Sir Paul McCartney says his post-Beatles feud with John Lennon was “pretty hurtful.”
But he insisted the four band members never hated each other.
Their 1970 split following a decade of hit records and world tours came after Sir Paul filed for the group’s contractual dissolution.
In a new interview, he appeared to blame then-manager Allen Klein for the demise of the band and the threat to their label Apple Records.
“I suppose when The Beatles broke up perhaps there was a misconception we all sort of hated each other,” he told British GQ.
“What I realise now is it was a family, a gang.
"Families argue and have disputes. Some people want to do this and some want to do that.”
He went on: “The only way for me to save The Beatles and Apple was to sue the band.
“If I hadn’t done that, it would have all belonged to Allen Klein. The only way I was given to get us out of that was to do what I did.”
He said his action enabled the release of “Anthology and all these great remasters of Beatles records” as well as the forthcoming documentary film Get Back, by director Peter Jackson.
Sir Paul, 78, appears on the cover of September’s issue of British GQ – photographed during lockdown by his daughter Mary.
He recalled: “John did his famous song How Do You Sleep? and he goes, ‘All you ever did was Yesterday’. And I’m going, ‘No, man’.
“Then you hear the stories from various angles and people apparently in the room when John was writing it that he was getting suggestions for the lyrics off Allen.
“So you see the atmosphere
of ‘Let’s get Paul, let’s nail him in a song’. And those things were pretty hurtful.”
*Read the full feature in British GQ’s September issue, available on Friday.
