Paul McCartney Said John Lennon Was so Angry With Him After The Beatles’ Split That Some of Their Phone Calls Were ‘Frightening’
In 1970, Paul McCartney announced that The Beatles had broken up, and John Lennon made his dissatisfaction with his bandmate abundantly clear. He wrote songs about McCartney and insulted him in interviews. In private, their relationship was even more tense. McCartney explained that for a period of time following the band’s split, he and Lennon had multiple vitriolic phone calls. He explained that he thought they were frightening.
Paul McCartney recalled several angry phone calls with John Lennon
McCartney and Lennon had been friends for over a decade by the time The Beatles broke up. In the early 1970s, though, it seemed that their relationship was damaged beyond repair. McCartney explained that every time he called Lennon, their conversations grew heated.
“I would ring him when I went to New York and he would say, ‘Yeah, what d’you want?’ ‘I just thought we might meet?’ ‘Yeah, what the f*** d’you want, man?’ I used actually to have some very frightening phone calls,” McCartney said, per the book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now by Barry Miles. “Thank God they’re not in my life anymore. I went through a period when I would be so nervous to ring him and so insecure in myself that I actually felt like I was in the wrong. It was all very acrimonious and bitter.”
McCartney admitted that Lennon wasn’t the only one who got angry during these calls. He often snapped at his former bandmate.
“[A]nother time I called him and it was ‘Yeah? Yeah? Whadda ya want?’ He suddenly started to sound American,” he said. “I said, ‘Oh, f*** off, Kojak,’ and slammed the phone down; we were having those kind of times, it was bad news.”
The former Beatles never let go of the love they had for one another
Though their relationship hit an extremely rough patch, McCartney and Lennon still viewed one another as family. Lennon lashed out at McCartney for a number of reasons — he didn’t like the way he treated Yoko Ono or the fact that McCartney was suing the group. Still, it seemed that part of the reason he was lashing out was because he wanted to separate himself from The Beatles. He wanted to push away his affiliation with the band, which meant publicly scorning his longtime writing partner.
Despite this, McCartney said that Lennon always had moments where he showed he still cared.
“John and I were arguing about something and I was getting fairly heated,” McCartney said. “John just pulled his glasses down his nose and looked over the top and said, ‘It’s only me,’ and then put them back again. Just a moment. I think that was very symptomatic of our whole relationship: John would let the barrier down and you’d get a couple of moments of deep reality, then he was defensive again.”
Paul McCartney said he and John Lennon eventually had to stop talking about business
Eventually, McCartney and Lennon repaired their relationship. McCartney explained that he realized he couldn’t talk about business with Lennon without their conversation devolving into an argument. Once he knew to avoid the topic, their relationship improved.
“I realized that I couldn’t always ring him up to ask about business, which was my main priority at the time,” he said. “It was better to talk about cats, or baking bread, or babies. So we did that, and I had a lot in common with him because we were having our babies and I was into a similar sort of mode. So the air cleared and I was able to speak to him and go and see him.”
McCartney remains grateful that he was able to mend his friendship with Lennon before his death.
