Paul McCartney inducts John Lennon into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

It's a privilege for me to be able to do this tonight and come here. So I have some random memories in the form of a letter to John: "Dear John, I remember when we first met in Walton at the village festival, it was a beautiful summer's day. And I walked in there and saw you in the stage and you were singing "Come Go With Me" by the Dell Vikings, but you didn't know the lyrics, so you made it up: "Come, go with me to the penitentiary." When we wrote our first songs together, we used to go to my house, the penitentiary. my father's house, and we used to smoke Typhoo tea with this pipe that my father kept in a drawer.

It didn't help us much, but it got us on our way. I remember the visits to your mother's house, Julia Era. a very pretty woman, a very beautiful woman. She had long red hair and she played the ukulele. I had never seen a woman who could do that. I remember having to tell you the chords on the guitar because he used to play the chords on the ukulele and Then when you turned 21 he gave a hundred pounds to one of your rich relatives in Edinburgh, yeah, so we decided to go to Spain. So we hitchhiked out of Liverpool and into Paris, decided to stop there for a week and finally a guy called Jurgen cut our hair, and it ended up being the "Beatles" haircut.

I remember introducing you to my friend George, my schoolmate. And him entering the group playing "Raunchy", on the upper deck of the bus. You were impressed and when we met Ringo, who had spent a season working at Butlins holiday camp, he was a seasoned professional, but the beard had to be removed and that was it. Later we got a gig at the Cavern Club in Liverpool, which was officially a blues club and we didn't really know any blues numbers; We love blues, we didn't know any blues numbers. So we had to make announcements like, "Ladies and gentlemen, this is a great 'Big Bill Broonzy' number called 'Wake Up Little Susie.'" They kept passing little notes: "This is not blues, this is not blues, this is pop!" We continue forward.

And then we ended up touring and there was a guy named Larry Parnes, who gave us our first tour. Thanks, Larry. And I remember we all changed our names for that tour and I changed mine to "Paul Ramon", George became "Karl Harrison", and although people think that John didn't really change his name, I seem to remember it was "Long John "Silver." " for the duration of that tour. Bang is another myth. Um, and later we'd be in the tour van and we'd have the kind of night where the windscreen would break, we'd be on the motorway back to Liverpool.

It was very cold , so we had to lie on top of each other in the back of the van creating a Beatle sandwich. We met, these are the ways we met in Hamburg and met people like Little Richard and Gene Vincent Yes, I remember Little Richard invited us back to his hotel, he was looking at Ringo's ring and he said, "I love that ring." He said, "I have a ring like that, I could give you a ring like that. So we all came back." to the hotel with him and... we never got a ring. Yeah. One time we went back with Gene Vincent to his hotel and everything was going well until he reached into his nightstand drawer and pulled out a gun.

We said, "We've got to go. , Gene. We have to go." We left quickly. And then we came to the US, to New York City, where we met up with Phil Spector, the Ronettes and the Supremes. Our heroes, our heroines. And then, later, in Los Angeles, we met up with Elvis Presley for a great evening. We saw the kid, you know, we saw him on his home turf and he was the first person I ever saw with a remote control on a TV. He was a hero, and then Ed Sullivan. Now we wanted to be famous, now we were getting really famous.

I mean, I mean, imagining meeting Mitzi Gaynor in Miami and later, recording at Abbey Road, I still remember doing "Love Me Do," because John officially had it. the vocal, "love me do." But, because he was playing the harmonica, George Martin, in the middle of the session, suddenly said, "Do you want to sing the line 'love me do'?" I said "okay" I can still hear it to this day John says and then I say "love me" huh nervous man. I remember doing the voice for Kansas City, but I couldn't understand it because it's hard to do all that.

You know, screaming at the top of your head, and John came down from the control room, he says, he took me aside, he said, he said, "You can do it, you know you just have to scream." so it can get off the top of your head, you know you can do it." So thank you, thank you for that, I did it. I remember writing "A Day in the Life" with him and the little look we gave each other while we wrote the line "I'd love to turn you on." We kind of knew what we were doing, you know, little sneaky look.

And after that there was this girl named Yoko Who showed up at my house one day and it was him. John Cage's birthday and he said he wanted to get a manuscript to give to John Cage from various composers and he wanted one from John and I. So I said, "Well, that's fine with me, but you'll have to go see John. She did." After that, I set up a couple of machines; we used to have these Brenell recording machines and I set up a couple of them. They stayed up all night and recorded "Two Virgins" on it.

But you took the case yourself. with me. And then after that came the phone calls to you, the joy for me, after all our business shit we had been through, to get back together and communicate once again. And the joy when you told me how you now baked bread and how you played with your little baby, Sean. It was great for me because it gave me something to hold on to, so now, years later, here we are. All of these people, we are gathered here to thank you for everything you mean to all of us. This letter comes with love from your friend Paul.

John Lennon, you did it. Tonight you're in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. God bless you.