Paul McCartney said the Beatles tolerated Yoko Ono joining the band for the 1968 recording sessions for “The White Album” at John Lennon’s insistence “out of respect” for him and because they “weren’t too confrontational.”
“Things like having Yoko in the middle – literally in the middle of a recording session was something you had to deal with, and the idea was that if John wanted this to happen then it had to happen. There’s no reason not to,” McCartney said in a statement. Wednesday’s episode of his podcast, “McCartney: My Life in Lyrics.”
He added: “Out of respect for John, we would have allowed it without making a fuss, but at the same time, I don’t think any of us particularly liked it – it was an intrusion into the workplace.”
He described the recordings of the “White Album” as a period of change fueled by Lennon’s strong relationship with Ono.
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Paul McCartney said that John Lennon insisted on Yoko Ono joining the recording sessions for “The White Album” in 1968. (Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)
“We were heading towards the breakup of The Beatles,” he said. “John and Yoko got together and it was bound to have an impact on the group dynamics.”
He said before Ono started joining them in the studio, there were always just four of them and an engineer named George Martin.
“We’ve always done it that way, so we weren’t too confrontational, I think we just suppressed it and got on with it.”
McCartney said that John Lennon’s relationship with Yoko Ono “must have had an impact” on the Beatles’ dynamics. (SSBL/Getty Images)
The “Let it Be” lyricist reiterated, “That was our job, that’s what we did in life. We were the Beatles. That meant if we didn’t tour, we would record.”
The 81-year-old said he learned his kind behavior from his father, who he described as “polite” and “polite.”
“We were encouraged to be good men in our family, so if we were at a bus stop and there were women in line, my father would hold up the trilby to them and say, ‘Good morning,’ and he would encourage us to hold the trilby up.” Our school caps said.
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He added: “He was the kind of polite, polite man even though they were working class. I think everyone in my family was like that.”
Last week, Lennon’s former friend May Pang, who dated him in the mid-1970s during his brief split from Ono, said he and McCartney were about to get together in 1975 to write again.
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The Beatles in a 1963 recording session with George Martin. (Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
“In January 1975, Paul and Linda (McCartney) were saying, ‘We’re going to go to New Orleans and do a new album’ (‘Venus & Mars’). So, John said, ‘Oh, great, new,'” Pang told USA Today. Tuesday I’ve always loved Orleans.
“A few days later, he was playing guitar, and he said, ‘How about I write with Paul again?’ “You’re talking about shock. The reference is like ‘The Exorcist’, flips the head back. I said, ‘I think it’s going to be cool.'”
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Then he said, “Maybe we should go downstairs.” “He really wanted to do it. I knew if I had gotten him to New Orleans, it would have happened.”
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