What do we know about John Lennon and Paul McCartney's unusually intense relationship?
Male friendships as conflicted and tempestuous as that of the two former Beatles are so rare, we don't have a box to put them in, says writer Ian Leslie.
It's "nonsense" that John Lennon was the creative genius of The Beatles, while Paul McCartney was his slightly talented, but superficial sidekick, Ian Leslie says.
In John & Paul, he explores a "love story" that began at a church fair, when both were 16, and was cut short by Lennon's assassination at 40.
"They were both extraordinary, complicated, weird geniuses, and you couldn't really have one without the other,” he tells Sunday Morning. “They kind of created each other."
The Beatles at Wellington Airport during their New Zealand tour.
Ref: 1/4-071857-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. [https://natlib.govt.nz/records/23217692 /records/23217692]
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It took many bizarre coincidences for two amazing vocalists like McCartney and Lennon to grow up a mile-and-a-half from each other in the south of Liverpool, then come together and ignite a cultural explosion, Leslie says.
One important aspect of their connection, which they didn't talk about much, was a shared a sense of being "different", because their mothers had both died when they were teenagers.
In a "very simplistic" version of their relationship, Lennon was the one who felt things very intensely, Leslie says, but the truth behind their incredible music is that they were both ambitious and extraordinarily emotionally intense young men.
John Lennon at Cannes Film Festival in May 1971.
AFP
While both could be jealous and resentful, McCartney was just better at controlling and, to some extent, concealing those feelings, with a more stable personality that partly reflected his more stable family background.
The pair's incredibly intense, very creative, conflicted and tempestuous relationship is hard to put in a box, Leslie says, and more like brotherhood than friendship.
Over the years, the extent to which the musicians fell out and turned on each other after the breakup has been overplayed and exaggerated, but it's true that - after a very rocky period - they never recaptured their old intimacy.
Sir Paul McCartney performing in 2017.
AFP / Kamil Krzaczynski
Although McCartney often gives the impression of "perfect, emotional competence", there is still turbulence beneath the surface, Leslie says.
On the December 1980 day he found out Lennon had died, he spent the day in his studio, working on his new album.
Heading to his car at the end of the day, microphones were pushed in McCartney's face, and reporters demanded to know how he felt.
He responded, "Yeah, it's a drag, isn't it," Leslie says, because he couldn't "handle" the question. Afterwards, McCartney drove home and collapsed into the arms of his wife Linda, shattered.
"He was absolutely devastated, but he couldn't show that in public."
Throughout most of the 1970s, Lennon and McCartney were somewhat friendly, Leslie says, and when Lennon was shot outside his New York apartment building, the two childhood friends from Liverpool were "gingerly trying to re-establish their friendship".
"I think they might have got closer had John lived."
