{"id":516633,"date":"2026-03-03T19:58:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T19:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/516633\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T19:58:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T19:58:08","slug":"a-verbal-contract-was-not-worth-the-paper-it-was-written-on-paul-mccartney-admits-he-was-fuming-after-allegedly-being-lied-to-by-the-rock-and-roll-hall-of-fame-in-the-90s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/516633\/","title":{"rendered":"“A verbal contract was not worth the paper it was written on.” Paul McCartney admits he was fuming after allegedly being lied to by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the ’90s"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul McCartney<\/a> was promised induction into the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist in 1995, and was less than impressed when Rock Hall co-founder Jan Wenner reneged on said promise.<\/p>\n

McCartney was finally inducted into the prestigious Rock Hall in 1999, five years after his former Beatles bandmate John Lennon was inducted, and four years after he was promised he’d be inducted. <\/p>\n

Famously, McCartney’s designer daughter Stella turned up to the 1999 ceremony wearing a white T-shirt featuring the slogan ‘ABOUT FUCKING TIME!’, a message she said “speaks for itself”.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In a 2015 interview newly published in Vanity Fair<\/a>, Paul McCartney revealed that he was irritated by Rolling Stone founder Wenner’s broken promise, not least because he’d helped induct John Lennon into the Rock Hall at Wenner’s request. <\/p>\n

“We had a thing which didn\u2019t endear me to him later on. He asked me, ‘Would I induct John into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame?’ And I said, Yeah, sure. Then I put the phone down. I thought, Well, what about me? I\u2019m not inducted. Now John\u2019s going to go in.”<\/p>\n

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“The thing about John Lennon and McCartney was we were always equal,” McCartney continued. “But, of course, once John got murdered, he became the martyr – the Buddy Holly, the James Dean character- because of the atrocity. So a revisionism started to go on. And Yoko certainly helped it. Jann was a big part of that… Now John was it. He was it in the Beatles. He was the force behind the Beatles. He\u2019d done it all. I \u201cjust booked the studios.\u201d It wasn\u2019t true.<\/p>\n

“Anyway, so I said, Well, what about me? [Wenner] said, ‘Next year. We\u2019ll do you next year.’ I said, Okay. And I bought the deal. Next year came around\u2026 Crickets.”<\/p>\n

“Eventually I did creep in there,” McCartney added, “and my daughter Stella wore a T-shirt [that said], ‘About Fucking Time’… So as far as Jann is concerned – they did induct me. It was \u201cabout fucking time\u201d and all that. But it was later, and it wasn\u2019t when I was promised it. A verbal contract was not worth the paper it was written on.”<\/p>\n

(In the interest of balance, Vanity Fair points out that Jan Wenner says he can not remember making any such promise to McCartney.)<\/p>\n

Sign up below to get the latest from Classic Rock, plus exclusive special offers, direct to your inbox!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paul McCartney was promised induction into the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":516634,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,134,136],"class_list":["post-516633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=516633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/516634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}