Kapranos Blasts 'Ono Criticises McCartney' Stories

Franz Ferdinand frontman Alex Kapranos has slammed media reports Yoko Ono had a dig at Sir Paul McCartney at the Q Awards on Monday (10OCT05) as "perverse".

On collecting the Special Award at the London ceremony on behalf of her late husband John Lennon, Ono described how she used to comfort him by saying people didn't cover his songs as much as McCartney's because they don't contain rhyming lyrics.

She told the gathering, "John... would say, 'They always cover Paul's songs, they never cover mine.' I said to him, 'You're a good songwriter, it's not June-with-spoon that you write."

And Kapranos is amazed many British newspapers yesterday (11OCT05) deciphered Ono's comments as being critical of McCartney.

Writing in today's (12OCT05) edition of UK newspaper The Guardian, Kapranos says, "The 'June-spoon-moon' stuff is irrelevant. It was Ono telling the husband she adored that it didn't matter if people didn't want to cover his songs as much as McCartney's, as his work had such phenomenal worth.

"The irony is that, while Yoko was whispering soothingly in John's troubled ear, (McCartney's late wife) LINDA was probably whispering into Paul's, telling him that it didn't matter that some of those critics considered Lennon's work to have a greater artistic merit.

"The idea that these supposedly inflammatory comments are reigniting some form of Lennon-McCartney rivalry is perverse.

"It is rooted in the mistaken presumption that any rivalry between the two appeared when Ono came on the scene. It was always there. It's what they thrived upon - simple competition, trying to outdo each other with better songs."