(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Mon 19 January 2026 21:30, UK
Throughout The Beatles’ career, Paul McCartney could usually be counted on to be the most diplomatic member of the group.
While none of them were exactly unapproachable back in the day, you weren’t going to find anyone more animated whenever looking at his presence in the public eye, especially when talking about one of their new records. But while McCartney could be his usual bubbly self up until the band’s final concert at Candlestick Park, he did have a much more cynical side whenever things weren’t going his way with the rest of the Fabs in the studio.
But that’s really the nature of the beast when you’ve been playing with any artist for that long. The Fab Four were practically brothers for as long as they were together, and while they could be perfectly civil when they were working through some of their older material, things were bound to go a little bit sideways when they ventured into new directions. McCartney certainly wasn’t a fan of the recording of a song like ‘She Said She Said’, but you chalk that up to a boyish sense of resentment rearing its head a little too much.
To his credit, McCartney did help steer the band through a lot of strange detours like working on Sgt Pepper or attempting to return to their roots on Let It Be, but it’s clear that not everyone was a fan of what he was doing. For someone who is known as one of the most famous people on Earth, it almost feels strange to see the rest of his bandmates being fed up with him, but it’s not like he couldn’t be too demanding.
If he had a song that he wanted to sound just right, he wasn’t above stepping on a few toes to get what he wanted. George Harrison was already halfway gone by the time he stormed out of Twickenham Film Studios during the Get Back rehearsals, but even before then, John Lennon was starting to butt heads more than a few times with Macca when working on The White Album.
The record was already one of the most disjointed albums they had ever made, but while McCartney wanted all of his songs to sound perfect, the experimental side of Lennon was starting to get to him. Lennon simply didn’t want to spend an entire album making strictly pop songs, but even if McCartney soldiered on through some of his work, it wasn’t until ‘Revolution 9’ that everyone could tell that he had officially had enough.
While McCartney could still put on a brave face whenever talking about the problems that he had with his old buddies, Geoff Emerick remembered him being a lot more annoyed when he heard the sound collage for the first time, saying, “I could see from the dark cloud that came over Paul’s face that he was totally underwhelmed with ‘Revolution 9’ when he first heard it. John looked at Paul expectantly, but Paul’s only comment was ‘not bad’, which I knew was a diplomatic way of saying that he didn’t like it.”
And it’s not hard to hear why, either. As much as Lennon’s ‘Revolution 9’ is interesting, it’s not necessarily the first thing that most people think of when listening to The Beatles. Here was a band that was meant to bring joy into the world, and hearing this brilliant piece of sound design after going through the greatest songs that they ever made is like listening to the most gorgeous classical recital and then hearing a punk song right after it. It could be great, but it’s not exactly what everyone came to hear.
The rest of the world might have shared McCartney’s opinion on the song, but Lennon wasn’t going to roll over and do whatever the rest of the band wanted anymore. He had become a much more elaborate artist, and anything that he put out was going to be an extension of the kind of person he had become with Yoko Ono.