John Lennon once listened to “Here, There and Everywhere” and gave Paul McCartney a compliment he would remember for decades.
“That’s a really good song, lad. I love that song.”
Paul’s reaction was immediate: John liked it. In a 2018 interview, he said Lennon had praised his songwriting directly only once, then joked that remembering the moment so clearly was “pathetic.” Yet the memory reveals how much John’s judgment mattered. Paul had already heard applause from millions, but this approval came from the one person who understood exactly what it had taken to write the song.
John was not merely another listener. He had helped create the standard by which Paul judged his own work.
John Became Paul’s Private Test
During their closest songwriting years, John and Paul often sat opposite each other with acoustic guitars. Because John played right-handed and Paul left-handed, Paul remembered the arrangement as looking into a mirror. One might offer a lyric or chord, and the other would immediately answer, reject it or push it somewhere unexpected.
That process left little room for weak ideas to hide. If Paul became too comfortable, John could introduce cynicism, humor or an unexpected line. If John stalled, Paul’s discipline could help move the song toward completion.
Paul was not simply trying to impress him. He was testing whether a song could survive him.
Direct praise was unusual. Paul has said that the two young men were not naturally comfortable expressing admiration, unless alcohol made the conversation easier. Approval usually appeared through participation. If John contributed a harmony, completed a lyric or became enthusiastic about an idea, Paul knew the song had passed the test.
That is why the brief compliment about “Here, There and Everywhere” mattered more than its wording suggested. It came from a rival who knew Paul’s strengths, recognized his habits and could detect when he had settled for something too easy.
The Breakup Did Not Silence John’s Voice
The Beatles’ separation ended their daily collaboration, but it did not remove John from Paul’s creative thinking.
Their relationship became hostile in the early 1970s, and John’s attacks contributed to the public image of Paul as the softer, more sentimental Beatle. Paul later acknowledged that being dismissed as “soppy” bothered him, although he eventually defended love songs as an honest part of his identity rather than a weakness.
After John was murdered in December 1980, Paul wrote “Here Today” as an imagined conversation with his former partner. The song, released on Tug of War in 1982, allowed Paul to express affection that the two men had rarely stated openly while John was alive. Paul’s official website describes it as a song dedicated to his friend, written shortly after John’s death.
The conversation had ended in life, but it continued inside Paul’s mind.
Paul Still Asks What John Would Think
Decades later, Paul has said he can still imagine John reacting to a new song. When a lyric seems too sentimental or an idea feels weak, he considers what John might have said and sometimes changes it. He described Lennon’s absence as the loss of an opposing creative force that he must now reproduce for himself.
This is not evidence that Paul still needs John’s permission to believe in his own talent. His career settled that question long ago.
What remains is the standard they created together. John was the person who knew Paul’s songwriting before the awards, before the record sales and before the world treated every new McCartney composition as an event.
John is no longer sitting opposite him with a guitar. But when Paul questions a lyric or decides an idea is not yet strong enough, the old partnership briefly returns.
The private test remains the same:
What would John think?