For a time, John Lennon was the clear frontman of The Beatles. His bandmates looked to him with admiration and media outlets established him as the group’s leader. According to a Beatles associate, this was a position Lennon wanted but could not hold. He grew too lazy as the 1960s wore on.
John Lennon was initially the clear leader of The Beatle
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Peter Brown, the personal assistant to Beatles manager Brian Epstein, had a close working relationship with the band for years. While he said he did not play favorites, he primarily communicated with Paul McCartney. McCartney was more invested in the group than his bandmates.
“I could communicate with Paul. I suppose I was closer to him, but I was always enamored of John’s enigmatic personality,” Brown told Rolling Stone. “Paul was the thorough one, the workaholic, and John was lazy.”
Brown said that Lennon was not always this way. He initially headed the band with ironclad authority.
“But in the beginning, John was absolutely the boss. It was his group,” Brown said. “It was John the leader, John everything. And John was never a compromiser. John did what John wanted.”
McCartney eventually wrested control from Lennon, but Brown believed this was only because the latter lost interest in the band. If Lennon had wanted to remain the leader, he could have.
“So when Paul took over, it was only because John had lost interest,” Brown said. “Of course, that was a problem when Yoko came along and got John to assert himself again. He wanted to take everything back.”
His first wife believed he never would have made it far without Paul McCartney
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While Lennon held much of the power in the early Beatles, his first wife, Cynthia, believed he never could have made it far without McCartney. He had artistic ambitions, but she didn’t think he could have made them reality without his bandmate.
“He would have ended up a bum … It’s hard to say that now, after what happened, but he wouldn’t have cared that much,” she said in the book Lennon: The Definitive Biography by Ray Coleman. “I’d have gone out to work, he wouldn’t have any qualifications whatsoever because he was falling foul of the art college, and Mimi would have pushed him in all sorts of directions. He would have needed to learn a trade, or go back to school again, and I can’t see him concentrating. He’d have gone downhill.”
John Lennon and Paul McCartney competed for control of The Beatles
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Even when Lennon had definitive control over The Beatles, McCartney was jockeying for leadership.
“John and Paul had always been competitive,” Cynthia wrote in her book John. “Although the other band members — and the audience — knew that John was the group’s leader, Paul wanted to be involved in all the decisions, whether they were about which venue to play or which songs to use. The two sang alternatively on stage and each had his own style.”
Paul Simon witnessed the dynamic between the two of them. He said the competition between them was breathtaking.
“You have no idea how competitive John Lennon was around Paul McCartney,” he said, per the book Paul Simon: The Life by Robert Hilburn. “When I first met them, I felt like someone had taken all the oxygen out of the room. I almost couldn’t breathe, they were so competitive, and that’s what made them so great. They wouldn’t settle for just good.”
