The legendary singer Paul McCartney has just given a thought-provoking new interview in which he admitted that he was “hurting too much” to keep The Beatles going after John Lennon left the band.

Fox News reported that Lennon left The Beatles in 1969 just after he married Yoko Ono, and this week, McCartney explained on SiriusXM’s “The Howard Stern Show” that the band would not have worked without him.

“You can’t just think of a smart idea like that at the time,” said McCartney, 77. “You’re hurting too much so it wasn’t going to happen.”

McCartney went on to say that George Harrison never got the credit he deserved in the group as a songwriter.

“It was easy to underestimate George because me and John had always written most of the stuff,” he said. “But then he started to get interested – and boy did he bloom. He wrote some of the greatest songs ever.”

When Stern told McCartney that he always believed The Beatles were better than The Rolling Stones, the singer started laughing and said, “You know, Howard, you know you’re going to persuade me to agree with that one.”

“I’ve always said it,” he said. “But the thing is the Stones are a fantastic group. I go to see them every time they come out. They’re a great, great band.”

“They’re so rooted in the blues and so when they’re writing stuff it’s to do with the blues. Whereas we had a little more influences,” McCartney continued. “Keith [Richards] once said to me, ‘Man, you were lucky. You had four singers in your band.’ And he said, ‘We got one.’ So, there’s a lot of difference.”

However, in the end, McCartney made it clear that there was really no contest between the bands.

“I love The Stones but I’m with you [Stern] – The Beatles were better,” he said. “We still are [friends] and we admire each other.”

Lennon unfortunately died in 1980, when he was murdered outside of his New York City apartment building at the age of 40. Harrison passed away back in 2001 from cancer when he was 58 years-old, leaving McCartney and Ringo Starr, 79, as the only two Beatles alive today.