Sir Paul McCartney has illuminated The Beatles’ sentiments surrounding Yoko Ono’s involvement in Beatles recording sessions, describing his feelings, as well as those of George Harrison and Ringo Starr, as “cheesed off”.
Even though McCartney and Yoko have long since buried the hatchet, Sir Paul still recalls the animosity that existed when Yoko entered the sanctum. As McCartney explained to Q Magazine (via NME), Yoko’s presence was seen an intrusion by John Lennon’s bandmates and caused resentment as Lennon looked to explore possibilities outside of The Beatles:
“Because we’d been such a tight-knit group, the fact that John was getting pretty serious about Yoko at that time, I can see now that he was enjoying his newfound freedom and getting excited by it.
“But when she turned up at the studio and sat in the middle of us, doing nothing I still admit now that we were all cheesed off. But looking back on it – [me and Yoko] have talked about this – I think she realises it must have been a shock for us. But lots of things that went down were good for us, really. At the time though, we certainly did not think that.”
Now, though, McCartney has given up blaming Yoko for The Beatles break-up. McCartney instead claims that manager Brian Epstein‘s successor Allen Klein held most of the blame. Sir Paul now credits Yoko for helping Lennon try expand his creativity and write songs such as Imagine.
