The meeting was recalled by one of John’s closest friends
A Christmas day meeting between Paul McCartney and John Lennon eight years after The Beatles split “could have changed the face of contemporary music”, according to one of their closest friends. The band went their separate ways in 1970, after artistic differences emerged in the latter years of the 1960s and simmering tensions over their business interests came to the boil.
Paul and John, who were The Beatles’ primary songwriters and often wrote in tandem in the early years of the 1960s, had their difficulties as the decade wore on. Creative disagreements and the presence of John’s wife Yoko Ono in the studio caused difficulties, pushing John and Paul away from each other.
The band’s final recording sessions – for “The End”, which featured on “Abbey Road” – took place in August 1969, A month later, John informed his fellow members that he was leaving the band, asking for a “divorce” from The Beatles.
Those problems worsened after the band’s 1970 acrimonious split, as the former songwriting partners traded barbs in a series of solo songs aimed at one another.
In response to the split, Paul filed a High Court lawsuit in December 1970 to dissolve the band’s contractual agreement. The court ruled in his favour in March 1971 and Paul’s relationship with his former bandmates was very much strained.
A war of words ensued, with Paul’s 1971 song “Too Many People” taking aim at John, who fired back with the pointedly-titled “How Do You Sleep” on his September 1971 album “Imagine”.
The clouds lifted, fortunately, and Paul was able to reconcile with the three other Beatles, making up with John before his death in 1980. John and Paul rekindled their friendship in the mid-1970s and jammed together before a recording session in 1974.
The two almost reunited on stage two years later, when they were offered $3,000 for The Beatles to come back together and play a set on US TV show “Saturday Night Live”.
It wasn’t the only “what if” moment from the 1970s, however. In an interview on Billy Corgan’s The Magnificent Others podcast released on July 30, John’s long-time friend and publicist, former radio presenter Elliot Mintz recalled a meeting in 1978 that could have proven creatively fruitful.
Elliot recalled that Paul and his wife Linda saw John and Yoko in New York on Christmas Day in 1978, spending the evening at the Lennons’ home at the Dakota.
They had been to a restaurant together before retiring to the house and Elliot wished they had played music together.
He told the podcast: “Paul said, ‘I’m always making music. I make music every day of my life. I can’t stop making music.
“And I thought to myself as I sat on the couch, ‘What would have happened if John bit the bait and said, ‘I got a couple of guitars in the other room. What if I bring them out just for the hell of it?’
“And the two of them could’ve sat in the living room and changed the face of contemporary music.”
