The UK's Daily Mail is reporting that John Lennon and Sir Paul McCartney planned a Beatles reunion in 1974 but it was stopped by Yoko Ono, a new book claims.In Paul McCartney: A Life, author Peter Ames Carlin suggests that he missed working with Lennon and tried to orchestrate a comeback.
Carlin claims that thirty five years ago Sir Paul, paid a surprise late night visit to a studio in California where Lennon was recording.
According to the book the pair played music into the early hours of the morning with Stevie Wonder, who was also working there.
The session went so well Lennon invited Sir Paul, now 67, and his first wife Linda over for dinner at his rented house in Malibu with girlfriend and assistant May Pang,
According to reports Mr Carlin spoke to Miss Pang, who the late singer was seeing during a break in his marriage from Miss Ono.
She told him she had heard Lennon talk about ‘getting the guys back together’ for a concert in the autumn of 1974.
But Mr Carlin states that Sir Paul inadvertently doomed the comeback by telling Lennon that he had recently seen his estranged wife and that she was keen to see him.
Miss Ono has often been blamed as the cause of The Beatles bitter split in 1970.
The couple had agreed to spend time apart with Lennon living in California and his wife in New York.
He famously called this 18 month hedonistic period his ‘lost weekend’.
After Sir Paul’s message the pair were reconciled and the plans for a reunion concert were cancelled.
1 comment:
I really object to this kind of reporting. The title suggest that Yoko deliberately persuaded or forced John to drop the idea for a Beatles reunion. If you read the article, it mentions Paul told John Yoko was "keen" to see him after their 18 month estrangement. Soon after their reconciliation, Sean was conceived and John stayed at home to raise Sean. But by 1980 John wanted to write again and wrote the tracks that became Double Fantasy. It's more likely that the Beatles might have reunited after this period, had John not been assassinated. But trying to demonize Yoko as the reason the '74 reunion didn't take place is speculation. John was his own person and contrary to what some people believe, Yoko didn't control John, although I do believe she tried to manipulate him when she thought it was for his own good. Anyone familiar with the Beatles story knows that John was disllusioned with the Beatles after they stopped touring in '66, and especially so after Brian Epstein's death in '67. But it's no surprise that John came to miss his collaboration with the other Beatles. The sum was always greater than the parts in my opinion. Their chemistry as musicians and their creative force as a group shows they were better together than as solo artists.
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