Paul McCartney Said He and John Lennon ‘Never Got to the Bottom of Each Other’s Souls’

Paul McCartney and John Lennon met as teenagers and went on to have one of the most prolific — and fraught — relationships in music history. The two musicians wrote countless classic songs together, but they also had a complicated dynamic. They were highly competitive and fought publicly after The Beatles broke up. While McCartney now reflects fondly on their relationship, he once said they didn’t fully know each other.

Paul McCartney and John Lennon met as teenagers

McCartney met Lennon at a church festival in 1956. Lennon’s band, The Quarrymen, was playing, and McCartney immediately noted Lennon’s skill.

“They weren’t bad,” he said, per the book The Beatles: The Authorized Biography by Hunter Davies. “John played the lead guitar. But he played it like a banjo, with banjo chords, as that was all he knew. None of the others had even as much an idea as John how to play.”

Afterward, McCartney sought out the band and began playing guitar for them.

“I went round to see them afterwards in the church hall place,” he explained, adding, “I talked to them, just chatting and showing off. I showed them how to play ‘Twenty Flight Rock’ and told them all the words. They didn’t know it. Then I did ‘Bee Bop a Loo,’ which they didn’t know properly either. Then I did my Little Richard bit, went through me whole repertoire in fact.”

As he played, he noticed a “beery old man” wandering over. 

“It was John,” McCartney said. “He’d just had a few beers. He was sixteen and I was only fourteen, so he was a big man. I showed him a few more chords he didn’t know. Ian James had taught me them really. Then I left. I felt I’d made an impression, shown them how good I was.”

Paul McCartney said he and John Lennon were like ‘army buddies’

McCartney joined Lennon’s band shortly after, laying the groundwork for the group that would eventually become The Beatles. While they were close friends, their relationship grew increasingly fraught over the years. 

“I idolized John,” McCartney said. “He was the big guy in the chip shop. I was the little guy. As I matured and grew up, I started sharing in things with him. I got up to his level. I wrote songs as he did and sometimes they were as good as his. We grew to be equals. It made him insecure. He always was, really.”

After The Beatles broke up, Lennon and McCartney publicly fought. While their relationship was far friendlier toward the end of Lennon’s life, McCartney said he wasn’t sure they ever truly knew each other.

“John and I were really Army buddies. That’s what it was like really,” he said. “I realize now we never got to the bottom of each other’s souls. We didn’t know the truth. Some fathers turn out to hate their sons. You never know.”

He reflects fondly on their relationship

Despite all their fights and barbed exchanges, McCartney said it’s impossible for him to hate Lennon.

“People said to me when he said those things on his record about me, you must hate him, but I didn’t,” McCartney told The New Yorker in 2021. “I don’t.”

When he looks back, McCartney said he keeps thinking about a fight he had with Lennon. During the argument, Lennon reminded him that he was still his friend. 

“We were once having a right slagging session and I remember how he took off his granny glasses. I can still see him,” McCartney said. “He put them down and said, ‘It’s only me, Paul.’ Then he put them back on again and we continued slagging … That phrase keeps coming back to me all the time. ‘It’s only me.'”