John Lennon was seemingly not a fan of Paul McCartney‘s post-Beatles group work with Wings. The Imagine hitmaker had choice words for his former bandmate when speaking about the Band on the Run legends in one of his final interviews. Lennon would discuss McCartney’s work with Wings and use it as a chance to slam both The Beatles member and The Rolling Stones frontman, Mick Jagger.
Lennon would not only take aim at McCartney and Jagger but at fans who wanted more work that sounded like The Beatles. He said: “They want to hold on to something they never had in the first place. Anybody who claims to have some interest in me as an individual artist or even as part of the Beatles has absolutely misunderstood everything I ever said if they can’t see why I’m with Yoko.
“And if they can’t see that, they don’t see anything. They’re just jacking off to… it could be anybody. Mick Jagger or somebody else. Let them go jack off to Mick Jagger, OK? I don’t need it.”
Lennon went on to ask for fans who wanted more similar-sounding records to simply leave him alone rather than pressure him into making music they had already heard before. The veteran songwriter went on to use Wings as an example of what fans should obsess about instead of him.
He added: “I absolutely don’t need it. Let them chase Wings. Just forget about me. If that’s what you want, go after Paul or Mick. I ain’t here for that. If that’s not apparent in my past, I’m saying it in black and green, next to all the tits and asses on page 196. Go play with the other boys. Don’t bother me. Go play with the Rolling Wings.”
It isn’t the first time Lennon had been left enraged by McCartney’s work, either. There was a clear fallout between the once-close pair when McCartney released Ram. Opening track Too Many People appeared to be a touch on the nose for Lennon, who was left furious by the song’s meaning.
Too Many People does not name-drop Lennon or Yoko Ono, but does hit out at the “lucky break” The Beatles had afforded Lennon. McCartney sings of Lennon making his “first mistake,” which he said was taking his “lucky break” and breaking it in two. Lennon was enraged by the comments made by McCartney, and shared as much with the readers of Crawdaddy Magazine.
He wrote: “I heard Paul’s messages in Ram – yes there are dear reader! Too many people going where? Missed our lucky what? What was our first mistake? Can’t be wrong? Huh!
“I mean Yoko, me, and other friends can’t all be hearing things. So to have some fun, I must thank Allen Klein publicly for the line ‘just another day’. A real poet! Some people don’t see the funny side of it. Too bad. What am I supposed to do, make you laugh? It’s what you might call an ‘angry letter’, sung – get it?”
Lennon would then feature How Do You Sleep on his Imagine album, which made clear pops at McCartney. One line referred to McCartney doing little since the release of Yesterday while another noted the “Paul is Dead” conspiracy, a theory which suggests the “real” McCartney was replaced.
Discover more from Cult Following
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
