Interview for Disc And Music Echo

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“If there is any message at all in “Hello, Goodbye,” it is that the answer to everything is simple. It’s a song about everything – and nothing. “Stop – go.” “Yes – no.” If you have black, you also have white. That’s the amazing thing about life, all the time. Realisation and awareness of all views, different things…”

The words are Paul McCartney’s. For more than five years, Beatles students have been busy dissecting their songs, finding hidden meanings and interpreting the words with weighty prose.

John and Paul are inclined to shrug off all the attempts to dig deep behind their poetic words.

“Our songs,” said McCartney, “are about people and things, love playing a big role, if you like, because it’s a nice subject – and anyway, it’s always been sort of traditional to have love as a theme for songs. But with ‘Hello, Goodbye’, the song’s about blacks and whites in the world… something like the Bee Gees thing: ‘Today I found that the world is round. and it doesn’t rain every day.'”

But Lennon and McCartney do not think their trend to “realism” in songs – which has also been identified with others, including Kink Ray Davies – is particularly significant.

“It will be back round to love songs very soon,” said John. “We haven’t stopped writing love songs – ‘Lucy In The Sky’ was a love song. We all started writing easy love songs, love songs, and at the moment it’s all down to writing about anything — like ‘Hello, Goodbye.’ It’s not a pointer, particularly.”

“I personally love good love songs, although I went through a spell of finding myself embarrassed by them,” said Paul. “You go through periods — sometimes you fancy doing a solid, manly song about life without love in it. then you do an easy love song.”

John: “‘Walrus’ is just saying a dream — the words don’t mean a lot people draw so many conclusions, and it’s ridiculous.”

Will the Beatles ever tour again, or are they now strictly a group destined to produce all their work in recording studios where so much time can be spent brilliantly working on albums like “Sgt. Pepper”?

“At the moment, tours are out,” said Paul.

“You never know,” said John, “but they are such big things to plan — and a bit of a drag to do. At least, a drag organised in the normal way as most people know them. If we could find some different way of doing a tour, it could be that we’d do it, but it’d just have to be in a different way. There’s no point in repeating what we’ve done before. We wouldn’t be putting up anything different.“

Do the Beatles, then, consider they have any responsibility to their millions of fans, thousands of whom would like to see them on stage? They have often explained that they cannot satisfy every request by every fan. It would be physically impossible.

“No, I don’t think we have any responsibility to fans,” said John. “You give them the choice of liking what you’re doing, or not liking it. If they don’t like it, they let you know – fast. If you allow everything to be dictated by fans, you’re just running your life for other people. All we do is try to give fans an even deal. We try to behave politely — sometimes in the face of some very impolite people – and we try to treat people with respect because they’re human being.”

Paul: “People who say: ‘I have a big responsibility to my public’ are the biggest rogues out. You can tell they’re lying, anyway — you can see through them.

“They’re not kidding me, nor anybody else who knows the scene. The only people they’re kidding are themselves. We’re probably nicer to people because we DON’T have this big thing about feeling a ‘big responsibility’ to the world. The people who talk about pop stars’ ‘responsibilities’ include politicians, and they show their great sense of responsibility by starting wars and putting people in prison. They’re the ones who say things like: ‘The younger generation don’t know what they’re talking about. We’ve had EXPERIENCE.’ Well, all I can say is they’ve not used their experiences very well, some of ’em.”

Lennon said: “They’re just playing the political game. ‘We know what’s best,’ and all that. Quintin Hogg reckons we’re leading the youth astray. Quintin Hogg!”

The two Beatles talked finally about growing older: John is 27, Paul 25, George 24, and Ringo 27.

John: “It’s a groove, growing older. I’m looking forward to it, when I’m, say, 67, and they’ll have me on the Eamonn Andrews Show. ‘—AND HERE HE IS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, CARRYING THE VERY GUITAR HE PLAYED ON STAGE AT THE WORLD-FAMOUS CAVERN IN LIVERPOOL: JOHN LENNON.’”

Paul: “And then you’ll play ‘She Loves You?’”

John: “Yeah — what a groove!”

The Beatles show no signs of growing old, but only of mellowing with their rich experience of life. And when Bob Dylan wrote a song called “My Back Pages” years ago, he might have been predicting something when be wrote this chorus: “Ah, but I was so much older then… I’m younger than that now.”

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