The Rolling Stone interviews - Jann Wenner [21]
No, I wasn’t angry.
Well, when he came out with this “I’m leaving.”
No, I wasn’t angry—shit, he’s a good PR man, that’s all. He’s about the best in the world, probably. He really does a job. I wasn’t angry. We were all hurt that he didn’t tell us that was what he was going to do.
I think he claims that he didn’t mean that to happen, but that’s bullshit. He called me in the afternoon of that day and said, “I’m doing what you and Yoko were doing last year.” I said, good, you know, because that time last year they were all looking at Yoko and me as if we were strange, trying to make our life together instead of being fab, fat myths. So he rang me up that day and said, I’m doing what you and Yoko are doing, I’m putting out an album, and I’m leaving the group, too, he said. I said, good. I was feeling a little strange because he was saying it this time, although it was a year later, and I said, “Good,” because he was the one that wanted the Beatles most, and then the midnight papers came out.
How did you feel then?
I was cursing because I hadn’t done it. I wanted to do it, I should have done it. Ah, damn, shit, what a fool I was. But there were many pressures at that time with the Northern Songs fight going on; it would have upset the whole thing if I would have said that.
How did you feel when you found out that Dick James [the Beatles’ music publisher] had sold his shares in your own company, Northern Songs? Did you feel betrayed?
Sure I did. He’s another one of those people who think they made us. They didn’t. I’d like to hear Dick James’ music and I’d like to hear George Martin’s music, please, just play me some. Dick James actually has said that.
What?
That he made us. People are under a delusion that they made us, when in fact we made them.
How did you get Allen Klein into Apple?
The same as I get anything I want. The same as you get what you want. I’m not telling you; just work at it, get on the phone, a little word here and a little word there, and do it.
What was Paul’s reaction?
You see, a lot of people, like the Dick Jameses, Derek Taylors and Peter Browns, all of them, they think they’re the Beatles, and Neil [Aspinal] and all of them. Well, I say, fuck ’em, you know, and after working with genius for ten, fifteen years they begin to think they’re it. They’re not.
Do you think you’re a genius?
Yes, if there is such a thing as one, I am one.
When did you first realize that?
When I was about twelve. I used to think I must be a genius, but nobody’s noticed. I used to wonder whether I’m a genius or I’m not, which is it? I used to think, well, I can’t be mad because nobody’s put me away; therefore, I’m a genius. A genius is a form of madness, and we’re all that way, you know, and I used to be a bit coy about it, like my guitar playing.
If there is such a thing as genius—which is what . . . what the fuck is it?—I am one, and if there isn’t, I don’t care. I used to think it when I was a kid, writing me poetry and doing me paintings. I didn’t become something when the Beatles made it, or when you heard about me, I’ve been like this all me life. Genius is pain, too.
You say that the dream is over. Part of the dream was that the Beatles were God or that the Beatles were the messengers of God, and, of course, yourself as God . . .
Yeah. Well, if there is a God, we’re all it.
When did you first start getting the reactions from people who listened to the records, sort of the spiritual reaction?
There is a guy in England, William Mann, who was the first intellectual who reviewed the Beatles in the Times and got people talking about us in that intellectual way. He wrote about aeolian cadences and all sorts of musical terms, and he is a bullshitter. But he made us credible with intellectuals. He wrote about Paul’s last album as if it were written by Beethoven or something. He’s still writing the same shit. But it did us a lot of good in that way, because people in all the middle classes and intellectuals were all going, “Oooh.”
When did somebody