Paul McCartney Once Compared The Beatles’ Fans to ‘a Million Seagulls Screaming’

When The Beatles first took over the rock and roll scene in the ’60s, Paul McCartney and the other members loved to hear the screams of their seas of adoring fans. But when they matured and started to take their music a bit more seriously, the noise from their fandom didn’t sound quite the same.

What changed, according to McCartney? And who did he say chose to pull the plug on The Beatles?

Early ‘Beatlemania’ sent The Beatles’ fans into a ‘collective hypnotism,’ said one promoter

In the ’60s, a frenzy known as “Beatlemania” blanketed the globe as four teenagers from Liverpool, England, skyrocketed to unprecedented fame. And The Beatles’ fandom was known to create “absolute pandemonium” at concerts in their early days, as promoter Andi Lothian described to The Guardian.

“The whole hall went into some kind of state, almost like collective hypnotism. I’d never seen anything like it,” Lothian said. He added The Beatles’ fans were hard for security to keep up with. For example, he saw one “almost getting to Ringo’s drumkit” in 1963 before bouncers came “tearing down the aisles.”

At first, the band appreciated the attention from their screaming fans, who greeted them by crying and possibly fainting on sight. But it didn’t have the same effect after some years.

Paul McCartney said The Beatles’ screaming fans became ‘worrying’ as they matured

In an interview with NPR, McCartney talked about finding massive fame as a teenager. According to him, the Beatles, as individual young people, were “apparently not very attractive” in a traditional sense. The iconic singer-songwriter said, “… We certainly weren’t the big kind of quarterback who attracted all the girls in town.”

As a result, the band members’ ambitions were simple when they first started gaining popularity. “We just wanted to have a girlfriend and basically do as much as we could, was the idea,” he offered.

“So as we got fans, that became our motivation, which was, we were trying to be attractive in any way you like,” he shared, “visually, physically, sexually.”

Their “any way you like” formula worked, maybe more than they appreciated later. McCartney told NPR, “… We were maturing and we were sort of out of that phase. It was like, OK, it would be quite nice to be able to hear the song we’re playing.”

But the “Dear Friend” writer said they couldn’t hear “because it was just a million seagulls screaming” in the audience.

Paul McCartney said he didn’t split up The Beatles

McCartney set the record straight on one longstanding misconception during his NPR interview. “It’s always looked like I broke up The Beatles, and that wasn’t the case,” he declared.

After he put out his first album, he received a questionnaire about the band. One asked, “Will The Beatles get back together again?”

So, McCartney “sort of said, ‘No, I don’t think so,'” he noted. “And then that became, as it does, blown up into the big headline, ‘Paul says The Beatles finished!’ or whatever.”

Though he didn’t have a chance to correct the record before the story took off, he eventually set it straight. He said The Beatles ended when John Lennon entered a meeting and announced he was leaving. “We were gobsmacked,” he said about the rest of the band. “We were very shocked.”

The Beatles’ fans were heartbroken, but McCartney eventually understood. “… Later I realized that it was John had this new relationship with Yoko [Ono], and he had to clear the decks in order to give her full-time attention,” he concluded.