John Lennon’s Wife Shared Why He Always Had ‘the Edge’ Over Paul McCartney

John Lennon and Paul McCartney jockeyed for control over The Beatles. Lennon's wife said her husband always had an edge over his bandmate.

John Lennon and Paul McCartney spent years competing for control over The Beatles. While Lennon was initially the clear leader, McCartney took more and more control over the years. Cynthia Lennon, who watched The Beatles on their rise to success, believed Lennon never could have made it without McCartney. Still, she thought Lennon always had an edge over his bandmate.

Cynthia Lennon thought John Lennon had an edge over Paul McCartney

When McCartney first met Lennon, he looked up to him. Lennon was older and already in a band; at the time, he was everything McCartney wanted to be.

“In those days, Paul tried hard to impress John, posing and strutting with his hair slicked back to prove that he was cool, because John was very much the leader,” she wrote in her book John. “It was his band, and he had the final say about who got in and who didn’t, and what they played. Then, he was everything Paul wanted to be — laid-back, self-assured, and in charge. As the schoolboy he still was, Paul could only aspire to those things.”

As they got to know each other, though, Lennon realized McCartney had a lot to offer and began to view him as an equal. Still, Cynthia believed her husband always had an edge over McCartney.

“As the two became closer, this changed,” she wrote. “John recognized Paul’s musical talent and that he could learn from him. Paul responded by becoming more confident and they came to share decisions and eventually ran the group together. But John, I suspect, always had the edge because he had formed the group, and neither of them forgot it.”

She thought her husband wouldn’t have made it without his bandmate

Cynthia may have believed that Lennon had more of an edge over McCartney in The Beatles, but she didn’t think Lennon would have been a success without his bandmate. She didn’t think Lennon had what it took to be a musician without him.

“He would have ended up a bum … It’s hard to say that now, after what happened, but he wouldn’t have cared that much,” she said in Lennon: The Definitive Biography by Ray Coleman. “I’d have gone out to work, he wouldn’t have any qualifications whatsoever because he was falling foul of the art college, and Mimi would have pushed him in all sorts of directions. He would have needed to learn a trade, or go back to school again, and I can’t see him concentrating. He’d have gone downhill.”

McCartney was always the Beatle who encouraged his bandmates to keep working.

John Lennon and Paul McCartney were very competitive

Though Cynthia believed Lennon had an edge over McCartney, he always felt as though he was in competition with his bandmate. Paul Simon witnessed the two of them together and said the competition between them was breathtaking.

“You have no idea how competitive John Lennon was around Paul McCartney,” he said in the book Paul Simon: The Life by Robert Hilburn. “When I first met them, I felt like someone had taken all the oxygen out of the room. I almost couldn’t breathe, they were so competitive, and that’s what made them so great. They wouldn’t settle for just good. That was me, too.”

They continued to compete with one another after The Beatles broke up.