During his last hours, the star gave his final interview and actually had some lovely things to say about his songwriting partner. Express.co.uk spoke with Kenneth Womack, author of John Lennon 1980: The Last Days In The Life. Instead of focusing on his murder, the book celebrates all the creative activities the Beatle was up to during his final year.
Womack said: “I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. I think they were good in the ways they needed to be.”
the journalist recounted exactly what he heard the star say about his former bandmate.
What he said in his last interview was particularly touching about McCartney. Lennon told Sholin: “He’s like a brother. I love him. Families, we certainly have our ups and downs and quarrels.
“But at the end of the day, when it’s all said and done, I would do anything for him. I think he would do anything for me.”
Lately McCartney has told fans over the decades that he wrote a play with John Lennon before they formed The Beatles. And now the 79-year-old has unearthed the manuscript. He said in a new interview: “For years I’ve been telling people that me and John wrote a play.” (Express)
McCartney said it was “amazing” to find his lyrics for “Tell Me Who He Is,” a track that was never recorded, which will appear in The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, out Nov. 2. “It’s my handwriting, but I don’t know how it goes,” he reported. “It would have been a love ballad, rock thing. I would have probably had a tune to it. But you could not put things down. You didn’t have any recording devices so you had to remember them.”
Paul told BBC Radio 4: “It was the era of kitchen sink, so we wrote this play. We only got four pages in.
“This was before The Beatles when we were just hanging out writing our earlier songs.
“We’d started this play and [upon discovering it years later I] said, ‘Oh stop!’ and I read it and I said, ‘That’s that play I’ve been talking about for forever and really thought was lost.’
As for the play’s subject matter, it turns out that John and Paul wrote their story about Jesus.
Paul shared: “It’s quite a funny little thing. It’s called Pilchard and it’s about the Messiah actually.”
Pilchards are sometimes referred to as sardines and fish are common symbols in Christian imagery.
Not only is a fish a Christian symbol like the cross, but the gospels of Jesus Christ’s life in The Bible see the founder of Christianity recruit fishermen as his disciples.
While there’s also a famous miracle recorded in the New Testament where the religious figure feeds five thousand people with just five loaves and two fish.
Considering John and Paul’s humour, perhaps Pilchard is a bit like Monty Python’s Life of Brian.
In Barry Miles’ 1997 biography Many Years From Now, Macca said of the play: “We were going to have this character: the person upstairs who never comes in, and the play is just people talking about him and his terrible crisis.
‘Oh, our Pilchard, you know, he’s taken a turn. He’s born again, and he really thinks he’s the Messiah. He’s upstairs praying.’ This was the way it was going to go but we couldn’t figure out how playwrights did it.”
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