Paul McCartney says he still dreams of John Lennon 'quite often'
It’s been almost 39 years since the world lost John Lennon, but for fellow Beatle Paul McCartney, the good times together seem like yesterday.
McCartney told Stephen Colbert Monday on The Late Show that he dreams of Lennon “quite often,” even after all these years, and that the dreams are always positive.
“I love when people revisit you in your dreams,” he noted. “I often have band dreams [and] I’m often with John, just talking about something.”
Reminiscing over an old photo of McCartney and Lennon together that Colbert produced on the show, the superstar explained that for quite some time, he grappled with confusion regarding the true nature of his relationship with his bandmate.
“When the Beatles broke up, a lot of the talk was that I was the villain — and that John and I really didn’t get on well,” he related. “I kind of bought into it. A little bit. Because when you’re called it enough, you start thinking, ‘Well maybe I am.’
“I had to do a lot of wrangling with ‘Was I? Wasn’t I? Did I know John? Were we friends?’— knowing really we were, but there were so many rumors about it.
“And that photo,” he said, indicating the picture. “When I saw that, I was like ‘Yes, we were friends.’”
McCartney also noted that he and Lennon shared the bond of both having lost their mothers as teenagers, and how that particular tragedy affected his songwriting. "I never thought it affected my music until years later,” he reflected. “People were saying, 'Well that song, ‘Yesterday’... ‘Why she had to go, I don't know, she wouldn't say?’ ...They said, 'That's your mum.'
“I certainly didn't mean it to be. But it could be. Those things can happen."
While discussing “Yesterday,” Colbert naturally turned to the subject of this year’s movie of the same title, which explores what a world without the Beatles would be like. McCartney admitted he’d seen the film, and that he chose to go incognito with wife Nancy Shevell to a public movie theater to experience it.
"It was a pretty good plug for me,” he joked. “We were in the back row and this guy is sort of saying, 'This is Paul McCartney, the world's greatest songwriter,'“ he added with a snort of laughter. “It was great...I thought it was a nice movie.”
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