By the time we made “Abbey Road”, John and I were openly critical of each other’s music, and I felt John wasn’t much interested in performing anything he hadn’t written himself.
Sadness isn’t sadness. It’s happiness in a black jacket. Tears are not tears. They’re balls of laughter dipped in salt. Death is not death. It’s life that’s jumped off a tall cliff.
It’s not unusual for writers to look backward. Because that’s your pool of resources. If you were to write something now, I bet there’s a pretty good chance you’d call on your teenage years, your experiences then, stuff you learned then.
The interesting thing about the Beatles was: The music was one thing, but we kind of symbolized a certain kind of freedom at a time when people of our generation were just growing up and just becoming adults.
