Yes-sir-day! Paul McCartney reveals he wanted to become an ENGLISH TEACHER if he had not found fame with the Beatles
- The music legend, 79, said he thought he would be ‘not bad’ at teaching English
- He told BBC’s A Cultural Life that his English teacher taught him to love literature
- McCartney said he recently found pages of a play he wrote with John Lennon
- He used the interview to blame Lennon for the break-up of the Beatles in 1970
Paul McCartney has said he would’ve taught English if he had not found fame with The Beatles.
McCartney told BBC Radio 4’s A Cultural Life that if the Fab Four had not been successful, the only other thing he was qualified for was teaching, according to the Telegraph.
The music legend did admit that higher level teaching would have required him to brush up on his books, saying that ‘lower level English literature’ was what he had as his plan B.
He used the interview to talk about the impact that his own English teacher Alan Durband had on his when he was growing up in the 1950s.
Alan Durband got a young McCartney interested in literature by introducing him to Chaucer
The singer said he thinks he would have been ‘not bad’ at teacher low
He credited the teacher at Liverpool Institute High School for Boys for getting him interested in literature by having him read The Miller’s Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer.
McCartney recounted how he was struck with how vulgar the text was.
The Beatle left school with an A-level in English and having failed another in Art.
Durband had studied under renowned literary critic FR Leavis while at Cambridge and the young McCartney had this reading bug passed down to him.
McCartney told presenter John Wilson that after being introduced to literature by his teacher he began being interested in the Royal Court theatre in Liverpool.
His theatre obsession carried on into his Beatles years as he recently found pages of a play written by him and John Lennon.
McCartney used the interview to tell listeners that it was John Lennon who broke up the Beatles in 1970 – not him as is often theorised
The play, titled Pilchard, is about a mother and daughter who are wondering where a character called Pilchard, who is the Messiah and busy ‘doing things’, is as the sit in a kitchen.
The Wings frontman also used the interview to set the record straight on the breakup of The Beatles which has been blamed on him since the four split in 1970.
McCartney told the programme that the late John McCartney had been the one which split the band up months before it was announced, with McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison sworn to secrecy.
McCartney’s interview with John Wilson will air tomorrow on BBC Radio 4.