We Can Work It Out: 10 times JohnLennon and Paul McCartney fell out... and somehow.....
Both men agreed that John wrote just one line of “I Saw Her Standing There”, changing Paul’s “she’d never been a beauty queen” to “you know what I mean”, but contentious disputes over some of The Beatles’ biggest hits have been highlighted in several post-split interviews. These include “Help!” (John claimed full authorship, Paul countered it was “70-30”), “Ticket To Ride” (John said Paul only contributed “the way Ringo played the drums,” Paul said “give him 60 per cent of it”), “In My Life” (John said Paul composed the middle-eight, Paul said he did the entire melody), “Eleanor Rigby” (John claimed 70 per cent of the lyrics, Paul said it was more like “half a line.”)
Paul takes over (1967)
Brian Epstein’s unexpected death saw Paul attempt to wrest control of the group’s managerial affairs, starting by conceiving and directing the Magical Mystery Tour film. At the time, John remained passive and happy to play along, but later, when it had been savaged by critics, he expressed mixed feelings, describing the project as “chaotic and unfocussed.” In his 1983 book The Love You Make, group confidante Peter Brown claimed John wanted to “junk it, rather than be embarrassed by it.” If the film gave the impression of Paul installing himself as the unofficial leader of the band, their next album did little to contradict it.
The White Album fractures (1968)
“You could cut the atmosphere with a knife,” studio engineer Ken Scott said of the sessions for the sprawling double album, from the moment when John brought in a bed for Yoko Ono on the very first day. It sparked a breakdown in communication between the two chief writers, now working almost entirely separately, but with Paul increasingly driving the direction of the record, or at least trying to. Biographer Philip Norman wrote that John thought Paul’s songs were “cloyingly sweet and bland,” while Paul thought John’s were “harsh, unmelodious and deliberately provocative.” Lennon later suggested “the breakup of The Beatles can be heard on that album.”
“How Do You Sleep?” begins… (1969)
As viewers saw in the film Let It Be and the subsequent Get Back three-parter, the studio continued to be a war zone. At one point Paul rails against John for not learning the lyrics to “Two Of Us” (ironically one of their most positive and uplifting shared lead vocal), as he struggles to get the rest of the group to match his intense work ethic. In a quieter moment he tells cameras he’s taken on the “captain of the ship” mantle reluctantly. “I’m scared of me being the boss, and I have been for, like, a couple of years. And I never get any support or anything. So, I just say, ‘Hell, well, fuck it.’ We can’t carry on like this indefinitely. We seem to, but we can’t.”
Source: uncut.co.uk/Terry Staunton
