The one love song Paul McCartney wrote for John Lennon: “I really loved you”
Paul McCartney has written countless songs. The architect of some of the most inspiring works in the modern world of pop, McCartney’s songwriting with both The Beatles and on his solo projects has established him as one of the defining voices of his generation. With music that ranges from the fantastical to the personal, his collection boasts hundreds of tunes, but one of his most touching works is undoubtedly ‘Here Today’.
In the years that followed McCartney leaving The Beatles, he quite rightly took his songwriting skills to the top of the charts and back again, with the odd mega-movie soundtrack thrown in for good measure. Among all the hits and references to his former life as a member of the Fab Four, ‘Here Today’ stands out. The track serves as Macca’s love letter to his old friend John Lennon, material in which he is finally able to tell his collaborator how he feels, even though it is somewhat too late. The song arrived on 1982’s Tug of War album.
“’Here Today’. A love song to John, written very shortly after he died,” McCartney said of the track. “I was remembering things about our relationship, about the million things we’d done together, from just being in each other’s front parlours or bedrooms to walking on the street together or hitchhiking. Long journeys together, which had nothing to do with the Beatles.”
McCartney wrote the song in his recording studio in Sussex, which, before being converted, was just a small house with an empty room upstairs. He found himself in that little room with his guitar, reflecting on his old friend and how much he missed him. It’s a poignant reminder of the human being behind the pop icon. Too often, we think of musicians as mythical figures, but they, too, sit in lonely rooms, yearning for the company of those they’ve lost.
However, there are shades of cynicism about Lennon within the song. McCartney said, “There one line in the lyrics that I don’t really mean: ‘Well, knowing you, you probably laugh and say that we were worlds apart’. I’m playing to the more cynical side of John, but I don’t think it’s true that we were so distant.”
From there, McCartney explained the more positive side of his friendship with his former songwriting partner: “’But you were always there with a smile’. That was very John. If you were arguing with him and it got a bit tense, he’d just lower his specs and say, ‘It’s only me,’ and put them back up again, as if the specs were part of a completely different identity.”
McCartney then wonders, “Why can’t men say ‘I love you’ to each other?” He admitted that attitudes towards that sentiment have changed in today’s society, but it certainly wasn’t like that in the 1950s and 1960s. “When we were growing up, you’d have had to be gay for a man to say that to another man,” he said. “That blinkered attitude bred a little bit of cynicism. If you were talking about anything soppy, someone would have to make a joke of it, just to ease the embarrassment in the room.”
He longs to tell Lennon that he does indeed love him: “There’s a longing in the lines ‘If you were here today, and I’m holding back the tears no more’ because it was very emotional writing this song. I was just sitting there in this little bare room thinking of John and realising I’d lost him.”
“And it was a powerful loss,” McCartney continued. “So to have a conversation with him in a song was some form of solace. Somehow I was with him again. ‘And if I say I really loved you’, there it is, I’ve said it. Which I would never have said to him.” So, ‘Here Today’ serves as McCartney finally being able to tell his old friend that he indeed loves him dearly.
“It’s a very charged experience to perform this song in concert,” McCartney concluded. “Just me and a guitar in the middle of a big arena with all these people, and a lot of them are crying. It’s always a very sentimental, nostalgic, emotional moment.”
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