Paul McCartney is busy on the press tour for his recently released new album Egypt Station, which means that we just got an extensive GQ profile in which the Knight Bachelor Of The Most Excellent Order Of The British Empire talked about jerking off in a dark room with John Lennon and some pals. “Good harmless fun,” McCartney called it. “BEAT THE MEATLES,” the cover of The New York Post proclaimed the next day.
Next, as USA Today reports, McCartney is sitting down with Sharyn Alfonsi on 60 Minutes. Their conversation promises to feature 100% less discussion of the young Beatles’ masturbation habits, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t contain any gems. In a preview clip for the interview, which airs in full on Sunday, Alfonsi asks McCartney if he and John Lennon were competitive about their songwriting, and McCartney reveals that Lennon only complimented one of his songs once.
“Once, John gave me a compliment. Once, the whole time,” McCartney says. And what was the song? “Here, There and Everywhere,” one of the McCartney-penned tunes from the Beatles’ 1966 classic Revolver. “John says just as it finishes, ‘That’s a really good song, that. I love that song,’” McCartney recalls. “I was like, ‘Yes! He likes it!’ I’ve remembered it to this day. It’s pathetic, really.” Did McCartney ever compliment Lennon? “Yeah, I would tell him his stuff was great,” he says. “You’d normally have to be a little bit drunk. It helped.”
Elsewhere in the interview, McCartney discusses his inability to read or write music, coming up with the idea for the famous Mellotron opening of Lennon’s “Strawberry Fields Forever,” and the famous Abbey Road album cover. Why was he barefoot in the photo of the band crossing the street? “I was wearing sandals, it was a hot day and I just left them off (outside the camera range),” Sir Paul says. Watch a preview of the conversation below.
This article originally appeared on Stereogum.
