The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame means something different to everyone, especially now that the annual voting cycle has commenced for its newest class. Some artists care; others, like king Todd Rundgren, ignore it completely. So perhaps a surprise: Paul McCartney fits in the first category. In a 2015 interview that has just been published for the first time in Vanity Fair, the cute Beatle admitted he holds lingering resentment toward former Rolling Stone editor-in-chief Jann Wenner for inducting John Lennon as a solo artist before him. (The Beatles, of course, already received the honor in 1988.) McCartney says Wenner asked him to induct Lennon for the 1994 ceremony, which was the first year Lennon was eligible. “I said, ‘Yeah, sure.’ Then I put the phone down. I thought, Well, what about me? I’m not inducted,” he explained. “Now John’s going to go in. The thing about John Lennon and McCartney was we were always equal. But, of course, once John got murdered, he became the martyr — the Buddy Holly, the James Dean character — because of the atrocity. So a revisionism started to go on … so that naturally colored my thinking.”
Macca points to both Wenner and Lennon’s wife Yoko Ono as helping spread that narrative. “Yoko would be saying things like, ‘Oh, Paul only booked the studio,’” he added. “People have said the greatest things about me. But luckily, there is this thing called history, and there are these things called record books, so I can say, ‘Well, no, I actually did more than that.’”
McCartney inquired about his own Rock Hall honors the next time he spoke with Wenner, who promised him the award the following year. Wenner reneged on his word and McCartney was snubbed as a soloist until 1999. “I bought the deal,” Macca explained. “Fucking bastards. So none of these things endeared me to him. And it was always, ‘It’s not me.’ Eventually I did creep in there and my daughter Stella wore a T-shirt that said, ‘About fucking time.’” (It was a great look.) Years later, he even campaigned to get his fellow Beatles brother, Ringo Starr, his moment of Rock Hall glory with the All-Starr Band, which was accomplished in 2015 following the induction of George Harrison in 2004.
“So as far as Jann is concerned — they did induct me. It was ‘about fucking time’ and all that,” McCartney added. “But it was later and it wasn’t when I was promised it. A verbal contract was not worth the paper it was written on. But I normally don’t talk about this, because I’m not very vindictive. I will hold a grudge, but I don’t see the point of being vindictive.” Technically, he could still get tapped a third time for his work in Wings. Or should we live and let that one die?