Paul McCartney Said That No Matter What Happened Between The Beatles, They Always Knew How to Make Music Together
Paul McCartney claimed that The Beatles knew how to make music with each other no matter what happened outside the recording studio. It was one of the best qualities of the group.
Paul McCartney said one of the best things about The Beatles was rehearsing their music
Despite the tensions between The Beatles during the Let It Be sessions, Paul couldn’t help but boast one of the best qualities about the group. There’s a scene in Peter Jackson’s documentary, The Beatles: Get Back, where Paul tells director Michael Lindsay-Hogg that the best bit of The Beatles “always has been and always will be is when we’re backs against the wall and we’ve been rehearsing, rehearsing, rehearsing.”
He continued to say that even if The Beatles were at a big place like Twickenham Studios, they’d still be able to play their music well. So, once The Beatles started making their music, their problems outside the recording studio suddenly disappeared. That is certainly obvious in Jackson’s very long documentary.
Paul said The Beatles knew how to make music together no matter what was happening between them
Months after the Let It Be sessions, The Beatles struggled to stay together. In his book The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, Paul explained his Abbey Road song “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” is an analogy for “when something goes wrong out of the blue,” as he was beginning to find happening around that time in The Beatles’ business dealings. Still, what Paul told Lindsay-Hogg remained.
The Beatles’ recording sessions were always good because “no matter what our personal troubles were, no matter what was happening on the business front, the minute we sat down to make a song we were in good shape,” Paul wrote. “Right until the end there was always a great joy in working together in the studio.”
Paul was hurt when John told him he was leaving the band
The Beatles might have worked well together while rehearsing and making music, but it wasn’t enough to save them from splitting up. It was inevitable that they’d break up, and they had to. All four of them had outgrown the band. They wanted and needed to explore solo careers and work with other musicians.
Still, that didn’t mean it wasn’t painful for Paul, who wanted them to stay together the most. It wasn’t pleasant for him when John Lennon happily announced his departure from the band.
In The Lyrics, Paul wrote that John “had quite gleefully told us it was over” during a meeting. John kept saying no to every suggestion to stay together. Paul thought they should return to playing smaller gigs, but John wanted none of it.
“Eventually John said, ‘Oh, I’ve been wanting to tell you this, but I’m leaving The Beatles,'” Paul wrote. “We were all shocked. Relations had been strained, but we sat there saying, ‘What? Why?’ It was like a divorce, and he had just had a divorce from Cynthia the year before.
“I can remember him saying, ‘Oh, this is quite exciting.’ That was very John, and I had admired this kind of contrarian behavior about him since we were kids, when I first met him. He really was a bit loony, in the nicest possible way. But whilst all of us could see what he meant, it was not quite so exciting for those left on the other side.”
The Beatles did work well, making music together. That’s why they were so popular. However, unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to keep them together. They had to fly the nest sometime.
