Timeline Albums, EPs & singles Songs Films Concerts Sessions People Interviews Articles

Released in 1982

Here Today

Written by Paul McCartney

Last updated on September 3, 2023


Album This song officially appears on the Tug Of War Official album.

Timeline This song was officially released in 1982

Timeline This song was written, or began to be written, in 1981, when Paul McCartney was 39 years old)

Master album

Related sessions

This song was recorded during the following studio sessions:

Related song

Related interviews

I wrote ‘Here Today’ about John. It’s just a song saying, you know, ‘If you were here today you’d probably say what I’m doing is a load of crap. But you wouldn’t mean it, cos you like me really, I know.’

Paul McCartney

From Wikipedia:

Here Today” is a song by Paul McCartney from his 1982 album Tug of War. McCartney wrote the song about his relationship with and love for John Lennon, who had died less than two years before. He stated the song was composed in the form of an imaginary conversation the pair might have had. The song was produced by The Beatles’ producer George Martin. Although not released as a single, the song reached #46 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock charts.

McCartney often performs the song live, and it is featured on the live albums Back in the World, Back in the U.S., and Good Evening New York City.

From an interview with Los Angeles Times, April 1982:

Did you resist writing a song about John at first?

Yes. I worried that it might not be good enough and that someone might think I was trying to cash in on it or something. I could just picture all these people sitting down after John’s death and saying, “I’m going to write a song about this…it’s a great idea.” None of the three of us [ex-Beatles] would think like that, but I had these worries in the back of my mind. I figured it was better to just avoid it. But eventually I just realized it was silly. I figured I’d just let it happen naturally, if I wrote a song about John, OK. If I didn’t, it’s OK, too. I’ve always had two sides to me: the creative and judicial. The creative starts to do something and the judicial starts to question and second-guess: ‘Is that right? Does that make sense? What will people think?’ I’ve begun trying to make sure the judicial doesn’t interfere with the creative. Anyway, I kind of forgot about the whole thing until I sat down one day and struck the beginning chords of “Here Today” and it fell out. 

Paul McCartney

Paul McCartney in "Conversations With McCartney", by Paul Du Noyer:

I wrote ‘Here Today’ about John. It’s just a song saying, you know, ‘If you were here today you’d probably say what I’m doing is a load of crap. But you wouldn’t mean it, cos you like me really, I know.’ It’s one of those ‘Come out from behind your glasses, look at me,’ things. It was a love song, really, not to John but a love song about John, about my relationship with him. I was trying to exorcise the demons in my own head. It’s tough when you have someone like John slagging you off in public, cos he’s a tough slagger-offer. So I wrote this song to try and come to terms with it. I thought I’d do that on stage but then someone suggested, ‘Why don’t you do one of John’s? That would be poignant.’ And it would, I don’t know if I could even get through it – you’ve got to deal with the emotion of something like that. [A year later Paul did tackle some Lennon material in concert.] But it would be nice to make a nod or a wink to the lad, cos he was great. He was a major influence on my life, as I suppose I was on his.

But the great thing about me and John is that it was me and John, end of story. Whereas everyone else can say ‘Well you know, he did this and so-and-so and so-and-so.’ The nice thing is that I can actually think. Come on, when we got in a little room it was me and John sitting down. It was me and him who wrote not these other people who think they all know about it. I must know better than them. I was the one in the room with him. But sometimes you don’t believe it.

From The Guardian, June 11, 2004:

[…] And then there is ‘Here Today’, the song he wrote in the wake of John Lennon’s death. “At least once a tour, that song just gets me,” he says. “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, you know? It happened at the first show, in Gijon: I was doing fine, and I found myself doing a thing I’ve done in soundcheck, just repeating one of the lines: ‘I love you, I love you, I love you.’ I did that and I thought, ‘That’s nice – that works.’ And then I came to finish the song, to do the last verse, and it was, ‘Oh shit – I’ve just totally lost it.’

From the Tug Of War Archive Collection, 2015:

I play ’Here Today’ every night in my concerts. It’s a very emotional thing; so there’s lots of thoughts that it brings up. One of writing it right here, and just sort of channelling John, and just sort of talking to John really, is what it is. I announce it in the show as ‘a conversation that we never had’, and that’s kind of what it is. I’m just bringing key memories. ‘What about the night we cried?’ When I said ‘key’, it came to my mind; it was actually in Key West in Florida, on a Beatles tour. That line there – we had to cancel a show in Jacksonville because of an approaching hurricane. So we went down to Key West which was nothing then, just a few houses. I understand now people say it’s a huge place, like Vegas! So anyway, it was this desolate little house, and we just sat and drank a lot and got totally wrecked, and we had very in-depth conversations like you do when you’re just stuck in a room with a few guys. But I mean normally at parties and that we’d be able to handle it but this was just stuck in a room woth nothing to do but wait until we could go to Jacksonville. It was a number of days, and that meant basically just drink, all the time. It was very emotional because we cried; it was the only time we’d cried together – “Oh. I love you” One of those drunken crying sessions. But again that was one of the memories when I’m talking to John “What about the night we cried?” you know. “What about the time we met?” and… come on man, we had the most intimate relationship. and I think that’s what you think about when you lose a friend. About all those little things that just jump into your mind. So I put a lot of that into the song. When I do it now, it’s still very emotional, and I go back . . . as I sing it. I go back to all those places and all those times. I think the only thing that I always question in the song is [hums, then sings], ‘You’d probably say that we were worlds apart.’ I don’t think he would have said that. I don’t know how that line got in there. I don’t think that he would say ‘worlds apart’. I think it was more… in answer to some of the things he’s said when we were having our… barney. After the break-up of The Beatles, and he’d sort of said, you know, ‘Oh, McCartney’s this, I’m this’ and ‘McCartney’s that, I’m that’. I think I was trying to answer that kind of thing: ‘You’d probably say that we were worlds apart…’.

Paul McCartney, in Tug Of War Archive Collection, 2015

A love song to John, written very shortly after he died. I was remembering things about our relationship and about the million things we’d done together, from just being in each other’s front parlours or bedrooms to walking on the street together or hitchhiking — long journeys together that had nothing to do with the Beatles. I was thinking of all these things in what was then my recording studio in Sussex. It was just a little house with a small room upstairs with bare, wooden plank floors and bare walls, and I had my guitar with me, so

I just sat there and wrote this.There’s one line in the lyric I don’t really mean: “Well knowing you / You’d probably laugh and say / That we were worlds apart”. I’m playing to the more cynical side of John, but I don’t think it’s true that we were so distant. “But you were always there with a smile” — that was very John. If you were arguing with him, and it got a bit tense, he’d just lower his specs and say, “It’s only me,” then put them back up again, as if the specs were part of a completely different identity.

“What about the night we cried?” That was in Key West, on our first major tour to the US, when there was a hurricane coming in and we couldn’t play a show in Jacksonville. We had to lie low for a couple of days, and we were in our little Key West motel room, and we got very drunk and cried about how we loved each other. I was talking to someone yesterday who was telling me that if he cried, his father would say, “Boys don’t cry. You mustn’t do that.” My dad wasn’t like that, but that was the attitude: male people do not cry. I think now it’s acknowledged that it’s a perfectly good thing to do, and I say, “God wouldn’t have given us tears if he didn’t mean us to cry.”

There’s a longing in the lines “If you were here today” and “I am holding back the tears no more”, because it was very emotional, writing this song. I was just sitting there in that bare room, thinking of John and realising I’d lost him. And it was a powerful loss, so to have a conversation with him in a song was some form of solace. Somehow I was with him again. “And if I say/ I really loved you” — there it is, I’ve said it. Which I would never have said to him. It’s a very charged experience to perform this song in concert.

Paul McCartney – From Paul McCartney reveals the stories behind his greatest hits | The Sunday Times Magazine | The Sunday Times (thetimes.co.uk) – From “The Lyrics”, 2021

If I do a show now, I’m happy to do Beatles songs, Wings songs, as well as my solo stuff and other people’s songs. I’m not under any silly illusions. When I do these tours, the stuff that people like the most is the old stuff. Mainly The Beatles stuff. I don’t have a problem with that. I like singing those old songs. I’ll open with “Hello Goodbye” and it works. Then I’ll do something like “Here Today” [from 1982’s Tug Of War], which was written for John with love, and that’s now a central part of the show. It’s like me talking to John and it’s emotional for me and for a lot of other people.

Paul McCartney – From interview with UNCUT, July 2004

Lyrics

And if I said

I really knew you well

What would your answer be?

If you were here today

Here today


Well knowing you

You'd probably laugh and say

That we were worlds apart

If you were here today

Here today


But as for me

I still remember how it was before

And I am holding back the tears no more

I love you


What about the time we met?

Well I suppose that you could say that

We were playing hard to get

Didn't understand a thing

But we could always sing


What about the night we cried?

Because there wasn't any reason left

To keep it all inside

Never understood a word

But you were always there with a smile


And if I say I really loved you

And was glad you came along

Then you were here today,

For you were in my song

Here today

Officially appears on

See all official recordings containing “Here Today

Bootlegs

Related films

Videos

Live performances

Here Today” has been played in 428 concerts and 3 soundchecks.

Latest concerts where “Here Today” has been played


Going further

The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present

"Here Today" is one of the songs featured in the book "The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present," published in 2021. The book explores Paul McCartney's early Liverpool days, his time with the Beatles, Wings, and his solo career. It pairs the lyrics of 154 of his songs with his first-person commentary on the circumstances of their creation, the inspirations behind them, and his current thoughts on them.

Shop on Amazon

Paul McCartney: Music Is Ideas. The Stories Behind the Songs (Vol. 1) 1970-1989

With 25 albums of pop music, 5 of classical – a total of around 500 songs – released over the course of more than half a century, Paul McCartney's career, on his own and with Wings, boasts an incredible catalogue that's always striving to free itself from the shadow of The Beatles. The stories behind the songs, demos and studio recordings, unreleased tracks, recording dates, musicians, live performances and tours, covers, events: Music Is Ideas Volume 1 traces McCartney's post-Beatles output from 1970 to 1989 in the form of 346 song sheets, filled with details of the recordings and stories behind the sessions. Accompanied by photos, and drawing on interviews and contemporary reviews, this reference book draws the portrait of a musical craftsman who has elevated popular song to an art-form.

Shop on Amazon

If we modestly consider the Paul McCartney Project to be the premier online resource for all things Paul McCartney, it is undeniable that The Beatles Bible stands as the definitive online site dedicated to the Beatles. While there is some overlap in content between the two sites, they differ significantly in their approach.

Read more on The Beatles Bible

Paul McCartney writing

Talk more talk, chat more chat

Notice any inaccuracies on this page? Have additional insights or ideas for new content? Or just want to share your thoughts? We value your feedback! Please use the form below to get in touch with us.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

2024 • Please note this site is strictly non-commercial. All pictures, videos & quoted texts remain the property of the respective copyright owner, and no implication of ownership by us is intended or should be inferred. Any copyright owner who wants something removed should contact us and we will do so immediately. Alternatively, we would be delighted to provide credits.