Paul McCartney flew to Monteserrat, where Beatles producer George Martin had installed a state-of-the-art studio, to begin work on a solo album. A guest at the sessions was the Beatles’ long-time friend rockabilly pioneer Carl Perkins. He played McCartney a song he had just written, entitled ‘My Old Friend’. ‘After I finished,’ he recalled,

Paul was crying, tears were rolling down his pretty cheeks, and Linda said, ‘Carl, thank you so much.’ I said, ‘Linda, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry.’ She said, ‘But he’s crying, and he needed to. He hasn’t been able to really break down since that happened to John.’ And she put her arm around me and said, ‘But how did you know?’ I said, ‘Know what?’ She said, ‘There’s two people in the world that know what John Lennon said to Paul, the last thing he said to him. But now there’s three, and one of them’s you, you know it.’ I said, ‘Girl, you’re freaking me out! I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ She said that the last words that John Lennon said to Paul in the hallway of the Dakota building were, he patted him on the shoulder and said, ‘Think about me every now and then, old friend.’

And that, with minor alterations, was the chorus line of Perkins’ song, ‘McCartney really feels that Lennon sent me that song, he really does.’

Paul starts singing in the chorus… and that’s when the tears start.