“I didn’t leave the Beatles. The Beatles have left the Beatles, but no one wants to be the one to say that the party’s over. Last year John said he wanted a divorce. All right, so do I. I want to give him that divorce. I hate this trial separation because it’s just not working. John’s in love with Yoko, and he’s no longer in love with the three of us.”
— Paul McCartney in an interview with Ray Connolly (
via selenak)
“And, in the same respect, the creativity of songwriting had left Paul and me… well, by the mid-Sixties it had become a craft. And yet…a different kind of thing comes in. It’s like a love affair. When you first meet, you can have the hots for twenty-four hours a day for each other. But after fifteen or twenty years, a different kind of sexual and intellectual relationship develops, right? It’s still love, but it’s different. So there’s that kind of difference in creativity, too. As in a love affair, two creative people can destroy themselves trying to recapture that youthful spirit, at twenty-one or twenty-four, of creating without even being aware of how it’s happening.”
“I do (have a connection) and I don’t expect it to go even though we are separated by death. It’s just something I will always feel, some sort of link with John. That’s for sure.”
— Paul McCartney (Interview with Steve Wright, Radio 2, December 9, 2005)
“
I was thinking the other day about the achievements people want in life. It was sort of shocking as I started to think of some of mine. Let’s say, imagine being the guy who wrote with John Lennon? Jesus Christ, I mean, what about that? The guy.
Let’s just go over this again: The guy that wrote with John Lennon. Are you kidding? I have such an admiration for John, like most people. But to be the guy who wrote with him — well, that’s enough. Right there, you could retire, and go, “Jesus, I had a fantastic life. Take me, Lord.”
”
lonelylifetime:
Probably my favourite quote of Paul’s about John. It’s simple and yet so heartwarming.
commanderspock:
albarns | andrewgarfieldsobliviousnipples
“At least once a tour, that song just gets me. I’m singing it, and I think I’m OK, and I suddenly realise it’s very emotional, and John was a great mate and a very important man in my life, and I miss him, you know? It happened at the first show, in Gijon: I was doing fine, and I found myself doing a thing I’ve done in soundcheck, just repeating one of the lines: ‘I love you, I love you, I love you.’ I did that and I thought, ‘That’s nice - that works.’ And then I came to finish the song, to do the last verse, and it was, ‘Oh shit - I’ve just totally lost it.’”
“John, he was beautiful. Very beautiful.”
“At least once a tour, that song just gets me. I’m singing it, and I think I’m OK, and I suddenly realise it’s very emotional, and John was a great mate and a very important man in my life, and I miss him, you know? It happened at the first show, in Gijon: I was doing fine, and I found myself doing a thing I’ve done in soundcheck, just repeating one of the lines: ‘I love you, I love you, I love you.’ I did that and I thought, ‘That’s nice - that works.’ And then I came to finish the song, to do the last verse, and it was, ‘Oh shit - I’ve just totally lost it.’”
“Are you kidding? Of course I bloody miss it. I’m sitting in the room with John, him with me. Believe me, we’re both pretty good editors. We were young turks. We were smartasses. And we did some amazing things. I would love him to be here now, saying, ‘Don’t bloody do that!’ – or, more wonderfully, ‘That’s great!’ So yeah, I really had the greatest writing partner.”
“It was written for John, to John. It was like a letter. With the business pressures of the Beatles breaking up it’s like a marriage. One minute you’re in love, the next minute you hate each other’s guts. It’s a pity, because it’s very difficult to cut through all that. So you do what we all seemed to do, which was write it in songs. I wrote “Dear Friend” as a kind of peace gesture.”
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