John Lennon Saw Paul McCartney as ‘Cunning and Devious’
John Lennon’s first wife said Paul McCartney was one of the few people her former husband trusted. While they had a close relationship, McCartney wasn’t sure Lennon found him all that trustworthy. By the time The Beatles broke up and the 1970s began, Lennon and McCartney were at odds. McCartney said Lennon always seemed to suspect he was doing something devious.
Paul McCartney said John Lennon didn’t seem to trust him
After Lennon’s death, McCartney expressed disgruntlement with how the public portrayed him. He felt Lennon had practically been deified, whereas he became seen as less important to the band.
“Nobody knows how much I helped John,” McCartney said, per the book The Beatles by Hunter Davies. “Me and Linda went to California and talked him out of his so-called lost weekend, when he was full of drugs. We told him to go back to Yoko and not long after he did. I went all the way to LA to see the bastard. He never gave me an inch, but he took so many yards and feet.”
Though McCartney worked closely with Lennon, he said his bandmate never seemed to trust him. When McCartney planned to invest in Northern Songs, the company that published Lennon-McCartney songs, Lennon flew into a rage. He thought McCartney was trying to cheat him.
“He always suspected me,” McCartney said, “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.”
McCartney said this was typical of their relationship.
“He was always thinking I was cunning and devious,” he said. “That’s my reputation, someone’s who’s charming, but a clever lad.”
Paul McCartney acknowledged that John Lennon wasn’t the only person who felt this way
While McCartney was always more openly friendly than Lennon, he didn’t think people trusted him as much as his bandmate.
“I was saying to Cilla [Black] that I liked Bobby [her husband],” he said. “That’s all I said. Bobby’s a nice bloke. Ah, but what do you really think, Paul? You don’t mean that, do you, you’re getting at something?”
McCartney said he’d been honest, but people weren’t willing to believe him.
“I was being absolutely straight. But she couldn’t believe it,” he said. “No one ever does. They think I’m calculating all the time.”
The Northern Songs deal fell apart because of Lennon
In 1969, the head of Northern Songs, Dick James, planned to sell the company to ATV Music. The band would lose the rights to their music, so McCartney and especially Lennon were unhappy.
“I met with them several days later at, uh, Paul’s place in St. John’s Wood,” James said in the book All You Need Is Love: The Beatles in Their Own Words by Peter Brown and Steven Gaines. “Linda [McCartney] made tea and John was belligerent. Paul said that he thought that, uh, I had done what I thought was best.”
Lennon and McCartney tried to buy Northern Songs instead. Things appeared to be going their way, until a board meeting. Lennon lost his temper and announced, “I’m not going to be f***ed around by men in suits sitting on their fat arses in the City,” he said (per The Beatles Diary Volume 1).
As a result, ATV gained control of the company and the band’s catalog.
