McCartney opened up about the late singer during a Storytellers panel at Tribeca Festival.
During the 2023 Tribeca Festival, Paul McCartney sat down with Conan O'Brien for a podcast recording of Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. And while looking at old photos of himself and his former Beatles bandmates, McCartney opened up about the late John Lennon, explaining why he looked so vulnerable in one of the images on display.
"[John] had a really tragic life," McCartney said. "As a kid, his mother was decreed to not be good enough to bring him up… His father had left the home when John was three. So that’s not too wonderful. John grew up with these sort of little minor tragedies throughout his life."
He continued by saying, "It made me realize why he had that vulnerability. I always admired the way he dealt with it because I’m not sure I would deal with the stuff he went through that well."
McCartney and Lennon first met as teenagers in 1957 before going on to form the Beatles, which also included George Harrison and Ringo Starr. After the release of 12 studio albums and massive success around the world, the English rock band broke up in 1970. All four went on to have solo careers, but Lennon's was cut short when he was murdered at 40 years old in 1980.
During the Storytellers panel, McCartney and O'Brien discussed the 80-year-old singer's new book, 1964: Eyes of the Storm, which features 275 mostly unseen photographs from his archive taken between 1963 and 1964, just when the Beatles became international stars.
"What I love about [these photos] is the innocence," McCartney said during his conversation with the former late-night talk show host, referring to the band's early days before the phenomenon known as Beatlemania. "We didn’t know we were going to [become] famous. We really wanted to be [famous], but we didn’t know."
McCartney's Storytellers session is just one of many taking place during the Tribeca Festival in New York City, with John Mellencamp in conversation with David Letterman; Lin-Manuel Miranda speaking to Rosie Perez; and Chance the Rapper, Billy Porter and Hailee Steinfeld all leading their own panels.
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