In the latest episode of his podcast McCartney: A Life in LyricsThe famous Beatles tells in detail about his first exchange with John Lennon and talks about the nature of their relationship.
By analyzing the lyrics of his song Here Today, a 1982 “love letter” to his late friend John Lennon, Sir Paul McCartney looks back on his first moments in his presence.
“The first time I saw him, he was getting on the bus,” remembers the 81-year-old singer. “He was a little older than me, with his neat rocker cut, black leather jacket and sideburns. I thought, ‘This guy is cool,'” he later told podcast host and poet Paul Muldoon.
The first exchange between the two artists was, unsurprisingly, about music.
“When I told people I wrote songs, they would just say, ‘Oh!'” McCartney remembers. “When I told John, he said, ‘Well, me too!’ So we decided to share what we had.”
First moments of creation
The first creative outbursts between him and John Lennon occurred at the residence of Paul McCartney’s father.
“We were filling the pipe that my father had hidden in his drawer,” says the Brit with a laugh. “We drank tea, rolled cigarettes and sat across from each other with our guitars.”
Yin and yang
Geoff Emerick, a British sound engineer behind a variety of Beatles projects who died in 2018, described the two artists as opposites who complemented each other perfectly.
“Paul was organized and thorough; John seemed to live in chaos, Paul was diplomatic; John was an agitator,” Paul Muldoon quotes in the seventh episode of the podcast.
“That’s what I liked about working with John. “He always came with a different point of view,” comments McCartney, who admits that since his stage brother’s death in 1980, he has always composed his songs with the “creative resistance” he brought him in mind.
“John was a lot easier to work with,” he says.
An evening to cry
Still analyzing the lyrics of Here Today, McCartney returns to a particular evening when the Beatles had to lock themselves in a hotel in Key West, Florida, to avoid a hurricane that struck the region.
“We drank a lot, and I don’t remember exactly why, but we started crying when we looked at each other,” recalls the living music legend, adding that it happened while composing the song “Here Today,” As he reflected on his time with John Lennon, it really dawned on him that he was gone.