7 of John Lennon’s Nastiest Comments About The Beatles

By the end of the 1960s, John Lennon had grown weary of The Beatles, and he made his feelings abundantly clear once the band broke up. In multiple interviews, Lennon insulted the group’s music, dynamic, and his former bandmates’ solo careers. While he made many comments, particularly ones directed at Paul McCartney, here are seven of his rudest opinions about his former band and bandmates.

John Lennon said The Beatles were all a con

Lennon admitted that while it was nice that others enjoyed The Beatles’ music, it bothered him. 

“None of it is important,” he said in The Beatles: The Authorized Biography by Hunter Davies. “It just takes a few people to get going, and they con themselves into thinking it’s important. It all becomes a big con.”

He said that as artists, they were conning their audience. 

“We’re a con as well,” he explained. “We know we’re conning them, because we know people want to be conned. They’ve given us the freedom to con them. Let’s stick that in there, we say, that’ll start them puzzling. I’m sure all artists do, when they realize it’s a con.”

John Lennon said The Beatles made ‘wallpaper music’

Lennon was happy to embark on a solo career because he grew bored with The Beatles’ music. He insulted many of the band’s songs, even ones he wrote, and hoped his solo career would allow him to make meaningful music.

“[His solo albums] would make a meaningful statement and not be wallpaper music — the term John and Yoko used to describe the music of The Beatles,” his girlfriend May Pang wrote in her book Loving John. “He was also determined that it be more successful than McCartney’s solo albums.”

He publicly criticized a Paul McCartney solo album 

After the band’s breakup, each former member embarked on a solo career. Lennon said he wasn’t a fan of many of these albums. He noted he wouldn’t listen to George Harrison’s album but liked it much better than McCartney’s.

“I thought Paul’s was rubbish,” he told Rolling Stone in 1971. “I think he’ll make a better one, when he’s frightened into it. But I thought that first one was just a lot of … Remember what I told you when it came out? ‘Light and easy.’ You know that crack.”

He admitted Ringo Starr’s debut solo album embarrassed him

Lennon and Ringo Starr had a close relationship even after The Beatles broke up. This didn’t protect Starr from Lennon’s criticism, though. While complimenting Starr’s second solo album, Beaucoups of Blues, Lennon said it was good that it hadn’t been as embarrassing as his first one.

“I think it’s a good record. I wouldn’t buy any of it, you know,” he said. “I think it’s a good record, and I was pleasantly surprised to hear ‘Beaucoups of Blues,’ that song you know. I thought, good. I was glad, and I didn’t feel as embarrassed as I did about his first record.”

He once admitted that he regretted not punching George Harrison

A part of the rising tensions between members of The Beatles was the band’s chilly treatment of Yoko Ono. He said it was impossible to forgive his bandmates for their behavior. He also wished he had hit Harrison when he had the chance.

“George, s***, insulted her right to her face in the Apple office at the beginning, just being ‘straight-forward,’ you know that game of ‘I’m going to be up front,’ because this is what we’ve heard and Dylan and a few people said she’d got a lousy name in New York, and you give off bad vibes,” Lennon recalled. “That’s what George said to her! And we both sat through it. I didn’t hit him, I don’t know why.”

John Lennon said he felt no sadness when he stopped working with Paul McCartney

Lennon and McCartney worked together for over a decade, but Lennon said he felt no loss when they split. He didn’t think McCartney had much to offer him.

“I never actually felt a loss,” he said, per the book, All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. “I don’t want it to sound negative, like I didn’t need Paul, because when he was there, obviously, it worked. But I can’t — it’s easier to say what my contribution was to him than what he gave to me. And he’d say the same.”

John Lennon described The Beatles as ‘the biggest bastards on earth’

In one of his harshest descriptions of the band, Lennon said Davies was too forgiving in his description of them. 

“Those things are left out by Davies, about what bastards we were,” he said. “F***in’ big bastards, that’s what the Beatles were. You have to be a bastard to make it, that’s a fact, and the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth.”