“From a purely selfish point of view, if I could get John Lennon back I’d ask him to undo this legacy he’s left me. I’d ask him to tell everybody what he told Yoko in the privacy of his own room. Yoko and I talk on the telephone a lot nowadays, since his death, and what she says tells me something very important: John still liked me, after all.”
<...>
I’m not interested in buying his whole company. I just want my songs. Give me back my babies, Lew!” [Lord Grade and Northern Songs]
<...>
With a measure of scorn, McCartney agrees that the British public would certainly have preferred him to have married the actress Jane Asher, with whom he had a very public romance in the Sixties.
“The point about Linda is that I love her and I didn’t love Jane Asher, that’s all. But we’d all like Elizabeth Taylor to get back together with Richard Burton, wouldn’t we? It’s incredibly stupid, all part of that unreality which has become an occupational hazard.”
(Paul McCartney, interview with Richard Williams for the Times, Monday, January 4, 1982)
“It beats the alternative, you know? The alternative is that your life turns sour, and I don’t want that to happen,” he says, citing friends, family, and ultimately himself as safeguards. “I don’t want to get depressed, so I fight it and think, Come on, you’ve got a lot of good stuff going on. Concentrate on that. It’s not always easy - in fact, it’s never easy.”
Paul talking about Two Of Us (2000, dir. Michael Lindsey-Hogg) for the Adam Buxton podcast. Interview recorded in November 18, 2020, aired in December 2020. (source)
ADAM: Did you see a film, directed by Michael Lindsey-Hogg, who directed the videos for Paperback Writer, and Rain, Hey Jude, Revolution… called “Two Of Us”, around about 2000?
PAUL: Oh, yeah! There’s a John and a Paul played by actors! Aidan Quinn played me, I remember, yeah.
ADAM: And Jared Harris, he played John. And it’s a fictionalized account of one of the visits that you made around 1976 to John’s New York apartment.
PAUL: [hums] Mhm. I did see it, actually, yeah. What was okay about that was that at the beginning of the film it said, “John and Paul met on such and such a date, in New York, and this is us imagining what might have happened. It’s pure fiction”, they did it like a disclaimer at the front. So I thought, well, that’s okay, ‘cause I can get into this. And I mean, I must say I enjoyed it, I thought I wish that had happened!
19 February 1963, the Cavern, photo by Michael Ward
Photo by Mike McCartney
August 13, 1966, photo by Bob Bonis
We wrote with two guitars, John and I. And, as I’ve mentioned previously, the joy of that was that I was left-handed while he was right handed, so I was looking in a mirror and he was looking in a mirror.
We would always tune up, have a ciggie, drink a cup of tea, start playing some stuff, look for an idea. Normally, one or the other of us would arrive with a fragment of a song. ‘Please Please Me’ was a John idea. John liked the double meaning of ‘please’. Yeah, ‘please’ is, you know, pretty please. ‘Please have intercourse with me. So, pretty please, have intercourse with me, I beg you to have intercourse with me.’ He liked that, and I liked that he liked that. This was the kind of thing we’d see in each other, the kind of thing in which we were matched up. We were in sync.
(Paul McCartney, about Please Please Me in The Lyrics, 2021)
gifs by javelinbk
A lot of what we had going for us was that we were both good at noticing the stuff that just pops up, and grabbing it. And the other thing is that John and I had each other. If he was sort of stuck for a line, I could finish it. If I was stuck for somewhere to go, he could make a suggestion.
We could suggest the way out of the maze to each other, which was a very handy thing to have. We inspired each other.
(Paul McCartney, about Eight Days A Week in The Lyrics, 2021)
gifs by nikidontsurf
When John and I met, the first year of our friendship was spent talking about these cover versions, the records we loved, and then playing them again and again. As we got to know each other, we practised these various covers until one day the conversation went, ‘You know, I’ve written one or two songs.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, so have I.’
That gave us something in common that was itself wholly uncommon. I went to a school of a thousand boys and I’d never met anyone who said he’d written a song. Mine were just in my head. So were John’s. We took each other by surprise. And then the logical extension was, ‘Well, maybe we could write one together.’ So that’s how we started. And we became versions of each other.
(Paul McCartney, about The Other Me in The Lyrics, 2021)
gifs by stewy
Q: "Can I ask you about Lewis Carroll?"
A: "Oh, Lewis Carroll. I always admit to that because I love 'Alice In Wonderland' and 'Alice Through The Looking Glass.' But I didn't even know he'd written anything else. I was that ignorant. I just happened to get those for birthday presents as a child and liked them. And I usually read those two about once a year, because I still like them."
(John Lennon, June 16, 1965, interview for BBC)
Paul McCartney in his garden at Cavendish Avenue, 7; photo by Barry Lategan (for Observer 'What Makes A Man Stylish?', July 1968)
I think of the imagined world of Lewis Carroll [Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There] that John and I both loved so much.
(Paul McCartney, about I’ll Get You in The Lyrics, 2021)
We’d been together so much that if you had a question, we would
both pretty much come up with the same answer. [about their hitchhike to Spain by way of Paris]
<…>
It’s a bit crude, but it’s fair to say that, in general, I’d had a good life and John hadn’t. His life had been tougher, and he had to develop a harder shell than I did. He was quite a cynical guy but, as they say, with a heart of gold. A big softy, but his shield was hard. So that was very good for the two of us. Opposites attract. I could calm him down, and he could fire me up. We could see things in each other that the other needed to be complete.
(Paul McCartney about Ticket To Ride in The Lyrics, 2021)
Sometimes I look in the mirror
Is nobody there?
But I just keep on staring and staring
No
Can it be?
Can it be?
Can it be?
And if I look in the mirror
And nobody´s there
But I just keep on staring, and staring
No
Is it me?
Is it me?
Is it me?
But I know you won't leave me 'cause you told me so
And I've no intention of letting you go
(Bad to Me, 1963)
Whatever happened to
The life that we once knew?
Can we really live without each other?
Where did we lose the touch
That seemed to mean so much?
It always made me feel so Free as a bird
(Free As A Bird, 1977/1995)
So you, you must tell me something,…I love you,
Say goodbye or anything
(The Lovers That Never Were, 1987)
I talked with Yoko the day after John was killed and the first thing she said was, “John was really fond of you, you know.” It was almost as if she sensed that I was wondering whether he had… whether the relationship had snapped. I believe it was always there. I believe he really was fond of me, as she said. We were really the best of mates. It was really ace.
(Paul McCartney,May, 1982, interview with Ray Bonici for Music Express)
I do (have a connection) and I don’t expect it to go even though we are separated by death. It’s just something I will always feel, some sort of link with John. That’s for sure.
(Paul McCartney, interview with Steve Wright, Radio 2, December 9, 2005)
And I won't go away until you tell me so
No, I'll never go away
(No More Lonely Nights, 1984)
I stand by what I said
The promise that I made
Will never be broken
I like this one of John sort of screwing up his eyes, he’s obviously got trying to knock at soap, he’s washing his face, trying to not have soap in his eyes. But again, you know, that’s the kind of thing he’d let me take that picture. Because it’s just me. He knew… Well, he thought it was never gonna get publicised. Sorry, John. But no, you had that access and that intimacy, just because you lived on top of each other, you know. So it was really nice looking back at the photos, and reminded me of those days.
(Paul McCartney, June 2023, interview with Martha Kearney, BBC Radio 4's Today programme)
As I read the other day, he [Paul] said in one of his ‘fanzine’ interviews that he was trying to put some distance between The Beatles and the public – and so there was this identity of Sgt Pepper. Intellectually, that’s the same thing he did by writing ‘He loves you’ instead of ‘I love you.’ That’s just his way of working.
(John Lennon, 1980, All We Are Saying, David Sheff)
“Even if I’m writing something very specific, I veil it. If I want to write about loneliness, it will be Eleanor Rigby who carries the can.
“With Little Willow, I was very affected by Maureen’s death. The fragility of life is in that song. But it wasn’t called Maureen, if you get what I’m saying. It was called Little Willow.”
(Paul McCartney on the Nineties, jamming with Ringo and life with wife Linda by Simon Cosyns, The Irish Sun, 7 Aug 2020)
