Paul McCartney reveals why he could never tell fellow Beatles legend John Lennon he loved him
He said: ‘As 16-year-old, 17-year-old Liverpool kids, you could never say that’
Interview at London’s Southbank Centre, to promote his new book The Lyrics.
Paul said of the pair’s childhood friendship: ‘As 16-year-old, 17-year-old Liverpool kids, you could never say that.
‘It just wasn’t done. So I never did… just say, ‘John, love you man’. I never got round to it. Now it’s great just to realise how much I love this man.’
Describing his youth with Lennon as ‘like walking up a staircase… side by side’, Paul said: ‘I just remember how great it was to work with him and how great he was… because you are not messing around here, you are not just singing with Joe Bloggs. You are singing with John Lennon.’
He added: ‘I realised that as we were making up songs, I would suggest a line and he would suggest a line. That was very much how we did it, just ping-ponging off each other.’
‘Because he was right-handed, for me it was like looking in a mirror. It was great, I could kind of see the chords that I was playing in the mirror.’
Paul’s on-stage interview at London’s Southbank Centre, to promote his new book The Lyrics, represented his first live event in two years.
Reflecting on the band’s break-up in 1970, he said: ‘I think the biggest misconception at the end of The Beatles was that I’d broken The Beatles up.
‘I lived with that for quite a while, saying to people, ‘No I didn’t, no I didn’t’. But once a headline is out there, it sticks.’
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