“The opposite of love is not hate; it’s indifference.” —Elie Wiesel
“I hate him. Except for all the places where I love him half to death.” ―
John Lennon wrote vitriolic comments about fellow-Beatle Paul McCartney in a picture biography of the famed pop group, providing new evidence of the tensions between them, the Observer newspaper said Sunday.
The weekly said Lennon jotted the comments in a 1971 biographical pamphlet [The Beatles From Apple] about the Beatles that will be auctioned Aug. 28. The remarks bear out what Beatles fans have long known – that there were constant personality clashes between McCartney, the Beatle with the clean-cut image, and the abrasive, sardonic Lennon.Lennon marked almost every one of the 76 pages with corrections and comments, including one that the Observer took as an indication the group already was experimenting with drugs in the 1960s.
The paper said Lennon wrote alongside one photograph of the group: “Staged photo pretending to be the fab four: all waiting stoned for it to be over.” On a photo of the Beatles sporting moustaches, the Observer said Lennon wrote: “Paul started this moustache business because he’d split his lip on a ‘stoned’ moped ride – purely functional, really.”On one McCartney photo, Lennon scribbled the words, “I’m always perfect” as coming from McCartney’s mouth. He drew a Hitler-style moustache on another photo of McCartney.In an entry noting McCartney’s marriage to Linda Eastman, Lennon crossed out “wedding” and wrote “funeral”, the Observer said.
The comments quoted by the Observer seem to reflect Lennon’s belief that McCartney and Ms. Eastman were denying him and his wife, Yoko Ono, their share of credit and publicity for the Beatles’ achievements. The Observer said that on an entry dated June 1968 that read “Paul to Hollywood”, Lennon added: “Cuts Yoko and John out of film 3/8”.On one page, the paper said, Lennon wrote in big letters: “This book is so prejudiced against John (and) Yoko… that I want to know who put it together and fire them.”
But in a final tender moment, the Observer said, Lennon wrote under a photo of himself with McCartney: “The minutes are crumbling away.”
Associated Press: Lennon’s resentment of McCartney reflected in book notes. (July 20th, 1986), courtesy of Amoralto.
In Their Own Words 