Paul McCartney remains “very sad” over John Lennon and George Harrison’s deaths
With the release of his twentieth solo album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, Paul McCartney is looking back at those who are no longer by his side.
The singer-songwriter has admitted in a new interview that he often gets “very sad” over the untimely passing of his former Beatles bandmates, John Lennon and George Harrison.
McCartney’s new full-length album, which also includes his first official solo collaboration with Ringo Starr, was announced to the world as a feat of “rare openness about his childhood in post-war Liverpool, the resilience of his parents, and early adventures shared with George Harrison and John Lennon long before the world had ever heard of Beatlemania.”
In keeping with this theme, in a new interview with The Guardian, McCartney reflected on a lesson Beatles producer George Martin once shared with him, saying that as you get older, “all your mates start popping off”.
The words have been ringing around his brain for quite some time: “Now I’m probably at that age,” McCartney admitted, “and I’m very conscious of that, having lost John and George– two big touchstones for anything we’re talking about.”
Earnestly, he continued, “You do miss them. I start to get very sad, and I have to think, Wow, wait a minute, everyone misses them, it’s not just me.”
For McCartney, considering his mourning as part of collective suffering helps ease the pain of grief. He added, “So that makes me feel a bit better. I think: Well, sod it, it’s life, and it’s what we’ve got.”
McCartney has found other ways to honour his friends, sharing that he still feels Lennon by his side as he writes: “My collaborator was probably one of the best writers of the century, so, yeah, you’re going to miss him,” McCartney reflected.
He added, “But when I write [about a specific place], I kind of know he would’ve known it.” When McCartney conjures up Liverpudlian specificities in song, he “Can gauge his reaction: that’s good, stick that in.”
Elsewhere in the interview, the 83-year-old admitted that he isn’t a big fan of the current administration in America, sharing his thoughts on Donald Trump: “Who would’ve ever thought you’d have an American president like that?” he asked incredulously.
In a less formal interview on TikTok Live, McCartney finally admitted that the Beatles are his favourite band: “I think The Beatles were the greatest band ever. I’m a fan,” he told thousands watching online.
In a four-star review of the new album, Far Out called out McCartney’s visions of home, observing, “No matter where he’s been, he knows where he came from, to borrow a phrase, and it’s generally quite rewarding to go time-travelling with him, even if we’ll never be able to fully separate the man from the Beatle.”
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