Sir Paul McCartney Admits He Turned To Alcohol When The Beatles Split
Sir Paul McCartney has opened up about life after the most iconic band in history split.
The singer has admitted that he was gripped by depression and turned to alcohol when his four-piece band The Beatles, which also included John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, broke up in 1970.
Recalling the dark time in his life, Paul shared: “I was depressed at the time, yeah. You would be. You would be too.
"I was breaking from my lifelong friends, not knowing whether I was going to continue in music. I took to the bevvies. I took to a wee dram.
"It was great at first, then suddenly I wasn’t having a good time. It wasn’t working. I wanted to get back to square one, so I ended up forming [his band] Wings.”
Before the split, Paul’s bandmates had defied his wishes and appointed Allen Klein as their manager, with Allen going on to take a huge share of their profits and giving his company the rights to sell The Beatles records in the US.
Paul ended up suing his bandmates in a bid to get away from their manager’s influence, causing a rift between himself and the late John Lennon.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Mastertapes, Paul admitted that he was grateful that he was able to rekindle his friendship with his ex-bandmate before he was assassinated in 1980.
The star explained: “I had to fight and I had to fight the others which was the worst decision of my life y'know. I would make calls to John occasionally and it was a bit ‘Yeah, do what you want.’, 'Well what do you want?’, silly buggers stuff.
"I was getting annoyed so I would call him silly insults, because by then he had got a little bit of an American accent so I would say 'all right Kojak’ and he would be coming back to me with insults.
"But we persevered long enough for it to break through and music brought us together. That was one of the things I was really grateful for, was that we got it back together before he died, because it would have been very difficult to deal with.
"It was difficult anyway but it would have been especially difficult.
"We had a good relationship and we just talked kids and baking bread, ordinary stuff.”
John Lennon and Paul McCartney used to sit around discussing bread? You really do learn something new every day…
Photo Credit: Rex
