The ex-Beatle shared archived photos that allude to his late bandmate’s troubled childhood

John Lennon and Paul McCartney in 1963. Photo:Fox Photos/Getty

Paul McCartney got exceptionally candid about his former Beatles bandmate, John Lennon, last week at the 2023 Tribeca Festival.

On Thursday, the 81-year-old English musician shuffled through aged Beatles photos with Conan O’Brien, 60, for a live recording of O’Brien’s podcast, Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend. When the former late-night talk show host queued up a photo of the late John Lennon, he noted hints of vulnerability and anxiety in Lennon’s expression.

“I don’t know about the anxiety, but vulnerability is very true,” McCartney told O’Brien, explaining that Lennon endured many “minor tragedies” at the beginning of his 40-year life.

“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 3. So that’s not too wonderful,” he recalled. “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.”

Last week, McCartney announced the creation of what he calls “the final Beatles record,” which uses artificial intelligence to extract Lennon’s voice from old demos. The singer was shot and killed in December 1980 at the age of 40.

Paul McCartney and John Lennon in 1963.Val Wilmer/Redferns

McCartney and O’Brien sat down at the Storytellers panel to talk about the musician’s upcoming book titled 1964: Eyes of the Storm, which features 275 recently discovered photographs taken by McCartney from the end of 1963 to the beginning of 1964 — the explosive period in which the Beatles sensationalized and cemented their place in music history forever.

Paul McCartney and John Lennon in 1964.William Vanderson/Fox Photos/Getty

The photos will also be on display at the U.K.’s National Portrait Gallery in London from June 28 to Oct. 1. In a release about the exhibit, McCartney said the decades-old photos have an air of innocence about them.

“They now bring back so many stories, a flood of special memories, which is one of the many reasons I love them all, and know that they will always fire my imagination.”