Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Had you come home late at night on December eighth,
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty and turned on your television, you would have
Speaker 2: had some generation shaking news.
Speaker 3: He was shot late this evening in front of his
Speaker 3: apartment building in New York City. Apparently he was killed
Speaker 3: almost immediately. The man who shot John Lennon walked up
Speaker 3: to the musician as he was leaving his limousine. According
Speaker 3: to eyewitnesses, he said, mister Lennon and then fired at
Speaker 3: him point blank at least five times.
Speaker 4: And if I.
Speaker 5: Said I really knew you, well, what would.
Speaker 4: Your answer me?
Speaker 6: This is basically a memory song that is a love
Speaker 6: song to John.
Speaker 7: Or knowing you, you probably laugh and says that we
Speaker 7: were worlds aboard.
Speaker 6: He's written after he died, and I was remembering things
Speaker 6: about our relationship and things about the million things we've
Speaker 6: done together.
Speaker 4: But as for me, I still remember it was before
Speaker 4: and I am holding back the team.
Speaker 6: From just being in each other's front parlors or bedrooms,
Speaker 6: or walking on the street together or hitchhiking love.
Speaker 2: And I've been fortunate to spend time with one of
Speaker 2: the greatest songwriters of our era.
Speaker 4: And will you look at me?
Speaker 6: I'm going on to I'm actually a performer.
Speaker 2: That is, Sir Paul McCartney. We worked together on a
Speaker 2: book looking at the lyrics of more than one hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty of his songs, and we recorded many hours
Speaker 2: of our conversations.
Speaker 6: I'm actually I'm a songwriter. My god, well, that crypta homie.
Speaker 2: This is McCartney, A life in lyrics, a masterclass, a memoir,
Speaker 2: and an improvised journey with one of the most iconic
Speaker 2: figures in popular music in this episode here today. John
Speaker 2: Lennon died on December eighth, nineteen eighty. It was a
Speaker 2: loss grieved by millions of people around the world. As
Speaker 2: Paul McCartney mourned in the following years, he found himself
Speaker 2: remembering all of the time they had spent together as
Speaker 2: childhood friends, bandmates and creative collaborators.
Speaker 6: And I was in what is now my recording studio
Speaker 6: in Sussex. It was just a little house. There was
Speaker 6: little room upstairs that was bare wooden planks and bare walls,
Speaker 6: and I had my guitar with me. So I just
Speaker 6: sat there and wrote this and it started, as also
Speaker 6: does with me. We're finding something nice on the guitar,
Speaker 6: A good chord or something.
Speaker 1: Just this.
Speaker 6: If I said, but that it's just such a lovely chord,
Speaker 6: it's not. I don't know what it is actually, And if.
Speaker 5: I said I really knew you, well, what would you
Speaker 5: answer me?
Speaker 4: If you read day?
Speaker 8: One of the things which I find very interesting is
Speaker 8: that the title is here today, but you never get
Speaker 8: round to letting the others shoe drop as it were
Speaker 8: on that when you don't refer to so far as
Speaker 8: I can see.
Speaker 1: I E. Gone tomorrow. Mmm, no, which I think is
Speaker 1: really quite beautiful. Yeah, I think.
Speaker 6: Do you know when I thought of here today, I
Speaker 6: would have thought of it I was here today, gone tomorrow,
Speaker 6: But I immediately just dropped, yes, gone tomorrow. I knew,
Speaker 6: I knew. I didn't want that, And a bit I
Speaker 6: wanted was this front pit.
Speaker 4: What about the time we met? About the time, well,
Speaker 4: I suppose that you could say that we were playing
Speaker 4: hard again.
Speaker 1: What about the time we met, Well, the first time
Speaker 1: I ever.
Speaker 6: Saw John Lennon, he got on the bus and was
Speaker 6: John always managed to be a little bit older than me.
Speaker 1: I never caught up.
Speaker 6: So he was like this sort of slightly older guy
Speaker 6: with a sort of rocker hardoo lots of grease, black jacket,
Speaker 6: side burns, sideboards as we called them. Burns was American,
Speaker 6: and you know, I just remember thinking, well, he's a
Speaker 6: cool guy, no idea who he is.
Speaker 4: Didn't understand the thing, but we could all say.
Speaker 6: And what would happen is when I would talk to people,
Speaker 6: they'd sort of say, what are your hobbies?
Speaker 1: What do you like to do?
Speaker 6: Inevitably I'd say, and I've written a couple of songs.
Speaker 6: And they got out and we pass that by and
Speaker 6: we carry on a conversation. When I met John, were
Speaker 6: just chapping what I've written a couple of songs. He said,
Speaker 6: I was so vi So that was like a full stop.
Speaker 6: So then it was like, let me hear what you've
Speaker 6: done and I'll tell you. I'll show you right to him.
Speaker 6: So that started us getting together. I think I was
Speaker 6: possibly the first person he'd met who had said that
Speaker 6: to him, and so that was the start of our relationship.
Speaker 6: We decided to get together normally at my house and
Speaker 6: my dad always left his pipe in the draw, so
Speaker 6: we would take tea, fill the pipe with it and
Speaker 6: smoke it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was before tea became tea exactly pre tea.
Speaker 4: If you ya.
Speaker 6: He normally one of the other of us would have
Speaker 6: a fragment, tune up, have a segy cup of tea,
Speaker 6: start playing some stuff, look for an idea. Nearly all
Speaker 6: of its two guitars, and joy of that was that
Speaker 6: I was left handed, he was right handed, So I
Speaker 6: was looking in a mirror and he was looking in
Speaker 6: a mirror.
Speaker 2: Just as their guitars mirrored each other, their personalities seemed
Speaker 2: complimentary yin and yang. Jeff Emeriic, the head studio engineer
Speaker 2: on several Beatles albums, observed that Paul was meticulous and organized.
Speaker 2: John seemed to live in chaos. Paul was a natural communicator.
Speaker 2: John couldn't artake get his idea as well. Paul was
Speaker 2: the diplomat. John was the agitator.
Speaker 6: That was one of the good things about writing with John.
Speaker 6: He would often come in from another angle. So if
Speaker 6: I'm doing a song, it's getting better all the time,
Speaker 6: John might easily say it couldn't get no worse, which
Speaker 6: immediately opens the song right up. Okay, And that was
Speaker 6: one of the things I loved about working with him.
Speaker 6: He could have said it's getting better all the time. Yes,
Speaker 6: indeed it is right. If you read it.
Speaker 2: The lyrics of here Today, imagine what Lennon might say
Speaker 2: to McCartney if he were still alive. It's a practice
Speaker 2: which informed much of Baurn McCartney's songwriting since the two
Speaker 2: ended their musical collaboration. In the song, McCartney reckons with
Speaker 2: the fact that since Lenon's passing, he has had to
Speaker 2: spar with himself internalizing Lenon's creative opposition.
Speaker 6: Now I'm conscious that I don't have him very much,
Speaker 6: and you know, often we'll sort of refer what John
Speaker 6: has said, this is too soppy, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you would have said no, no, no, So I'll
Speaker 1: change it.
Speaker 6: But my songs have to reflect me, and you don't
Speaker 6: have this opposing element so much.
Speaker 1: I have to do that myself these days, you know.
Speaker 6: And you know, if anyone sort of asked me what
Speaker 6: was he like to work with John, the fact was
Speaker 6: it was easier, much easier, because there were two minds
Speaker 6: at work, and that interplay was nothing short of miraculous.
Speaker 2: While John Lennon's cynicism was often helpful in the songwriting
Speaker 2: process with Baun McCartney, he could be quite harsh. He
Speaker 2: had a very traumatic childhood, a distant father. There was
Speaker 2: the early loss of his mother and his aunt's frequent
Speaker 2: criticism and cruelty.
Speaker 6: John's persona was very guarded. Yeah, hopelessly guarded. You know.
Speaker 6: That was where all his wit came from. It was
Speaker 6: like so many comedians, it's to shield themselves against the world,
Speaker 6: you know, and John having had this very difficult upbringing
Speaker 6: where his father ly Tom lys and then his uncle
Speaker 6: dies and then his mother gets killed.
Speaker 1: By the time I knew him, he could be very sarcastic,
Speaker 1: but we all could.
Speaker 6: I mean, it was my way of dealing with my
Speaker 6: mother's death and his too.
Speaker 1: So he would often they d funny I'll tell you
Speaker 1: about you.
Speaker 6: Know, there would often being a very witty put down.
Speaker 6: Wouldn't always be a put down, but it would. It's
Speaker 6: always a quick answer, and he trained himself to do that.
Speaker 6: It was kind of obvious to and that was one
Speaker 6: of the attractive things about him self.
Speaker 1: Protective attack before we were attacked.
Speaker 7: Well knowing you, he probably laugh and says that we
Speaker 7: were world around.
Speaker 5: Few to day.
Speaker 6: I played to the sort of more cynical side of John.
Speaker 1: It was certainly that. But whenever I sing this, I
Speaker 1: do think.
Speaker 6: It's probably not true. You probably laugh and say we
Speaker 6: were world's apart.
Speaker 2: This cynicism may seem particular to John Lennon, but it
Speaker 2: was drilled into all young men of their generation as
Speaker 2: part of some ideal of stoic masculinity.
Speaker 6: Why can't men say I love you to each other?
Speaker 6: I don't think he's quite as true now, but I
Speaker 6: think certainly when we were growing up, you had to
Speaker 6: be gay for a man to say that to another man.
Speaker 6: So you know, that bred a little bit of cynicism.
Speaker 6: If you ever were talking about anything soppy, then the
Speaker 6: next thing would be someone would have to make a
Speaker 6: joke of it, just to ease the embarrassment in the room.
Speaker 2: And as boys couldn't admit their love for their friends,
Speaker 2: they were also encouraged to hold back their tears.
Speaker 1: Boys don't cry.
Speaker 6: My dad wasn't like that, but that was the attitude
Speaker 6: that you don't cry. Male people do not cry. Whereas
Speaker 6: I think now it's acknowledged that it's a perfectly good
Speaker 6: thing to do, And I say, well, you know, God
Speaker 6: wouldn't have given us tears if he didn't mean us
Speaker 6: to cry.
Speaker 7: What about the night we cried?
Speaker 9: Because there wasn't any reason. I have to keep it
Speaker 9: on inside. Never still would you.
Speaker 4: With a smile.
Speaker 2: Even before the Beatles, Paul and John spent so much
Speaker 2: time together that if they didn't acknowledge it in words,
Speaker 2: their friendship had deepened. They grew closer and they came
Speaker 2: to really know one another.
Speaker 6: John and I hitchhiked a lot. It was the kind
Speaker 6: of way to get a holiday. You never you didn't
Speaker 6: book holidays. Maybe your parents did that, but we don't
Speaker 6: think we would have known how to.
Speaker 1: So you would do is you just.
Speaker 6: Head out. We would always take our guitars and it
Speaker 6: was always just two of us. And from Liverpool you
Speaker 6: go south. You don't really think of hitchhiking north. The
Speaker 6: beaches are south and John and I got down to
Speaker 6: ride on the Isle of Wight.
Speaker 1: Or why do you.
Speaker 6: Where My cousin Betty Elizabeth and her husband Mike were
Speaker 6: running a pub. They did that, They ran pubs.
Speaker 2: Not only did McCartney's cousins Betty and Mike run a pub,
Speaker 2: Mike was also an entertainment manager at Butland's. Butland's was
Speaker 2: a chain of seaside resorts started by Billy Butlin in
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty seven.
Speaker 10: Butlin's the big holiday where everyone enjoys everything at no
Speaker 10: extra cost like the monorail.
Speaker 2: As this ad makes clear, the point was to provide
Speaker 2: affordable holidays for working class families.
Speaker 10: A big holiday for everyone with everything to enjoy at
Speaker 10: Butler's and remember no extra at the Bay.
Speaker 6: They were very showers and their kids all are great
Speaker 6: little family who went down there. And it was great
Speaker 6: really because I was sort of showing John part of
Speaker 6: my world. It was very cute because we were goet
Speaker 6: of young guys then still teen teenagers. H we'd play
Speaker 6: our guitars. They'd love to hear us play.
Speaker 1: He was.
Speaker 6: He was a very funny guy and musical. He'd been
Speaker 6: in a sort of an a cappella singing group with
Speaker 6: zoot suits calling the Jones Boys. And we listened to
Speaker 6: them on the radio once once on the radio, and
Speaker 6: we all whole family tuned in, you know, guy collected
Speaker 6: clippings of them. It was very cute to now think
Speaker 6: of me and John in a bed top and tail,
Speaker 6: a little single bed top and tail, and Betty and
Speaker 6: Mike coming in to talk us in. It was so sweet,
Speaker 6: you know, it's so sort of innocent. Play it again, ring, stop,
Speaker 6: that's not me.
Speaker 4: What do your promise to be and help me.
Speaker 1: I'm tired.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: Even when John would attack Paul, he find ways of
Speaker 2: signaling to his friend, the softer part of himself that
Speaker 2: lay underneath the hard shell.
Speaker 6: I told you you were the classes all the time.
Speaker 6: And we have we have an argument about something. I said, no, no, no,
Speaker 6: no no, because I would have to stand up to
Speaker 6: him because we're working together. And he'd say something but
Speaker 6: particularly caustic. I'd be so wounded. And then he pulled
Speaker 6: down his classes. He got it's only me, went back
Speaker 6: and that was John. That to me, it was John,
Speaker 6: It's only me. Oh all right, and you've just gone
Speaker 6: and blustered and that was somebody else?
Speaker 4: Was it?
Speaker 1: Okay? And that was your shield talking.
Speaker 4: I'm giving up the business.
Speaker 1: We're doing it wrong. George is tuned up, tuning up.
Speaker 1: I want to thieve.
Speaker 2: As Paul came to recognize when John's shield was up,
Speaker 2: and when it was done, he learned how to comfort him.
Speaker 6: I remember him saying to me, oh, you know, I
Speaker 6: worry about how people are going to remember me when
Speaker 6: I die. And it kind of shocked me. I said, okay,
Speaker 6: hold on, just hold it right there. People are going
Speaker 6: to think you were great, You've already done enough work
Speaker 6: to demonstrate that. So I was like I had to
Speaker 6: I was like his priest often, you know, I'd have
Speaker 6: to say, my son, you're great, don't worry about it,
Speaker 6: you know whatever.
Speaker 1: And he would take it and make him feel better.
Speaker 7: What about the night we cry?
Speaker 4: Because there was any reason to keep it on inside?
Speaker 4: Never would you.
Speaker 2: One stormy night in Key West, while the Beatles were
Speaker 2: on tour shield dropped all together.
Speaker 1: What about the night we cry? That was a specific
Speaker 1: incident in Key West.
Speaker 6: There was a hurricane coming in and we had to
Speaker 6: lay low for a couple of days, and for some
Speaker 6: reason they chose Key West, and so we were in
Speaker 6: a little sort of motel room and stuff. So we
Speaker 6: got very drunk and cried about, you know, I don't
Speaker 6: know about how we loved each other or something.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Writing here today, processing his friend's death, McCartney experienced a
Speaker 2: similar emotional release. Once again, it was music the broke
Speaker 2: down the barriers of masculinity, of violence, of the tragedy
Speaker 2: of John's absence.
Speaker 4: But as for me, I still remember it was before.
Speaker 6: But as for me, I still remember how it was
Speaker 6: before and I'm holding back the tears no more because
Speaker 6: it was very moving, a very emotional writing this song,
Speaker 6: because I was just sitting there saying this bare room,
Speaker 6: thinking of John and realizing I'd lost him, and.
Speaker 1: It was a powerful loss. So to have a.
Speaker 6: Conversation with him in a song was some form of solace.
Speaker 1: Somehow I was with him again. What about the night
Speaker 1: we cried?
Speaker 4: Because it was a learis do have to keep it on? This?
Speaker 6: And people come to my shows and this is I
Speaker 6: do this, just me and a guitar, and I'm all
Speaker 6: stuck in the middle of a great, big arena with
Speaker 6: all these people, and people tell me they look around,
Speaker 6: there's a lot of people crying. And I think you
Speaker 6: know because it is a very sentimental, nostalgic, emotional song.
Speaker 4: For you were in my song.
Speaker 2: Dude here Today from Tug of War, released in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty two.
Speaker 4: When you Are in your Heart.
Speaker 1: Was an open book.
Speaker 2: In the next episode, you.
Speaker 4: Used to say lilently.
Speaker 2: McCartney's secret aspiration to write a Bond song.
Speaker 9: The ever changing world in which we live in makes
Speaker 9: you giving and crawn.
Speaker 2: McCartney. A Life in Lyrics is a co production between
Speaker 2: iHeartMedia NPL and Pushkin Industries