"To keep the record straight, it wasn't always John and Yoko. We've all accused one another of various business things; we tend to be pretty paranoid by now, as you can imagine. There's a lot of money involved"
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McCartney is doing damage control in real time, and the craft is in how casually he admits the mess. “To keep the record straight” isn’t just a preface; it’s an attempt to seize authorship of a narrative that had already hardened into pop mythology: Yoko as the villain, John as the defector, the other Beatles as wounded innocents. He punctures that story with a small, unglamorous truth: the breakup wasn’t a single soap-opera betrayal, it was a prolonged corporate stress fracture.
The line about it “wasn’t always John and Yoko” is a quiet redistribution of blame. McCartney isn’t exonerating Lennon so much as refusing the convenient scapegoat. Then he slides into the more revealing admission: “We’ve all accused one another… we tend to be pretty paranoid by now.” That “by now” matters. It implies paranoia as a learned condition, the inevitable psychological tax of being a band that turned into a multinational brand. Success doesn’t just buy freedom; it buys lawyers, factions, and the constant suspicion that affection is being leveraged.
“There’s a lot of money involved” lands like an anti-lyric: blunt, unsentimental, almost embarrassing. McCartney is puncturing the romantic fantasy that great art is ruined only by ego or muses. The subtext is harsher: when friendship becomes governance, everyone starts talking like a shareholder. The intent isn’t to confess weakness; it’s to make the breakup legible as adulthood, not melodrama.
The line about it “wasn’t always John and Yoko” is a quiet redistribution of blame. McCartney isn’t exonerating Lennon so much as refusing the convenient scapegoat. Then he slides into the more revealing admission: “We’ve all accused one another… we tend to be pretty paranoid by now.” That “by now” matters. It implies paranoia as a learned condition, the inevitable psychological tax of being a band that turned into a multinational brand. Success doesn’t just buy freedom; it buys lawyers, factions, and the constant suspicion that affection is being leveraged.
“There’s a lot of money involved” lands like an anti-lyric: blunt, unsentimental, almost embarrassing. McCartney is puncturing the romantic fantasy that great art is ruined only by ego or muses. The subtext is harsher: when friendship becomes governance, everyone starts talking like a shareholder. The intent isn’t to confess weakness; it’s to make the breakup legible as adulthood, not melodrama.
Quote Details
| Topic | Business |
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