TL;DR:
Paul McCartney felt one track from The Beatles‘ The White Album was a love song to John Lennon’s mother, Julia Lennon. Subsequently, Paul discussed what he thought of Julia. Similarly, John revealed his interpretation of the song in question.
The 2015 book Conversations with McCartney includes a section where Paul is asked about love songs. “There’s a kind of timelessness [to love songs], because people are always falling in love,” he said. “There’s people now who aren’t even dreaming of it, who tomorrow will be in love, and there’s people in school who in five years’ time might be in love.
“There’s people now whose hearts are broken, who might find love,” he added. “So they’re very useful things on a practical level, love songs. But more importantly, they touch you.”
He named “Julia,” a song about John’s mother, as a personal favorite love song. “I love ‘Julia,’ of John’s, that’s a particularly beautiful song and that’s very special to me because I knew John’s mum Julia, and I knew how fond of her he was, and the tragic circumstances in which she died,” Paul said.
“So years later, when John recorded that, it was very special,” he added. “I love his fingerpicking style that he used, a very gentle song and obviously very meaningful to John. And me, too, cos she was a great lady. And also just a real good tune.” Paul also praised the track’s “little guitar harmonic phrases,” comparing them to the instrumentation of “Blackbird,” another track from The White Album.
The book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono features an interview from 1980. In it, John was asked about “Julia.” He said the song was about his mother and Yoko at the same time.
“Julia” was never a single, so it never charted on the Billboard Hot 100. It served as the B-side to “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” which reached No. 49 and stayed on the chart for seven weeks. On the other hand, The White Album became a massive hit. It reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 for nine weeks, staying on the chart for a total of 215. The White Album was one of the Fab Four’s most popular albums.
“Julia” and “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” were never singles in the United Kingdom either, so The Official Charts Company reports they did not chart there. On the other hand, The White Album reached No. 1 in the U.K. for eight weeks and stayed on the chart for 37 weeks in total.
“Julia” wasn’t a hit but it moved Paul.