Paul McCartney 'depressed,' turned to the bottle after Beatles breakup

April 19, 2015. Paul McCartney introduces Ringo Starr at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies, in Cleveland, Ohio. (The Associated Press)

Paul McCartney turned to booze to cope with the dissolution of the Beatles nearly 46 years ago.

“I was so depressed. You would be. You were breaking from your lifelong friends,” the 73-year-old singer revealed during a taping of BBC radio’s “Mastertapes” (via The Guardian). “So I took to the bevvies. I took to a wee dram. It was great at first, then suddenly I wasn’t having a good time … I wanted to get back to square one, so I ended up forming Wings.”

Unfortunately for McCartney and wife Linda, who also joined Wings, the group never gained the same success as the Beatles.

“We were terrible. We knew Linda couldn’t play, but she learned, and looking back on it, I’m really glad we did it … I could have just formed a supergroup, rung up Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page and John Bonham,” he said. “But you still remember the names of the people who gave you really bad, vicious reviews: Charles Shaar Murray shall ever be hated!”

As for his relationship with John Lennon, McCartney is thankful the two were able to make amends before Lennon was killed in 1980.

“I was really grateful that we got it back together before he died. Because it would have been very difficult to deal with if … well, that was very difficult anyway,” McCartney shared.

Two years after Lennon’s death, McCartney penned an emotional ode to his fallen friend with “Here Today.”

“I’m quite private and don’t like to give too much away. Why should people know my innermost thoughts? But a song is the place to put them,” he explained. “In ‘Here Today,’ I say to John ‘I love you.'”

“I couldn’t have said that to him unless we were extremely drunk — ‘I love you, man!’ — but you can put these emotions, these deeper and sometimes awkward truths, in a song,” McCartney added.

This article originally appeared in the New York Post's Page Six.