McCartney recalls John Lennon after recording RAM

By editorial board on May 5, 2018

 Paul is a perfectionist. He hasn't been happy, he hasn't had a chance to work with the best since the old days. Since the Beatles." (Linda McCartney)

This is an excerpt from Playboy interview. After the Feud with Lennon.

I was looking at my second solo album, Ram, the other day and I remember there was one tiny little reference to John in the whole thing. He'd been doing a lot of preaching, and it got up my nose a little bit. In one song, I wrote, 'Too many people preaching practices,' I think is the line. I mean, that was a little dig at John and Yoko. There wasn't anything else on it that was about them. Oh, there was 'You took your lucky break and broke it in two.'" "They thought the whole album was about them. And then they got very upset."

 PLAYBOY: "In most of his interviews, John said he never missed the Beatles. Did you believe him?"

PAUL: "I don't know. My theory is that he didn't. Someone like John would want to end the Beatle period and start the Yoko period. And he wouldn't like either to interfere with the other. As he was with Yoko, anything about the Beatles tended inevitably to be an intrusion. So I think he was interested enough in his new life to genuinely not miss us."

Lennon and McCartney, the competitive element within the team. It was great. But hard to live with. It was hard to live with. It was probably one of the reasons why teams almost have to burn out. And, of course, in finding a strong woman like Yoko, John changed."

The thing is, in truth, I never really got on that well with Yoko anyway. It was John who got on well with her--that was John who got on well with her... that was the whole point. Strangely enough, I only started to get to know her after John's death.

I began wanting to know if I could be of any help, because of my old friend. And at first, I was a bit put off by her attitude of 'I don't want to be widow of the year.' That's what she said. At first, I felt rebuffed and thought, Oh well, great! Well, sod you! But then I thought, Wait a minute, come on. She's had the tragedy of a lifetime here, and I'm being crazy and insensitive to say,

'Well, if you're not going to be nice to me, I'm not going to be nice to you.' I feel I started to get to know her then, to understand what she was going through instead of only my point of view all the time... which I think is part of growing up anyway. And I think then I was able to find quite a lot of things in common with Yoko."

Yes we did. In fact, after he died, the thing that helped me the most, really, was talking to Yoko about it. She volunteered the information that he had... really liked me. She said that once or twice, they had sat down to listen to my records and he had said, 'There you are.' So an awful lot went on in the privacy of their own place. So, yes, it was very important."

I remember one time when we were making Help! in Austria. We'd been out skiing all day for the film and so we were all tired. I usually shared a room with George. But on this particular occasion, I was in with John. We were taking our huge skiing boots off and getting ready for the evening and stuff, and we had one of our cassettes. it was one of the albums, probably Revolver or Rubber Soul... I'm a bit hazy about which one.

 

It may have been the one that had my song, 'Here, There and Everywhere.' There were three of my songs and three of John's songs on the side we were listening to. And for the first time ever, he just tossed it off, without saying anything definite,

'Oh, I probably like your songs better than mine.' And that was it! That was the height of praise I ever got off him." (mumbles) "'I probably like your songs better than mine.' Whoops! There was no one looking, so he could say it. But, yeah, I definitely did look up to John. We all looked up to John. He was older and he was very much the leader; he was the quickest wit and the smartest and all that kind of thing. So whenever he did praise any of us, it was great praise, indeed, because he didn't dish it out much. If ever you got a speck of it, a crumb of it, you were quite grateful.after

With 'Come Together' for instance, he wanted a piano lick to be very swampy and smoky, and I played it that way and he liked that a lot. I was quite pleased with that. He also liked it when I sang like Little Richard 'Tutti-Frutti' and all that.

All my screaming songs, the early Beatles screaming stuff... that's me doing Little Richard. It requires a great deal of nerve to just jump up and scream like an idiot, you know? Anyway, I would often fall alittle bit short, not have that little kick, that soul, and it would be John who would go, 'Come on! You can sing it better than that, man! Come on, come on! Really throw it!' All right, John, OK... He was certainly the one I looked up to most definitely."

 

DISCLAIMER: the images used by Videomuzic are for the purpose of criticism and exercise of the right to report news, in low quality, in compliance with the provisions of the law on copyright, used exclusively for the information content.
DISCLAIMER: Videomuzic usa le immagini per finalità di critica ed esercizio del diritto di cronaca in modalità degradata conforme alle prescrizioni della legge sul diritto d'autore utilizzate ad esclusivo corredo dei contenuti informativi.
Copyright © 2022 Videomuzic | Rome. ITA | Pictures, videos remain the property of the copyright owner, Any copyright owner who wants removed should contact us..
linkedin facebook pinterest youtube rss twitter instagram facebook-blank rss-blank linkedin-blank pinterest youtube twitter instagram