Paul McCartney and John Lennon shared a brotherly relationship and went through more than their fair share of fallouts during The Beatles and beyond, as they struggled to match their wild success during their solo careers. The group were strong as a unit, but as soon as they parted ways, their songs would be the ultimate testament to that.Following the split of The Fab Four, their friendship first splintered and was blistered by bitter songs and even harsher courtroom battles.
However, eventually, those wounds healed themselves over time and transformed into a new entity, one that was completely different from the inseparable teenagers they were when they first became friends. They were older, they had children, their own record deals, and the weight of the world was now slipping from their shoulders, but they still had this unbreakable bond that survived throughout.
After The Beatles came to an end, they both went their own ways and released a wealth of stellar solo material as they stepped into different musical lanes. There are some similarities in the early material of both men, who were dealing with the exact same issues following the death of The Beatles. The songwriting partnership had been as strong as their friendship, and the dissolution of that hit them both hard, even if it was in different ways. They had been thrown back into civilian life after being in the trenches of Beatlemania for almost a decade. They were trying to find their feet in normal life, a factor which meant that even though they weren’t speaking, they were still somehow connected.This connection provided McCartney with an ability to understand the music of John Lennon like nobody else; he could map through his old bandmate’s new songs by remembering his creative process. He knew his highs, lows and everywhere in between.
When you work with someone day-in-day-out for close to a decade, as Lennon and McCartney did, it becomes almost impossible to shake this level of understanding of one another away. This meant that when it was Macca listening, some of John’s songs just meant that extra something — knowing exactly where every last note has come from.“You know if you know someone that long,” Paul said whilst in conversation with Sean Lennon, celebrating John’s recent 80th birthday celebration on BBC Radio 2. The conversation gave McCartney the opportunity to share his deep admiration for his creative partner.“From your early teenage years to your late twenties, that’s an awful long time to be collaborating with someone, and you grow to know each other, and even when you’re apart, you’re still thinking about each other, you’re still referencing each other,” McCartney added.
Sean was eager to discover what song from Lennon’s solo career held the biggest place in McCartney’s heart, and his answer didn’t disappoint. “Obviously ‘Imagine and ‘Instant Karma’ is great, and the nice thing was when I listen to the records, I can imagine him in the studio and go, ‘Oh ok, I know what he’s done’. I’m often asked for my favourite tunes kind of thing, and I always include ‘Beautiful Boy’,” McCartney revealed.The Double Fantasy track was famously written for Sean by John, and the song is full of messages of self-improvement like “Every day and in every way, I am getting better and better”, which has become somewhat of a self-help mantra. The honest lyrics also feature the famous line, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans” — it’s a track that sees Lennon truly lay his heart on the line for his art.About the track, Lennon explained to David Sheff in 1980: “The joy is still there when I see Sean. He didn’t come out of my belly but, by God, I made his bones, because I’ve attended to every meal, and to how he sleeps, and to the fact that he swims like a fish. That’s because I took him to the ‘Y’. I took him to the ocean. I’m so proud of those things. He is my biggest pride, you see.”
McCartney wasn’t just polite by saying it was his favourite Lennon song because it was written about his former bandmate’s passionate adoration for his son, who he was in the company of — he has been banging the drum about ‘Beautiful Boy’ for decades.During an appearance on Desert Island Discs back in 1982, just two years after John’s death — a grief-stricken Macca picked the beautiful song as one of his choices, “I haven’t chosen any Beatles records, but if we had more than eight, I probably would have. I haven’t chosen any of my records so, to sum up the whole thing, I have chosen one of John Lennon’s from Double Fantasy, which I think is a beautiful song very moving to me. So, I’d like to sum up the whole thing by playing ‘Beautiful Boy’.”Almost 40 years after he made that initial statement about ‘Beautiful Boy’ as the song from the entirety of The Beatles Universe, which means the most to him. It warms the heart to know that despite everything which has changed in that long period, his adoration for John, Sean and the song remains the same. It’s a heartbreakingly touching track, not least of all because of the heavy emotion it delivers.
