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In a detailed conversation with the “BBC” some time ago, Paul McCartney discussed his songbook “The Lyrics” and a rediscovered radio play manuscript from his youth. And one last time he talks about who REALLY broke up the Beatles.
“I’ve been telling people for years that John and I wrote some kind of radio play,” he told the Guardian. “A rather funny story called ‘Pilchard’, which is about the Messiah.”
The story would only be four pages long on paper, McCartney said. The piece would be inspired by the Kitchensink dramas that were popular in Britain in the 1960s. Mother and daughter chat about a mysterious lodger with Jesus ambitions who moved in with them.
In his volume of lyrics “The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present,” McCartney tells the story of his life using 154 songs – from his early teenage compositions to his later works. This also includes the rediscovered lyrics to “Tell Me Who He Is”. A track that never made it onto record. “It would have been a love ballad,” he says. But due to a lack of recording equipment, all that remains is a handwritten note.
Who was responsible for the Fab Four’s breakup?
When asked by the moderator, he emphatically states again that John Lennon was the first to leave the Beatles. However, her new manager, Allen Klein, had persuaded her to keep the fact a secret until business was sorted out. “So we had to pretend for a few months,” he said. “It was strange because we all knew it was the end… But we couldn’t just walk away.” Eventually, says McCartney, he “let the cat out of the bag.” He was tired of “hiding them.”
He also said that he took legal action against his bandmates in December 1970 because it was the only way to protect their legacy. “The only way I could fight was to sue the other Beatles because they listened to Klein,” he recalls. “They thanked me for it years later. But I didn’t instigate the breakup. It was our Johnny who came in one day and said, ‘I’m leaving the band!'”