In a recent appearance, Paul McCartney addressed the allegations of whether he tried to erase John Lennon’s legacy.
Reflecting on the distortions and the need to set the record straight, the musician said:
“So, I think with all these distortions that were beginning to happen, there’s kind of a sort of revisionism that was starting, I sensed. And I thought, well, look, I don’t want to kind of put John down at all. I mean, I’m his biggest fan. I’m the last person to do that because I really feel very privileged and loved every second that we had together.”
He then explained his perspective on their songwriting partnership:
“I mean, let’s face it, to be McCartney in the Lennon-McCartney songwriter partnership was fantastic, but it was a question of me thinking, ‘Well, I better stick it down now before the memory goes completely,’ which is going fast; even as we speak, it’s ebbing away.”
Sharing his side of the story, Paul continued:
“And I better get with someone I know and trust, like Barry Miles, who wrote the book, to actually just put forward my side of things. Because the kind of thing that started to happen was… George Martin wrote a book called ‘The Summer of Love,’ and he asked me to proofread it just to see if his memory was the same as mine, and he got to a song called ‘Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.’
And he said, ‘Well, this was John’s song completely. John wrote this, very typical of John…’ So I had to ring him up. I said, ‘George, no, it was John and I. We sat down. I contributed half of the song.'”
He added, reflecting more on the writing process of the track:
“I remember clearly arriving at John’s place – it is in the book here – where he had this little drawing that Julian, his son, had done. And across the top of it, in this very naive children’s writing, was ‘Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.’ John said, ‘What about that for a title, huh?’
I said, ‘Fantastic.’ He said, ‘Come on, let’s go upstairs and write it,’ which we did. But things like that, where it’s almost a better story that John just wrote ‘Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds’ himself, that it’s attributed to LSD, etc. All the little legends that have grown up about it. Unfortunately, it’s just not true.”
Later during the chat, the singer further clarified misconceptions, saying:
“So that was basically the idea. I thought, well, whether people believe me or the revisionism, it doesn’t really matter to me. But I think I ought to get it down.”
You can listen to the interview below.
