Paul McCartney Was OK Being Cast As "The Villain" After Beatles' Breakup

As The Beatles' career together was winding down, lots of fingers from lots of different places tried to point at who was responsible for the band's frustrating end.

At the time, many of those fingers pointed at Paul McCartney, the band's most prolific songwriter and most controlling personality.

In an interview this week on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, McCartney indicates that he was indeed following the reports of strife within The Beatles. He started to believe the hubbub, which even lead him to question his friendship with John Lennon.

"When The Beatles broke up, a lot of the talk was that I was the villain, John and I didn't really get on well, there was a lot of down talk about it because, you know, everyone was sad The Beatles had broken up," McCartney recalled. "I kind of bought into it. ...When you're called [the villain] enough, you start to think, 'Well, maybe I was.'"

Despite the truth of the matter in his heart, Macca says the question haunted him for a long time, but a "very special" photo of himself and Lennon working together reminded him that "yes, we were friends."

"It's a beautiful photo for me because it just reminds me of us working together and how cool it was," McCartney continued.

While the former Beatle says he has no idea what song he and Lennon were working on in the photo, he approved of Colbert's guess that they were working the medley from Side 2 of Abbey Road.

McCartney also acknowledged that he often has dreams where he's with Lennon.

McCartney's new children's book, Hey! Grandude, is available now.

Photo: Getty Images