And I loved Fats Waller. I love his instrumental abilities, his vocal abilities and his sense of humor.
At the end of the Beatles, I really was done in for the first time in my life. Until then, I really was a kind of cocky sod.
Being in the audience actually looks like quite a lot of fun.
But with writers, there’s nothing wrong with melancholy. It’s an important color in writing.
But you know, as a kid I would have thought of a vegetarian as a wimp.
Buy, buy, says the sign in the shop window; Why, why, says the junk in the yard.
George Martin, he’s very good at a very sort of lush, sweet arrangement.
George wrote Taxman, and I played guitar on it. He wrote it in anger at finding out what the taxman did. He had never known before then what could happen to your money.
I can take pot or leave it. I got busted in Japan for it. I was nine days without it and there wasn’t a hint of withdrawal, nothing.
I can’t deal with the press; I hate all those Beatles questions.
I definitely did look up to John. We all looked up to John. He was older and he was very much the leader; he was the quickest wit and the smartest.
I don’t ever try to make a serious social comment.
I don’t take me seriously. If we get some giggles, I don’t mind.
I don’t work at being ordinary.
I feel that if I said anything about John, I would have to sit here for five days and say it all. Or I don’t want to say anything.
I got my first guitar when I was 15, and I just used to fool about with it, more or less, as time went by, though, I got more interested.
I had this song called Helter Skelter, which is just a ridiculous song. So we did it like that, ‘cuz I like noise.
I hate the idea of success robbing you of your private life.
I have not practiced how to be a singer without an instrument.
I knew the words to 25 rock songs, so I got in the group. Long Tall Sally and Tutti-Frutti, that got me in. That was my audition.
I like the idea that people hear my stuff, and if it’s commercially successful, that’s a good sign that it’s being heard.
I look a lot busier than I am, as I’m actually a rather sporadic, random person and I’ll play a few gigs and then disappear for a while.
I love the past. There are parts of the past I hate, of course.
I never look forward, because I have no idea about how any of it happened to getting here. I’ve no idea how the next five years are going to be.
I never really got on that well with Yoko anyway. Strangely enough, I only started to get to know her after John’s death.
I saw that Meryl Streep said, I just want to do my job well. And really, that’s all I’m ever trying to do.
I think I always had a musicality, and I think I could tell a good song from a bad song. And I would appreciate hearing something that was new to me.
I think people who create and write, it actually does flow-just flows from into their head, into their hand, and they write it down. It’s simple.
I think the pop industry is still a young man’s game.
I used to think anyone doing anything weird was weird. Now I know that it is the people that call others weird that are weird.
I used to think that all my Wings stuff was second-rate stuff, but I began to meet younger kids, not kids from my Beatle generation, who would say, We really love this song.
I used to think that anyone doing anything weird was weird. I suddenly realized that anyone doing anything weird wasn’t weird at all and it was the people saying they were weird that were weird.
I was still 15 when I met John Lennon at a village fete in Woolton, in Liverpool.
I’m a pretty hands-on dad and make the most of my custody. I take care of my little one whenever I can, and she determines what I can do and where I can do it.
I’m not religious, but I’m very spiritual.
I’ve got to admit it’s getting better. It’s a little better all the time.
If children are studying the 20th century, I’m in their text books.
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian.
In the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.
It was Elvis who really got me hooked on beat music. When I heard “Heartbreak Hotel” I thought, this is it.
It’s also not unusual for writers to look backward. Because that’s your pool of resources.
It’s time to end the cruel slaughter of whales and leave these magnificent creatures alone.
John’s time and effort were, in the main, spent on pretty honorable stuff. As for the other side, well, nobody’s perfect, nobody’s Jesus. And look what they did to him.
Look, people are allowed their own opinions and they don’t always coincide with yours. As an artist you just have to keep plugging on.
Looking back, I think I was always musical. My dad was very musical, and I think my mom was musical.
Love is all you need.
Lyricists play with words.
Microphones are just like people, if you shout at them, they get scared.
My dad was a particularly polite kind of guy, very courteous.
My dad, bless him, was a musician. And his dad had thought that his music was rubbish.
My old school in Liverpool is now a performing-arts school, and I kind of teach there – I use the word lightly – but I go there and talk to students.
My so-called career is a haphazard thing.
None of us wanted to be the bass player. In our minds he was the fat guy who always played at the back.
Nothing pleases me more than to go into a room and come out with a piece of music.
One of my biggest thrills for me still is sitting down with a guitar or a piano and just out of nowhere trying to make a song happen.
Putting two songs together, I’ve always loved that trick when it works.
She is the rock ‘n’ roll queen. Weirdly enough, that is one of the things her reign will be remembered for. Queen Elizabeth I, we remember Raleigh; Queen Elizabeth II it’s gonna be the Beatles.
So, if I’m cooking, I’ll be steaming vegetables, making some nice salad, that kind of stuff.
Somebody said to me, ‘But the Beatles were anti-materialistic.’ That’s a huge myth. John and I literally used to sit down and say, ‘Now, let’s write a swimming pool.’
Someone like John would want to end the Beatle period and start the Yoko period. He wouldn’t like either to interfere with the other.
Somewhere down the line everyone must pay for their misdeeds.
The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.
The Stones also still have a huge following. Mick Jagger leaps around like a crazy dude. And Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood and Charlie Watts are playing great too.
There are only four people who knew what the Beatles were about anyway.
Think globally, act locally.
To keep the record straight, it wasn’t always John and Yoko. We’ve all accused one another of various business things; we tend to be pretty paranoid by now, as you can imagine. There’s a lot of money involved.
We were a savage little lot, Liverpool kids, not pacifist or vegetarian or anything. But I feel I’ve gone beyond that, and that it was immature to be so prejudiced and believe in all the stereotypes.
We were pretty good mates until the Beatles started to split up and Yoko came into it. It was more like old army buddies splitting up on account of wedding bells.
When I sit down to write a song, it’s a kind of improvisation, but I formalize it a bit to get it into the studio, and when I step up to a microphone, I have a vague idea of what I’m about to do.
When we were starting off as kids, just the idea of maybe going to do this as a living instead of getting what we thought was going to be a boring job, was exciting.
When you first get money, you buy all these things so no one thinks you’re mean, and you spread it around. You get a chauffeur and you find yourself thrown around the back of this car and you think, I was happier when I had my own little car! I could drive myself!
Where I come from, you don’t really talk about how much you’re earning. Those things are private. My dad never told my mum how much he was earning. I’m certainly not going to tell the world. I’m doing well.
Why would I retire? Sit at home and watch TV? No thanks. I’d rather be out playing.
You see, my mother was a district nurse until she died when I was 14, and we used to move from time to time because of her work.
