Paul McCartney has reflected upon his relationship with his former Beatles bandmate, John Lennon and looked back upon their first meeting as teenagers.
Although they grew up in a similar area of Liverpool, Lennon was two years older than Paul, which meant they didn’t cross paths at school. However, due to their shared passion for songwriting, they were drawn together, which inadvertently led to the beautiful creation of the most successful musical partnership of all time.
During the upcoming episode of his podcast, A Life In Lyrics, McCartney dissected his solo track ‘Here Today’ from his 1982 solo album Tug of War. The song, released two years after Lennon’s death, contains an imaginary conversation between the pair.
“The first time I ever saw John Lennon, he got on the bus … he was like this slightly older guy with this sort of rocker hairdo — lots of grease — black jacket, sideburns, sideboards as we call them. And I just remember thinking, ‘Well, he’s a cool guy. No idea who he is,’” he told co-host Paul Muldoon in an exclusive clip obtained by Rolling Stone.
McCartney continued: “And what would happen is when I would talk to people, they’d sort of say, ‘What are your hobbies? What do you like to do?’” he continued. “And then inevitably, I’d say, ‘Well, I’ve written a couple of songs.’ And they’d go, ‘Oh.’ And we’d pass that pie, and we’d carry on a conversation. But I met John, (and) we were just chatting, and ‘Well, I’ve written a couple of songs.’ And he said, ‘Well, so have I.’”
“So that was like a full stop. So then it was like, ‘Let me hear what you’ve done, and I’ll show you what I’ve done.’ So that started us getting together. I think I was possibly the first person he’d met who’d said that to him. So that was the start of our relationship. We decided to get together, normally at my house, and my dad always left his pipe in the drawer, so we would take tea, fill the pipe with it, and smoke it,” he recalled.
Meanwhile, The Beatles are on course to achieve their first number one single in 54 years with ‘Now and Then’. The new track features vocals recorded by Lennon onto a cassette tape in 1977, which he intended to give to McCartney and was found by his widow, Yoko Ono, in 1994.
The surviving members of The Beatles previously attempted to record ‘Now and Then’ in 1994 but couldn’t get the track to a high enough standard due to technological issues, which they’ve now overcome.
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Listen to ‘Now and Then’ below.
