Why a Carl Perkins song brought Paul McCartney to tears (2024)

When The Beatles finally parted ways in April 1970, the media stirred the pot to sensationalise any tension between the members. That said, during the recording of the band’s final two albums, Abbey Road and Let It Be, there were significant power struggles within the band as George Harrison fought Paul McCartney for album space and John Lennon became increasingly distracted in the orbit of his new wife, Yoko Ono.

Following the untimely death of The Beatles’ beloved manager Brian Epstein in August 1967, McCartney became the band’s de facto leader on sufferance. As seen in Peter Jackson’s recent fly-on-the-wall documentary, The Beatles: Get Back, McCartney stepped up to the mark as the dominating creative force in the final years of the ’60s.

The cracks that would ultimately form huge chasms began to show in the documentary as Harrison walked out on the band mid-session. While he returned to complete the sessions, the end was palpably nigh.

In the post-Beatles years, the members became absorbed into solo careers, family life and external friendships. Hatred was far from the word, but the four clearly needed space. Except for a handful of collaborations, namely Harrison’s appearance on Lennon’s Imagine and 1973’s Ringo, The Beatles remained family at arm’s length from one another throughout the 1970s.

In McCartney’s recent book, The Lyrics: 1956 To The Present, he reflected on the band’s dissolution. “When we broke up, and everyone was now flailing around, John turned nasty,” McCartney wrote. “I don’t really understand why. Maybe because we grew up in Liverpool, where it was always good to get in the first punch of a fight.”

Ostensibly, McCartney was referring to when Lennon criticised his first solo album in December 1970. This seemed to ensure that the greatest chasm was that between the band’s two principal songwriters.

Thankfully, it appears the pair managed to bridge their differences before Lennon was fatally shot by Mark Chapman in December 1980. Lennon reflected on the strained relationship just days before his death.

In 1976, Lorne Michaels famously offered the Beatles $3,000 to reunite during an episode of Saturday Night Live. Reportedly, Lennon and McCartney were actually together that evening at the Dakota, just a mile and a half away from the NBC Studios at Rockefeller Plaza, and briefly considered popping down to show their faces.

The next day, McCartney called in at Lennon’s New York residence but was sadly turned away. “I said to him, ‘Please call before you come over. It’s not 1956, and turning up at the door isn’t the same anymore. You know, just give me a ring,’” Lennon told Playboy in 1980. “He was upset by that, but I didn’t mean it badly. I just meant that I was taking care of a baby all day, and some guy turns up at the door.”

The two never met in person again but kept in close contact over the phone. “The last phone conversation I ever had with him was really great,” McCartney told Playboy in 1984, “And we didn’t have any kind of blowup. It could have easily been one of the other phone calls when we blew up at each other and slammed the phone down.”

In 1981, a few months after Lennon’s death, McCartney invited Carl Perkins to collaborate on ‘Get It’, a song from his 1982 album, Tug of War. While working in the studio, Perkins showed McCartney a new song, ‘My Old Friend’, which contained the words: “Think about me every now and then, old friend”. Touched by the familiar lyrics, the former Beatle left the room in tears.

In a 1996 interview with Goldmine magazine, Perkins revealed an ensuing conversation between himself and Linda McCartney. “Paul was crying, tears were rolling down his pretty cheeks, and Linda said, ‘Carl, thank you so much.’ I said, ‘Linda, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you cry.’ She said, ‘But he’s crying, and he needed to. He hasn’t been able to really break down since that happened to John.’

“And she put her arm around me and said, ‘But how did you know?’ I said, ‘Know what?’ She said, ‘There’s two people in the world that know what John Lennon said to Paul, the last thing he said to him. Me and Paul are the only two that know that, but now there’s three…you know it. I said, ‘Girl, you’re freaking me out!’…She said the last words that John Lennon said to Paul in the hallway of the Dakota building were…he patted him on the shoulder, and said, ‘Think about me every now and then, old friend.’”

Listen to ‘My Old Friend’ by Carl Perkins, featuring Paul McCartney, below.

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