The 2007 song Paul McCartney wrote about his own death
In 1957, John Lennon met Paul McCartney at St Peter’s Church Hall fete in Woolton, Liverpool. The pair instantly bonded over an obsession for rhythm and blues and took little time to start jamming along to Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry records. After finding chemistry in both friendship and musicianship, McCartney was invited to join Lennon’s precursor to The Beatles, The Quarrymen.
As part of Barry Miles’ 1997 biography Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, McCartney was quoted remembering how he used to spend hours on end in Lennon’s bedroom, at his aunt Mimi Smith’s house, listening to old-school rock ‘n’ roll records. “It’s a lovely thought to think of a friend’s bedroom then,” McCartney pondered.
Adding: “A young boy’s bedroom is such a comfortable place, like my son’s bedroom is now; he’s got all his stuff that he needs: a candle, guitar, a book. Physically, it was always a bad idea for us to sit side by side on the bed in his bedroom. The necks of our guitars were always banging.”
The pair played and sang along to some of their favourite rock hits, eventually finding the confidence to write a handful of songs themselves. Little did they know then, but the words they laid down in those early jams would help guide them to staggering levels of fame in the early 1960s.
Those formative songwriting sessions became the foundation of one of the most important creative partnerships in modern music. Lennon and McCartney developed a collaborative instinct that allowed them to sharpen each other’s ideas in real time, often finishing songs together line by line while absorbing influences from American rock and roll, skiffle and rhythm and blues.
Their contrasting personalities also proved essential, with Lennon’s sharper edge balancing McCartney’s melodic optimism in a way that gave The Beatles their unique emotional range.
Even decades after the band’s split, McCartney’s reflections on mortality reveal how closely tied his outlook remains to the people who shaped his life during those early years. ‘The End Of The End’ carries a warmth and humanity that echoes the communal spirit The Beatles projected at their best, focusing less on fame or legacy than on memory, storytelling and companionship.
Inspired partly by Harrison’s attitude toward death, the song stands as one of McCartney’s most openly vulnerable compositions, offering a surprisingly peaceful perspective from one of popular music’s most enduring figures.
The popularity garnered by The Beatles over the decade reached a state of immortality by the time they parted ways in 1970. Even today, over 50 years since the band’s demise, surviving members Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr ride the unstoppable wave of Beatlemania.
When it comes to legacies, few are more immortal and enviable than that of McCartney. Not only did he contribute a mammoth share of the songwriting credits for The Beatles, but his subsequent solo endeavours and work with Wings have helped keep him relevant for over five decades.
In 2007, McCartney released ‘The End Of The End’, a song about how he wants to be remembered after he dies, on his album, Memory Almost Full. The former Beatle took inspiration from the late George Harrison, who was notably well-prepared for death and oddly chirpy and jocular in his final days when McCartney and Ringo Starr visited him in Los Angeles.
“On the day that I die I’d like jokes to be told/ And stories of old to be rolled out like carpets/ That children have played on/ And laid on while listening to stories of old,” McCartney sings.
He continues in the second verse: “On the day that I die I’d like bells to be rung/ And songs that were sung to be hung out like blankets/ That lovers have played on/ And laid on while listening to songs that were sung.”
“I heard someone – I think it was James Taylor – say in a lyric, ‘the day I die,’ and it prompted me to think of my death as a subject,” McCartney told World magazine in 2008, revealing another source of inspiration for the song. “So I got into that and found that I was interested in the Irish Wake idea, and jokes being told and stories of old, rather than the solemn, Anglican, doom-laden event. But it’s not a subject that anyone visits that much. It’s not too jolly, I suppose. It doesn’t make a great song to dance to.”
Listen to Paul McCartney’s ‘The End Of The End’ below.
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