Playboy Interview 1980
Page 6
John: Yes, but I didn't mean it like
that.
Playboy: We're asking because there's always a lot of speculation about whether
the Fab Four are dreaded enemies or the best of friends.
John: We're neither. I haven't seen any of the Beatles for I don't know how much
time. Somebody asked me what I thought of Paul's last album and I made some
remark like, I thought he was depressed and sad. But then I realized I hadn't
listened to the whole damn thing. I heard one track - the hit "Coming
Up," which I thought was a good piece of work. Then I heard something else
that sounded like he was depressed. But I don't follow their work. I don't
follow Wings, you know. I don't give a shit what Wings is doing, or what
George's new album is doing, or what Ringo is doing. I'm not interested, no more
than I am in what Elton John or Bob Dylan is doing. It's not callousness, it's
just that I'm too busy living my own life to be following what other people are
doing, whether they're the Beatles or guys I went to college with or people I
had intense relationships with before I met the Beatles.
Playboy: Besides "Coming Up," what do you think of Paul's work since
he left the Beatles?
John: I kind of admire the way Paul started back from scratch, forming a new
band and playing in small dance halls, because that's what he wanted to do with
the Beatles - he wanted us to go back to the dance halls and experience that
again. But I didn't. . . . That was one of the problems, in a way, that he
wanted to relive it all or something - I don't know what it was. . . . But I
kind of admire the way he got off his pedestal - now he's back on it again, but
I mean, he did what he wanted to do. That's fine, but it's just not what I
wanted to do.
Playboy: What about the music?
John: "The Long and Winding Road" was the last gasp from him. Although
I really haven't listened.
Playboy: You say you haven't listened to Paul's work and haven't really talked
to him since that night in your apartment...
John: Really talked to him, no, that's the operative word. I haven't really
talked to him in ten years. Because I haven't spent time with him. I've been
doing other things and so has he. You know, he's got 25 kids and about
20,000,000 records out - how can he spend time talking? He's always working.
Playboy: Then let's talk about the work you did together. Generally speaking,
what did each of you contribute to the Lennon-McCartney songwriting team?
John: Well, you could say that he provided a lightness, an optimism, while I
would always go for the sadness, the discords, a certain bluesy edge. There was
a period when I thought I didn't write melodies, that Paul wrote those and I
just wrote straight, shouting rock 'n' roll. But, of course, when I think of
some of my own songs - "In My Life" - or some of the early stuff -
"This Boy" - I was writing melody with the best of them. Paul had a
lot of training, could play a lot of instruments. He'd say, "Well, why
don't you change that there? You've done that note 50 times in the song."
You know, I'll grab a note and ram it home. Then again, I'd be the one to figure
out where to go with a song - a story that Paul would start. In a lot of the
songs, my stuff is the "middle eight," the bridge.
Playboy: For example?
John: Take "Michelle." Paul and I were staying somewhere, and he
walked in and hummed the first few bars, with the words, you know [sings verse
of "Michelle"], and he says, "Where do I go from here?" I'd
been listening to blues singer Nina Simone, who did something like "I love
you!" in one of her songs and that made me think of the middle eight for
"Michelle" [sings]: "I love you, I love you, I l-o-ove you
..."
Playboy: What was the difference in terms of lyrics?
John: I always had an easier time with lyrics, though Paul is quite a capable
lyricist who doesn't think he is. So he doesn't go for it. Rather than face the
problem, he would avoid it. "Hey, Jude" is a damn good set of lyrics.
I made no contribution to the lyrics there. And a couple of lines he has come up
with show indications of a good lyricist. But he just hasn't taken it anywhere.
Still, in the early days, we didn't care about lyrics as long as the song had
some vague theme - she loves you, he loves him, they all love each other. It was
the hook, line and sound we were going for. That's still my attitude, but I
can't leave lyrics alone. I have to make them make sense apart from the songs.
Playboy: What's an example of a lyric you and Paul worked on together?
John: In "We Can Work It Out," Paul did the first half, I did the
middle eight. But you've got Paul writing, "We can work it out/We can work
it out" - real optimistic, y' know, and me, impatient: "Life is very
short and there's no time/For fussing and fighting, my friend...."
Playboy: Paul tells the story and John philosophizes.
John: Sure. Well, I was always like that, you know. I was like that before the
Beatles and after the Beatles. I always asked why people did things and why
society was like it was. I didn't just accept it for what it was apparently
doing. I always looked below the surface.
Playboy: When you talk about working together on a single lyric like "We
Can Work It Out," it suggests that you and Paul worked a lot more closely
than you've admitted in the past. Haven't you said that you wrote most of your
songs separately, despite putting both of your names on them?