Although Paul, Ringo, John, and George created some of the finest music ever released, their main objective was to generate cash. In an interview promoting his new book, The Lyrics, with Barnes & Noble C.E.O. James Daunt, Beatles bassist and vocalist, McCartney, explains they were simply cashing in. However, the Beatles’ bassist and vocalist claims it was before the group begun to understand that they were creating something important.
Paul admits it was all about the money when they first got out of Liverpool as they were “kids without jobs. Suddenly here was a job, and so we wanted to get paid, and the more money; the better. It was kind of a joke, a half-joke, once we started to get a hit and knew what kind of money a hit could bring in. We said, ‘Well, let’s write a swimming pool! You need a new extension – let’s write it!’”
Living out their compassion for music, the band began to think differently as they progressed in the art of music making. Paul said the band had only discovered that what The Beatles “were doing was art, and [that] there were things like muses.”
“You then start to think, ‘Oh, is it more noble if we don’t write for money and we just write for art or love?’ But that comes in anyway, Paul explains. “It’s not like it’s excluded because you’re accepting money. What we wanted was a guitar, a car, and a house. … That was the height of our ambitions. Then you suddenly could get them.”
With “most people in the world” comfortably accepting money as income for their work, the group never thought there was “something dirty” about it, themselves. However, the Get Back singer notes that a successful musician can lead to philanthropic work further down the line.
“You don’t just use money for yourself,” Paul explains. “There can be someone who’s in desperate need of an operation who you work with, or you’re very friendly with, and you can say, ‘Look, get up to Harley Street, get that operation. I don’t want you waiting around. It might take months.’ To be able to donate to great causes so you can see things changing, you can see how you can help people. There’s plenty of good stuff about money; you don’t have to just take it all. You can distribute it.”
