John Lennon’s former assistant Dan Richter recently recalled The Beatles and Lennon’s rivalry with Paul McCartney during a new interview for The Telegraph (via Guitar.com).
John Lennon was angry with Paul McCartney
The rivalry was the reason behind the legendary band’s split. It impacted history of modern music would be an understatement. But during the interview, Richter explained that Lennon was not exactly super-happy about McCartney’s songwriting talents. It was about those “sweet melodies” as Richter pointed out.
He said:
“It bugged him that Paul could write those sweet melodies like ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Hey Jude.’ He couldn’t do that. He was just too acerbic, or too intelligent…”
Richter then recalled an occasion when, in 1965, John Lennon went into a restaurant and whoever was in charge there felt like it was a good idea to welcome him with The Beatles’ “Yesterday.” Needless to say, Lennon wasn’t exactly happy about hearing McCartney’s song there.
Going further into it, Richter also remembered how Lennon was looking for ways to prove his contribution to The Beatles, even bringing the full list of the band’s songs and pointing out the ones that he wrote. The assistant said:
“John got somebody to make a list of all the Beatles’ songs. Then we had to say which were his and which were Paul’s.”
But as Richter also pointed out, the two musical giants of the 20th century would eventually set their differences inside and would reconcile. Remembering his attempt to get them talking again in 1973, Richter said:
“John and Yoko [Ono] were at their Bank Street place [in New York] and I was trying to get John and Paul to talk to each other. Paul was at a hotel in Berlin and I called his people. I said: ‘If I got John on the phone would Paul talk to him?’ They said yes, and so they talked. I felt really good about that because they really loved each other.”
