Yeah. In fact, I think that’s why he and I didn’t really get on. Because he was so in their camp. And I so wasn’t. When anything happened, they would discuss it with Jann, and he would be their sounding board. So I didn’t feel like he was independent enough when he was talking to me. I was talking to someone who would report back to John. No doubt about it. Which wasn’t the world’s worst thing, because I didn’t have a massive need to do anything.

Well, John was using Rolling Stone to define himself outside the Beatles. They were very much hand in glove with John and Yoko. I was curious about the effect that had for you, because Jann was always trying to get you to cooperate as well.

Well, I was sort of sidelined at that time, because John, when he met Yoko—that signaled the end of the Beatles. Now, looking back, I can see it more clearly. In retrospect, John was always a kind of experimental guy with a weird past—father leaving home when he was three, going to his aunt and uncle. The uncle died. The aunt was quite strict with him.

We would go and see his mother—John and I would go visit her. It’s nothing like all the films. [He’s referring here to biopics like Backbeat and Nowhere Boy] Much better, actually, the real life. But we’d go and see her. Then the mother gets run over in front of John’s house—in front of Mimi’s house—killed by an off-duty drunken policeman, was what we heard. I think it got covered up a bit. [Lennon reportedly believed that the driver had been drunk, though the driver was never charged with a crime related to drinking while driving.]

So that was John. That had always led him to be attracted to something experimental. John would say, “If you get to the edge of a cliff, jump off.” I would always be, “No, get to the edge of the cliff, take a look around. If it’s really deep and there are bad people coming, then we’ll jump.” I was much more, “Let’s wait just a second.”

That’s just my personality, my upbringing. I was lucky—I had a mom and dad till I was 14. My mom died. I find with a lot of people—John’s mom, my mom, Bono’s mom, so many people—it appears to be a thing that drives people. They lose their moms kind of early, particularly boys.

So John would be more that way. In [the Beatles multimedia company, Apple Corps], he would want to do experimental things. It was great as a collaborator—it was perfect, because we were two sides of a coin. We’d sit around writing songs, and when I’d contribute something the song needed, he would contribute the other thing the song needed. It was really great.

But he was always quite edgy. So when he met Yoko, I could kind of see it, but it was disturbing because it was going to break up the Beatles. We were a pretty cool group, and I was pretty keen on them. But John was jumping off a cliff. Whereas I would say, “Let’s think about this jumping,” John would be, “No, no, no. I’m jumping. I’m out of here.”