For Millennials. By Millennials.
No band ever left as big an impact on the world as The Beatles. But, by the end, things were getting very sour between the band members. Things were so bad that John Lennon confessed in one of his final interviews that Paul McCartney sabotaged his songs. And one of those songs was Across The Universe from the album Let It Be.
The controversies in Across The Universe
Earlier, we wrote how good Across The Universe by the Beatles really was. It’s hard to believe that this song barely made it in any of their albums. But, that’s the sad truth. Across The Universe first appeared on No One’s Gonna Change Our World, a 1969 charity album for the World Wildlife Fund. John Lennon tried many times to get the song the attention it deserves, but it was all in vain.
But more than that, it became a bone of contention between Paul McCartney and Lennon. John recalls that Paul made the recording of the song a pain in the neck for him. After that recording, it was buried deep into the Beatles’ files. But then, Phil Specter showed up and dug it out of the files to make it a part of their last released album Let It Be. However, Lennon always said that the song was never recorded properly. This goes to show how bad things were between the Beatles close to their break up.
John Lennon said Paul ‘sabotaged’ his songs
John Lennon said in one of his final interviews before his death:
The Beatles didn’t make a good record of ‘Across the Universe.’ I think subconsciously we… I thought Paul subconsciously tried to destroy my great songs. We would play experimental games with my great pieces, like ‘Strawberry Fields,’ which I always felt was badly recorded. It worked, but it wasn’t what it could have been. I allowed it, though. We would spend hours doing little, detailed cleaning up on Paul’s songs, but when it came to mine… especially a great song like ‘Strawberry Fields’ or ‘Across the Universe’ …somehow an atmosphere of looseness and experimentation would come up.
It may sound like John Lennon was paranoid about Paul, but he was self-aware enough to know the difference:
Well, maybe I’m paranoid. But it is not paranoid. It is the absolute truth. The same thing happened to ‘Across the Universe.’ The song was never done properly. The words stand, luckily.
This just goes to show how their break-up was inevitable. If John felt sabotaged by Paul, then imagine what George Harrison and Ringo Starr felt, who already had less representation in most of the albums. Therefore, one can say that their break-up was important for them to grow as musicians. What do you think? Did Paul McCartney sabotage any of John Lennon’s songs? Let us know in the comments.