Can you make a compilation of all the times Paul, John and other have talked about the breakdown of their relationship and the whole John/Paul/Yoko triangle?
"I mean, 'cause [their problem] was, uh, about Yoko, really. [...] Let me tell you what I can remember is Paul and John were the best pals, really, right? They spent all their time together and stuff, and they had individual lives. But in the end they were the final sort of arbiters of everything between themselves. Yoko completely took over John. I mean, Paul just really felt left out and just hated it, you know what I mean? (John Dunbar)
"It was clear to Paul by this point that Yoko had become by far the most important person in John Lennon's life; even were she to somehow vaporize, John would not come running back to Paul after that unfortunate disappearance." (Danny fields)
“Paul and I had our differences early on, mostly creative ones, but we always got over them. Then I met Yoko and we fell in love. When I invited her to the recording studio during the Let It Be sessions, none of them took it well. This was a men’s club, and no women were allowed in the recording room. But Paul seemed the most bothered about Yoko, and part of me felt it was because he was jealous. Because up till then, he had all my attention, all my love when we were recording. And now there was another. Now there was Yoko.”(John)
"This was my best mate from my youth, the collaborator with whom I'd done some of the best work of the twentieth century. If he fell in love with this woman, what did that have to do with me? Not only did I have to let him do it, but I had to admire him for doing it. That was the position I eventually reached. There was nothing else I could do but be cool with it." (Paul)
"Being around Paul gave me a sense of stability. When I met Yoko, I knew it was time to cut myself loose. Paul hated me for turning my back on him and did everything he could to turn the others against me. He saw that he couldn't compete with Yoko, so he tried to stab us in the back. He was absolutely vicious, and it shattered whatever illusions I had about our so-called friendship." (John)
"I was jealous because of Yoko, and afraid about the break-up of a great musical partnership. It’s taken me a year to realise that they were in love." (Paul)
"Paul wasn't happy. But the big things that were driving him mad were beyond me. He kept on working and writing, but when John came over, all he could talk about was how much he loved Yoko. That disturbed Paul. In spite of John's obvious happiness, Paul stifled his jealousy with not-very-cute bursts of racist crap." (Francie)
"Paul hates Yoko for stealing the love of his life away from him. No, not Linda…. John! Paul has never forgiven her for that." (Francie)
"John did put it that way, he was 'riding on the boat called Paul, and now I'm going to ride on a boat called Yoko." (Yoko)
"Yeah, I think we spurred each other into marriage. I mean, you know...They were very strong together, which left me out of the picture. So I got together with Linda and then we got our own kind of thing. [...] Um..and then yeah, I think they were a little bit peeved that we got married first. Probably. In a little way, you know, just minor jealousies. And so they got married. I don't know if that's ...I mean, who knows.."(Paul)
“I didn’t realise how sensitive the other Beatles were to John’s opinion. Paul worried about what John would say and was still longing for his friendship. [...] Those interviews were done before John’s death and Paul’s heart was broken, even then. It wasn’t just the break-up of the Beatles. It was more personal than that.” (Steven Gaines)
"Why this odd little Japanese lady? The reason, many people believed, was that more than a trophy wife, a model or an actress, John needed a chum. His love affair with Paul McCartney was ending." (Peter Brown)
"The Beatle thing is over. It has been exploded, partly by what we have done, and partly by other people. We are individuals, all different. John married Yoko, I married Linda. We didn’t marry the same girl." (Paul)
"When John and Paul split up (think of them as a couple for a moment) their second mates [Linda and Yoko] had to stand by them." (Francie)
"One week and one day after Paul married Linda, I received a phone call from John. He and Yoko were at the Hôtel Plaza Athénée in Paris and wanted to get married, immediately. People believe that John's desire to get married so soon after Paul's marriage was a knee-jerk reaction. Perhaps it was psychologically about breaking up with Paul." (Peter Brown)
"For a reason to hold a grudge [against Yoko], think about the possibility of this: She took John from him. And she didn't particularly want to share John with his "ex significant other" on certain levels." (Francie Schwartz)
"It's like a marriage. These two broke up. And it took Paul a long time to get over it. John too, but he was just too macho to show it. But they had a marriage before Yoko arrived, although they both had girlfriends before." (Ray Connolly)
"With Yoko present, Paul's reign as Lennon's princess was doomed."(Peter McCabe)
"I mean . . . the disruption really came with the women anyway. Where you have very close personal relationships between two men, and one of them goes off and gets a girl, and the other one goes off and gets another girl, and the two women don’t particularly like each other . . . then there’s a divergence. I don’t think Paul minded Yoko — Yoko’s fine, nothing wrong with Yoko — except that she was always there. When she wasn’t well, she had a bed in the studio, and the other boys got fed up with that. I think that was the beginning of it. And almost in self-defense, Paul got Linda. (George Martin)
"If you go to a party and the husband and wife have been having a row - there's a tension, an atmosphere. And you wonder whether you are making things worse by being there. I think that was kind of the situation we found with Ringo. He was probably feeling a little bit odd because of the mental strangeness with John and Yoko and Paul." (George Martin)
"One of my feelings even when he used to lay into me was that he really didn’t mean it. I could always see why he was doing it. There was this attempt [on John’s part] to get rid of the spectre of me, which I understand, because he had to clear the decks just like I did." (Paul)
"Then also we were like married, so you got the bitterness. It’s not a woman scorned this time, it’s two men scorned — probably even worse. And I had to make way for Yoko. My relationship with John could not have remained as it was and Yoko feel secure." (Paul)
"Really all that happened was that John fell in love. With Yoko. And so, with such a powerful alliance like that, it was difficult for him to still be seeing me. It was as if I was another girlfriend, almost. Our relationship was a strong relationship. And if he was to start a new relationship, he had to put this other one away." (Paul)
"I understood what happened when he met Yoko. He had to clear the decks of his old emotions. He went through all his old affairs, confessed them all. Me and Linda did that when we first met. You prove how much you love someone by confessing all that old stuff. John's method was to slag me off." (Paul)
"Of course, for me Yoko provoked all the echoes of the past, of Stuart and John. How Stuart was the one who was between John and Paul. We must all bring our own interpretations of what jealousies or fears did really lead to the abandonment of the Beatles. I would suggest that it had to do as much with personal relationships and power as with artistic ambition and financial awareness." (Pauline Stutcliffe)
"Perhaps Jane wanted Paul to be something other than what he was, more like the young man in the public image of the perfect couple. But that wasn’t what he wanted. More important to Paul than his relationship with Jane, was his partnership with John Lennon, whom he’d met shortly after his mother died of breast cancer (the same illness from which Linda was to die) when he was 14. And when John’s mother was also to die in a road accident just over a year later, the friendship had intensified with a shared sense of loss. And so it was to remain as adulthood and fame arrived, and the girls came and went. And, in John’s case, a wife as well. [...] Exactly a year after their first encounter, Paul met Linda again when he contacted her while he and John were on business in New York. A few weeks later Paul called and invited Linda to join him at another business meeting in Los Angeles. Slowly but surely, they were coming together, just as certainly as John and Paul were breaking apart. John had fallen in love with Yoko Ono, and, increasingly fuelled by hard drugs, seemed bent on destroying what Paul saw as their creation. Losing interest in the Beatles, John had less time for Paul. The two could no longer write or record freely together without Yoko offering advice. Her presence put Paul off and John didn’t care. Paul was finding himself abandoned. Outwardly super-confident, inwardly he was growing increasingly insecure. There were girls all around him, of course. He couldn’t get rid of some of them, but he needed someone special at his side. He sent for Linda. [...] Catching Paul at the Beatles’ Apple headquarters in Savile Row, he told me they wanted a quiet wedding. A quiet wedding for a Beatle in the centre of London in 1969 was impossible. Eight days later John and Yoko married in secret in Gibraltar. [...] Paul had always played on stage with his best friend. He couldn’t play with John Lennon anymore, so he turned his new best friend, Linda, into a keyboard musician in his new group, Wings." (Ray Connolly)
"The Beatles were having severe problems then, with Yoko Ono apparently having driven a wedge between Paul McCartney and the most important person in his life, John Lennon." (Danny Fields)
"‘John always used to say,’ Yoko told me at one point, ‘that no one ever hurt him the way Paul hurt him.’ The words suggested a far deeper emotional attachment between the two than the world ever suspected - they were like those of a spurned lover." (Philip Norman)
"The wedding [of Paul and Linda] was front-page news all over the world [...] Girls wore the black of mourning for weeks afterwards, and, like an answering move in a chess game, John and Yoko were married in Gibraltar eight days later." (Danny Fields)
"I always wished I’d been involved in the Beatles’ early happier days, but my role was to cover the final act of their career, and to observe the fall-out, largely, though by no means totally, with John and Paul. There were some bizarre and revealing moments during those days." (Ray Connolly)
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