Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney (55 page)

BACK IN THE PICTURE

Paul turned 40 in June 1982 and made some changes to his life. To help stave off middle-age spread, exacerbated by Linda’s cooking, he took to jogging around the country lanes in Sussex, and he quit smoking cigarettes (but not dope). He also took up painting. As a boy, Paul showed considerable artistic talent, winning an art prize at school. The only A-level he received was for art. When John Lennon entered his life, and especially when John’s artist friend Stuart Sutcliffe joined the Beatles, Paul’s artistic ambitions were overshadowed. Thereafter his talent was mostly expressed in sketching ideas for stage suits and album covers, and doodling on postcards. Now he bought canvases, paint and brushes and turned one of the old farmhouses on his Sussex estate into an art studio, spending hours creating large colourful abstract pictures that gave him a sense of fulfilment and helped him relax. ‘I discovered that I really enjoyed it … what painting gives me is very similar to what music gives me.’

Now he’d reached middle life, Paul also determined to make the movies he’d been talking about for years, commissioning his animator friend Geoff Dunbar to go ahead with a pilot for the
Rupert the Bear
movie, the pilot based on a 1958 story in which Rupert visits a grotto inhabited by frogs.
Rupert and the Frog Song
would start with a scene showing Rupert at home with his mother and father in what Dunbar - mindful of Paul’s sentimental feelings about his childhood - drew as a cosy post-war domestic setting, reminiscent of Alfred Bestall’s illustrations; ‘there is a thing of Mum being this central figure,’ says Geoff, who was similarly sentimental. For the underwater sequence Dunbar took additional inspiration from a series of Matisse paper cuts Paul and Linda were in the process of buying.

Rupert and the Frog Song
would take two years to make, and would feature a new song, ‘We All Stand Together’, which Paul had already recorded with George Martin. Apart from authorising the money for the film, which he was financing entirely, the project didn’t require much of Paul’s time. So while Geoff got on with the slow work of animation, Paul pursued his other movie-making ambition: that of bringing a live action musical adventure to the screen, the project which had begun life as Willy Russell’s
Band on the Run
.

The last Russell had heard from Paul on the subject of the film was just before the star went on his ill-fated trip to Japan in 1980: he assured the playwright that they’d make their picture when he got back. After the drug bust Paul fell silent. ‘Occasionally Linda would ring and we’d have a blather and she’d say, “Oh God, I wish he’d do that movie,”’ says Russell. ‘Next thing we heard he was making a movie called
Give My Regards to Broad Street
.’ This was an almost totally different film, borrowing only one or two ideas from Russell’s script. Part of the thinking was that Paul would, for the first time, try serious acting, in the sense of being a leading man. One of the first people he consulted was David Puttnam, now Britain’s leading film producer, having enjoyed success with
Midnight Express
(1978) and
Chariots of Fire
(1981), for which he collected the Oscar for Best Picture. Like many of Paul’s acquaintances, Puttnam was used to McCartney tapping him for advice. Linda would typically make such calls on Paul’s behalf, to the point where David’s wife would groan when Linda called. As the film-maker, ennobled in 1997 as Lord Puttnam, recalls: ‘She said to me one day, “Why don’t you pick up the phone and say, ‘Yes, Linda what do you want?’”’ So it was no surprise when the McCartneys called for advice on making their new movie.

Paul explained his vision for
Give My Regards to Broad Street
to Puttnam over supper with their wives at the Savoy Grill. The film was to be a ‘musical fantasy drama in the classical [sic] tradition of
The Wizard of Oz
’, the title being Paul’s laboured pun on the George M. Cohan song ‘Give My Regards to Broadway’ and the fact that the dénouement would be shot at Broad Street train station in the City of London.
⁵²
The plot - completely different to Willy Russell’s script - had come to Paul while sitting in his chauffeur-driven car in a London traffic jam: what would happen if the master tapes of his new album were stolen? He had written the screenplay himself, and what he had written bore little relation to a professional script; it was too short, just 22 pages, and brief though it was the script was fatally flawed, as Puttnam saw from the first page:

The script started with Paul in the back of a Rolls Royce complaining bitterly about the emptiness of his life. I said, ‘Look, let me tell you on page one you’ve already got a problem. People see you, see a Roller, and you’re
moaning
? … They might eventually, by the end of the film, come to understand some of the pressures and problems you are under. Not on reel one! They’re going to hate you. You’ve got everything they want, and you’re moaning about it.’

Paul disagreed and, worryingly, he seriously underestimated how much time this project would take.

My impression was he thought it was something he could do in three months, a bit like an album. I remember saying to him, ‘This is not an album. This is a
massive
commitment. Time, effort, energy and maybe money.’ So, yes, I did forewarn him.

As in so many aspects of his career, having flirted with working with professionals, Paul decided to do everything himself, or as much as he could, asking Puttnam to recommend a director who’d be a cinema-graphic amanuensis, enabling him to make his own film. This was just like the approach he had taken in the Sixties with Peter Theobald on
Magical Mystery Tour
. ‘He was asking me to introduce him to a director who would basically be prepared to do what he, Paul, wanted to do,’ says Lord Puttnam, who suggested Peter Webb, a 40-year-old photographer who ran an advertising agency. Webb had made a series of popular adverts for John Smith beer and won a BAFTA for a short film. He was ambitious to get into movies, though Webb’s memory of his early meetings with Paul is that the star didn’t say he wanted to make a movie at first, rather a ‘one-hour TV special based on
Tug of War
’. Paul put up the equivalent of half a million dollars of his own money and, with this financing, Webb started shooting sequences, including Paul driving through London at night.

Along with Paul’s 22-page outline there was a note that the project would feature music. Peter Webb called Stephen Shrimpton and asked what music this would be. ‘Anything you want, mate,’ replied Paul’s Aussie manager. So they decided to film Paul singing a version of ‘Eleanor Rigby’, while dressed in the style of a Victorian costume drama for reasons unclear. When Lee Eastman saw how much money his son-in-law was spending he decided Paul needed a major studio behind him. Footage was shown to the American producer Harvey Weinstein, whom Paul had known for some years, with the result that 20th Century Fox bought into a ‘Hollywood musical with happy ending’. Peter Webb claims he only discovered he was shooting such a picture when he came home from work one day, around Christmas 1982, to be told by his babysitter that Paul had called and left a message that he and Peter were ‘going to the Fox’. The babysitter assumed this was the name of a pub.

Suddenly, Webb found himself nominally the director of a $ 6.8m (£4.4m) Hollywood movie, starring Paul McCartney. ‘I think he got over-excited, ’ says Webb. ‘Once he was in a movie with a Hollywood studio, then he was a Hollywood movie star.’ So, apparently, was Mrs McCartney, though what Linda was doing in the picture, other than filling the role she did in Paul’s daily life, Peter never understood. Likewise, parts were found for other members of the McCartney circle: studio engineer Geoff Emerick, roadie John Hammel, George Martin, Ritchie Starkey and Eric Stewart were all called upon to play themselves. Ritchie’s wife Barbara came along for the ride. A professional actress, Barbara played a press photographer, a character so poorly realised as to be risible. Having acted in a flick or two himself, her husband noticed something elementary was missing from the production. ‘Ringo came up to me once,’ recalls Peter Webb. ‘He said, “So where is the bloody script?”’ There wasn’t one.

As the shooting progressed, a cast of professional actors were also hired, including Bryan Brown, who played a character obviously based on Paul’s Australian manager; Tracey Ullman played the girlfriend of a roadie who disappears with Paul’s master tape, the McGuffin around which the action revolved; while the elderly Sir Ralph Richardson concluded his illustrious career with an absurd cameo as a publican. Sir Ralph died shortly thereafter. ‘I hope it wasn’t his last film because it was my film,’ muses Webb.

The warning signs that should have prevented the project going further were ignored because Paul McCartney was involved. ‘The Three Mile Island or the Chernobyl safety net to prevent a film going into production was side-stepped,’ says Webb, comparing his picture tellingly to the worst nuclear disasters in peace-time history. ‘You must have a screenplay.’ They didn’t. ‘It must be read by the cast.’ It wasn’t. Having fallen flat on his face with
Magical Mystery Tour
, Paul was heading for another cinematic pratfall.

21

TRIVIAL PURSUITS

THAT EXTRA 15 PER CENT

The new year started badly for Paul when, on 28 January 1983, the
Sun
splashed the story of a Liverpool typist who claimed the former Beatle was the father of her son. This was ancient history as far as Paul was concerned, dating back to 1964 when Brian Epstein paid off the girl in advance of the Beatles returning to Liverpool for the première of
A Hard Day’s Night
, though Paul never admitted paternity. The press had known about the story at the time, but hadn’t touched it for want of corroboration. Eighteen years later, the
Sun
ran with the tale thanks to one of Paul’s former employees, Peter Brown, who revealed it in his new memoir,
The Love You Make
.

Although Brown cloaked the girl in the anonymity of a false name, journalists soon found the real people concerned. The mother was now a married woman of 37 named Anita Howarth; her son, Philip, was about to turn 19. Both still lived on Merseyside. ‘I would have given anything in the world for this to have stayed a secret,’ Anita was quoted as telling reporters, adding that she never wanted to embarrass Paul and had hoped the story wouldn’t come out for the sake of her son, though she had told Philip ‘the truth about his father’, mother and son both giving journalists the impression they considered Paul to be the father. The story was common knowledge among their friends and neighbours, many of whom believed it, too. Anita and Philip said they didn’t want any money from Paul, who made no comment. Privately, however, he and Linda were furious at Peter Brown. When Brown sent them a copy of his book they burnt it ritually, Linda taking photographs as it went up in flames.

At the same time Paul’s other supposed love-child, the German Bettina Hübers, continued to pursue her paternity claim. Now 20, Bettina came before a judge in Berlin to plead her case, letting it be known to reporters that she intended to visit London to record a song entitled ‘Let it Be Me’. Bettina had also agreed to pose for a nude photo shoot for
High Society
magazine. Her lawyers apparently thought she was entitled to a pay-off of £1.75 million ($ 2.6m), a serious enough claim for Paul and Bettina to both undergo blood tests, Paul in London, Bettina in Berlin. The results cleared McCartney of being the father, but Bettina and her mother were not satisfied. They asserted that the test had been fixed - believing Paul had used a stand-in - and requested a second test, which the German judge ordered, telling Paul to pay Bettina £185 a month maintenance ($ 283) until the matter was resolved.

This unseemly court battle came as Paul lost a 14-year legal battle for additional back royalties from Northern Songs, rejected at London’s High Court in February 1983. On top of which the
Sunday People
published an exclusive look ‘Inside the Strange World of Paul McCartney’, based on interviews with Jo Jo Laine, who had never got on with the McCartneys. Jo Jo made much of the couple’s rustic domestic life, described Linda’s love of dope, and Paul’s dependence on his wife. ‘He enjoys Big Mamma Linda running the show.’ These were not particularly revelatory or hurtful claims, but Paul probably saw such tales as a betrayal and an intrusion into his privacy. In later life Jo Jo lived in a flat just around the corner from Paul’s London home in St John’s Wood and, according to her son Boston, Paul blanked his mother when he saw her. Where Paul’s private life started and ended was hard to say, for a man who included his family in his public life, working with Linda and often posing with the kids for photos, as well as talking in interviews about the phases the children were going though, such as Heather’s punk period, which one doubts Heather thanked him for. While inviting the press into his life in this way, Paul also wanted to deny the media access to his family when he wasn’t in the mood for publicity.

It was this craving for time away from public scrutiny that led Paul and Linda to buy another holiday home in 1983, their most remote and private getaway. This time they went to Arizona, where Linda had lived with her first husband Mel See. Marriage to Mel had been a failure, but it had left Linda with a love of the desert country around Tucson, where she and Mel had lived briefly, and which Mel had returned to since his African sojourn. After a period when the McCartneys had little to do with Mel, they re-established friendly contact for Heather’s sake, and started to visit Tucson regularly, staying initially at the Tanque Verde guest ranch, which lies 45 minutes east of Tucson in a desert landscape studded with cacti. This area is named after the Tanque Verde wash, a small river that floods during the summer monsoons, when the afternoon sky turns black and crackles with electrical storms, drying to a trickle in the remaining months of the year. Just across the wash from the guest ranch stood an isolated tin-roof house used by a Tucson banker as his weekender. The McCartneys bought the house, and the surrounding 107 acres, having the buildings painted pink and turquoise, and installing a heart-shaped swimming pool in the yard. Like their country retreats in England and Scotland, the ranch was a modest, even Spartan abode, but one off the beaten track in an area of great natural beauty.

As in Scotland and Sussex, the McCartneys conducted themselves in a friendly, low-key manner in Arizona, pottering around in an old car, Paul often neglecting to shave. ‘You can’t recognise him if he’s unshaven,’ notes neighbour Bob Bass. ‘When he’s on camera he puts on a face like he’s Paul! But if he looks normal, you’d never even recognise him.’ The McCartneys continued their habit of making friends of their neighbours and buying adjacent plots of land as they came on the market, gradually extending their Arizona property up to the top of the nearby ridge, where an abandoned school house became a special hideaway for Paul and Linda, who’d ride up there together like a couple of cowboys. Eventually the McCartneys came to own 1,000 desert acres, so much land that one elderly neighbour, whom the star did not bother to befriend, found himself marooned. ‘We’re enclosed here by Paul McCartney,’ notes retired forester Eldon Erwin, whose only access to his home became a road across Paul’s land. Mr Erwin discovered he was no longer at liberty to hike up to the old school house on the ridge for recreation as he once did. Paul’s caretakers told the old man the boss had said, ‘
nobody
goes up there’.

The Arizona ranch cost approximately $100,000 (£65,359), a price Paul could well afford. That autumn his duet with Michael Jackson, ‘Say Say Say’, went to number one in the United States, number two at home, earning a rich man more money. The album
Pipes of Peace
got no higher than fourth place in UK album charts, peaking at 15 in the US, which was slightly disappointing, considering the quality of the work. Made side by side with
Tug of War
, with the help of George Martin, the two albums share a sophisticated, mature sound, abounding with wellcrafted tunes that came close to the high quality Paul achieved with the Beatles. Yet
Tug of War
and
Pipes of Peace
must also be marked down for a surfeit of love ballads with lamentable lyrics. ‘I always think I am not that good with words,’ Paul admitted in an interview around this time, and who would doubt him with rhymes like this:

I know I was a crazy fool
For treating you the way I did
But something took hold of me
and I acted like a dustbin lid

(‘The Other Me’)

One wonders why Paul didn’t abandon this, and similar weak songs, or make the effort to rework them - a thought that has troubled his friends. Film-maker David Puttnam asks whether there may be a fundamental shortcoming in Paul as an artist.

I feel about Paul the way I feel about Ridley Scott: both men of immense, immense, immense talent who on their death bed are likely to look back on their career with some satisfaction, but with some dissatisfaction, in that I’m not sure that either of them - Ridley and Paul, both very wealthy and everything - I’m not sure either of them have absolutely delivered what was in them.

Lord Puttnam believes that, in the years since the Beatles, Paul has not been able to summon the crucial extra effort - he quantifies this as an additional 15 per cent - required to transform good work into something exceptional.

Was it that it was too hard, was it that it was too challenging? Or was it that he was a reasonably contented guy and he didn’t think it was worth putting himself through that amount of pain? But the difference between good and great is that last 15 per cent, and the really great artists aren’t artists who have one bright, brilliant moment in their lives.

In Lord Puttnam’s film analogy, Ridley Scott made at least one classic,
Blade Runner
, but directors like Akira Kurosawa are a class apart because they found it within themselves to make many important films over a long period.

Frank Capra is more like Paul - he didn’t ever really make a decent film by the time he reached 40, [and] if he’s the artist I think he is, if he’s as sensitive as I think he is, [Paul] will be absolutely aware [of this] and he will be troubled by the question. He won’t have any answer for it.

THE WORST MUSICAL EVER MADE?

The year George Orwell chose for his dystopian prophecy started well for Paul McCartney, then turned sour. After ringing in 1984 on Merseyside, Paul and Linda flew to Barbados for some winter sunshine, renting a beach house from friends in the Guinness family. Eric and Gloria Stewart were staying in a nearby house, so they spent time with the McCartneys. Paul received good news from home when he was informed that the Berlin judge had thrown out Bettina Hübers’ paternity claim, after Paul had passed both blood tests. He was
not
the father after all. Paul was magnanimous in victory, remarkably so considering how bothersome Bettina and her mother had been over the years, paying not only his own legal costs but also their £60,000 costs ($91,800), on the basis that mother and daughter would be ruined financially otherwise, and hoping they would now have the good grace to fall silent. On the contrary, Bettina took the view that Paul’s generosity proved his guilt, and continued to assert that he was her dad. ‘McCartney paid for everything, the tests, [his] legal costs, also my legal costs. No person does such a thing out of kindness,’ protests the woman who continues to argue to this day that Paul tricked the doctors.

A few nights after hearing he’d won the German paternity case, Paul and Linda were sitting on the veranda of their rented beach house in Barbados, chatting with Eric and Gloria Stewart, when they heard a tap at the door. Linda went to see who it was. ‘Christ, it’s the police!’ she exclaimed. There was marijuana on the coffee table. ‘My wife grabbed the bag, stuffed it up her skirt,’ recalls Eric. Paul asked Gloria to give him the bag back, not wanting her to get into trouble for his sake. Then the police came in. ‘They said, “We believe you have some marijuana here.” Paul said, “Yeah, I’m having a smoke. I buy it on the beach here. What are you talking about? You must know about this.”’ He showed the police the grass, as a result of which the McCartneys were taken to the police station. It transpired that their butler had informed on them. When Paul and Linda were released on bail, they didn’t feel comfortable returning to the Guinness villa, taking sanctuary instead with the Stewarts. The following Monday, Paul and Linda appeared before a magistrate in Holetown, pleaded guilty to possession, and were fined a nominal $100 each. But Paul was furious: furious at the butler for going to the police in the first place, and angry with the police for busting him for something sold openly on the island, complaining to his friends that he and Linda had become targets for harassment. ‘We’re going back. This holiday is over,’ he told Eric, booking the next flight to London.

The McCartneys arrived at Heathrow on Tuesday 17 January 1984, disembarking to go through customs before boarding a second, private plane. In the process, an item of luggage was held back. Linda was waiting for it on their private jet when a customs official came aboard.

‘Have you found my luggage?’ she asked.

‘Yes, and that’s not all we found,’ came the reply. Linda was under arrest for bringing cannabis into the UK.

Despite what had happened in Barbados, Linda had carelessly brought some grass back home, a tiny amount, less than 0.2 of an ounce, but enough to be charged. The following week Linda appeared before magistrates in Uxbridge to plead guilty to importing cannabis. It was explained in court that Linda assumed the Barbadian police cleaned out her stash when they searched her belongings, and didn’t realise she had a scraping of weed left in her bag. She accepted a £75 fine ($114), telling the press: ‘I am glad it is all over with. It is much ado about nothing … It is horrible to feel like a criminal when you know you are not.’ Be that as it may, the McCartneys had now been in trouble for drugs on six occasions in six countries, a record that casts doubt on their judgement and the example set to their children. Paul admitted this was a concern, saying he and Lin never smoked dope in front of the kids, or took hard drugs like heroin or cocaine,
⁵³
and that they had explained to the children their view that marijuana was less harmful than alcohol. British tabloid newspapers, staffed as they then were by journalists who drank heavily but took a moralistic view of other drugs, mocked the McCartneys with headlines such as THE PIPES OF POT (a pun on Paul’s new album
Pipes of Peace
). Then, much more damaging allegations were made by their old friend Denny Laine.