Paul McCartney has given new meaning to “I get by with a little help from my friends.”
The music legend regaled writer Chris Heath in GQ with a story about how he, John Lennon and some of their friends masturbated together before the pair became world-famous members of the Beatles.
Discussing their early days, McCartney talked about how the group bonded. And it was, uh, fascinating.
McCartney told Heath: “What it was was over at John’s house, and it was just a group of us. And instead of just getting roaring drunk and partying—I don’t even know if we were staying over or anything—we were all just in these chairs, and the lights were out, and somebody started masturbating, so we all did.”
Heath clarified that it was “about five of them: McCartney, Lennon, and maybe three of Lennon’s friends,” and added that each boy shouted out names that “would offer relevant inspiration.”
“We were just, ‘Brigitte Bardot!’ ‘Whoo!’” said McCartney. “and then everyone would thrash a bit more.”
When asked if the “ritual” took place more than once, McCartney said: “I think it was a one-off. Or maybe it was like a two-off. It wasn’t a big thing. But, you know, it was just the kind of thing you didn’t think much of. It was just a group.”
“Yeah, it’s quite raunchy when you think about it,” he acknowledged. “There’s so many things like that from when you’re a kid that you look back on and you’re, ‘Did we do that?’ But it was good harmless fun. It didn’t hurt anyone. Not even Brigitte Bardot.”
Heath also asked McCartney to explain Lennon’s complaint about “how sanitized the published accounts had been of what life was really like in the Beatles.”
Responding to a question about what really happened on the band’s tours and whether there were orgies, McCartney said:
“There weren’t really orgies, to my knowledge. There were sexual encounters of the celestial kind, and there were groupies. The nearest it got … See, this is my experience, because I’m just not into orgies. I don’t want anyone else there, personally. It ruins it! I would think—I’ve never actually done it. Didn’t appeal to me, the idea.”
He continued: “There was once when we were in Vegas where the tour guy, a fixer, said, ‘You’re going to Vegas, guys—you want a hooker?’ We were all, ‘Yeah!’ And I requested two. And I had them, and it was a wonderful experience. But that’s the closest I ever came to an orgy,” McCartney said.
“See, the thing is, in the next room I think the guys might have ordered something else off the menu. So that would figure if John was saying, yeah, it was all bacchanalian. I think John was a little more that way, because thinking back, I remember there was someone in a club that he’d met, and they’d gone back to the house because the wife fancied John, wanted to have sex with him, so that happened, and John discovered the husband was watching. That was called ‘kinky’ in those days.”