Jim Keltner on the “brutal” brotherly love between The Beatles
After being a sideman for two of The Beatles’ solo careers, Jim Keltner opened up about the “brutal” love that ‘The Fab Four’ shared for one another. Keltner had done some drumming for John Lennon and George Harrison and was one of the honourary members of the supergroup The Traveling Wilburys.
When speaking with Uncut, Keltner recalled Lennon as being fairly normal in the studio compared to Harrison, remembering, “He was a regular kind of guy: funny, incredibly smart and incredibly fast with everything. Nothing took a long time”.
While Keltner worked on Lennon’s albums during his “lost weekend”, he remembered Harrison’s studio environment being very different. When working on Living in the Material World, Keltner recalled Harrison being much more sporadic with creativity, continuing, “it was always kind of mystifying how he would come up with stuff to do, and how easily he made it happen”.
After The Beatles’ breakup, the foursome fell out over business, with Paul McCartney going in a different direction than the rest of the band, who wanted to work with the notorious Allen Klein. Though Lennon and McCartney wrote songs about each other like ‘How Do You Sleep’ and ‘Too Many People’ respectfully, Keltner said that none of the original members would let anyone else say anything negative about them.
When working with Lennon and Harrison, he remembered the pair getting defensive about McCartney a few times, saying, “Over the years with him and John, they could both be really brutal with Paul. I learned very early on that I couldn’t join them. They, both on different occasions, said, ‘We can say that, but you shouldn’t.’ They were truly brothers who loved taking the piss out of each other, but they didn’t want anybody else doing it”.
Lennon and McCartney would eventually make amends as well, becoming friendlier with each other up until Lennon’s murder in 1980.