“Knowing you well, you’d probably laugh and say we were worlds apart. But as soon as I remember what it was like before, I try to hold back my tears. I love you”. This is one of the stanzas that composes Here Today (1982), the song that singer and songwriter Paul McCartney composed alone in memory of his recently deceased friend John Lennon. It was two years after the tragic murder of the singer in 1980, outside his home in New York, when Mark David Chapman, a fan of The Beatles, fired five shots into Lennon’s back, which caused the immediate death of Lennon. he. McCartney has rarely spoken about the death of his partner. In the new episode of McCartney: A Life in Lyrics (in Spanish, A life through song lyrics) -he podcast of the ex beatle―, the singer is honest with his audience and reveals that John Lennon was afraid of death. But, above all, to his post-mortem memory of him. “I remember him saying to me, ‘Paul worries me how people will remember me when he dies,’ and he surprised me a little bit.” But McCartney had no doubt what would happen in that case: “People will think you were great,” he responded, as the 81-year-old singer has now recalled.
Paul McCartney, in the new chapter of his podcast, reflects on the friendship and work relationship he shared with Lennon. “I was like his mentor. He often had to tell him, ‘My son, you’re great, don’t worry,’ and he accepted it. “He made her feel better,” she admits. But, above all, the legendary artist accepts that the two had a very special relationship when it came to working together: “If someone asks me what it was like to work with John, it’s easy, much easier, because there were two minds working. And that interaction was anything but miraculous.”
“Write the song [Here Today] “It was very moving and emotional because I was sitting in an empty room thinking and being aware that I had lost him.” The ex beatle He describes the single he dedicates to his friend as “a love song for John” and shared that he wrote it after Lennon’s death as “a way to reflect on some of his fondest memories.” In addition, he also confesses that it was not easy to compile so many moments and memories with his partner. “I was remembering the most intimate details of our relationship and the million crazy things we had done. From simply sitting on the couch, watching television, to walking together, or even hitchhiking,” he recalls. For him, composing this song was the way to heal and face the pain: “It was a powerful loss. Having a conversation with him through music was the right way to comfort my pain. Somehow I was with him again.”
What McCartney wanted to highlight now, apart from good and beautiful memories, is how, despite more than four decades since Lennon’s murder, he continues to miss him. “I often think, ‘What would John say about this?’ It shows that my songs do not have those contrasting elements.” A deep collective mourning that crossed borders: “It was difficult for everyone because he was a very beloved character and a very crazy guy. “He was very special,” McCartney concludes the chapter of his series, in which he also wanted to highlight why he did not want to pay tribute to the singer publicly after his murder: “I couldn’t go on television and say what John meant to him.” my. “It was too painful.”
In an interview for EL PAÍS in 2015, Paul McCartney admitted that the competition that existed between Lennon and him was healthy and one of the reasons for their joint success. “Instead of saying that he was the great muse that descended upon us, it was more of a necessity. Then came a competitive instinct. The great thing about John and I writing together was that we competed with each other non-stop, and that was a very healthy thing. We were like, ‘Damn, he just wrote Strawberry Fields. I better write Penny Lane”.
Not everything was good gestures and teamwork. The exes beatles They made multiple headlines after the group’s breakup that revealed their pronounced differences. John Lennon himself threw poisonous darts at, at that time, his partner’s new album, titled McCartneyduring an interview in 1970 with the magazine Rolling Stone: “I think Paul’s album is garbage. I guess he’ll make a better one, when he’s scared.”
The war that began at the beginning of the seventies would last until shortly before Lennon’s murder, as McCartney himself has explained in several interviews, when he and Yoko Ono would manage to make peace after the birth of the couple’s son, Sean. in 1975. “We had even more in common and often talked about being parents,” the musician acknowledged. “If he was in New York, he would call and say, ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’”
The Beatles have established themselves as probably the most transcendental group in history, and after 53 years since their disappearance, this November they released their “last song.” Now and Then It is a piece from the late seventies, recorded on piano and with the voice of a thirty-something Lennon in a room in the Dakota building in New York, where Lennon lived. beatle with his partner and where he was murdered on December 8. “Paul McCartney says artificial intelligence has enabled a final Beatles song,” the BBC headlined in June announcing that the single could soon be heard. The use of AI has allowed us to hear the voice of the late Lennon again for the last time.
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