Here Today (Paul McCartney song)

• 1. Introduction

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  "Here Today" is a Paul McCartney song built around a conversation that never happened. Written in mid-1981, less than a year after John Lennon was murdered in 1980, it takes the form of an imaginary dialogue between the two former Beatles. McCartney told The Los Angeles Times in 1982 that he was "kind of crying" when he wrote it. The questions the song raises are simple and hard: what do you say to someone after you can no longer say anything? And what did they mean to you when you had the chance?

• 2. A Conversation With The Dead

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  McCartney found the song so raw that he struggled to discuss it even with the other surviving members of the Beatles. The structure mirrors the real texture of his relationship with Lennon. McCartney has said Lennon used to "lay into" him, but frequently without truly meaning it. That dynamic plays out inside the song itself, where the two trade arguments over whether they ever really knew each other at all. The song captures McCartney reaching out to Lennon across an unbridgeable distance, knowing full well the gesture will go unanswered.

• 3. A Night in Key West

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  One verse draws directly from a specific memory: the Beatles' first full American tour in 1964, when the group was stranded in Key West, Florida during a hurricane. McCartney described what happened that night in his own words: "It was during that night, when we'd all stayed up way too late, and we got so pissed that we ended up crying--about, you know, how wonderful we were, and how much we loved each other, even though we'd never said anything. It was a good one: you never say anything like that. Especially if you're a Northern Man." That unspoken tenderness between two men who could not quite bring themselves to admit it is what the song circles back to.

• 4. George Martin and the String Quartet

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  McCartney recorded "Here Today" sometime after June 1981 at his High Park home studio in Campbeltown, Scotland. The Beatles' former producer George Martin shaped the track and arranged its orchestral accompaniment. Four string players recorded that accompaniment at AIR Studios in London on the 30th of November 1981: Jack Rothstein and Bernard Partridge on violin, Ian Jewel on viola, and Keith Harvey on cello. Mixing was completed at Odyssey Studios in London on the 9th of December 1981. The song appeared on McCartney's 1982 album Tug of War.

• 5. Still Breaking Live

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  Although "Here Today" was never released as a single, it reached No. 46 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock charts in 1982. McCartney has kept it in his live shows for decades, and it appears on the live albums Back in the World, Back in the U.S., Amoeba Gig, and Good Evening New York City. He told The Guardian: "At least once a tour, that song just gets me. I'm singing it, and I think I'm OK, and I suddenly realise it's very emotional, and John was a great mate and a very important man in my life, and I miss him, y'know?" The song that began as something too private to discuss has become something McCartney returns to in front of thousands of people, again and again.