John Lennon was frequently critical of Paul McCartney. When The Beatles broke up, he publicly discussed his problems with his bandmate, calling him controlling, frustrating, and egomaniacal. Still, Lennon could give his former bandmate credit where credit was due. He said McCartney was one of the best bassists in the music industry and did not have an over-inflated ego about his talent.
John Lennon said Paul McCartney wasn’t an egomaniac about one of his skills
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While McCartney had the most technical training of The Beatles, he was primarily a self-taught musician. Lennon did not think this impacted his skill in any way. He thought that McCartney was one of the best bass players alive.
“I think Ringo’s drumming is underrated the same way as Paul’s bass-playing is underrated,” Lennon said in The Beatles Anthology. “Paul was one of the most innovative bass players that ever played, and half the stuff that’s going on now is directly ripped off from his Beatles period.”
Lennon believed this was one of the few talents McCartney didn’t loudly broadcast.
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“He was coy about his bass-playing,” Lennon said, adding, “He’s an egomaniac about everything else, but his playing he was always a bit coy about. He is a great musician who plays the bass like few other people could play it.”
While he admitted that McCartney was not a technically good musician — none of The Beatles were, in his mind — he still thought he was one of the best.
The bassist’s friend said he let fame go to his head
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Lennon was not the only one who thought McCartney had an over-inflated ego. McCartney enjoyed fame more than his bandmates. He said it would be difficult to walk away from the spotlight, a sentiment that Lennon and George Harrison did not share. One of McCartney’s friends said he believed the bassist let fame go to his head on The Beatles’ rise to success.
“Paul is the only one of the boys who’s had it go to his head,” the friend told The Saturday Evening Post in 1964, per The Guardian.
Still, McCartney has spoken about how he tries not to think about his fame too often in order to remain grounded.
John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr kept each other’s egos in check
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While McCartney may have enjoyed fame more than the other Beatles, his bandmates didn’t let him get too big-headed. They helped one another remain grounded. This is why Ringo Starr believed they were able to survive such a massive level of fame. He said things could have ended up differently for them if they didn’t have each other.
“We’d get in the car. I’d look over at John and say, ‘Christ. Look at you. You’re a bloody phenomenon!’ And just laugh because it was only him,” Starr said, per the book Ringo: With a Little Help by Michael Seth Starr. “Elvis went downhill because he seemed to have no friends, just a load of sycophants. Whereas with us, individually, we all went mad, but the other three always brought us back. That’s what saved us.”
Whenever one of them grew overwhelmed, the other three would help settle them.
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“I remember being totally bananas thinking, I am the one, and the other three would look at me and say, ‘Scuse me, what are you doing?’” he said. “I remember each of us getting into that state.”
