Paul McCartney (108 page)

There are a few Wings tracks and the odd cult item like ‘Temporary Secretary’, from the 1980 McCartney ll album, which Rolling Stone rates his thirty-sixth best post-Beatles song (a high placing) and the NME calls ‘wonky electro-pop that doesn’t seem so much ahead of its time as out of it’.

He’s resigned to giving up his usual stringent image-control while he’s onstage; since the arrival of mobile phones, nothing can stop audience-members photographing or filming him. But most do so only during the songs that are dearest to them. ‘Whenever I do a Beatles number, all the phones come out,’ he observes wryly. ‘But as soon as I start something more experimental, it goes dark.’

As always at his shows, he’s confronted by a medieval-looking array of waving banners. He reads out a selection of their messages, ranging from the sexual come-ons that never cease to the most innocent confidences. ‘We love your butt… My name is Claire and I am seven today… Happy birthday, Claire.’

His Liverpool accent grows stronger by the minute: after becoming the first rock act to perform in Moscow’s Red Square, he recalls meeting ‘members of the Rooshen goovernment… When I was a boy, growing up in Forthlin Road, if anyone had told me that one day I’d be meeting members of the Rooshen goovernment…’ It’s redeemed from bragging by its punchline: ‘The Defence Minister told me the first record he ever bought was “Love Me Do”. He said, “We learned to speak English from Beatles songs. Hello, Goodbye.”’

Absent friends are commemorated, John in ‘Mr Kite’ and also ‘Here Today’, the tribute song almost no one noticed; George with ‘Something’ on the ukulele. ‘I wrote this next song for Linda’ introduces ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’, still redolent of being blown away by love for the very first time. After a decent interval comes the quieter ardour of ‘My Valentine’, written for Nancy, who’s in the audience tonight (and, doubtless, will be waiting afterwards to say ‘You were wonderful, darling’).

In ‘Hey Jude’, he’s long accustomed to audiences singing along word-perfectly and in tune. With the present 15,000, the echo is so true, he gives them a test, going ‘Oh-kay… All right… Wow-wow wowowow… woo-oop… uh-uh-uh’ at erratic volumes, rising and falling in odd places to see if they can match him. They do time and again until eventually he gives up and moves on to ‘Day Tripper’.

After three hours on my feet, I decide I’ve had enough, and head for the exit. Generally at rock concerts, lots of people leave just before the end to beat the rush for restaurants and public transport. Outside on the windblown plaza, a giant coffee-and-burger wagon is open for business; police reinforcements mass in clumps of sherbet yellow; taxis with lit foreheads glide by the dozen along the old dock road. But inside the Echo Arena, no one else is going anywhere.

‘You’re not leaving, are you?’ says the elderly security man who unbars a door for me. ‘He’s still got another six songs to do.’

Paul, aged 5, with brother Michael (right).

Paul (front) and Michael on holiday in north Wales.

Quarrymen days: (r to l) Paul, John and an absurdly young-looking George play at a family party.

Paul and Michael with their wonderful dad, Jim, in the back garden at 20 Forthlin Road.

Poster for Kaiserkeller club when rival Liverpool band Rory Storm and the Hurricanes headlined over the Beatles.

Paul at the piano in Hamburg. Note the bottles lining the stage-front. Stu Sutcliffe is on right.

George, Pete Best, Paul and John (l to r) after the transition to black leather. Paul has just bought his Hofner violin bass.

After Brian Epstein’s takeover: out go rock ‘n’ roll black leathers, in come tailor-made suits of grey ‘brushed tweed’.

‘What are they writing about us?’ Maybe that the Dave Clark Five have knocked them off number one.

Hardcore fans at the Cavern club. Despite their transports of ecstasy, they stay on their kindergarten-size chairs.

Paul says a cautioning word in John’s ear, in the days when he still listened.

The camera loves him, even perched on the kitchen sink at ‘Forthlin’.

Under the protective eye of Brian Epstein (far left), Ed Sullivan feigns interest in Paul’s violin bass before the TV appearance that put America in the Beatles’ pocket.

Surf broads: with fans during a rare rest-day in Miami.

Paul with Jane Asher, when he lodged in her parents’ house in a ‘Peter Pan world’.

With Wilfrid Brambell, his ‘grandfather’ in A Hard Day’s Night; a chance to indulge his love of false beards.

The Beatles between floors at NEMS, the Epstein family’s electrical store in Liverpool. ‘You’ve already got a good business, Mr Epstein,’ one record company boss advised Brian. ‘Why not stick to that?’

She Loves Them Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! At Buckingham Palace after receiving their MBEs from the Queen, 26 October 1965.

Rampant Beatlemania, held in check by the tolerant British bobbies of yesteryear.

Gentleman-guru: Sgt. Pepper-era Paul in the studio with the Beatles’ producer, George Martin, who turned his increasingly ambitious concepts into reality.

Paul and Jane: the classy young actress introduced him to a sophisticated new world of classical music and West End first nights.

Always patient with fans and ready to sign autographs–even when one fan waylays him outside the Ashers’ home in Wimpole Street.

The hippy look takes hold. Back then, no pop idol minded being seen with a ‘ciggie’.

1967: Paul is cornered by an American photographer named Linda Eastman.

The short-lived Apple boutique with the mural that outraged its Baker Street neighbours.

The Beatles film their second clip for ‘Hello, Goodbye’ at the Saville Theatre on 10 November 1967 during a filming session for the Magical Mystery Tour.

With his cartoon self in the Yellow Submarine film.

Paul with Martha, his Old English sheepdog.

Paul and Jane, almost like a young royal couple–though he said they never really ‘clicked’.

With John and Derek Taylor at the launch of Apple Corps. Paul says he already knew they were out of their depth.

A bit of clowning to try to hide the unstoppable drift apart.

The Apple rooftop concert, January 1969. Destined to be imitated by other bands down the decades…

Hiding out in Scotland with Linda, Martha and a beard after his brutal sidelining by John, George and Ringo.

Tap your troubles away: the 1973 TV special James Paul McCartney featured Paul in a Busby Berkeley routine.

Woolly sentiment: performing ‘Mary Had A Little Lamb’ with sheep back-up.

Cover of the Wings album that finally won over the critics.

Wings’ fourth line-up: Paul, Linda, Denny Laine, Jimmy McCulloch and Geoff Britton.

Country life: Paul and Linda with Heather, Mary and baby Stella. Thanks to Linda, all their children grew up in the saddle.

Magical Mystery Tour revisited: psychedelic transport for Wings Over Europe.

The McCartneys with some of their menagerie. Vets were regularly called to treat ducks with broken legs.

On the road again: Paul and Linda attracted much criticism for taking their children on tour.

Toyko bust: Paul under arrest in Tokyo, 1980.

Toyko bust: The culprit suitcase is put on display.

‘What do you call a dog with Wings?’ ran the cruel sexist jibe when Paul first put Linda into the band. But she gradually won over her critics and became a competent musician.

Paul with conductor Carl Davis after the premiere of his Liverpool Oratorio in Liverpool Cathedral, 1991. Years before, he’d been rejected for its choir.

Ever supportive, Paul helps Linda launch her vegetarian range which was to become a top-seller in supermarkets. But the couple alienated many Wings fans with their ‘Go Veggie’ banners at concerts.

Hard Day’s Knight: Paul receives his ‘K’ from the Queen, 1997.

The strain of Linda’s illness is etched on both their faces as they watch one of daughter Stella’s wildly successful couture collections.

Linda where she was always happiest, riding one of her beloved Appaloosa horses.

Paul is caught on camera, shopping with Heather Mills. After months of insisting they’re just good friends, he admits ‘I love her’ on a British TV show. People soon notice how Heather seems to do most of the talking.

Out on the town together when everything still looked rosy.

Paul swears the international media to secrecy on the eve of his Irish wedding to Heather in 2002.

Paul with daughters Mary and Stella, 2006: ‘When you’re going through Hell, keep going’.

‘Shake it up, baby’: the American tabloids uncover his relationship with New York trucking heiress Nancy Shevell.

Paul with his musician son, James, on whom his fame will always cast ‘a shadow like Mount Everest’s’. His marriage to Heather caused a rift between them but with the advent of ‘new mum’ Nancy, they grew close again.

2011: Paul marries Nancy at London’s Marylebone Town Hall–where he had married Linda in 1969.

My thanks firstly to Sir Paul McCartney for allowing me to write this biography without seeking any editorial control over it. I am grateful to his stepmother, Angie McCartney, and his stepsister, Ruth, for their memories of his father, and to his cousin, Ian Harris, for recollections of both his mother and his beloved Auntie Gin. I received generous help, too, from his brother-in-law and lawyer, John Eastman, who figures in every account of Apple Corps’s disintegration and the Beatles’ break-up but who, in 47 years, has never before spoken on the record.

Inevitably I have drawn on my interviews with leading characters in the Beatles’ story dating back to 1969: Mike McCartney, Yoko Ono, Mimi Smith, Cynthia Lennon, Allen Klein, Sir George Martin, Neil Aspinall, Mal Evans, Andrew Oldham, Peter Brown, Clive Epstein, Queenie Epstein, Dick James, Derek Taylor, Robert Fraser, Tony Barrow, Sir Joseph Lockwood, Richard Lester. Larry Parnes, Bob Wooler, Ray McFall, Astrid Kirchherr, Tony Sheridan, Bert Kaempfert, Klaus Voormann, Jurgen Vollmer, Alan Durband, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Pete Best and Mona Best.

But Paul McCartney is primarily the product of new research and conversations with people who have been close to its subject at different moments, for different reasons, many of them sharing their insights for the first time. My warmest thanks to Keith Altham, Peter Asher, Suzy Aspinall, Dot Becker (formerly Rhone), Stuart Bell, Tony Bramwell, Iris Caldwell, Sandra Caron Howie Casey, Alan Clayson, Charles Corman, Peter Cox, Mark Featherstone-Witty, Joe Flannery, Johnny Gentle, John Gibb, Martin Glover (aka Youth), Brian Griffiths, John Gustafson, Colin Hanton, Bill Harry, Peter Hodgson, Steve Holley, Ian James, Lesley-Ann Jones, Laurence Juber, Frieda Kelly, John Lang, John Lowe, David Litchfield, Maggie McGivern, Robbie McIntosh, Reggie McManus, David Matthews, Barry Miles, Russell Miller, Humphrey Ocean, Chris O’Dell , Denis O’Dell, Natalie Percy, Brian Ray, Denny Seiwell, Don Short, Guy Simpson, Anthony Smith, Bernice Stenson, Hamish Stuart, Jan Vaughan, David Watts, Peter Webb, Bruce Welch, Paul ‘Wix’ Wickens, Beverley Wilk and Roy Young.

Once again I must pay tribute to my researcher, the indomitable Peter Trollope, who conducted several crucial interviews (the only person I would trust to do so) and who insisted on continuing work despite a bout of serious illness. In Tokyo, Nikki Uzumi was invaluable in helping piece together the first full account of Paul’s prison ordeal there in 1980.

The world is full of Beatles experts, poised to pounce delightedly on any authorial error however inconsequential. My text has been fact-checked, wholly or in part, by eleven people, among them the indisputably expert Bill Harry, Barry Miles, Johnny Rogan, Alan Clayson and Ian Drummond. However, no book can hope to be 100 percent error-free and on that score the responsibility is mine alone.

For permission to reproduce copyrighted material on pp 39, 95, 111, 131-2, 418-20, 612, 662-3, 682 and 727, the author and publisher are grateful to MPL Music Publishing.

The excerpt from Derek Taylor’s memoir, As Time Goes By, appears by kind permission of his widow, Joan.

Finally I wish to thank my literary agents and dear friends, Michael Sissons in London and Peter Matson in New York; my publishers Alan Samson and Lucinda McNeile of Orion and John Parsley of Little, Brown; and Rachel Mills and Alexandra Cliff of the PFD rights department.

This book is dedicated to Sue and Jessica, the audience I try hardest to please.

Philip Norman, London, 2016

Also by Philip Norman

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The Skaters’ Waltz

Words of Love (short stories)

Everyone’s Gone to the Moon

The Avocado Fool

BIOGRAPHY AND JOURNALISM

Shout! The True Story of the Beatles

The Stones

The Road Goes On For Ever

Tilt the Hourglass and Begin Again

Your Walrus Hurt the One You Love

Awful Moments

Pieces of Hate

Elton

The Life and Good Times of the Rolling Stones

Days in the Life: John Lennon Remembered

The Age of Parody

Buddy: the Biography

John Lennon: the Life

Mick Jagger

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Babycham Night: A Boyhood at the End of the Pier

PLAYS AND MUSICALS

Words of Love

The Man That Got Away

This is Elvis: Viva Las Vegas

Laughter in the Rain: the Neil Sedaka Story

PICTURE CREDITS

The author and publisher are grateful to the following for permission to reproduce images:

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Alamy, here, here

Rex Features, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here

PA Images, here, here, here, here, here, here, here

Corbis, here, here

Photoshot, here

Camera Press, here

Scope Features, here

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