John Lennon 'insulted' by Paul McCartney's request and warned 'I don't think you understand'
The Beatles stars John Lennon and Sir Paul McCartney wrote a host of hits together, but the pair disagreed over how much input they both had over one popular hit. John Lennon was said to be left “insulted” by a request from Sir Paul McCartney as the pair wrote one of The Beatles biggest hits.
Paul is said to have penned the first verse to the incredibly popular Eleanor Rigby before putting it on the back burner. However, at a dinner party hosted by John and his then wife Cynthia, Paul is understood to have played the song for friends of the band, and asked for suggestions on how to finish it.
According to the book John and Paul: A Love Story in Songs, businessman Pete Shotton, a friend of John, suggested that the Eleanor character could die in the third verse, leaving Father Mackenzie, the priest in the lyrics, to conduct her funeral.
He claims John dismissed the idea out of hand, saying: “I don’t think you understand what we’re trying to get at, Pete.”
According to author Ian Leslie, John gave a similar, albeit slightly different account to how Eleanor Rigby was written, including a moment he was left feeling “insulted” by fellow songwriter Paul. He claimed the band were with assistant Mal Evans and Neil Aspinall at the time.
In a 1980 retelling of the incident, he said: “By that time, he [Paul] didn’t want to ask for my help, and we were sitting around with Mal Evans and Neil Aspinall so he said to us, ‘Hey you guys, finish up the lyrics’. Now, I was there with Mal, a telephone installer who was our road manager, and Neil, who was a student accountant, and I was insulted and hurt he had thrown it out in the air.”
Source: themirror.com/Matt Jackson
