McCartney says touchingly: “There is this period of John which is all pre-Beatles, pre-huge fame, pre-drugs – and it is another John completely – that was always there right until the end.
[John] got much sweeter, too, once he settled in New York. Once he was reunited with Yoko, and they had Sean, he became this sweet personalty again then when he was more comfortable with himself. But the acerbic John is the one we know and love, you know, because he was clever with it, so it was very attractive.
But, for me, I have more than a slight affection for the John that I knew then, when we were first writing songs, when we would try and do things the old songwriters had done. I slightly regret the way John's image has formed, and because he died so tragically it has become set in concrete. The acerbic side was there but it was only part of him. He was also such a sweet, lovely man – a really sweet guy. ”
And would his songwriting partner have liked this album of standards and accompanying TV show? “Yes, he liked the songs of that era. He was brought up on them, too, and certainly we used to talk about them. One of his favourite songs was 'Little White Lies'. He would have liked some of the songs on this album. We thought of Lennon/McCartney as following on from Rodgers and Hammerstein.”
Paul McCartney talks (unusually for him) the real John Lennon (2012)
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