Paul McCartney Said He and John Lennon Had More in Common Than People Think

Paul McCartney and John Lennon were in a songwriting partnership for years and considered each other close friends, but their public images are markedly different. McCartney is often seen as an affable family man, while Lennon is thought of as angrier, with more politically-minded songs. According to McCartney, they were different personality-wise but had far more in common than people may realize.

Paul McCartney and John Lennon publicly feuded 

Part of the reason people assume Lennon and McCartney are so different is the long-running public feud they engaged in when The Beatles broke up. After one interview by McCartney, Lennon wrote a furious letter to his former bandmate.

“It’s all very well playing ‘simple, honest ole’ human Paul’ in Melody Maker,” Lennon wrote, per the New York Post, “[but] if you’re not the aggressor (as you claim), who the hell took us to court and s*** all over us in public?”

Some of their arguments were much more public. McCartney targeted Lennon and Yoko Ono in his song “Too Many People.” Lennon, who had gone on record saying he didn’t like McCartney’s solo work, hit back with the harsher “How Do You Sleep?”

“The only thing you done was yesterday/ And since you’ve gone you’re just another day,” he sings. 

The former bandmates had many things in common

McCartney acknowledged that he and Lennon were different, but he said that if he had been more like Lennon, The Beatles wouldn’t have worked.

“We were there. We all enjoyed it,” he said, per The Telegraph. “I never really criticized John. I’m not that critical. It’s a question of personalities. John’s was more abrasive than mine and that was good for his corner of the square that made up the Beatles. If we’d had two people like that — forget it — I don’t think it would have worked.”

Still, he didn’t think that Lennon was the person that the public perceived him to be.

“He was not the hard, mad man that people think he was,” McCartney said. “He was a very soft-centered guy and we had a lot more in common than people think. His favorite song when we were kids was ‘Little White Lies,’ which was very sentimental. It was a smoochy old standard that his mum liked. Whatever bad things John said about me, he would also slip his glasses down to the end of his nose and say, ‘I love you.’ That’s really what I hold on to. That’s what I believe. The rest is showing off.”

John Lennon’s son is close with Paul McCartney

Lennon and McCartney got along much better as the 1970s went on. Lennon’s son Sean said he thinks of McCartney as a hero, similar to how he views his father.

“Time has sort of made us all grow to soften our edges and appreciate each other much more,” Sean told The New Yorker. “Paul is a hero to me, on the same shelf as my dad. My mom loves Paul, too, she really appreciates him. They’ve had tensions in the past, and no one is trying to deny it. But all the tension we ever had, hyperbolized or not, makes it a real story about real human beings.”