Paul McCartney and John Lennon Had an ‘Emotional Landmark’ Moment Where They Both Wept

Paul McCartney and John Lennon were friends and collaborators for years. While their relationship grew fraught in their post-Beatles days, they repaired their friendship before Lennon’s death in 1980. Long before the public breakdown of their relationship in the early 1970s, McCartney and Lennon had a breakthrough emotional moment while in Florida. McCartney shared what they bonded over.

Paul McCartney wrote a song about John Lennon after his death

In 1982, McCartney released the song “Here Today,” which he wrote shortly after Lennon’s death. 

“What about the night we cried/Because there wasn’t any reason left to keep it all inside?/Never understood a word/But you were always there with a smile/And if I say/I really loved you/And was glad you came along/Then you were here today.”

The song was about his relationship with Lennon and referenced specific moments in their friendship.

Paul McCartney recalled an ’emotional landmark’ moment he shared with John Lennon

In “Here Today,” McCartney sings about “the night we cried.” He said this referred to a night they spent in Key West.

“I seem to remember we had some time off in Key West, Florida, and it was because there was a hurricane, and we’d been diverted, I think, from Jacksonville,” McCartney told NPR in 2001. “So we had to spend a night or two in Key West, is where we ended up, anyway. And at that age, with that much time on our hands, we really didn’t know what to do with it except get drunk. And so that was what we did.”

They spent the night drinking and talking, which led them to some heavy emotional topics. 

“And we stayed up all night talking, talking, talking like it was going out of style,” he said. “And at some point early in the morning, I think we must have touched on some points that were really emotional, and we ended up crying, which was very unusual for us, because we — members of a band and young guys, we didn’t do that kind of thing. So I always remembered it as a sort of important emotional landmark.”

McCartney believed that they had been crying over the deaths of their mothers. McCartney’s mom died when he was 14, and Lennon’s mom died when he was 17.

“Probably our mothers dying, because John and I shared that experience. My mother died when I was about 14, and his died shortly after — about a year or so after, I think,” McCartney said. “So this was a great bond John and I always had. We both knew the pain of it, and we both knew that we had to put on a brave face because we were sort of teenage guys, and you didn’t talk about that kind of thing where we came from.”

He recalled one of their final conversations 

Though Lennon and McCartney didn’t always get along, they healed their relationship in the years after The Beatles broke up. According to McCartney, one of their final conversations was about baking bread.

“I was baking bread and got quite good at it,” he said on The Howard Stern Show. “So when I heard John was doing it, it was great. We could just talk about something so ordinary.”

He was grateful they had returned to a friendly relationship before Lennon died.

“It was really nice, and I was so glad that we got back to that relationship that we always had,” McCartney said. “We’d lived in each other’s pockets for so long that it was great to get back to that.”