Paul McCartney couldn’t talk about the “deep grief” he felt for many years after he learned of pal and former bandmate John Lennon’s death because he “couldn’t put it into words.”
The pain was too intense, he couldn’t even tell anyone just how much Lennon meant to him.
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Paul McCartney On How “Difficult” John Lennon’s Death Was On Him
Even though the Beatles disbanded pretty quickly, their bond remained years after the dust raised by the Beatlemania had finally settled.
In a new interview on SiriusXM’s The Beatles Channel, the award-winning musician, 80, revealed how the pain of losing Lennon inspired his “Here Today” track.
Lennon’s murder in 1980 was a dark time for McCartney and for fans all over the world.
“When John died, it was so difficult,” McCartney told host Tom Frangione. “It was difficult for everyone in the world because he was such a loved character and such a crazy guy. He was so special.”
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In fact the death of his beloved friend affected him so much “that I couldn’t really talk about it.”
“I remember getting home from the studio on the day that we’d heard the news he died and turning the TV on and seeing people say, ‘Well, John Lennon was this and what he was was this,” the “Maybe I’m Amazed” singer recalled of the time. “It was like, I don’t know, I can’t be one of those people.”
“I can’t just go on TV and say what John meant to me,” he explained. “It was just too deep. It’s just too much. I couldn’t put it into words.”
However, once his emotions “had sort of settled a little bit,” he immediately did what he knows how to do best – he wrote a song about it.
“I found a room and just sat on the wooden floor in a corner with my guitar and just started to play the opening chords to ‘Here Today.'”
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Paul McCartney – On the Beautiful Memory That Inspired “Here Today”
McCartney went on to explain the reason behind a specific line in the song: “‘The night we cried,’ that was to do with a time when we were in Key West down in Florida, and for some reason — I think it was like a hurricane — something had been delayed, and we couldn’t play for a couple of days, so we holed up in a little Motel. So what would we do? Well, we’d have a drink, and we would get drunk.”
“We got drunk and started to get kind of emotional,” he continued. “On the way to that, there was a lot of soul-searching. We told each other a few truths, you know, ‘Well, I love you,’ ‘I love you man,’ ‘I love that you said that,‘ and we opened up.”
“So that was kind of special to me,” McCartney said. “I think that was really one of the only times that ever happened.”
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