After the breakup of The Beatles in 1970, Paul McCartney and John Lennon each set off on their solo paths—but those journeys didn’t always unfold in harmony. According to longtime Lennon confidant Elliot Mintz, Lennon’s admiration for McCartney was accompanied by deep jealousy in the mid-1970s, when Paul’s band Wings was flying high and John had stepped out of the spotlight.
In a revealing interview on The Magnificent Others, a podcast hosted by Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins, Mintz opened up about Lennon’s conflicted emotions during his so-called “househusband” years.
“He spoke so lovingly of Paul,” Mintz said. “But then when John was not making any music between 1975 and almost ’80, and Paul would have these mega-hits with Wings, John became insanely jealous about that.”
At the time, McCartney’s Wings had found enormous commercial success with songs like “Jet” and “Listen to What the Man Said”. Meanwhile, Lennon, after releasing solo works like Mind Games and Walls and Bridges, chose to take a five-year break from music to help raise his and Yoko Ono’s son, Sean.
But the acclaim McCartney was receiving clearly stung.
“John would say to me, ‘They’re not embracing me the way they are him,’” Mintz recalled. “I said, ‘John, you’re not on a concert stage. You’re not in a stadium. You’re not making music.’ And he said, ‘You’re missing the point. They’re embracing his genius… but have you heard Silly Love Songs?’”
Mintz laughed, noting Lennon’s sharp wit and tendency to poke fun at what he perceived as lightweight material. Still, it was clear that the public’s embrace of McCartney—stadiums, screaming fans, and hit after hit—left Lennon feeling overlooked.
Not Just Jealousy: A Complicated Relationship
Though Lennon and McCartney had clashed both publicly and privately after the Beatles’ split, their relationship was never black and white. Mintz explained, “They went through a whole mess of stuff together. They loved each other, they wrote about each other, they hurt each other.”
Indeed, their post-Beatles songwriting turned into a kind of musical feud. McCartney’s 1971 track “Too Many People” included lines believed to target Lennon, such as: “You took your lucky break and broke it in two.” Lennon fired back with “How Do You Sleep?”, a blistering track with lines like: “The sound you make is Muzak to my ears.”
Mintz, however, compared the spat to “two high school kids arguing on Instagram.” Despite the hurtful words, the bond between Lennon and McCartney endured in its own way.
A Quiet Christmas Reunion
One of the more tender stories Mintz shared involved an unpublicized Christmas Day visit in 1978. Paul and Linda McCartney visited John and Yoko at the Dakota apartment in New York City. The group went to Elaine’s, a famous Manhattan restaurant, but unimpressed by the menu, they ordered pizza instead.
Later that evening, Mintz said, John and Paul stood by the window together, watching the Christmas lights twinkle over Manhattan.
It was a brief but meaningful reconnection between two musical giants who had once changed the world together—and who still, despite everything, meant a great deal to each other.
Closing Thoughts
Jealousy is a human emotion—even among legends. Mintz’s candid insight reminds us that beneath the fame and talent, Lennon struggled with the same feelings many of us do: wanting recognition, fearing irrelevance, and missing an old friend.
