Paul McCartney Said John Lennon ‘Hated Musicals’ and Once Walked Out of One
Paul McCartney and John Lennon are rock n’ roll legends, but they never took their talents to the theater. The two were asked many times if they wanted to, but they never showed any interest. McCartney said Lennon “hated musicals” and once walked out of a classic production.
Paul McCartney said John Lennon ‘hated musicals’
While McCartney and Lennon dominated the charts, the songwriting duo never took their talents to the Broadway stage. In an interview with his website, Paulmccartney.com, the “Michelle” singer said they were often asked if they would write a musical as a pair, similar to Rogers and Hammerstein. However, they never had an interest in musicals, and McCartney said Lennon particularly hated them.
“I’ve been asked and still do get asked because it kind of is a natural progression,” McCartney shared. “But John and I, when we started, were asked a lot because ‘Lennon-McCartney, Rogers and Hammerstein,’ we liked it. It sounded like old writers. Sounds like a team. So we were asked a lot, but we didn’t like it. John, in particular, hated musicals.”
John Lennon walked out of ‘South Pacific’
Despite John Lennon’s hatred for musicals, Paul McCartney said they were fans of West Side Story, the 1957 show by Leonard Cohen and Stephen Sondheim. However, the two went to see South Pacific and Macca said there was a moment that went too far for the “Imagine” singer, leading to him storming out.
“John and I one afternoon went to see ‘South Pacific’, and we actually walked out ‘cause he just couldn’t stand it. I mean I would have sat and just watched it ‘cause I had paid my money and I would watch anything. But he’d go, ‘Oh, bloody hell,’ you know because what happens is they start – you know the girl in it, Mitzi Gaynon I think it was – going, ‘I wonder if he’s looking at me. Can he really see me?’ And we’d go, ‘Oh no!’ And he starts like, ‘Oh, I think she’s looking at me, I don’t know.’ And we’re going, ‘Oh, stop it!’”
Lennon and McCartney worked on an unfinished play together
There was a time when the pair had an interest in theater but not in the musical kind. Before they formed The Beatles, Paul McCartney and John Lennon created a rough draft of a play called Pilchard. The two only finished four pages of it, but McCartney was reminded of the unfinished project when he found it one day in his attic.
“We were just hanging out, writing our early songs. We started this play,” McCartney told the BBC. “I thought that was lost. It’s quite a funny little thing. It’s called Pilchard and it’s about the Messiah. It was in the era of the kitchen sink [drama]. The idea was the mother and the daughter are in the kitchen area… and they’re just talking. The mother says, ‘Where’s Pilchard?’ And the daughter says, ‘He’s upstairs again’… The idea was the whole story would go on and on and it was the Messiah, and that’s why he never came down.”
