John Lennon Tried to Convince Paul McCartney to Drill a Hole in His Skull
During the period when John Lennon and Paul McCartney were writing hit songs for The Beatles, Lennon tried to convince his bandmate to try an ancient medicinal practice. Lennon, McCartney explained, was intrigued by trepanning and tried to convince his bandmate to try it. McCartney wasn’t as sold on the idea of drilling a hole into his skull and told Lennon that he should try it first.
Paul McCartney shared the way he and John Lennon were different
Lennon and McCartney were close and had been long before the success of The Beatles, but McCartney explained that there were some clear differences between them. He wondered if that had to do with his father.
“I’m more careful in everything,” McCartney told GQ in 2018. “My dad is a very strong factor in this. He was an ordinary working-class guy, very intelligent, very good with words, but his whole philosophy was to think it out a bit. So that, that turned out to be my sort of way.”
He explained that Lennon had a different upbringing.
“Whereas John, you’ve got to remember, didn’t have a father,” McCartney said. “John didn’t even have an uncle. He went to live with the uncle — the uncle died. His dad had run away. So John felt like he was a jinx on the male line, he told me. I had a father. He was always spouting to be tolerant. Moderation. These were words he used a lot, and I think I listened.”
John Lennon wanted Paul McCartney to try trepanning
Lennon, who wasn’t as big on moderation or trepidation as McCartney, became interested in trepanning, an ancient medicinal practice of drilling a hole into a person’s skull.
“John was a kooky cat,” McCartney said. “We’d all read about it — you know, this is the ’60s. The ‘ancient art of trepanning,’ which lent a little bit of validity to it, because ancient must be good. And all you’d have to do is just bore a little hole in your skull and it lets the pressure off — well, that sounds very sensible. ‘But look, John, you try it and let me know how it goes.'”
He said that he and Lennon worked so well as partners because he wasn’t afraid to tell him no.
“Yeah, but this is the good thing about John and I — I’d say no,” he explained. “And he knew me well enough that if I said no, I meant no, and I’m not frightened of being uncool to say no. And I wouldn’t go so far as to say, ‘You’re f***ing crazy,’ because I didn’t need to say that. But, no, I’m not gonna trepan, thank you very much. It’s just not something I would like to do.”
The former Beatle isn’t sure either of them would have actually done it
Though McCartney said Lennon was excited by the idea of trepanning, he’s not sure his bandmate would have actually tried it. Though he talked a big game, he didn’t always want to follow through on things.
“Who knows? I don’t think so,” McCartney said. “I don’t think he was really serious. He did say it, but he said all sorts of s***.”
