The “very moving” John Lennon song that Paul McCartney can’t live without
It’s more than 40 years since the world lost one of its most extraordinary musical talents, John Lennon, but the pain remains raw for those who knew him best. For his family and bandmates, such as The Beatles’ Paul McCartney, there’s a hole in their hearts which will never be filled due to the unimaginably tragic circumstances surrounding his heartbreaking death.
McCartney’s relationship with John Lennon was a brotherhood bonded by love. In addition to their musical synergy in an artistic sense, they understood each other on a deeper level than they knew themselves. As teenagers, both Lennon and McCartney went through the devastating loss of their mothers. At their young age, it was uncommon to suffer the death of a parent, but both Lennon and McCartney comprehended their friend’s tragic grief-fuelled experience.
Their relationship went through a tumultuous period following the demise of The Beatles. During this difficult spell, which lasted for several years, they wrote vicious songs about each other, but eventually, it was all water under the bridge. While they thankfully repaired their friendship before Lennon’s passing, the pain of his death still lives with McCartney to this day. “It’s very difficult for me, and I occasionally will have thoughts and sort of say, ‘I don’t know, why don’t I just break down crying every day?’ Because it’s that bad,” McCartney admitted in 2020. He continued, “Not every day, you know? There will be times that I just have memories and just think, ‘Oh my God, it was just so senseless.'”
In his battle with grief, McCartney has found comfort in the music that Lennon left behind, which continues to keep his legacy burning bright. Although he’s got a whole Rolodex of memories from the precious times they spent together, Lennon’s artistry, both with and without The Beatles, provides McCartney access into the soul of his late friend.
There’s likely a whole host of Lennon compositions that McCartney could name his favourite on any given day, but in 1982, he selected ‘Beautiful Boy’ while on Desert Island Discs. Significantly, this interview occurred only two years after Lennon’s passing, which remained very fresh on McCartney’s mind for obvious reasons.
‘Beautiful Boy’, from Lennon’s Double Fantasy, is an ode to his son, Sean, and shows the tender, fatherly side of the Beatle. Explaining his decision to select the track, McCartney said: “I haven’t chosen any Beatles records, but if we had more than eight, I probably would have. I haven’t chosen any of my records so, to sum up the whole thing, I have chosen one of John Lennon’s from Double Fantasy which I think is a beautiful song very moving to me. So, I’d like to sum up the whole thing by playing ‘Beautiful Boy’.”
For Lennon, it represented the love he felt within every fibre of his body for Sean. In an interview with David Sheff, whose relationship with his own son was later turned into a film called Beautiful Boy starring Timothée Chalamet and Steve Carrell, Lennon said, “Well, what can I say? It’s about Sean. It’s self-explanatory. The music and the lyric came at the same time. The joy is still there when I see Sean. He didn’t come out of my belly but, by God, I made his bones, because I’ve attended to every meal, and to how he sleeps, and to the fact that he swims like a fish. That’s because I took him to the ‘Y’. I took him to the ocean. I’m so proud of those things. He is my biggest pride, you see.”
In 2020, 40 years after Lennon’s death, McCartney had the opportunity to tell Sean about his feelings about the track. The pair spoke during a programme on BBC Radio 2 to mark the anniversary of Lennon’s death, which made for emotional listening. McCartney told Sean: “Obviously ‘Imagine and ‘Instant Karma’ is great, and the nice thing was when I listen to the records, I can imagine him in the studio and go, ‘Oh ok, I know what he’s done’. I’m often asked for my favourite tunes kind of thing, and I always include ‘Beautiful Boy’.”
For sentimental reasons, McCartney’s attachment to ‘Beautiful Boy’ significantly moves him every time he listens to the heartbreakingly beautiful composition. The track captures Lennon at his most vulnerable and expresses his unbreakable attachment to his young son. While Lennon was cruelly robbed of seeing Sean grow from a boy to a man, his son has ‘Beautiful Boy’ as a pertinent reminder of his late father’s feelings.
