During his appearance for an upcoming episode of the “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” podcast filmed during the Tribeca Festival last week, Paul McCartney explained the way John Lennon dealt with his tragic life.

The podcast previews the rock star’s new book “1964: Eyes of the Storm,” which features about 275 mostly unseen photos of The Beatles during the band’s early years. The book, which captures McCartney, Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr when they were emerging as international stars, arrived on June 13.

McCartney explained Lennon’s sad upbringing as the reason for the late icon appearing downcast in some of the images in the collection.

“[John] had a really tragic life,” McCartney recalled to O’Brien. “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.”

“John grew up with these sort of little minor tragedies throughout his life,” he continued. “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.”

“What I love about [these photos] is the innocence,” McCartney said during his conversation with O’Brien, 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.”

Source: RTT Music News