The Reason John Lennon Got Jealous Of Paul McCartney’s Songwriting

Dan Richter, a former employee of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, explains why John Lennon has always been jealous of the songwriting of his former Beatle partner, Paul McCartney.

Richter, also famous for his mime artistry as well as his acting work starring in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), explained his friendship with the power couple in a recent interview with The Telegraph. The 83-year-old actor recalled John’s obsessive desire to one-up his former Beatle bandmates, and once remembered that time when Lennon came home right from George Harrison’s Friar Park mansion. Lennon allegedly said: “I could see water from George’s window. Do you think we could put in a lake here?”

But of course, Lennon’s biggest rivalry has remained with McCartney. “It bugged him that Paul could write those sweet melodies like ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Hey Jude,’ He couldn’t do that,” Richter explained. “He was just too acerbic, or too intelligent…”

Richter also remembered the time when “John got somebody to make a list of all the Beatles’ songs and then we had to say which were his and which were Paul’s.” And he fondly remembered the time when they went to a “fancy restaurant that had a band. When they saw John come in they started playing ‘Yesterday.’ John was so p—-d off!”

The former Lennon’s assistant also revealed that both John and Yoko were “easy-going employers,” and that Ono did help her husband open his eyes to a new level of artistry. “He was a Dante and Yoko was his Virgil, his guide through the art world.”

Read the full interview here.