Paul McCartney will never forget the moment he learned John Lennon was murdered.
“It was just too crazy,” McCartney, 83, wrote in his new oral history book, “Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run,” about finding out from his manager “early in the morning” on Dec. 8, 1980 that his former Beatles bandmate was gunned down by Mark David Chapman in New York City.
“We just said what everyone said; it was all blurred,” McCartney wrote, per Us Weekly. “It was the same as the Kennedy [assassination]. The same horrific moment, you know. You couldn’t take it in. I still haven’t taken it in. I don’t want to.”
McCartney recalled that he and his fellow Beatles, Ringo Starr and George Harrison, all went back to the studio after Lennon died.
“Nobody could stay home with that news,” the “Every Night” singer said. “We all had to go to work and be with people we knew. Couldn’t bear it. We just had to keep going. So, I went in and did a day’s work in a kind of shock.”
While the Beatles dramatically broke up in 1970, McCartney noted that he and Lennon made amends before the shooting.
“That is a nice thing, a consoling factor for me, because I do feel it was sad that we never actually sat down and straightened our differences out,” said McCartney. “But fortunately for me, the last phone conversation I ever had with him was really great, and we didn’t have any kind of blowup.”
“One of the great blessings in my life is that we made up,” McCartney also wrote. “We’d loved each other all our lives, and we’d had our arguments and we’d called each other names. But it had never got any more serious than two brothers in a family.”
The musician added that the duo, who were childhood friends, had a “very happy conversation” about their families, including Lennon’s son Sean, before Lennon’s death.
McCartney’s daughter, Stella, participated in her dad’s oral history book and shared her perspective from the day of Lennon’s death.
“I remember the biggest reaction I’d ever seen from a phone call, and him leaving the kitchen and going outside,” Stella, 54, said about her father. “I admit it breaks my heart to this day. That was truly heartbreaking to see.”
“I’ve got that footage in my head for my life,” she continued. “I’ve captured in my head the moment Paul McCartney found out that John Lennon had been murdered.”
A year after the Beatles broke up, McCartney sued his bandmates for dissolution of their partnership. A London High Court judge ruled in McCartney’s favor and the partnership was terminated in 1974.
“In so many ways, I was dead… A 27-year-old about-to-become-ex-Beatle, drowning in a sea of legal and personal rows that were sapping my energy, in need of a complete life makeover,” McCartney wrote in his book, reflecting on the music group’s demise, per People.
McCartney also said that he wasn’t sure if he’d ever be able to move on from the “amazing decade” he had with the Beatles.
The rocker’s new book, edited by Ted Widmer, is based on “dozens of hours of interviews with Paul and numerous key players” involved in his band, Wings, that he formed after the Beatles split.
“Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run” is out now.
