In an interview with GQ, Paul McCartney revealed his dream that inspired “Let it Be.” Paul said the dream involved a vision of his mother, who died of cancer when he was young. He had been through a tough time, and he believed his mom visited him in the dream to reassure him that everything would be alright.
“It’s the 60s, and we’re just getting grazed and stuff, a lot of the time. So, I went to bed, and wasn’t feeling too great in myself, and in my dream, my mother came to me, and she died maybe 10 years previously,” McCartney explained. “When someone who you’ve lost comes back to you in a dream, it’s a miraculous moment because you’re with them. And your mind doesn’t say ‘Wait a minute. You shouldn’t be here.’ You’re just with them.”
“She seemed to realize that I was going through struggles, and she said, ‘It’s gonna be ok. You’re gonna be ok. Just let it be,’” McCartney continued. “I felt great, and woke up and thought, ‘What was that?’ And I remember going, ‘What did she say?’ Let it be. And then I sat down on a piano and wrote the song.”
When asked why he decided to perform “Let it Be” on a piano, Paul McCartney said he wasn’t quite sure. He said that when writing a song, he often chooses whatever instrument he fancies at that moment. For “Let it Be,” it happened to be a piano.
“I don’t know. You know, sometimes you just sit down at a piano, and sometimes there isn’t a piano, so you play the guitar. It’s not like a formula. It’s just what you fancy at the time, and that particular song, there was a piano in my room, so I just sort of wrote it on the piano. It still is a piano song when I do it live. It’s a piano song.”
McCartney grew up in Liverpool, England, in a working-class family. While he had to save up to afford his first guitar, his home had a piano where he would listen to his dad play. In an interview with Wired, he said that his dad tried to get him to take “proper lessons,” but he found it easier to teach himself.
“[My dad] said, ‘You’ve got to get proper lessons,’” McCartney recalled. “So, I took proper lessons and couldn’t really get on with it because the music I was hearing in my head…I couldn’t do that. Now, you know, I think kids learning, continue. I don’t want to tell you not to, but I couldn’t just ever get with it. I kind of learned myself. I just picked out chords on the piano. That would have been when I was about 14 or so.”
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