of any of them.” The tensions in the band had clearly reached a breaking point.

And Lennon had been quietly angling to leave the band for a while. In fact, you could say that he’d already embarked on a solo career before McCartney made his announcement. He’d already performed solo tracks accompanied by Yoko Ono, after all.

Lennon was also upset that McCartney had tried to release a solo album first — perhaps in part because he had wanted to do that himself. “We were all hurt that [McCartney] didn’t tell us that was what he was going to do,” Lennon told Rolling Stone in 1971, though he claimed he had never been angry about it.

But who was it who really put the final nail in the coffin for The Beatles? Well, different people have said different things. In 2009 Rolling Stone published an article titled “Why The Beatles Broke Up” that attempted to get to the bottom of what had happened. And by 1969, the magazine claimed, McCartney was the only Beatle “who had any sense of urgency” about the band.

The death of Brian Epstein in 1967 had cast a dark shadow over things, it seemed. Numerous observers believed that the manager had been fundamental to the band’s stability, and without him the band had been cut adrift. And while Lennon thought Epstein’s passing marked the end for the band, McCartney’d had other ideas.

Within a week of Epstein’s death, McCartney had talked the other Beatles into making a new movie to be aired on the BBC. This turned out to be Magical Mystery Tour, and it didn’t go well. When the film aired in the U.K. over the Christmas holidays, the media absolutely roasted it. Since McCartney had been the driving force behind the project, this did little to help his standing within the band.

And then there was Yoko Ono. She’d had a bad time of it as Lennon’s girlfriend in a period when sexism and racism were rife. Many fans of the band hated her. The other Beatles didn’t like her much, either. Lennon usually flew off the handle whenever anyone offered him advice during recording sessions. But he let Ono do it, and the band resented that.

Also, egos were getting way out of control during the final days of The Beatles. The 2009 Rolling Stone article notes, “Each of The Beatles treated the others as his supporting musicians — which made for some spectacular performances and some explosive studio moments.” Starr left the band for a couple of weeks, and then Harrison seemingly quit for good.

Harrison walked out during a recording session. He’d had a fight with Lennon that reportedly saw the two trade punches. But Lennon seemingly wasn’t all that bothered. He got Ono to do Harrison’s parts instead. And the other two Beatles had no idea what to do. They believed that Lennon might also leave if they got involved.

Lennon floated the idea of the band bringing Eric Clapton in as a permanent replacement for Harrison, but thankfully it didn’t come to that. The Beatles were able to make up shortly afterward, though tensions remained. The other members of the band still deeply resented Ono’s status as the “fifth Beatle.”

Then The Beatles’ iconic album Abbey Road was released in September 1969. But it was arguably the last hurrah for the band. That same month, Lennon played the Toronto Rock ‘N’ Roll Revival with Ono and Eric Clapton. And he seemed to prefer their company to that of his bandmates.

According to Rolling Stone, Lennon dropped an absolute bombshell shortly after that show. When McCartney said in a meeting that The Beatles should go back on the road, Lennon reportedly replied, “I think you’re daft. I wasn’t going to tell you, but I’m breaking the group up. It feels good. It feels like a divorce.”

Whether Lennon actually meant it was open to debate. Over the following year, he made statements that indicated the band were still together and making plans for the future. Harrison apparently wanted The Beatles to go back on tour as well. But McCartney’s solo album and “No” statement seemed to completely close that chapter.

Everyone knows the rest of the story. Lennon was shot and killed in 1980 just as he was embarking on a comeback. Across the entire world, fans mourned and paid tribute. The Beatles may have already split, but now it really was all over.

George Harrison has also since passed away, dying of cancer in 2001. After his former bandmate’s passing, McCartney released a statement saying, “We knew he’d been ill for a long time. He was a lovely guy and a very brave man and had a wonderful sense of humor. He is really just my baby brother.”

McCartney and Starr are both still alive, of course, and McCartney’s the more public and active of the two. In 2020 he gave an in-depth interview to GQ magazine and spoke about his old bandmates. He still dreamed about them every now and again, he said.

McCartney told the magazine, “The thing is, if you’re a performer, or me as a performer, I find that dreams are often related to a gig or getting ready for a gig or being in a recording studio. And I think a lot of performers are like that. So, often, John or George will be in there.”

McCartney continued, “And the good thing is you don’t really think anything of it. It’s just normal, like, ‘Oh, yeah?’ And you’re just chatting away, talking about what we’re going to do, as in making a record or something. So [John’s] often there, I’m glad to say... And it’s normally very pleasant, you know? I love those boys.”

But despite that touching statement, McCartney also has memories of the less pleasant times. He went into detail about the infamous Beatles breakup during a 2021 chat with the journalist John Wilson. This was broadcast as part of the BBC Radio 4 series This Cultural Life.

McCartney remembered that the breakup of The Beatles had been the “most difficult period” of his entire life. His desire had been for the band to carry on, especially as they were continuing to make “pretty good stuff” at that point. “This was my band, this was my job, this was my life, so I wanted it to continue,” McCartney declared.

Instead, McCartney claimed, the blame lay at Lennon’s feet. “The point of it, really, was that John was making a new life with Yoko,” he said. “John had always wanted to sort of break loose from society because, you know, he was brought up by his aunt Mimi, who was quite repressive, so he was always looking to break loose.”

And McCartney also discussed the fact that he was often the one blamed for the split. “I had to live with that because that was what people saw. All I could do is say, no… I am not the person who instigated the split. Oh no, no, no. John walked into a room one day and said I am leaving The Beatles. Is that instigating the split or not?” he said pointedly.

McCartney told Wilson that after this, the band had been left confused as to where exactly they stood. Their manager Allen Klein made them keep everything away from the press. “It was weird because we all knew it was the end of The Beatles, but we couldn’t just walk away,” McCartney explained.

In the interview, McCartney remembered Klein as “dodgy,” adding, “Around about that time, we were having little meetings, and it was horrible. It was the opposite of what we were.” But, according to the star, he got “fed up of hiding it” and “let the cat out of the bag.”

As for the court case, McCartney recalled, “I had to fight, and the only way I could fight was in suing the other Beatles because they were going with Klein. And they thanked me for it years later. But I didn’t instigate the split. That was our Johnny coming in one day and saying, ‘I’m leaving the group.’”

Yet McCartney indicated that he wasn’t trying to reignite the old feud between himself and Lennon. He added that Lennon had “wanted to go in a bag and lie in bed for a week in Amsterdam for peace. And you couldn’t argue with that.” He didn’t blame Ono either, saying, “They were a great couple. There was huge strength there.”

As for Lennon’s side of the Beatles breakup story? Obviously, he can’t speak for himself anymore, but he went into it with Rolling Stone in 1971. The interviewer asked, “Always The Beatles were talked about — and The Beatles talked about themselves — as being four parts of the same person. What’s happened to those four parts?”

Lennon said in response, “They remembered that they were four individuals. You see, we believed the Beatles myth, too. I don’t know whether the others still believe it. We were four guys… We were just a band that made it very, very big, that’s all. Our best work was never recorded.”

Then Lennon added, “You know Brian [Epstein] put us in suits and all that, and we made it very, very big. But we sold out, you know. The music was dead before we even went on the theater tour of Britain… That’s why we never improved as musicians; we killed ourselves then to make it.”

“The Beatles broke up after Brian died,” Lennon continued. “We made the double album, the set. It’s like if you took each track off it and made it all mine and all George’s. It’s like I told you many times: it was just me and a backing group, Paul and a backing group, and I enjoyed it. We broke up then.”

However, Lennon also believed that McCartney had tried to “take over” the band after Epstein’s death. “I don’t know how much of this I want to put out,” he told Rolling Stone. “Paul had an impression — he has it now like a parent — that we should be thankful for what he did for keeping The Beatles going. But when you look back upon it objectively, he kept it going for his own sake.”

Now, though, McCartney seems to be the keeper of The Beatles’ legacy. In the 2021 BBC interview, he mentioned that he’d recently found an unrecorded song called “Tell Me Who He Is.” Perhaps it was one of those “best works” that Lennon had spoken about.

And McCartney hadn’t only rediscovered that track. He’d also uncovered a lost radio play penned by both him and Lennon. “For years, I’ve been telling people that me and John wrote a play,” the star explained. “It is quite a funny thing called Pilchard, and it is about the Messiah, actually.” That’s not all.

In November 2021 McCartney released a book called The Lyrics — an autobiographical work that included a lot of previously unpublished photos and letters. He said in a press release that he hoped the volume would “show people something about [his] songs and [his] life which they haven’t seen before.”

And there’s still time for McCartney to reveal more on The Beatles. One of the most touching revelations about Lennon and the band breakup actually came out in the GQ interview. McCartney said that before Lennon died, the two had finally “settled [their] family squabble.” The musical legend added, “I was able to see [John] and to speak to him on a number of occasions, so we were friends till the end.”

Despite their many ups and downs, it seems the band just couldn’t stay mad at one another. The remaining members all met up in 2001, and they all knew that Harrison didn’t have very long left to live. As Harrison’s physician, Gil Lederman, would go on to recall, “There were some tears — but there was more laughter than anything else.”

“It was a spirited affair, not a sombre one,” Lederman continued. “There were lots of laughs and lots of fun. They spent hours reminiscing… At the end, after both Paul and Ringo had left, [George] was fine and calm. He was a very happy man. This meeting meant so much to him.”

“We held hands,” McCartney revealed. “It’s funny, even at the height of our friendship — as guys — you would never hold hands. It just wasn’t a Liverpool thing.” With both men knowing Harrison wouldn’t be around much longer, though, they threw aside any outdated notions of what men can or can’t do. As McCartney said, “It was lovely.”

For some reason, while The Beatles were known as the Fab Four, history’s chosen mostly to focus on Lennon and McCartney. Yet the band also contained a second duo whose friendship and creative synchronicity was arguably just as important: Harrison and Starr. In fact, Harrison was integral in Starr joining the band.

In 1962 The Beatles were plying their trade in their native Liverpool, England, having come together two years previously. Their drummer, though, wasn’t Ringo Starr, who was then a member of Rory Storm & the Hurricanes. Behind the kit in The Beatles was Pete Best, a man who’d soon be forced out of the group to make room for Starr.

Now, while Starr and Harrison were extremely close in many ways, their relationship did have some rocky periods. Take, for example, the time Harrison reportedly considered taking legal action against Starr. That isn’t very friendly! It all stemmed from Harrison being upset when he heard Starr’s 1976 re-recording of Harrison’s “I’ll Still Love you.”

And it was Harrison who apparently pushed for The Beatles to recruit Starr. In The Beatles Anthology, Harrison revealed, “I was quite responsible for stirring things up. I conspired to get Ringo in for good; I talked to Paul and John until they came round to the idea.” So Harrison clearly believed in Starr right from the start.

Interestingly, in 2012 Starr told the Toronto Star that, two years prior to him joining The Beatles, they’d supported the Hurricanes at a gig in Hamburg. Even at that point, though, he could see the massive potential the group had. “They were just starting out and we were the biggest band in Liverpool,” Starr recalled. “But John, Paul and George — oh my! What a front line they made.”

Jumping ship was clearly the right call for Starr to make, but initially sections of The Beatles’ audience were far from pleased. A disgruntled group of Best supporters actually protested outside the venue of Starr’s second gig with the band, chanting, “Pete forever! Ringo never!” The situation apparently got so bad that Harrison’s face was bruised while he was trying to protect Starr from the angry mob! Now that’s friendship.

Harrison then had Starr’s back again in 1964 when the drummer fell ill before a huge scheduled tour of Australia. The poor guy had tonsillitis and couldn’t perform, so the band’s producer George Martin came up with a simple solution: replace him. Martin proposed drafting in a drummer named Jimmie Nicol specifically for the tour.

To Starr’s chagrin, both Lennon and McCartney agreed to the plan without much fuss. Harrison, on the other hand, put his foot down. As Martin admitted in The Beatles Anthology, “They nearly didn’t go on the Australian tour. George is a very loyal person and he said, ‘If Ringo’s not part of the group, it’s not The Beatles.’”

Harrison doubled down by saying, “I don’t see why we should do it, and I’m not going to.” In the end, Martin and band manager Brian Epstein put a guilt trip on Harrison by insisting that if he wouldn’t agree to the tour, then he’d be “letting everybody down.” Though Harrison was still reticent, eventually he gave in and the band went Down Under.

But Harrison was still quick to let it be known in The Beatles Anthology that he’d remained convinced that the tour was ill-conceived. “With all respect to Jimmie — we shouldn’t have gone on tour without Ringo. It wasn’t the Fabs,” he stated. “Can you imagine the Rolling Stones going on tour: ‘Oh sorry Mick, you can’t come.’ I couldn’t understand it. It was silly.”

No one knows exactly what happened, but it seems that for some reason Harrison wasn’t able to take part in the actual recording. But then, when he heard the completed track, he didn’t what the producers had done with the mix. Still, it seems a big leap to go from this to thinking about suing your friend, but that’s exactly what Harrison did.

Thankfully, though, nothing ever came of the threat and no suits were ever launched. But it definitely caused a bit of awkwardness between the friends, as the pair revealed in a 1988 television interview. When speaking about the last time they’d had a flare-up in their friendship, Starr joked, “The last time we were cross was when Georgie sued me.”

A seemingly embarrassed Harrison replied, “That was the last time. We are always cross.” Starr didn’t leave it there, though — he went on to explain his side of the story! He added, “Yeah, yeah, we are still cross. The last time he called he said, ‘I’m going to sue you.’”

Starr said that he replied, “You are not, George, don’t say that,” to which Harrison responded, “‘No, no, I’m going to sue you.’” Starr then added, “Because he wrote this song and I had it mixed by somebody else, and he didn’t like the mix. So, I said, ‘Sue me if you want, but I’ll always love you.’”

Fast-forward to 2011 and the documentary George Harrison: Living in the Material World is out. Helmed by legendary Goodfellas director Martin Scorsese, the well-received doc featured an illuminating and emotional revelation from Starr. The drummer spoke of the last time he visited his old friend and choked back tears as he told the cameras about Harrison’s final words to him.

“The last weeks of George’s life, he was in Switzerland, and I went to see him, and he was very ill,” Starr recalled. “You know, he could only lay down.” At the time, Starr wasn’t only going to see his sick friend in Europe — he was then supposed to travel to America to check in on his daughter, who was also seriously ill.

“And while he was being ill and I’d come to see him, I was going to Boston, because my daughter had a brain tumor,” Starr revealed. “And I said, ‘Well, you know, I’ve got to go, I’ve got to go to Boston,’ and he was…” At this point, emotion got the better of Starr, who trailed off and paused before adding, “Phew, it’s the last words I heard him say.”

After a few moments, Starr revealed, “He said, ‘Do you want me to come with you?’” This piece of gallows humor between long-time friends showed that Harrison was thinking about Starr’s plight, despite his own being so serious. Starr was clearly still affected by the memory. “Oh God,” he said. “So, you know, that’s the incredible side of George.”

In 2020 Starr elaborated slightly on the story when being interviewed by Rolling Stone. He emphasized how amazed he was at Harrison’s empathy, even while in such dire straits. Starr added, “‘Do you want me to come with you?’ How many people say great things like that to you, really give themselves?”

Indeed, over the years Starr’s often spoken about how much he misses his departed band-mates. For instance, in 2021 he was interviewed by Stephen Colbert, who inquired, “How often are they on your mind?” Emotion visibly grabbed hold of Starr, and he replied, “Yeah, quite a bit.”

“We just had two sad anniversaries,” Starr continued. “George’s was 20 years ago when we lost him. John’s was 40 years ago, for God’s sake. I always say I was an only child and suddenly I had three brothers. We were really close.” In fact, Starr felt the men’s bond was so tight that it was “almost psychic.”

So Harrison’s final words to Starr perhaps summed up their friendship perfectly. The two superstars had been through a lot during their time in the spotlight. While they occasionally fought and some mistakes were made, they were always there for each other in the end. Through thick and thin, Harrison often looked out for the man he’d drafted into the band — and he was still doing so on his deathbed.