Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney (53 page)

Throughout that short winter day, journalists besieged AIR Studios. There were photographers waiting for Paul down at the entrance on Oxford Street, with snappers clambering over the rooftops to try for pictures through the windows. In these extraordinary circumstances, Paul’s office arranged for a private security firm to help Paul when he was ready to leave the building, employing a driver in a blocker car to get between the press and Paul’s Mercedes estate, which was brought round to the front door on Oxford Street. As always, Oxford Street was thick with traffic. It being nearly Christmas, the pavement was also crowded with shoppers.

It was dark when Paul came down in the lift, surrounded by employees including Joe Reddington. As McCartney stepped out of the lobby onto the pavement, journalists clustered around him. Paul stopped obligingly so they could take pictures and ask him questions. Television crews were also present. Technicians switched on their special lights. ‘I was very shocked, you know, it’s terrible news,’ Paul said, when asked for his reaction to John’s death. He was usually relaxed with journalists, having dealt with them all his adult life, but this evening Paul was distinctly edgy, his hazel eyes darting about, a touch of Scouse truculence creeping into his voice. He was also chewing gum, which gave the unfortunate impression that he wasn’t taking the matter as seriously as he might. Passing shoppers stared, a few members of the public stopping to watch and listen from behind the scrum of journalists. One of the TV reporters asked Paul when he’d heard the news John had been killed. ‘I got a phone call this morning,’ Paul replied, giving clipped answers.

‘From whom?’

‘From a friend of mine.’

‘Are you planning to go over for the funeral?’

‘I don’t know yet.’

‘What were you recording today?’

‘I was just listening to some stuff, you know. I just didn’t want to sit at home.’

‘Why?’

Bridling at the impertinence, Paul replied: ‘I didn’t feel like it.’ When the reporters began repeating their questions, Paul concluded the interview with an offhand rhetorical question. ‘It’s a drag, isn’t it?’ he asked the newsmen, still chewing. ‘OK, cheers, goodbye …’ - after which he got in his red Mercedes and was driven away.

The clip was used prominently in news broadcasts around the world that night, including Britain’s
News at Ten
. ‘“A drag” isn’t how the world will see it,’ commented the ITN newscaster sternly, highlighting the crassness of Paul’s remark. Just as when his mother and his father had died, and when Stuart Sutcliffe passed away, Paul had reacted awkwardly to death, saying and doing the wrong thing. Whatever he really felt - and of course he was shocked, and in time would feel genuine grief - he gave the impression on the day of not caring, which was very unfortunate because in death John Lennon was transfigured into a tragic hero, seen by many as a much greater man than Paul. On top of the Japanese bust, this was a dreadful end to a horrible year, as well as being one of the defining moments of Paul’s life. His partner in the Beatles, his best friend, with whom he’d fallen out and never been fully reconciled, was gone, and Paul had sent him on his way with a stupid comment. Perhaps it was true what people said of Paul, as he himself thought when the Beatles broke up, perhaps he really was a shit.

20

INTO THE EIGHTIES

THE MEAN SIDE OF PAUL McCARTNEY

Reportage of John Lennon’s murder was the most excessive coverage of the death of a pop star since Elvis Presley died three years previously, a sensation that lasted weeks. Yoko had her husband cremated privately on 10 December 1980. Mass public memorials were held in New York and Liverpool four days later, while John’s songs played seemingly constantly on the radio into the new year, the singles ‘(Just Like) Starting Over’ and ‘Woman’ both posthumously going to number one in the USA, as did
Double Fantasy
. John’s death also created a huge revival of interest in the Beatles, selling truckloads of the band’s albums on a wave of nostalgia that hasn’t abated. ‘It was John’s death that reignited the whole thing,’ notes Lennon’s college friend Bill Harry, who points out that the civic leaders of Liverpool had hitherto ignored the Beatles.

Liverpool refused to do a Beatles statue. They refused to have Beatles streets named after them. Liverpool councillors [said], ‘The Beatles, we don’t want to know them, they were drug addicts … they brought shame to the city. We don’t want to have anything to do with the Beatles.’ [This attitude] was transformed after John’s death.

All the surviving Beatles benefited from renewed sales of their back catalogue, leading to an ongoing, lucrative programme of repackaging and reissuing their records and films. While John’s death helped make Paul even richer, it also served to elevate his friend into the company of James Dean and Marilyn Monroe, show business idols who died young and were revered as a result like secular saints. This was absurd, and over the ensuing years McCartney tried to persuade the public that John wasn’t a saint, and that it was unfair to label Paul as a platitudinous balladeer in comparison to Lennon the intellectual and musical heavyweight. But if John wasn’t a saint, there was a grain of truth in this characterisation of their respective roles in the Beatles, and Paul’s attempts to adjust the public’s perception tended to make him look insecure.

Having uttered his regrettable ‘It’s a drag’ comment the day the world heard John had died, Paul kept a low profile during the mourning period. He and Linda visited Yoko at the Dakota briefly, then returned to England where Paul resumed work with George Martin on the
Tug of War
album. Another old friend joined the team at AIR. Paul had known Eric Stewart since the Beatles and Eric’s first band, Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, were playing the clubs. ‘It was always Paul who would come out and say “Hi, how are you doing? How’s it going?” So we sort of kept in touch in that way, just crossing paths on gigs and things like that, for a long, long time.’ In the 1970s Eric enjoyed success with 10cc, creating such distinctive hits as ‘I’m Not in Love’, which he co-wrote, sang and produced at his Lancashire studio, named Strawberry in honour of ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’.

Eric owned a second Strawberry studio not far from Paul’s estate in the south-east of England. Driving home from this studio one winter evening in 1979, Eric’s car came off the road and hit a tree. The musician was lying semi-comatose in Redhill General Hospital when Paul rang and asked the nurse to put the phone next to his friend’s ear.

She said, ‘There’s somebody on the phone to speak to you. It’s Paul. Paul wants to speak to you.’ I said, ‘Who? What?’ I was full of drugs, a drip, not really caring much about anything, but completely oblivious, amnesic. ‘It’s Paul McCartney. He wants to say hello to you.’ And she put the phone next to my ear, and I said, ‘Hello?’ He said, ‘Hi, Eric, it’s Paul.’ And I said, ‘How are you? How are you doing?’ He said, ‘Fuck me! How are
you
? What have you been doing? It’s Paul.’ I said, ‘Paul? Paul! Right, Paul. Great. How are you? Fantastic. Yeah, I’m in … I’m in a hospital. Oh my God, how are you?’ It just woke me up … I don’t think I’d have been a cabbage, but it certainly did take me out of whatever state I was in at that point in time.

In fact, Eric came to feel that his friend’s call helped save his life.

When Paul began recording
Tug of War
he invited Eric to sing and play guitar on the record, beginning a five-year collaboration. Eric celebrated his 36th birthday as they started the project and Paul got their working relationship off to a nice start by giving his friend a drum machine as a present. ‘He’s incredibly generous, always has been,’ says Eric, who went on to play on many of the tracks on the new LP, including the title song, a ballad with a metaphorical lyric about the struggle of life, lifted enormously by George Martin’s production, as was the whole album. The record purred like a Rolls Royce under the hands of the master after years when Paul had been turning out old bangers that coughed and spluttered.

Having started
Tug of War
in London, Paul transferred the work to Montserrat where George had built a studio complex on a farm overlooking the sea. Apart from the pleasant Caribbean climate, part of the attraction of AIR Montserrat was that everybody could be accommodated in private villas within a secure compound. Security seemed important after John’s death. Paul had worried in the 1960s about being shot by a maniac, when such fears had seemed like the paranoia of a young man who’d read too much about Lee Harvey Oswald. After all, who’d want to kill a pop star? When Mark Chapman murdered John Lennon, apparently to achieve fame, it became painfully obvious to PaulI and other leading rock stars that there was a real danger of being targeted by a copy-cat killer. (Bob Dylan gave a member of his road band a bulletproof vest in case he took a bullet for his boss on stage.) The fact that Ringo Starr was coming down to Montserrat to play on
Tug of War
made it doubly important to have good security at the studio, which was fenced and guarded, members of the press buzzing around the perimeter in hire cars trying to get pictures of the Beatles together. One day when Paul was driving his children around in a Mini Moke he had a run-in with two such photographers. ‘The man is definitely scared,’ commented the
Daily Express
snapper afterwards, claiming Paul rammed their car with his jeep.

Part of George Martin’s strategy for
Tug of War
was to surround Paul with new and more notable musicians than he had used in Wings, complementing a brilliant talent as a jeweller selects emeralds and rubies to set off a diamond to its best advantage. Although Denny Laine came to Montserrat, George Martin recruited new players to work alongside Paul, such as the bass guitarist Stanley Clarke and drummer Steve Gadd, two of the best session musicians in the business, as well as being close associates of Ringo’s.

John’s death cast a shadow over Paul and Ritchie’s reunion on Montserrat. ‘It was a little bit heavy,’ recalls Steve Gadd. ‘If they wanted to get back together again they couldn’t now.’ Paul had a song he’d originally intended to give Ritchie for his new album, titled ‘Take It Away’. Now the guys recorded the song as a
Tug of War
track. Ringo and Steve Gadd both played drums, helping to create a swinging hit sound. When Ritchie, Steve and Stanley left Montserrat, Carl Perkins flew in to play with Paul on the likeable ‘Get It’. Then a still bigger star arrived in the form of Stevie Wonder, who’d agreed to sing with Paul on a song McCartney had written inspired by the black and white keys on a piano keyboard, from which he’d created a musical metaphor for racial harmony. Many listeners find ‘Ebony and Ivory’ annoyingly simplistic, but it possesses the ineluctable power of McCartney’s best tunes and became a massive hit. As much a musical genius as McCartney, and even more of a perfectionist, Wonder admonished Paul during the recording for being out of time with his handclaps. His claps were not ‘in the pocket’. ‘And you better believe I got it in the pocket,’ recalled McCartney. ‘He gets results and he knows what he’s doing.’

McCartney and Wonder continued their collaboration in England, going into Eric Stewart’s Strawberry South Studios to work on a co-written song, ‘What’s That You’re Doing?’ During the session Paul fell into a lugubrious mood. Recalls Stewart:

He said, ‘I’ve just realised that John has gone. John’s gone. He’s dead and he’s not coming back.’ And he looked completely dismayed, like shocked at something that had just suddenly hit [him]. I said, ’Well, it’s been a few weeks now.’ He said, ‘I know, Eric, but I’ve just
realised
.’ It was one of those things maybe he wanted to say something to him, but it was too late to say it then. I think personally that Paul seriously missed John’s input, even when the songs were written by one or the other … You didn’t have John saying, ‘That’s not good enough,’ and I think on a lot of tracks Paul has lacked that brutal honesty.

Paul had written a new song with John in mind, ‘Here Today’, in which he sang about no longer holding back the tears. George Martin graced the number with a Beatlesque string arrangement.

A few weeks later, in April 1981, Ritchie married Barbara Bach at Marylebone Register Office, where Paul and Linda had married in 1969. The McCartneys were surprised to see that the registrar was the same Joe Jevans who’d married them. Anybody watching Paul and Linda at the ceremony would have to say they looked as happy together as they did on their wedding day 12 years before.

The wedding reception was at Rags, a West End nightclub, with George and Olivia Harrison joining the Starkeys and McCartneys in a Beatles reunion. Other guests included Neil Aspinall and their former press officer Derek Taylor. The musicians gathered around the piano, Paul leading the company in a singsong. Everybody was having a great time, the kids digging into the star-shaped wedding cake. Paul’s four children had Beatle cousins to run around with in Ringo’s kids, Zak, Jason and Lee, aged 15, 13 and 10; while George’s son, Dhani, was still only two.

Despite the warm family atmosphere at the reception, this proved a particularly challenging afternoon for Paul. Denny Laine chose the day to announce he was leaving Wings, which was not much of a surprise, but ended a chapter in Paul’s career on a not entirely happy note. Denny had been grumbling about tax problems that Paul’s office couldn’t seem to sort out for him, despite having offered to manage his affairs, and moaning about the tour revenue he’d lost because of Paul’s Japanese bust. He went off to concentrate on his solo career, which soon petered away into negligible record sales and melancholy guest appearances at Beatles conventions.

More upsetting than Denny’s departure, Paul heard some home truths about himself at Ritchie’s wedding reception. He said some disagreeable things, too. Talking with his fellow guests Paul gave the impression he was unhappy about a memoir his brother Mike had recently published, the book
Thank U Very Much
. It included a lot of family history and many personal photographs that Paul apparently felt would have been best kept private. Looking at Derek Taylor, Paul made a critical comment equating Mike’s new book with Derek trading on his friendship with the Beatles for a radio interview back in the Sixties. ‘It’s always a bit funny when someone you know well does something like that,’ Paul remarked sharply, censuring Derek and Mike. Then Neil told Paul that Aunt Mimi was upset Paul hadn’t called her since John’s death. It hadn’t crossed Paul’s mind to do so. He had only known Mimi briefly when he was a kid, and she hadn’t been particularly welcoming towards him. It surprised Paul that Mimi wanted to hear from him now.

Paul was also thrown into confusion by a conversation he had with Cilla Black, a friend since Cavern days who had gone on to have a successful career as a television personality. Paul told Cilla how much he liked her husband, Bobby Willis, who’d managed her since Brian died. ‘Bobby’s a nice bloke,’ he told Cilla.

‘Ah, but what do you really think, Paul? You don’t mean that, do you, you’re getting at something?’ replied Cilla quizzically. It was as if everybody believed Paul spoke with forked tongue.

The weirdest conversation of the day took place in the gents’ toilet at Rags, when Paul found himself standing at the urinals next to Ritchie himself.

He said there were two times in his life in which I had done him in. Then he said that he’d done himself in
three
times. I happened to be spitting something out, and by chance the spit fell on his jacket. I said, ‘There you go, now I’ve done you three times. We’re equal.’ I laughed it off. It was affectionate. It wasn’t a row … But
now
, I keep thinking all the time, what are the two times that Ringo thinks I put him down …?

Paul asked this question in a peevish telephone call to the writer Hunter Davies shortly after Ritchie’s wedding reception. He also complained to Davies about Philip Norman’s new book,
Shout!
, a lively history of the Beatles which left the reader with the impression that Paul was a shallow young man compared to the more substantial figure of Lennon. This was all part of the problem of how the public perceived Paul
vis-à-vis
John. Paul reminded Hunter grumpily that John had hurt his feelings many times, noting that Lennon could be a ‘manoeuvring swine, which no one seemed to realise. Now, since his death, he’s become Martin Luther Lennon.’ When Hunter put these injudicious comments into print, they served to do Paul’s image further damage. The mainstream press in Britain still liked Macca - they always would - but there was a sizeable minority of the nation’s media and public that had an increasingly low opinion of Paul.

There was more bad publicity for the star that summer when Angie McCartney sold the story of her relationship with her stepson to the
Sun
- a three-part serial headlined ‘The mean side of Paul McCartney’. Angie described how she tried to make a living as a theatrical agent after Jim died, but soon got into debt. When she wrote to Paul to say she would have to sell her home in Gayton and her possessions to clear the debts, he showed little sympathy, and when she tried to get him involved in a charity concert she was promoting in 1978 they had a heck of a row, Paul accusing her of using his name and interfering in his career, a conversation that ended with Angie putting the phone down on him. As she sank deeper into financial difficulties there were further unpleasant conversations with Paul, who advised Angie, then almost 50, to pull herself together and make a fresh start. ‘I was tempted to remind Paul that Jim McCartney had told me in the past that Ruth and I would be looked after for the rest of our lives.’ When Angie sold Paul’s birth certificate to a Beatles collector some years later, Paul washed his hands of his stepmother. ‘I consider that she married my dad for money. There are some people you just don’t bother with,’ he said coldly.