Hi! Can you now do a continuation of your previous post and elaborate on Paul's grief after the 2000s, and how he has dealt with it
I think his grief post-2000 looks different for many reasons. It appears far more devastating in the 1980s because the problems they had and the arguments between them were still fresh in his mind, and they hadn't been able to fully resolve things by the time of John's death. When someone you love deeply dies, your brain often amplifies the bad parts and the unresolved conflicts (this happened to him after Linda died too). He also began doubting John's love for him and was constantly seeking reassurance that John did, in fact, still care for him at the time of his death. We have to remember that this was a period when Yoko would publicly claim that John said nobody had ever hurt him the way Paul did, and the media and newly released biographies constantly portrayed John and Paul as rivals, suggesting that John had little regard for Paul, while elevating John as almost a saint and the sole genius of the group, often sidelining Paul. I think that's part of the reason Paul's interviews in the 80s are much more candid than they are today. He openly expressed not only deep grief, but also the far more complicated feelings underneath it. He would say that even though he and John had been getting along better before John's death, there were still many unresolved issues between them and many things left unsaid. This internal struggle—the pain of missing John deeply while also regretting that they never had the chance to fully resolve their issues and completely repair their relationship—seems to have been eating him alive throughout the 80s and 90s. You can see it reflected in many of his songs from that period, particularly the ones that revolve around not telling someone that you loved them. And you can still see traces of how much his complicated relationship with John remained on his mind even in the early 2000s. He wrote Lonely Road in India in 2001. It is about refusing to let past heartbreak pull you back into despair:
I tried to get over you
I tried to find something new
But all I could ever do was fill my time
With thoughts of you
I tried to go somewhere old
To search for my pot of gold
But all I could ever hold inside my mind
Were thoughts of you
I hear your music and it's driving me wild
Familiar rhythms in a different style
I hear your music and it's driving me wild again, oh
Don't wanna let you take me down
Don't wanna get hurt second time around
Don't wanna walk that lonely road again
I have seen some people think this is about Linda, but I don't think the lyrics fit, especially not the "Don't wanna let you take me down" and the "I hear your music and it's driving me wild." And the "Don't wanna let you take me down" sounds like a callback to "let me take you down" from SFF.
One thing that stands out is that in the 80s, Paul also used to frame their relationship using explicitly romantic metaphors, pointing out that he and John were like a married couple and that he was "almost like a girlfriend", which is why John had to put him aside when Yoko came along. These kinds of metaphors are, interestingly, practically nonexistent in Paul's interviews today. Instead, his language regarding John has grown much more openly loving, nostalgic, and emotionally open, while largely avoiding romantic metaphors altogether. He also seems to have learned to deal with his grief (which is still clearly very strong) in a healthier way. I think this happened mainly because, over the years, he talked more and more with people who had been close to John in the 1970s, read more about him, and heard things directly from people like May Pang and Elton John. He also has likely become aware of things that Harry Nilsson, Tony King, Elliot Mintz publicly said about how much John still cared about him. Gradually, I think he became more secure in John's love for him. Paul also used to say that he didn't like dwelling on the past, but his attitude changed considerably after the 2000s, when he became much more openly nostalgic. That's often what happens as people get older. The sharp edges of old conflicts tend to soften, while the love and the good memories become easier to hold on to. His most recent album reflects this very well.
His children are very aware of how much John still means to him. They bought him John's piano stool at an auction around 2007, and Paul placed it next to his father's old piano. He also began painting John frequently, who became a recurring subject in his artwork. In 2000, he said, "If I'm gonna see a face in a painting, it's highly likely to be his." In 2001, he began performing Here Today publicly for the first time, something he had avoided doing since writing it in 1981 because it was emotionally difficult for him to sing. And even after he finally found the strength to perform it, you could often hear his voice crack during the song. In 2009, he said: "Here Today is specifically written for John. That sometimes catches me out. I realize I'm telling this man that I love him, and it's like I'm publicly declaring this in front of all these people I don't know. I sometimes wonder what I'm doing." But I think performing the song helped him find an emotional release by expressing that love out loud, since in 1985 (when talking about John) he said: "I care very deeply, but I don't know what to do with my care." In some performances, he would even repeat the "I love you" part four times instead of just once, as he did in Russia in 2004:
He acknowledged this after it happened in another concert in Spain, also in 2004: "At least once a tour, that song just gets me. It happened at the first show, in Gijon: I was doing fine, and I found myself doing a thing I’ve done in soundcheck, just repeating one of the lines: ‘I love you, I love you, I love you.’ And then I came to finish the song, to do the last verse, and it was, ‘Oh shit – I’ve just totally lost it.’” In 2012, there was a radio call-in quiz about the Beatles, and Paul happened to be listening to it while driving. At one point they asked a trivia question about Paul himself, and none of the callers were able to answer it. Paul decided to call in and answer the question himself. The prize for winning was a bag of goodies signed by him, but Paul told them to give it to someone else. Instead, as his "prize," he asked them to just play Here Today, and they did.
The 2000s is also the period when he starts saying that he mentally consults John while writing songs. He said: "If I'm at a point where I go, 'I'm not sure about this,' I'll throw it across the room to John. He'll say, 'You can't go there, man.' And I'll say, 'You're quite right. How about this?' 'Yeah, that's better.' We'll have a conversation. I don't want to lose that." Another huge factor in helping him heal after the 2000s was having access to countless photos and videos of the two of them that reminded him of the bond they shared. This is something he talked about with Ron Howard while Howard was making the 2018 Beatles documentary. Paul told him: "If we're looking at the touring years, I would just like you to view the relationship that John and I had through that lens. I've only begun to do this in the last few years. I've seen a couple of YouTube videos that fans made that just reminded me of how good friends we were. There's so much acrimony that came later that continues to reverberate; it even colours my thinking today if I allow it." Which, again, reflects the constant struggle Paul seems to have whenever he allows intrusive thoughts about their conflicts to take over. For years, those conflicts often overshadowed the happier memories in his mind.
A huge difference now is that the public narrative has largely shifted away from the old "John and Paul were rivals" story, so Paul is no longer constantly being bombarded by this through the media. By this point, he has heard countless people who were close to John talk about how much John loved him and missed him. More than ever, both fans and the media openly describe his relationship with John as a love story of sorts, and surprisingly many people interpreted Now and Then as a "love letter" from John to Paul. The Get Back footage had a profound effect on him. Instead of confirming the image of a relationship in constant decline, it reminded him how much warmer, happier, and more affectionate many of their interactions actually were. Paul himself admitted that the footage showed a far more positive dynamic than he had remembered. When asked about what moment of the film made him smile most, everything he mentioned had to do with John: "Me and John goofing around on ‘Two of Us’ acting like ventriloquists and singing through our teeth; me and John goofing around on ‘Bathroom Window’ where we start singing Tuesday - “Hello Tuesday!”, that was nice. But the one that immediately comes to mind is John dancing...just seeing him dancing. It’s very cute." He also said, "Whenever I was in the band, playing live, I’d be facing out. John was to the left or to the right of me, so I never got to sort of see him perform so much. Except in the film. And there he is in massive closeup. I can study everything about him.” He has also spoken about how much he treasures a six-foot-tall print of this photograph:
He said, "It was a picture Linda had taken and it really gave me hope that picture. Before the Peter Jackson thing that was like one little picture I held onto [...] And you can just see that we’re into each other and we’re like smiling, we’re engaged in doing something artistic, something interesting. And I say that every time I felt a bit down, I look at that picture and go, ‘No that’s the reality.’ [...] I've got the pad and I'm writing, and he's just looking over at me, and you can see the body language and everything: These guys love each other." So I think one of the reasons he has made more openly loving comments about John after the 2000s is that he seems to be much more at peace with their relationship. He now has had constant reminders that things were not always as bad as his mind sometimes led him to believe for years, or as the media often portrayed them. Deep down, I think he always knew that, but now it is much easier for him to access those reminders, which in turn makes it easier for him to express his love for John more openly. That said, I have noticed that he now tends to repeat, over and over again, that they managed to get their relationship back on track before John died and clear up their differences. If you read his interviews from the early 80s, however, that doesn't seem to have been entirely how he viewed it at the time. Back then, he explicitly said that there were still many unresolved issues between them, even though their final phone call had been warm and friendly. I think portraying the state of their relationship in 1980 as more resolved than it actually was may be, at least in part, a coping mechanism. Talking about unresolved conflicts and the more painful aspects of their relationship still is a very sensitive subject for him.
Another thing I've noticed is that throughout the 2000s and 2010s, whenever he is asked about John's death, he often tends to universalize his grief and make it less personal, which unfortunately has led some fans to think that he is cold or that he doesn't care very much. He'll say things like: "I felt like everyone felt", "It was the same for me as it was for everybody", "It was a huge shock for the whole world, just like the Kennedy assassination." On one occasion, after Paul gave an answer along those lines, the interviewer pushed back and said something to the effect of: "Yes, it was a shock for everyone, but we didn't know him. You did." At that point, Paul looked slightly uncomfortable and replied: "Yeah. For me it was... so sad realizing that he was gone. That I wasn't gonna see him again and we weren't gonna hang out anymore." He said that last part very quickly, and it was obvious he didn't want to dwell on it, much less discuss it publicly. He immediately changed the subject and started talking about the guy who killed John instead (about him being "the jerk of all jerks"). What some people interpret as coldness strikes me as something very different: a deeply rooted grief that is still raw beneath the surface, and one that makes him feel vulnerable whenever he has to discuss it in public. Universalizing his grief and speaking in more general terms helps him talk about it in front of the cameras, without losing his composure. I honestly hate it whenever they bring up the subject of John's death, and they always ask him the same things ("How did you hear the news? How did you feel?"). It's clear these people have no idea of the depth of Paul's feelings for John, and how painful it is for him to be reminded of his murder in every interview. His own son James said in 2013: "John Lennon was shot dead in 1980. That totally knocked Dad for six. I haven't really spoken to him a lot about it because it is such a touchy subject." Paul himself said a few years ago: "It's very difficult for me and I, occasionally, will have thoughts and sort of say: 'I don't know why I don't just break down crying every day.' [...] You know, I don't know how I would have dealt with it [if we hadn't made up] because I don't think I've dealt with it very well. In a way... I wouldn't be surprised if a psychiatrist would sort of find out that I'm slightly in denial, because it's too much." He later reiterated, "I can't think about it. I'm sure it's some form of denial. But denial is the only way that I can deal with it." This is clearly something that has never fully healed and remains emotionally raw, even if he handles it much better than he did in the 80s. Part of that is because he has found healthier ways to express and release those feelings, as I explained earlier. He has become increasingly comfortable with expressing love for another man publicly, even though you can still occasionally see traces of self-consciousness. For example, in the early 2000s, when he was asked about the line "the night we cried," he sounded hesitant and sad, saying that it was "probably about our mothers dying." Today, however, he speaks much more openly about it and has explicitly said that they cried because of "how much they loved each other" (though he is inconsistent regarding the amount of people who were present. Sometimes he says it was all 4 Beatles, and sometimes he says it was just him and John).
Back in the 80s, many people who knew him remarked on how he would just talk and talk about John, often completely unprompted. And that hasn't really changed. People who work with him still say that he loves telling stories about John. Journalist Paul Du Noyer noted that in almost every interview he's had with Paul, he eventually makes some unprompted reference to John. Morgan Neville recently said something similar and offered what I think is a very perceptive explanation: talking about John is a way of keeping him alive. You can see it in interviews. Paul's eyes often light up whenever he gets the chance to tell a funny or affectionate story about John, even if it's one he's already told a hundred times before. There are also more personal stories, such as the anecdote about John giving him a piece of chocolate: a tiny memory that clearly means a great deal to him, so much so that he has hardly ever, if ever, retold it publicly. Yet he once shared it with Bono while giving him a tour of Liverpool and pointing out places where he and John used to hang out: "John bought a bar of chocolate and when he came out of the newsagent he broke it in half. Gave me one half. I was amazed [...] Most boys would break off a little square, but John gave me half his bar." Paul then put his foot on the accelerator and drove away before quietly adding: "I don't know why I'm telling you that." Another thing Paul has never publicly acknowledged, even though the media discussed it extensively at the time, is the fact that he chose to marry Nancy on John's birthday. They even went out of their way to obtain a special dispensation (since it fell on a Sunday) from the registry office (the same one where he married Linda, by the way) so that they could get married on that specific day. He later made a toast to John at the reception. I've seen some people argue that Paul's more "lovey-dovey" comments about John, and the extent to which he talks about him, are mostly because he knows that's what the public wants to hear—that it's become a sort of "party trick." But I don't think the evidence supports that. The stories I mentioned earlier, the testimonies of people who have interacted with him off camera, and the countless examples of him bringing up John unprompted all suggest that he talks about John because he genuinely loves doing so. Actions like this also show that John remains deeply, and genuinely, central to his life. He didn't have to get married on John's birthday, but he did. In a way, he included both John and Linda in the occasion: John through the date, and Linda through the place where the ceremony was held.
We all know about the John Lennon calendar he had hanging in his studio in 2015, and we only became aware of it because a journalist went there to interview him and immediately noticed it. It was not something Paul showed for the cameras.
Paul has also said that he buys John's writings and drawings and puts them all over his walls, so he "can look at them all the time." Morgan Neville confirmed this when he visited Paul's house: "When I went to Paul's house for one of the interviews, I was let into the house and was told he'd be back in a little while. I looked on the wall and there was a drawing by John. Then Paul came in, and I said, 'I just noticed you've got this John drawing.' He said, 'Oh, let me show you something.' We went into the hallway and there were many drawings by John. He said, 'I was sitting across from John when he drew some of these. And I just felt like this would be a good home for them here.' And he just stood there looking at them with such love that I got the chills." Colin Hall recalled that some years ago he visited Paul in his London office, and the two of them started talking about the early days. Paul told him that his most treasured memories were of "sitting in John's small bedroom listening to music and playing their guitars." Colin said that as Paul was saying this, he became visibly moved and seemed close to tears.
But things like the calendar, the piano stool, the date of the wedding, the drawings on his walls, and even the stories he constantly tells is that they aren't really evidence of grief in the traditional sense. They are evidence of how he lives with the grief. In the 80s, his grief often manifested as shock, regret, seeking reassurance of John's love, and unresolved pain. In later years, it evolved into something different: a desire to keep John present in his life. Everything seems to point to the fact that he is in a much better place internally regarding his relationship with John than he was in the 80s—vastly more so. Julian Lennon said something that also caught my attention a few years ago. After hearing Bill Maher describe John and Paul's relationship as being like a love affair, Julian replied: "I agree with you, 100%. And the more I meet Paul in later years, the more I can see that—from him. Which I didn't really get that much of earlier in life."Julian then began telling a recent anecdote about meeting Paul around the time his book Eye of the Storm was released and seemed about to give a specific example of what he meant, but unfortunately Maher interrupted him before he could finish the story. But this still indicates that Paul is now much less guarded about John than before, as Julian himself noticed. Whenever Paul wants, he can now look at photos and footage of them interacting, having fun, and looking at each other lovingly. He constantly hears testimonies from people who knew John talking about how much John still cared about him. He sees the media portraying their relationship less as a competitive rivalry and more as a love story. He no longer has to constantly remind people of his place in John's life and insist that he was one of the people closest to him. You can tell how much public perception of their relationship affects him. After the whole Yesterday songwriting-credit controversy, when he asked whether, on that song alone, whenever they we were using the full names, it could say, "Written by Paul McCartney and John Lennon", (he wanted this because in the Beatles Anthology CD booklet the lyrics to Yesterday had a picture of John above them and the credit was, "Written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney"). When many people accused him of trying to damage John's legacy, Paul responded:
"Don't get it wrong. I was one of the most important people in John's life and he was one of the most important people in my life. I'm the only person who wrote that body of work with him, who was in the room with him and I... For something tiny like this to cloud that is ridiculous. I love him and always will." (2005)
When you hear so many people repeating the same narrative over and over, even if they weren't there and have no way of knowing the truth, you often start doubting and think, "maybe they are right." Which is what happened to Paul for long time. He has mentioned how he sometimes even wondered if they were ever really friends. The fact that so much of the old media framing has changed drastically has genuinely helped him a great deal. But even so, the pain of losing John still weighs heavily on his heart and that's unlikely to change. As he once said in 2001, "I know I will never get over it and hope I will never get over it."
