John Lennon Said Paul McCartney and George Harrison Were Too 'Prudish'
John Lennon believed he shocked the other Beatles with one album. Here's why he found their reaction to it surprising.
When John Lennon released the album Two Virgins in 1968, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr were politely shocked. While they tried not to get caught up in the public outcry over the album cover — which featured full frontal nudity from Lennon and Yoko Ono — they didn’t approve of it. Lennon said it surprised him that McCartney and Harrison were so prudish. John Lennon said Paul McCartney and George Harrison were surprisingly prudish
Lennon and Ono chose to pose naked on the cover of Two Virgins because they wanted to reveal all of themselves to the public. It was a bold choice that brought the couple a great deal of blowback.
“It was insane!” Lennon said in The Beatles Anthology. “People got so upset about it — the fact that two people were naked. I didn’t think there’d be such a fuss. I guess the world thinks we’re an ugly couple.” John Lennon and Yoko Ono's face peek out from a circle of the otherwise hidden album cover for 'Two Virgins.' There is brown paper over it. He found it particularly surprising that McCartney and Harrison did not seem to approve of the cover.
“George and Paul were a little shocked, that was weird. That really shocked me, the fact that they were prudish,” Lennon said. “You can’t imagine — it was so uptight in those days. It’s not that long ago, and people are uptight about nude bodies. We didn’t create nudity, we just put it out. Somebody else had been nude before.”
McCartney wasn’t sure this was the case.
“I was slightly shocked but, seeing as I wrote a liner note for the sleeve, I obviously wasn’t too uptight,” he said.
Source: cheatsheet.com
