Paul McCartney Feared for His Life After John Lennon Was Killed

John Lennon's murder on Dec. 8, 1980, was a terrible shock for millions around the world — including Paul McCartney, who feared his former bandmate's killing might lead to his own.

In fact, as McCartney admits in the new issue of Uncut (via NME), his frayed nerves came leaping to the surface when he spotted armed men on his property during the days after Lennon's death, and he immediately assumed the worst.

"It was weird, because in the days that followed it, I was sitting in the house. We had a little perimeter fence, mainly to keep foxes out, because we had some chickens. I'm aware of security threats, so I'm on high alert, and I look out and I see someone with a f---ing gun, like a machine gun, an assault rifle," recalled McCartney. "'Wha?!' He's in full military gear, and then I see there's a whole patrol of them. I'm going, 'Holy s---, what's going on?'"

As it turned out, there was a relatively simple explanation.

"I don't know what I did. I think I rang the police. It turned out to be Army maneuvers," he explained. "[They said] 'Oh, sorry. Are these your woods?' I'd put two and two together and made a thousand. God, I don't know how I lived through it. You think you'd just faint dead on the ground. But they were all there, coming through these woods."

McCartney delved deeper into the swirl of emotions unleashed by Lennon's murder during another interview earlier this summer, admitting that he gave in to a certain amount of frustration regarding what he saw as Beatles revisionism. "When John got shot, aside from the pure horror of it, the lingering thing was, ‘Okay, well, now John’s a martyr. A JFK.’ I started to get frustrated because people started to say, ‘Well, he was the Beatles,'" he pointed out. "And me, George and Ringo would go, ‘Er, hang on. It’s only a year ago we were all equal-ish.’"

Coming off a well-received appearance at this year's Lollapalooza Festival, McCartney will extend his Out There tour later this year with a pair of recently announced North American tour dates that will bring him to Columbus, Ohio, on Oct. 13 and Toronto on Oct. 17. Check out McCartney's complete list of upcoming shows at his official site.

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