Being bitter rivals throughout their Beatles days, Paul McCartney has claimed that John Lennon only ever complimented him on a song once.
“Once. Once John gave me a compliment,” McCartney said in a '60 Minutes' segment that aired this week. “It was only once the whole time.”
“It was ‘Here, There and Everywhere. John says just as it finishes, ‘That’s a really good song, lad. I love that song.’ And I’m like, ‘Yes! He likes it!’"
“I’ve remembered it to this day. It’s pathetic, really.”
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“We were competitive … not openly,” he added. “But we later admitted [we were]. He’d have written ‘Strawberry Fields,’ I’d write ‘Penny Lane.’ He remembered his old area in Liverpool, so I’ll remember mine.”
Shortly before Lennon was murdered in 1980, the former bandmates had reconciled their tense friendship.
McCartney says he was much more complimentary to Lennon's work over the years than vice versa: “I would tell him his stuff was great. You’d normally have to be a little bit drunk. It helped.”
