Paul McCartney in concert (Photo: Paul Bachmann for Live4ever Media)
A letter written by John Lennon to Paul McCartney during the aftermath of the break-up of The Beatles has been sold at auction for nearly $30,000.
The letter’s contents, thought to have been written in 1971, lay bare the acrimony and personal grievances which had driven The Beatles apart a year earlier as Lennon responds to a letter he received from McCartney’s then wife Linda by saying it had made him wonder, ‘what middle-aged cranky Beatle fan wrote it’.
“I resisted looking at the last page to find out – I kept thinking who is it – Queenie? Stuart’s mother? Clive Epstein’s wife? Alan Williams? What the hell – it’s Linda!”
There’s more strife as Lennon criticises his estranged bandmate’s alleged treatment of Yoko Ono, writing: “You and the rest of my ‘kind and unselfish’ friends laid on Yoko and me since we’ve been together.”
The following decade before Lennon’s untimely death in 1980 would involve a significant repairing of their relationship, but the letter’s documenting of the tensions which brought the biggest pop group of them all to an end marks its significance out – auctioneers RR Auction adding that it, ‘captures the intense rivalry between the two men in the months, and even years, surrounding the break-up of the Beatles’.