Lennon - McCartney Feud

In January, 1967, Beatles, LTD. became Apple Corps, LTD. Magical Mystery Tour was the first production credited to Apple Corps. After Brian Epstein’s death, Paul became involved with the business of the Beatles. It was Paul’s idea to do Apple. He structured it. Once it started going Paul was very active with it. Soon, the business got complicated and a bit chaotic. So, the Beatles needed a new manager.

"Allen Klein had been making overtures towards the Beatles for several years before Brian’s death, letting them know their record deals could be a lot more lucrative. Brian knew about this and it caused him some anxiety." Paul in addition, to Brian, was against Allan King. Now, without Brian, Paul was on his own.

Allen Klein was an American accountant who managed many acts including the Rolling Stones. His specialty was identifying and digging out money from record companies that was owed to performers. The record companies would usually just pay off the discrepancy. Paul says Klein’s style was very persuasive. You want it, it’s yours. He describes Klein’s method: Yoko "wanted an art exhibition and was having some difficulty maybe getting it on… So we all ended up paying for her Syracuse exhibition – a quarter each – and she wasn’t even in the group…. He’d do anything anyone wanted – if he needed to influence that person." Klein’s other specialty was firing anyone who was remotely close to the Beatles. Alistair Taylor, Brian Epstein’s former personal assistant, says "I never met Allen Klein, It’s the only time in my life I’ve been fired from a job and never met the person who did it."

John and Yoko met with Klein and thought he would be a good manager. So John hired him as his manager in February, 1969. "When (they Beatles) asked him why, John said ‘well he’s the only one Yoko liked.’" Apparently, he and Yoko were impressed with the way he handled the Rolling Stones. George and Ringo followed John and also signed with Klein. Paul didn’t like Kline. He thought the 20% they were agreeing to be outrageous, and they should go back and ask for 15%. The others refused to even bring it up with Klein. Paul refused to sign the agreement.

Paul suggested Lee Eastman, his new in-law, as a possible lawyer, but the others said no, because he’d be too biased for Paul and against the others. Paul could see their point. Eastman warned Paul that Klein: "was viewed with suspicion in New York because of the Cameo Parkway affair; that some fifty lawsuits decorated the escutcheon of Klein’s company, ABKCO; and that Klein himself currently faced ten charges by the I.R.S. for failing to file income tax returns."

Up until this point in time, if any Beatles had a problem with any plan, it was vetoed. It was always fair this way. Paul didn’t like Allen Klein and he didn’t like being voted out of a Beatles decision. The three-to-one situation was very awkward and as a result ‘things’ happened later. Paul really resented what they did to him.

John Announces to the "Beatles" he’s Leaving

In May 1969, Paul tried to get the band to play live. He suggested that they play unannounced in small clubs, maybe in disguise. Ringo liked the idea. George was a bit reserved about it. When Paul told John, John said Paul was daft and said "I might as well tell you, I’m leaving the group. I want a divorce, like my divorce with Cynthia." John had told Allen Klein already. Klein told John to keep silent, even to the other Beatles, until the Capital deal was done. John agreed, but found it impossible not to tell the others.

"A furious row developed, with John railing bitterly at Paul for his "granny" music, especially ‘Ob-la-di’ and ‘Maxwell's Silver Hammer,’ on the ‘Abbey Road’ which John had particularly detested. He told Paul he was sick of ‘fighting for time’ on their albums, and of always taking the B-sides on singles…George interrupted resentfully that songs he had recorded this year were often those he had written years earlier but not been allowed to release. He added that he never really felt the Beatles were backing him. After a six month silence, Paul called John and said he was putting out an album and was leaving the group also. John replied "That makes two of us who have accepted it mentally."

Paul Makes the Announcement

Paul notified what remained of Apple that he wanted his solo album, McCartney, to be released in early April. Klein said no because "Let It Be" and Ringo’s solo album "Sentimental Journey" were being released at the same time. Paul then appealed directly to Sir Joseph Lockwood who said Paul had to accept the majority decision. Ringo came in to deliver to Lockwood his personal explanation to the letters from John and George that confirmed that "McCartney" would have to be postponed. Ringo, in an affidavit described how upset he was when Paul "went completely out of control, prodding his fingers towards my face, saying ‘I’ll finish you all now, and you’ll pay.’" Ringo then talked John and George into letting Paul release on April 17, 1970 and pushing ‘Let it Be’ back and bringing ‘Sentimental Journey" forward.

On April 17, 1970 "McCartney" is released. The album contained an inserted questionnaire that reveals that the Beatles are broken up and have no plans on doing anything in the future. Paul’s reasons are "personal differences, business, differences, and musical differences. He doesn’t foresee another Lennon-McCartney writing partnership in the future. He also states that neither Allen Klein nor ABKCO Industries have been or ever will be in any way involved in with the production, manufacturing, distribution, or promotion of the record.

John had honored his agreement with Klein to stay silent about the breakup. George and Ringo also kept quiet. John had made it very clear that he was the one who was going to make the announcement. He found it hard to forgive Paul for using the split as a publicity stunt on his first solo album. Paul says he "didn’t realize it would hurt him that much or that it mattered who was first." Paul says he felt guilty about lying to the public by not saying anything and it was about time that someone told the public. The Beatles had been broken up for eight months before Paul’s announcement.

Paul’s Lawsuit

On December 31, 1970, Paul filed a law suit against the other three Beatles in order to dissolve the partnership. The Beatles had signed a ten year partnership agreement in 1967. At the time they really didn’t look at the agreement and they forgot about it. It had been discovered recently. It meant that if they wanted to do anything like put out an album, they would each have to get the three others’ permission. Paul wanted to just rip it up. The others had been advised that destroying it would cause serious bad consequences for them. To Paul, this was just another three-to-one vote, like the hiring of Allen Klein. The Beatles had broken up in every sense but not on paper. Paul took it to court to be done with it completely.

Reaction to the Breakup

Paul remembers that, "Our manager, Neil Aspinall, had to read the official wording dissolving the partnership. He was supposed to say it aloud to us in a deadly serious voice and he couldn't do it. He did a Nixon wobble. His voice went. And we were all suddenly aware of a sort of physical consequence of what had been going on. I thought, Oh, God, we really have broken up the Beatles. Oh, shit."

Paul was asked if he thought John ever missed the Beatles, he responded, "I don't know. My theory is that he didn't. Someone like John would want to end the Beatle period and start the Yoko period. And he wouldn't like either to interfere with the other. As he was with Yoko, anything about the Beatles tended inevitably to be an intrusion. So I think he was interested enough in his new life to genuinely not miss us."

Paul was probably right. John said in an interview: "I never went to high school reunions. My thing is, Out of sight, out of mind. That's my attitude toward life. So I don't have any romanticism about any part of my past. I think of it only inasmuch as it gave me pleasure or helped me grow psychologically. That is the only thing that interests me about yesterday. I don't believe in yesterday, by the way. You know I don't believe in yesterday. I am only interested in what I am doing now."

Imagine – How Do You Sleep?

On August 8, 1971, John releases "Imagine." The song "How Do You Sleep?" is comically nasty. I don’t know what to say about this song except that is about Paul McCartney and its very nasty. I don’t think it could be a response to "Too Many People" because the albums were released two months apart. "Imagine was probably finalized and being pressed and packaged for retail by the time "Ram" was release. Here’s a slightly shortened version on John’s song:

When asked about "How Do You Sleep" he says "You know, I wasn't really feeling that vicious at the time. But I was using my resentment toward Paul to create a song, let's put it that way. He saw that it pointedly refers to him, and people kept hounding him about it. But, you know, there were a few digs on his album before mine. He's so obscure other people didn't notice them, but I heard them. I thought, Well, I'm not obscure, I just get right down to the nitty-gritty. So he'd done it his way and I did it mine. But as to the line you quoted, yeah, I think Paul died creatively, in a way."

Paul and Linda’s reaction: "At the time, we tried to understand. But what should happen was, if we were the least bit bitchy that would be very hurtful to them in this... wild thing they were in. I was looking at my second solo album, Ram, the other day and I remember there was one tiny little reference to John in the whole thing. He'd been doing a lot of preaching, and it got up my nose a little bit. In one song, I wrote, 'Too many people preaching practices,' I think is the line. I mean, that was a little dig at John and Yoko. There wasn't anything else on it that was about them. Oh, there was 'You took your lucky break and broke it in two...They thought the whole album was about them. And then they got very upset... That was the kind of thing that would happen. They'd take one small dig out of proportion and then come back at us in their next album."

John’s thoughts on "Yesterday"

"Well, we all know about 'Yesterday.' I have had so much accolade for 'Yesterday.' That is Paul's song, of course, and Paul's baby. Well done. Beautiful-- and I never wished I had written it."

"I'm always proud and pleased when people do my songs. It gives me pleasure that they even attempt them, because a lot of my songs aren't that doable. I go to restaurants and the groups always play 'Yesterday.' I even signed a guy's violin in Spain after he played us 'Yesterday.' He couldn't understand that I didn't write the song. But I guess he couldn't have gone from table to table playing 'I am the Walrus.'"

The End

I’m not going rehash all the reasons and elements that led to the nastiness and resentment between John and Paul because, quite honestly, my head hurts. I have always wondered about John’s comment that "Paul died creatively". Died creatively? Oh please… Paul was never deep! I like to believe that Paul’s response to Lennon’s song came a little later in 1976 when he wrote "Silly Love Songs" - some people want to fill the world with silly love songs, and what’s wrong with that? …."

Linda Yadlon © beatlesnumber9

"Looking back on it with John, you know, he was a really great guy. I always idolized him. I don't know if the others will tell you that, but he was our idol." ~Paul McCartney

"Someone told me a few minutes ago they saw John walking on the street once wearing a button saying "I Love Paul." And this girl said she asked him, "Why are you wearing a button that says ' I Love Paul'?" He said, "Because I love Paul." ~Harry Nillson

McCartney Buries Lennon Feud Sir Paul McCartney has revealed to the Sunday Herald that he will no longer seek to have the famous Lennon-McCartney songwriting credits reversed in his favour, which he did on his last album. The musician, who caused outrage last year when he reversed the credits on the 19 Beatles' songs on his Back In The US Live 2002 album, changing it from Lennon-McCartney to Paul McCartney and John Lennon, said he has changed his mind and is now happy to keep the original order of the 'rock'n'roll trademark'. At the time, the action prompted a furious response from Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, who was said to be so incensed she was investigating possible legal action against the multi-millionaire. But speaking to the Sunday Herald ahead of his sell-out show to 30,000 fans in Liverpool tonight, McCartney said: 'I am happy with the way it is and always has been. Lennon and McCartney is still the rock'n'roll trademark I'm proud to be a part of -- in the order it has always been.' The dispute with Ono first occurred when The Beatles' Anthology was being assembled in the 1990s. Then, Ono objected when McCartney asked her if he could put his name first on Yesterday, a song he largely wrote alone. The DVD of his current Back In The World tour does not reverse the credits and the singer says he is now content to let the matter rest.

WHEN Paul McCartney strode on stage at Madison Square Garden last month, it promised to be a trip down memory lane for the 18,000-strong audience. What they didn't expect among McCartney's hits and Beatles' classics was a song with a bitter message - one designed to rekindle an old feud with John Lennon's widow Yoko Ono. Too Many People - a number he had never before performed live - sat oddly among such old favourites as Eleanor Rigby and Magical Mystery Tour. Many fans would have been unaware of the song's significance. Written in 1971, when his relationship with John was at an all-time low, Paul accuses Yoko of hijacking her husband's career. The fact he played it in New York, where Yoko lives, was hardly a coincidence. "It's well known Paul and Yoko have never been mates and never will be," says a source at McCartney's record label, EMI. The bad blood has been there since The Beatles split but reached boiling point five years ago when Paul wanted to change the credits on some old Beatles songs and Yoko said no. "Too Many People is a very elaborate way of saying, 'What the f*** have you got to do with me and John? You were only his wife so stop interfering.' Paul has always said, 'I took abuse from John, who called me a lot worse when he was alive, but I'm not going to take it from Yoko now he's gone.' "It was always Lennon and McCartney, not Lennon, McCartney and Ono." At last week's Q music awards in London, Yoko, 72, appeared to ridicule Paul's songwriting ability. She told journalists: "Sometimes, in the middle of the night, John would ask, 'Are you awake?' and I would say, 'Yes.' And he said, "You know, they always cover Paul's songs and never mine, and I don't know why.' "I said, 'You're a good songwriter - it's not just June and spoon that you write.'" At the weekend, Paul, 63, hit back when he said Yoko was "not the brightest of buttons," adding: "Her life is dedicated to putting me down. That's what she seems to do all the time. Yoko is a law unto herself." The bitter rift between Paul and Yoko began soon after they met in 1968. He and John were the most successful songwriting partnership the world had ever known. John, who'd been married to Cynthia Powell since 1962, first met Yoko, a Japanese performance artist seven years his senior, at a London art gallery in November 1966. He slowly became enchanted by her, but it wasn't until May 1968 that they became lovers - and John immediately insisted on his new girlfriend attending sessions for The Beatles White Album. The EMI studios in Abbey Road, North London, had long been the band's private clubhouse. Now Paul, George and Ringo were going to have to get used to a small, unsmiling woman sitting in. Beatles expert Mark Lewisohn says: "Yoko attended every Beatles recording session and would encourage hostility by whispering conspiratorially into John's ear. She would sit on his amplifier and appear to preside over the session by openly criticising and suggesting changes to the music being recorded." By 1969, the biggest-selling group the world has known was disintegrating, with Lennon ditching McCartney as collaborator in favour of his girlfriend. John and Yoko recorded three albums together and even used their 1969 honeymoon to hold a 10-day press conference in a "bed-in" at the Amsterdam Hilton. By the time of The Beatles' final public appearance, an impromptu gig on the roof of their Apple record label headquarters in London, Paul could no longer control his frustration. Although he later denied it, some say he glared at Yoko every time he sang the chorus to the hit song Get Back. But the recriminations and lawsuits surrounding The Beatles' split a year later, in 1970, were as nothing compared to the extraordinary public spat that was to follow. The opening salvo came when John wrote to Paul and his new wife, New York photographer Linda Eastman, viciously berating them for their treatment of Yoko. "I hope you realise what s**t you, and the rest of my kind and unselfish friends, laid on Yoko and me since we have been together. It might have sometimes been a bit more subtle or should I say 'middle class' - but not often." He went on to warn that his old friend's marriage would not last. "God help you out, Paul," he wrote. "See you in two years. I reckon you'll be out then." The following year, Paul hit back on his second solo album, Ram, which contained the cryptic anti-Yoko rant Too Many People. It included the lyric: "Too many people pulled and pushed around/ Too many waiting for that lucky break/ That was your first mistake/ You took your lucky break and broke it in two." Within months, John had dispensed with any attempts at subtlety by recording the blistering How Do You Sleep?, dismissing his former partner's new material as "muzak" and accusing him of surrounding himself with sycophants. But it wasn't the song's acidic lyrics that bothered Paul. It was knowing that Yoko had helped think them up. "Paul could handle the attack but what really got to him was when he heard some of the lyrics had been suggested by Yoko," says the EMI source. "That really angered him and he's never forgiven her." Although Lennon and McCartney were reconciled in the 70s, any hopes of a musical reunion were scuppered after Yoko began intercepting Paul's calls. It's long been a strand of Beatles folklore that Paul rang Yoko in January 1980, just before a tour of Japan, and mentioned that he had some particularly potent marijuana. Two days later he was arrested at Tokyo airport for possession of illegal substances and spent 10 days in jail. It was hinted the Japanese authorities had received a tip-off from someone who knew exactly what Paul was carrying. Since John Lennon's murder in December 1980 by deranged fan Mark Crapman, the Paul-Yoko rift has rumbled on. In 1997, she compared John to Mozart while Paul, she said, more closely resembled his less-talented rival Salieri. The next year Paul pointedly refused to ask Yoko to attend a New York memorial service for Linda, who had just died of breast cancer.The feud surfaced again in 2000 as the three surviving Beatles were preparing a Beatles greatest hits package, 1. Although the song Yesterday had always been credited to Lennon-McCartney, it was entirely the work of Paul who now asked for his name to be put first. "I felt that after 30 years this would be a nice gesture and something that might be easy for Yoko to agree with," said Paul. "At first she said yes, but then she rang back a couple of hours later and reversed her decision." Two years later, Paul hit back when he changed the credits for all The Beatles songs included on his album Back In The US Live 2002, to "composed by Paul McCartney and John Lennon". Yoko hit back by removing Paul's credit from the track Give Peace A Chance on the Lennon Legend DVD. Peace, it seems, is now the last thing on Paul and Yoko's minds.