Yoko Ono Said Paul McCartney Helped Save Her Marriage to John Lennon
Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono have famously not always been on the best terms. Soon after The Beatles broke up, John Lennon even said that he would never forgive McCartney and George Harrison for the way they treated Ono. Several years later, though, Lennon and Ono separated, and he was living apart from her during his Lost Weekend. According to Ono, McCartney helped the couple reunite.
Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono did not always get along
When Ono and Lennon got together, his Beatles bandmates, particularly McCartney and Harrison, were not welcoming to her.
“You can quote Paul, it’s probably in the papers, he said it many times at first he hated Yoko and then he got to like her,” Lennon told Rolling Stone in 1971. “But, it’s too late for me. I’m for Yoko. Why should she take that kind of s*** from those people?”
They continued to dislike each other after Lennon’s death.
“Yoko would appear in the press, and I’d read it, and it said, ‘Paul did nothing! All he did was book the studio…’ Like, ‘F*** you, darling! Hang on! All I did was book the f***ing studio?’ Well, OK, now people know that’s not true,” McCartney told Esquire in 2015. “But that was just part of it. There was a lot of revisionism: John did this, John did that. I mean, if you just pull out all his great stuff and then stack it up against my not-so-great stuff, it’s an easy case to make.”
Yoko Ono said Paul McCartney helped save her marriage to John Lennon
Though problems between Ono and McCartney have flared over the years, he said he wanted to work to accept her. She was Lennon’s wife, and McCartney could see he loved her. In 1973, however, Lennon and Ono separated. He moved out of their apartment and began a relationship with the couple’s assistant, May Pang.
They remained separated for 18 months, and Ono eventually confided in McCartney and his wife, Linda. She told them that she loved Lennon and wanted him back, but he had to work for it.
“I said, ‘Well, look, do you still love him?'” McCartney said, per the book Paul McCartney: A Life by Peter Ames Carlin. “So I said, ‘Well, would you think it was intrusion if I said to him, “Look, man, she loves you and there’s a way to get back”?’ She said she wouldn’t mind.”
When McCartney visited Lennon at his rented home in Malibu, he passed the message on.
“I took him into the back room and said, ‘This girl of yours, she really still loves you … You’re going to have to work your little ass off, man. You have to get back to NYC and you have to take a separate flat, you have to send her roses every f***ing day, you have to work at it like a b****!”
Lennon took McCartney’s advice and got back together with Ono in 1975. They remained together until his death in 1980.
“I want the world to know that it was a very touching thing that he did for John,” Ono said, per The Daily Mail. “He was genuinely concerned about his old partner. Even though John was not even asking for help — John, Paul, all of them were too proud to ask anything — he helped. John often said he didn’t understand why Paul did this for us, but he did.”
They’re on much better terms these days
Ono and McCartney have had their problems over the years, but they’re on better terms now. McCartney recognized her importance to Lennon, and Ono felt similarly about her husband’s former writing partner.
“I never felt too bad about Paul,” she said, per IndyStar. “He was my husband’s partner and they did a great job and all that. They seemed to have a lot of fun, and I respected that.”
