Paul McCartney and John Lennon were once close, but they grew increasingly distant toward the end of their years with The Beatles. After the band broke up, their relationship turned outright hostile. McCartney said Lennon made remarks about him that cut deep. He shared one thing Lennon said that felt particularly hurtful.

Paul McCartney said John Lennon hurt him after The Beatles broke up

McCartney said that when Lennon began trashing him publicly, it hurt far worse than if a different public figure insulted him. It wasn’t just that Lennon had been his friend; many, many people also respected his opinion.

“When the Beatles had broken up and John was downing me a lot in public, that was probably the worst to take because I knew he [had] an opinion a lot of people listened to,” McCartney said, per Far Out Magazine.

In Lennon’s song “How Do You Sleep?” he wrote about McCartney, singing “The only thing you done was yesterday.” McCartney said this shot at his music hurt.

“If it was just a critic saying, ‘Oh, McCartney’s stupid’, you know…” he said. “But when it was John saying, ‘All you ever did was ‘Yesterday,’ I mean… that’s hurtful.”

He believed that this type of insult, coming from Lennon, would be difficult to shake. McCartney worried it would damage his public image.

“It was hurtful,” he said, “because I knew it would stick – like mud to the wall.”

They argued viciously after the band broke up

In the early 1970s, the former Beatles were locked in a legal dispute. McCartney sued his bandmates and their manager, Allen Klein, to take control of their catalog. This created heightened tensions between McCartney and Lennon.

“I would ring him when I went to New York and he would say, ‘Yeah, what d’you want?’ ‘I just thought we might meet?’ ‘Yeah, what the f*** d’you want, man?’ I used actually to have some very frightening phone calls,” McCartney said, per the book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now by Barry Miles. “Thank God they’re not in my life anymore. I went through a period when I would be so nervous to ring him and so insecure in myself that I actually felt like I was in the wrong. It was all very acrimonious and bitter.”

Their conversations were brief and acrimonious.

“[A]nother time I called him and it was ‘Yeah? Yeah? Whadda ya want?’ He suddenly started to sound American,” McCartney said. “I said, ‘Oh, f*** off, Kojak,’ and slammed the phone down; we were having those kind of times, it was bad news.”

Paul McCartney said he made his peace with John Lennon before he died

As the decade wore on, however, McCartney and Lennon’s relationship settled. They were able to have friendly conversations and spend time together.

“It was a public hurt,” McCartney said. “Actually, in private, I had made my peace with him before he died.”

He said that by the end of Lennon’s life, they were able to talk pleasantly, without devolving into arguments.