This is an excerpt from a Rolling Stone interview. to read the full article click here
I had a group, I was the singer and the leader; I met Paul and I made a decision whether to – and he made a decision too – have him in the group: was it better to have a guy who was better than the people I had in, obviously, or not? To make the group stronger or to let me be stronger? That decision was to let Paul in and make the group stronger.
Are you the Beatles?
No, I'm not the Beatles. I'm me. Paul isn't the Beatles. Brian Epstein wasn't the Beatles, neither is Dick James. The Beatles are the Beatles. Separately, they are separate. George was a separate individual singer, with his own group as well, before he came in with us, the Rebel Rousers. Nobody is the Beatles. How could they be? We all had our roles to play.
What part did you ever play in the songs that are heavily identified with Paul, like "Yesterday"?
"Yesterday," I had nothing to do with.
"Eleanor Rigby"?
"Eleanor Rigby" I wrote a good half of the lyrics or more.
When did Paul show you "Yesterday"?
I don't remember – I really don't remember, it was a long time ago. I think he was . . . I really don't remember, it just sort of appeared.
Who do you think has done the best versions of your stuff?
I can't think of anybody.
Did you hear Ike and Tina Turner doing "Come Together"?
Yeah, I didn't think they did too much of a job on it, I think they could have done it better. They did a better "Honky Tonk Woman."
Ray Charles doing "Yesterday"?
That was quite nice.
And you had Otis doing "Day Tripper," what did you think of that?
I don't think he did a very good job on "Day Tripper."
I never went much for the covers. It doesn't interest me, really. I like people doing them – I've heard some nice versions on "In My Life," I don't know who it was, though. [Judy Collins], José Feliciano did "Help" quite nice once. I like people doing it, I get a kick out of it. I thought it was interesting that Nina Simone did a sort of answer to "Revolution." That was very good – it was sort of like "Revolution," but not quite. That I sort of enjoyed, somebody who reacted immediately to what I had said.
What about on Rubber Soul, "Norwegian Wood"?
I was trying to write about an affair without letting me wife know I was writing about an affair, so it was very gobbledegook. I was sort of writing from my experiences, girls' flats, things like that.
Where did you write that?
I wrote it at Kenwood.
When did you decide to put a sitar on it?
I think it was at the studio. George had just got the sitar and I said "Could you play this piece?" We went through many different sort of versions of the song, it was never right and I was getting very angry about it, it wasn't coming out like I said. They said, "Well just do it how you want to do it" and I said, "Well I just want to do it like this." They let me go and I did the guitar very loudly into the mike and sang it at the same time and then George had the sitar and I asked him could he play the piece that I'd written, you know, dee diddley dee diddley dee, that bit, and he was not sure whether he could play it yet because he hadn't done much on the sitar but he was willing to have a go, as is his wont, and he learned the bit and dubbed it on after. I think we did it in sections.
You also have a song on that album "In My Life." When did you write that? 
I would do that just to get an impression of what it sounded like sung and to hear it back for judging it – you never know 'til you hear the song yourself. I would double track the guitar or the voice or something on the tape. I think on "Norwegian Wood" and "In My Life" Paul helped with the middle eight, to give credit where it's due.
From the same period, same time, I never liked "Run For Your Life," because it was a song I just knocked off. It was inspired from – this is a very vague connection – from "Baby Let's Play House." There was a line on it – I used to like specific lines from songs – "I'd rather see you dead, little girl, than to be with another man" – so I wrote it around that but I didn't think it was that important. "Girl" I liked because I was, in a way, trying to say something or other about Christianity which I was opposed to at the time.
Let me ask you about one on the double album, "Glass Onion." You set out to write a little message to the audience.
Yeah, I was having a laugh because there'd been so much gobbledegook about Pepper, play it backwards and you stand on your head and all that.
Even now, I just saw Mel Torme on TV the other day saying that "Lucy" was written to promote drugs and so was "A Little Help From My Friends" and none of them were at all – "A Little Help From My Friends" only says get high in it, it's really about a little help from my friends, it's a sincere message. Paul had the line about "little help from my friends," I'm not sure, he had some kind of structure for it and – we wrote it pretty well 50-50 but it was based on his original idea.
Why did you make "Revolution"?
Which one?
Both.
There's three of them.
Starting with the single.
When George and Paul and all of them were on holiday, I made "Revolution" which is on the LP and "Revolution #9." I wanted to put it out as a single, I had it all prepared, but they came by, and said it wasn't good enough. And we put out what? "Hello Goodbye" or some shit like that? No, we put out "Hey Jude," which was worth it – I'm sorry – but we could have had both.
I wanted to put what I felt about revolution; I thought it was time we fuckin' spoke about it, the same as I thought it was about time we stopped not answering about the Vietnamese War when we were on tour with Brian Epstein and had to tell him, "We're going to talk about the war this time and we're not going to just waffle." I wanted to say what I thought about revolution.
I record with Yoko, but I'm not going to record with another ego-maniac. There is only room for one on an album nowadays. There is no point, there is just no point at all. There was a reason to do it at one time, but there is no reason to do it anymore.
