A brutal letter John Lennon wrote to Paul McCartney is up for auction
nme.comJohn Lennon once wrote to his estranged Beatles bandmate, Paul McCartney, has been sent to auction.The letter came as a response to McCartney’s interview in the November 20, 1971 issue of Melody Maker, which among other topics, saw him wax lyrical on the relationship between Lennon and his widow, Yoko Ono, and the dissolution of The Beatles’ business partnership.
Typewritten and inscribed with notes scrawled in pen, the letter runs for three pages and is addressed to “Paul, Linda, et all the wee McCartneys”.In it, Lennon riffed on the minutiae of The Beatles’ royalty-sharing arrangement, implying that he disagreed with the way McCartney was compensated directly from royalties that should have belonged to their self-run label, Apple Records.
Lennon also took aim at McCartney’s understanding of his songs, snapping back at McCartney’s opinion that 1971’s ‘Imagine’ wasn’t intended to be political: “It’s ‘working class here’ with sugar on it for conservatives like yourself,” he wrote. “You obviously didn’t dig the words.
Imagine!”Towards the end of the letter, Lennon addressed McCartney’s alleged desire to “put your photo on the label like uncool John and Yoko”, quipping: “If we’re not cool, WHAT DOES THAT MAKE YOU…”The letter ends on a rather amiable note, though, as Lennon assured McCartney that he had “no hard feelings to you”.
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