Paul McCartney Remembers How He Found Out John Lennon Had Died

— -- Today marks the 34th anniversary of the death of the late, great Beatle, John Lennon.

With the grim milestone coming up, his bandmate, Paul McCartney, 72, spoke about how he found out his close friend had died after he was shot to death at the age of 40 in New York by Mark David Chapman.

"I was at home and I got a phone call," he said on the Jonathan Ross Show. "It was early in the morning. I was in the country and I just got a phone call. I think it was like that for everyone, just so horrific, you couldn't take it in. And I couldn't take it in."

He continued, "Just for days, you couldn't think he was gone. Yeah, it was just a huge shock and I had to tell Linda [McCartney's former wife, who died of breast cancer in 1998] and the kids. It was very difficult. It was very difficult for anyone. That was like a really big shock in most people's lives, a bit like Kennedy. ... For me, it was just so sad that I wasn't going to see him again."

For lack of better words, McCartney said the man who took Lennon's life -- Chapman -- all he could think was "jerk of all jerks."

"He's just a jerk. It's not even a guy politically motivated," he added. "Just some total random thing."

McCartney added that he's glad that after the band broke up in 1970, he was able to reconnect with Lennon before he died.

"I'm so glad because it would have been the worst thing in the world to have this great relationship that then soured and he gets killed, so there was some solace in the fact that we got back together. We were good friends," the iconic musician said on the show, according to People.