Paul McCartney and John Lennon were on decidedly bad terms after The Beatles broke up. McCartney sued his bandmates to take control of their catalog from their manager, Allen Klein. The other three Beatles resented him for this, and their interactions following the split were chilly. After a phone argument with Lennon, McCartney made a mistake that only made things worse.
Paul McCartney made an uncomfortable mistake after a fight with John Lennon
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As the former members of The Beatles worked their way through the lawsuit, Lennon made it clear to them that he wanted indemnity. He reportedly had over $1 million in personal debts and wanted protection. McCartney spoke to his lawyer, John Eastman, then called Lennon to tell him he could have indemnity.
The conversation began friendly enough, but when McCartney began to talk about business, Lennon’s mood soured.
“John said, ‘F***ing indemnity. F***ing this, f***ing that. You don’t need to give me f***ing indemnity, you f***ing —’ I think we ended up just sort of swearing at each other,’” McCartney recalled in the book All You Need Is Love: The Beatles in Their Own Words by Steven Gaines and Peter Brown. “I said, ‘F*** you, ya big c***,’ ’cause I just couldn’t handle it. I couldn’t be sweet and reasonable anymore.”
After ending the conversation, a furious McCartney tried to call Eastman. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the John he reached.
“Of course, I got the phone numbers wrong,” he recalled. “I rang John Lennon back instead. [When the phone was answered, I said,] ‘Hello, John? Yeah, listen, I just — oh — yeah well…’ But it was Yoko this time, and then I said, ‘Look, I didn’t mean for it to go like that — but, s***, you know, it seems to have got …’”
McCartney said his attempt to play it cool did not fool Ono or Lennon. If anything, it made things worse.
“The funny thing was, they knew I was trying to ring John Eastman immediately after, so that would have reinforced their little feelings about me — double-dealing,” he said. “I’ve hardly talked to him since.”
“I would ring him when I went to New York and he would say, ‘Yeah, what d’you want?’ ‘I just thought we might meet?’ ‘Yeah, what the f*** d’you want, man?’ I used actually to have some very frightening phone calls,” McCartney said, per the book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now by Barry Miles. “Thank God they’re not in my life anymore. I went through a period when I would be so nervous to ring him and so insecure in myself that I actually felt like I was in the wrong. It was all very acrimonious and bitter.”
They got along as long as they didn’t discuss business
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Eventually, McCartney learned to steer clear of business discussions with Lennon.
“I rang last Christmas, and I was smart enough not to mention Apple,” he said. “We had a pleasant conversation. I was allowed to talk to his son, which was lovely. His son seemed very nice. And that was now the new formula for life, for The Beatles — to this day, I’ve not mentioned that word to them.”
McCartney was grateful to have found a way to be friendly with Lennon, but their relationship never bounced back to where it had been in the early 1960s.
