Jane Asher and Paul McCartney (English Version)

FOR NO ONE

PAUL: I suspect it was about another argument. I don't have easy relationships with women, I never have. I talk too much truth.

[...]

It’s a song about rejection. The breakup, or marking the end of a relationship that didn’t work, has always been quite a rich area to explore in a song. Having been through it a few times – as I suppose a lot of people have – it was an emotion I could relate to, and it seemed like a good idea to put into a song because probably a lot of other people could relate to it too. In the song, I’m talking about two people who’ve broken up, but obviously, as with any writer, it all comes from your own experience, and inevitably you’re talking about yourself.

There are two short lines: ‘She wakes up / She makes up’. Then you have long lines after the two short ones. ‘She takes her time and doesn’t feel she has to hurry / She no longer needs you’. Then this: ‘And in her eyes you see nothing / No sign of love…’ It’s a horrible moment when you’ve broken up with someone, and you look at them – this person you used to be in love with, or thought you were in love with – and none of that old feeling is there. It’s like it just switched off too, and it’s not great to be on the receiving end of that.

[...]

Jane Asher and I were together for around five years, so at the back of my mind I expected to marry her, but as the time got closer, I think I also realised it wasn’t right. You can’t ever put your finger on it, but when Linda came along, shortly after Jane and I broke up, I just thought, ‘Oh, I dunno, maybe this is more right.’ And then when Linda and I got to know each other, I felt, ‘This is more me; I’m more her.’ And there were little things with Jane where we just didn’t quite match up. I loved a lot of things about her, and I will always admire a lot of things about her. She’s a wonderful woman, but little bits of the jigsaw weren’t quite fitting.

One of the verses of the song reads as follows:

«she says that long ago she knew someone, but now he's gone, she doesn't need him».

Jane had started working for the Bristol Old Vic theatre company, and rumour has it that she had a parallel relationship with a colleague in the company, the actor David Weston. She had previously worked with him in "A Masque Of The Read Death" and "Romeo and Juliet", in 1966 they starred in the play "A Winter's Tame" and in 1967 they travelled to the United States with the rest of the company for a four-month tour of Romeo and Juliet. In 1997, it was the first and last time Paul said anything on the subject.

PAUL: I don't remember the breakup as being traumatic, really. I remember more one time when she was working at the Bristol Old Vic and she'd got a boyfriend in Bristol and was going to leave me for him. That was wildly traumatic, that was "Uhhhh!" Total rejection! We got back together again but I had already gone through that when we eventually split up. It seemed it had to happen. It felt right. I liked her a lot and we got on very well. She was a very intelligent and very interesting person, but I just never clicked. One of those indefinable things about love is some people you click withand some people who you should maybe click with, you don't. Whatever.