How Paul McCartney felt right after The Beatles were over

The Beatles were formed in 1960 and were together for only 10 years. But it was enough for George Harrison, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and John Lennon to make some of the most successful albums of all time. They are still the best-selling group in history with an estimated amount of more than 600 million records sold worldwide.

It’s really hard to lose a job and that’s how the legendary Paul McCartney felt right after the band came to end. Although he still had a huge amount of money that would allow to not work anymore he felt the emptiness of not doing anymore what he had talent for. He recalled that feeling in an interview with Playboy magazine back in 1984 and also how he dealt with it.

How Paul McCartney felt right after The Beatles were over

“I was impossible. I don’t know how anyone could have lived with me. For the first time in my life, I was on the scrap heap, in my own eyes. An unemployed worker might have said, ‘Hey, you still have the money. That’s not as bad as we have it.’ But to me, it didn’t have anything to do with money.”

“It was just the feeling, the terrible disappointment of not being of any use to anyone anymore. It was a barreling, empty feeling that just rolled across my soul, and it was… I’d never experienced it before. Drugs had shown me little bits here and there. They had rolled across the carpet once or twice. But I had been able to get them out of my mind. In this case, the end of the Beatles, I really was done for the first time in my life.”

He continued:

“Until then, I really was a kind of cocky sod. It was the first time I’d had a major blow to my confidence. When my mother died, I don’t think my confidence suffered. It had been a terrible blow, but I didn’t feel it was my fault. It was bad on Linda. She had to deal with this guy who didn’t particularly want to get out of bed. If he did, wanted to go back to bed pretty soon after.”

“He wanted to drink earlier and earlier each day and didn’t really see the point in shaving, because where was he going? And I was generally pretty morbid. There was no danger of suicide or anything. It wasn’t that bad. Let’s say I wouldn’t have liked to live with me. So I don’t know how Linda (His wife) stuck it out,” Paul McCartney said.

The band came to an end after John Lennon announced that he wanted to leave and it was a difficult moment in their relationship. The was tension during the  recording of their final album “Let It Be” but in the end everything worked out. There was some bad blood between McCartney and Lennon for a few years after the end since they weren’t saying good things about each other in interviews. But they ended up becoming good friends again a few years before Lennon was brutally murdered at the age of 40.

The successful McCartney solo career

The Beatle released his debut album “McCartney” in 1970. He recorded everything alone and the only other person who was in the album was his wife Linda who recorded the harmony vocals. Besides singing, the musician recorded the bass, guitar, drums, piano, organ, mellotron and more.

It represented the beginning of a successful solo career that had sold an estimated amount of more than 45 million records worldwide. McCartney is one of the few artists who were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, once as part of a band and once as a solo act.