‘It’s a drag, isn’t it,” Paul McCartney told reporters quizzing him the day after John Lennon’s murder, a soundbite as dispiritingly muted, even callous, as his reaction to his mother’s death when he was 14: “How are we going to get by without her money?” Behind the scenes, Paul was lost and tearful, as well as guilt‑stricken that he and John hadn’t properly reconciled since the Beatles split: “I’m never going to fall out with anybody again.” Still, the enshrinement of John and vilification of Paul had begun. “John Lennon was three-quarters of the Beatles,” Philip Norman told television viewers while promoting his biography, Shout!, a few months later.
The antagonism has abated in recent years, but the John-Paul duality persists. Heavy rocker versus cute populist. Working-class rebel v smug bourgeois clone. Tormented genius v girly sentimentalist. Strawberry Fields Forever v Penny Lane.
