“The man I admired”: the rare letter that proved Paul McCartney’s love for John Lennon
On July 6th, 1957, a 15-year-old Paul McCartney met a 16-year-old John Lennon at a gig where Lennon’s band, The Quarrymen, were performing their rock ‘n’ roll/skiffle renditions.
At the time, of course, it was impossible for the two boys to know that together, they would revolutionise rock ‘n’ roll, while embarking on the most successful and analysed songwriting collaborations in music history. Then, they were just two schoolkids obsessed with rock ‘n’ roll, both beginning to pick up instruments of their own and garnering the confidence to attempt to make music like the artists they loved.
Thrown into the thrilling, chaotic, over-consumptive world of Beatlemania, McCartney and Lennon’s brotherly relationship began to strain. Once sharing a like-minded point of view, both in songwriting and idealistically, the two’s bond frayed as they expanded creatively, becoming increasingly complicated. Once The Beatles broke up in 1970, McCartney and Lennon’s relationship stalled for a few years, with the two even writing songs to each other in retaliation.
For McCartney’s second solo album, 1971’s Ram (credited to him and his wife, Linda), he wrote the song ‘Too Many People’, commenting on Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono’s tendency to “preach” to their fans. He wrote the song from a place of annoyance with Lennon’s continued references to him in his own songs. Lennon, in response, wrote ‘How Do You Sleep?’, from his 1971 album Imagine, after McCartney’s lawsuit dissolved The Beatles as a legal partnership.
With these being just two instances of McCartney and Lennon conversing their tensions for the world to listen to and perceive in their music, their relationship’s less favourable moments were forever immortalised. Though their friendship never returned to the state it was in when The Beatles were still a nascent band, the two would return to keeping in contact through shared phone calls, albeit infrequent ones, as they grew apart.
Their last time spent together was on April 24th, 1976, as they watched an episode of Saturday Night Live at Lennon’s Manhattan apartment at The Dakota, and four years later, in 1980, Lennon would tragically be murdered, a harrowing loss that remains poignant in its heartbreak.
Despite their moments of tension, McCartney has remained outspoken in his admiration for his old friend, paying tribute to him through his music on songs like ‘Here Today’ from his 1982 album Tug Of War, as well as in conversation, often remembering Lennon in moments of reflection.
In 2005, McCartney wrote a letter to Q magazine, describing his love for Lennon in a way that still has yet to be known in such detail – handwritten on paper with a “Paul McCartney US” letterhead, with a graphic of a smiling McCartney playing guitar in the corner, he attempts to summarise his feelings towards his friend.
“It is impossible to sum up in a short letter how and why I love John, but here are a few thoughts,” he scribbled. “I love him because… he was a mate through our teenage years in Liverpool, he was the guy I sat across from as we worked out how to write songs, he was the man I admired as we evolved through the madness of fame, fortune and ‘fabness’, and he was, and still is, the heroic figure whose wit and wisdom, with a little help from his friends, shaped the thoughts and lives of millions of people. And so much more.”
Then, encapsulating the decades of memories of his friend, McCartney signs his heartfelt note with a simple, “Love, Paul”.
