John Lennon Considered Writing With Paul McCartney in the 1970s, Claimed May Pang
After The Beatles broke up, John Lennon and Paul McCartney were on decidedly chilly terms. They insulted one another in interviews and songs and rarely saw one another. Several years after the breakup, though, much of their anger had waned. According to Lennon’s girlfriend, May Pang, he considered reuniting with McCartney to write music.
John Lennon considered reuniting with Paul McCartney in the 1970s
After the vitriolic Beatles break up, Lennon and McCartney steered clear of each other. McCartney said that anytime he attempted to reach out to his former bandmate over the phone, he was met with nothing but anger.
By 1973, though, neither felt nearly as angry. According to Lennon’s girlfriend, May Pang, McCartney and his wife Linda visited them often.
“Paul and Linda would visit us whenever we were [in New York],” she told Cultural Sonar. “Well, they said that they were going to New Orleans to record their new album. John thought it was a fabulous idea.”
Lennon even began to consider working with McCartney again.
“One day, I see John strumming on the guitar, and he asks me, ‘What would you think about me writing with Paul again?’ Well, my head nearly spun around like Linda Blair from The Exorcist,” she recalled.” So, I said, ‘That would be great.’ ‘Why?’ he asked. I said: ‘Solo, you guys are good but when you work together, no one can beat you.’ So, he thinks about that and says, ‘Yeah.'”
Ultimately, they did not write together again before Lennon’s death in 1980.
John Lennon believed he was a better writer than Paul McCartney
Though Pang said Lennon and McCartney were best when they were together, Lennon thought he brought more to the partnership than McCartney did. He liked writing with McCartney, but he didn’t think he needed him. Because of this, Lennon claimed he never felt a loss when they stopped writing together.
“I never actually felt a loss,” he said in the book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono by David Sheff. “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.”
The pair had a friendly relationship, even if they did not work together
Though Lennon and McCartney never reached the same level of friendship that they had in the early days of The Beatles, they greatly improved their relationship. McCartney said that their last conversations were light and friendly.
“I was baking bread and got quite good at it,” he said on The Howard Stern Show. “So when I heard John was doing it, it was great. We could just talk about something so ordinary.”
This came as a welcome relief to McCartney. He and Lennon were like family to one another, and it was good to be able to be friends again.
“It was really nice, and I was so glad that we got back to that relationship that we always had,” McCartney said. “We’d lived in each other’s pockets for so long that it was great to get back to that.”
