Paul Vs Yoko - DM's Beatles forums

Pop's oldest war STILL isn't over
By David Edwards
WHEN Paul McCartney strode on stage at Madison Square Garden last month, it promised to be a trip down memory lane for the 18,000-strong audience.

What they didn't expect among McCartney's hits and Beatles' classics was a song with a bitter message - one designed to rekindle an old feud with John Lennon's widow Yoko Ono.

Too Many People - a number he had never before performed live - sat oddly among such old favourites as Eleanor Rigby and Magical Mystery Tour.

Many fans would have been unaware of the song's significance. Written in 1971, when his relationship with John was at an all-time low, Paul accuses Yoko of hijacking her husband's career.

The fact he played it in New York, where Yoko lives, was hardly a coincidence.

"It's well known Paul and Yoko have never been mates and never will be," says a source at McCartney's record label, EMI.

"The bad blood has been there since The Beatles split but reached boiling point five years ago when Paul wanted to change the credits on some old Beatles songs and Yoko said no.

"Too Many People is a very elaborate way of saying, 'What the f*** have you got to do with me and John? You were only his wife so stop interfering.' Paul has always said, 'I took abuse from John, who called me a lot worse when he was alive, but I'm not going to take it from Yoko now he's gone.'

"It was always Lennon and McCartney, not Lennon, McCartney and Ono."

At last week's Q music awards in London, Yoko, 72, appeared to ridicule Paul's songwriting ability. She told journalists: "Sometimes, in the middle of the night, John would ask, 'Are you awake?' and I would say, 'Yes.' And he said, "You know, they always cover Paul's songs and never mine, and I don't know why.'

"I said, 'You're a good songwriter - it's not just June and spoon that you write.'"

At the weekend, Paul, 63, hit back when he said Yoko was "not the brightest of buttons," adding: "Her life is dedicated to putting me down. That's what she seems to do all the time. Yoko is a law unto herself."

The bitter rift between Paul and Yoko began soon after they met in 1968. He and John were the most successful songwriting partnership the world had ever known.

John, who'd been married to Cynthia Powell since 1962, first met Yoko, a Japanese performance artist seven years his senior, at a London art gallery in November 1966.

He slowly became enchanted by her, but it wasn't until May 1968 that they became lovers - and John immediately insisted on his new girlfriend attending sessions for The Beatles White Album.

The EMI studios in Abbey Road, North London, had long been the band's private clubhouse.

Now Paul, George and Ringo were going to have to get used to a small, unsmiling woman sitting in.

Beatles expert Mark Lewisohn says: "Yoko attended every Beatles recording session and would encourage hostility by whispering conspiratorially into John's ear.

"She would sit on his amplifier and appear to preside over the session by openly criticising and suggesting changes to the music being recorded."

By 1969, the biggest-selling group the world has known was disintegrating, with Lennon ditching McCartney as collaborator in favour of his girlfriend.

John and Yoko recorded three albums together and even used their 1969 honeymoon to hold a 10-day press conference in a "bed-in" at the Amsterdam Hilton.

By the time of The Beatles' final public appearance, an impromptu gig on the roof of their Apple record label headquarters in London, Paul could no longer control his frustration.

Although he later denied it, some say he glared at Yoko every time he sang the chorus to the hit song Get Back.

But the recriminations and lawsuits surrounding The Beatles' split a year later, in 1970, were as nothing compared to the extraordinary public spat that was to follow.

The opening salvo came when John wrote to Paul and his new wife, New York photographer Linda Eastman, viciously berating them for their treatment of Yoko.

"I hope you realise what s**t you, and the rest of my kind and unselfish friends, laid on Yoko and me since we have been together.

"It might have sometimes been a bit more subtle or should I say 'middle class' - but not often."

He went on to warn that his old friend's marriage would not last. "God help you out, Paul," he wrote. "See you in two years. I reckon you'll be out then."

The following year, Paul hit back on his second solo album, Ram, which contained the cryptic anti-Yoko rant Too Many People.

It included the lyric: "Too many people pulled and pushed around/ Too many waiting for that lucky break/ That was your first mistake/ You took your lucky break and broke it in two."

Within months, John had dispensed with any attempts at subtlety by recording the blistering How Do You Sleep?, dismissing his former partner's new material as "muzak" and accusing him of surrounding himself with sycophants.

But it wasn't the song's acidic lyrics that bothered Paul. It was knowing that Yoko had helped think them up.

"Paul could handle the attack but what really got to him was when he heard some of the lyrics had been suggested by Yoko," says the EMI source.

"That really angered him and he's never forgiven her."

Although Lennon and McCartney were reconciled in the 70s, any hopes of a musical reunion were scuppered after Yoko began intercepting Paul's calls.

It's long been a strand of Beatles folklore that Paul rang Yoko in January 1980, just before a tour of Japan, and mentioned that he had some particularly potent marijuana.

Two days later he was arrested at Tokyo airport for possession of illegal substances and spent 10 days in jail. It was hinted the Japanese authorities had received a tip-off from someone who knew exactly what Paul was carrying.

Since John Lennon's murder in December 1980 by deranged fan Mark Chapman, the Paul-Yoko rift has rumbled on.

In 1997, she compared John to Mozart while Paul, she said, more closely resembled his less-talented rival Salieri.

The next year Paul pointedly refused to ask Yoko to attend a New York memorial service for Linda, who had just died of breast cancer.

The feud surfaced again in 2000 as the three surviving Beatles were preparing a Beatles greatest hits package, 1. Although the song Yesterday had always been credited to Lennon-McCartney, it was entirely the work of Paul who now asked for his name to be put first.

"I felt that after 30 years this would be a nice gesture and something that might be easy for Yoko to agree with," said Paul.

"At first she said yes, but then she rang back a couple of hours later and reversed her decision."

Two years later, Paul hit back when he changed the credits for all The Beatles songs included on his album Back In The US Live 2002, to "composed by Paul McCartney and John Lennon".

Yoko hit back by removing Paul's credit from the track Give Peace A Chance on the Lennon Legend DVD.

Peace, it seems, is now the last thing on Paul and Yoko's minds.

It's kicking off!!!!! lol