By the end of the 1960s, Paul McCartney was beginning to get on John Lennon’s nerves. All The Beatles found him domineering in the studio, overly focused on perfecting his songs. One of the songs he spent an exceptionally long time on was “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.” He was a perfectionist about the production, much to his bandmates’ irritation. It didn’t help that Lennon disliked the song and did not try to hide it.
John Lennon did not like Paul McCartney’s ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’
McCartney dragged The Beatles through endless takes of “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” while working on the White Album.
“The previous week’s work was a typical study in frustration,” audio engineer Geoff Emerick wrote in his book Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles. “We’d worked endlessly on just two songs: Lennon’s ‘Revolution’ and McCartney’s ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,’ done over and over again until we were all sick to death of them. Nonetheless, here we were again, breathing in the same stale studio air, working on those same two tracks.”
They had a relatively easy time recording “Revolution” that day. The same could not be said for McCatney’s song.
“[O]nce that was done, Paul made the announcement that none of us wanted to hear: he had spent much of the weekend deliberating and had decided he wanted to sing the lead vocal to ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’ yet again — probably his tenth attempt to get it to sick correctly.”
According to Emerick, the other Beatles did not take this news well. They did not like the song and barely tried to conceal their distaste.
“I saw the grimaces flicker across the faces of George Harrison and Ringo, and I’m quite sure that none of us missed the sheer look of disgust on John’s — this was a McCartney composition that Lennon openly and vocally detested.”
John Lennon had moments of enjoying the Paul McCartney song
While Lennon did little to hide his disgust while recording “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” he still had moments of fun. According to Emerick, Lennon’s behavior had grown increasingly erratic and it was difficult to predict his mood.
“Throughout the preceding weeks I had noticed that John’s behavior was becoming increasingly erratic — his mood swings were more severe, and they were occurring more frequently,” he wrote. “That was definitely the case with the recording of ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.’”
Emerick explained that Lennon swung between enjoying himself and viciously deriding McCartney’s song.
“One moment he’d be into it, acting the fool and doing his fake Jamaican patois, the next minute he’d be sulking and grumbling about how the song was more of Paul’s ‘granny music s***.’ You never knew exactly where you stood with Lennon at any given time, but things were definitely getting worse.”
Paul McCartney yelled at Beatles producer George Martin in the studio
The “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” recording sessions ended in a fight, but not between McCartney and Lennon. Instead, McCartney blew up at Beatles producer George Martin. Martin suggested that McCartney rephrase the line of a verse.
“If you think you can do it better, why don’t you f***ing come down here and sing it yourself?” McCartney said.
Martin yelled back that McCartney should just “bloody sing it again.” Emerick, who had never seen Martin raise his voice in the studio, found the fight both troubling and emblematic of the problems The Beatles had been facing for months. As a result, he quit, though he would later return to work on Abbey Road.
