John Lennon Accused Paul McCartney of Trying to ‘Destroy’ 2 Beatles Hits

John Lennon and Paul McCartney began to butt heads in the latter half of the 1960s. While they had worked closely together in the early years of The Beatles, their collaborative process grew increasingly fraught. Lennon even went so far as to accuse McCartney of trying to sabotage some of his songs. He shared how he thought McCartney did it.

John Lennon said Paul McCartney subconsciously ruined songs

Lennon saw “Across the Universe” as one of his best songs ever. He didn’t like the band’s recording of it, though. He blamed McCartney for this.

“I think subconsciously sometimes we — I say ‘we,’ though I think Paul did it more than the rest of us; Paul would … sort of subconsciously try and destroy a great song,” Lennon said, per the book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview With John Lennon and Yoko Ono by David Sheff, adding, “He tried to subconsciously destroy my songs, meaning that we’d play experimental games with my great pieces like ‘Strawberry Fields’ — which I always felt was badly recorded.”

He believed McCartney spent more time and effort on his own songs and allowed Lennon’s to fall to the wayside.

“Usually we’d spend hours doing little detailed cleaning-ups of Paul’s songs; when it came to mine, especially if it was a great song like ‘Strawberry Fields’ or ‘Across the Universe,’ somehow this atmosphere of looseness and casualness and experimentation would creep in,” he said. “Subconscious sabotage. He’ll deny it, ‘cause he’s got a bland face and he’ll say the sabotage doesn’t exist. But this is the kind of thing I’m talking about, where I was always seeing what was going on.”

He acknowledged that people might view him as paranoid, but he believed he was presenting the “absolute truth.”

He still believed in the strength of his writing 

While Lennon described the recording of “Across the Universe” as “lousy,” he believed his writing was still strong. He began to work on the song while lying in bed next to his first wife, Cynthia Lennon.

“The words stand, luckily, by themselves,” he said. “They were purely inspirational and were given to me as boom!”

He said it felt like the song came out of nowhere.

Paul McCartney said John Lennon always suspected him of wrongdoing

McCartney was well aware of the type of accusations Lennon used to level at him. 

“He always suspected me,” McCartney said, per the book The Beatles by Hunter Davies. “He accused me of scheming to buy over Northern Songs without telling him. I was thinking of something to invest in, and Peter Brown said what about Northern Songs, invest in yourself, so I bought a few shares, about 1,000 I think. John went mad, suspecting some plot. Then he bought some.”

He said Lennon never seemed to trust him and always suspected he was up to something nefarious.

“He was always thinking I was cunning and devious,” he said. “That’s my reputation, someone’s who’s charming, but a clever lad.”