Sir Paul McCartney "often" consults the late John Lennon when he's writing songs.
Sir Paul McCartney covers Uncut
The 78-year-old star regularly wishes he had his former Beatles bandmate - who was shot dead in 1980 - around to turn to for inspiration when he's unhappy with a lyric but he usually knows just what his pal would have said to him.
He told Uncut magazine: "I’m working on one at the moment that was going one way, but I didn’t like the lyric. 'No, this is not happening, mate.'
"This would have been the point where John and I would have said, 'You know what, let’s have a cup of tea and try and rethink this.' "
Asked if he regularly mentally consults John when he's writing, he added: "Yeah, often. We collaborated for so long, I think, ‘OK, what would he think of this? What would be say now?’ We’d both agree that this new song I’m taking about is going nowhere. So instead of sitting around, we’d destroy it and remake it."
The 'Hey Jude' hitmaker also admitted he found the initial lockdown period that was imposed earlier this year to slow the spread of coronavirus to be a "very scary" time.
He said: "It was a very scary time. Other scares we’ve had – SARS, avian flu – they seemed to happen to other people. But this was happening to everyone, people you knew, everyone in the world.
"Some of my friends, some people I knew were close to going under with it."
Despite his advancing years, Paul has no interest in retiring because he still enjoys making music and has enough balance in his life in other areas.
Asked about the possibility of calling it a day, he said: "I’m very lucky, I can go out on my old gee-gee, go into the woods and lose myself. I love nature, I always have done. It’s so calming and inspirational.
"When we were kids, we used to live on the perimeter of Liverpool. You’d walk one yard and you were in Lancashire. Then you’d walk a mile and you were in a village where they spoke very differently.
"There was always a sense that you were falling off the edge of the world. I fell off the edge of Liverpool into nature.
"So it’s not so much that I would retire – I’m very happy to be able to go to the studio and hang with my buddies. I still enjoy that in my life.
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