Paul McCartney Opens Up About ‘Deep Grief’ Over Murder Of John Lennon – ‘It Was So Difficult’

The world was devastated when the legendary John Lennon was brutally murdered outside his home in New York City back in 1980. Two years later, his former Beatles bandmate Paul McCartney paid tribute to him with the touching acoustic song “Here Today.”

While discussing the making of this song 40 years later, McCartney opened up about the “deep” grief that he felt over Lennon’s murder.

‘It Was So Difficult’

“When John died, it was so difficult,” said McCartney, 80, according to People Magazine. “It was difficult for everyone in the world because he was such a loved character and such a crazy guy. He was so special.”

McCartney went on to say that Lennon’s death hit him so hard that he “couldn’t really talk about it.”

“I remember getting home from the studio on the day that we’d heard the news he died and turning the TV on and seeing people say, ‘Well, John Lennon was this and what he was was this,” he recounted. “It was like, I don’t know, I can’t be one of those people.”

“I can’t just go on TV and say what John meant to me,” McCartney admitted. “It was just too deep. It’s just too much. I couldn’t put it into words.” 

McCartney recalled that he went right to the studio “once the emotions had sort of settled a little bit.”

“I found a room and just sat on the wooden floor in a corner with my guitar and just started to play the opening chords to ‘Here Today,'” he said. 

Check out “Here Today” in the video below.

Related: Paul McCartney Drops Bomb – Reveals Real Reason The Beatles Split

McCartney Discusses Memories From ‘Here Today’

McCartney then opened up about one of the memories that he references in “Here Today.”

“‘The night we cried,’ that was to do with a time when we were in Key West down in Florida, and for some reason — I think it was like a hurricane — something had been delayed, and we couldn’t play for a couple of days, so we holed up in a little Motel. So what would we do?” he said. “Well, we’d have a drink, and we would get drunk.”

“We got drunk and started to get kind of emotional,” McCartney continued. “On the way to that, there was a lot of soul-searching. We told each other a few truths, you know, ‘Well, I love you,’ ‘I love you man,’ ‘I love that you said that,’ and we opened up. So that was kind of special to me. I think that was really one of the only times that ever happened.”

Check out McCartney’s full comments on this in the video below.

Lennon’s Murder

Lennon was only 40 years-old when he was murdered outside his home on Manhattan’s Upper West Side at 10:50 p.m. on December 8, 1980. He was fatally shot by gunman Mark David Chapman, who had gotten his autograph hours earlier, according to Fox News. 

NPR reported that Chapman has since been denied parole twelve times, with his next hearing scheduled for February of 2024. 

Related: John Lennon’s Murderer Has A Message For Yoko Ono

Though it’s been over four decades since Lennon’s murder, it still feels like yesterday to his loved ones, and to his millions of fans. We can’t imagine how difficult Lennon’s death was for McCartney, but we applaud him for channeling his grief into making beautiful music. In the end, that’s what Lennon would have wanted him to do.