Sir Paul McCartney has acknowledged that his late Beatles bandmate John Lennon could sometimes come off as a total fool when looking back on their notoriously fraught early-1970s period.
Speaking openly with director Judd Apatow, McCartney was questioned about why Lennon seemed irritated by his post-Beatles path. Apatow asked whether the tension stemmed from a contrast between Lennon’s buoyant energy as he pursued primal bursts and McCartney’s own enjoyment, and what, in his view, had rubbed Lennon the wrong way.
McCartney weighed in on the Wings era: “Well, I’m not sure—perhaps he anticipated more from me, a different direction, and I wasn’t delivering that. I was simply chasing madcap, carefree material.”
He bluntly added: “I always thought John was very cool, and I still do. But he could be a complete idiot, about some things.”
Despite their clashes, McCartney said Lennon’s behavior never altered how he saw him: “It wouldn’t matter, as it didn’t matter, what he said or did, because I’d known him since I was 15, and he was like this wild guy I knew, and I truly looked up to him.”
The 84-year-old icon formed Wings in 1971 with his then-wife Linda McCartney and Denny Laine, just a year after Let It Be, the Beatles’ final album, had been released.
Wings — which also included Denny Seiwell and former Moody Blues guitarist Denny Laine — went on to release seven records, among them the highly regarded 1973 LP Band on the Run.
Lennon publicly dismissed McCartney’s early solo work, famously saying in 1971 that he couldn’t imagine working with him again. McCartney later acknowledged that several lyrics on Ram—particularly in Too Many People—contained barbs toward Lennon.
By 1975, Lennon was praising Band on the Run, noting that Wings kept changing and were conceptual; effectively, they served as Paul’s backing group. It doesn’t matter who’s playing, he seemed to say. You can call them Wings, but it’s Paul McCartney music. And it’s good stuff.
