Paul McCartney (41 page)

In their early days, he could sometimes treat her with a macho roughness more suited to Merseyside dance-halls: ‘trying to beat her down’ was his own candid–but slightly troubling–term for it in one of the few joint interviews they ever gave. Despite her air of almost child-like innocence, Jane was not one to be beaten down. The occasional sour note in Paul’s music reflected rows in which he himself had ended up feeling out-manoeuvred and hard-done-by: ‘The day breaks, your mind aches’ in ‘For No One’, or the almost-furious ‘I’m looking through you–but you’re nowhere!’

Over time, they had come to lead almost separate lives, Paul with his musician and underground friends, Jane with her theatrical ones. She stood firm in her refusal to take drugs–even though many in her own profession now did–and was scathing in her disapproval of those who fostered Paul’s various habits, and of their adverse effects on him.

He hadn’t wanted her to join the Bristol Old Vic theatre company and her decision to put this major career step above his wishes created a distance more than merely geographical. In Bristol for long periods during play-runs, Jane had been seeing someone else and word had got back to Paul. Thus the world’s most adored young man had to deal with his first-ever dose of rejection.

Yet breaking up was a prospect from which both of them shrank. Paul was still close to Jane’s family, especially her mother, and had embarked on an already fruitful working relationship with her brother Peter, Apple Records’ Head of A&R. All of Paul’s family adored Jane, Jim McCartney especially. After some initial unease, Jim now regularly played host at ‘Rembrandt’ to Dr Richard Asher, in whom he discovered a fellow dictionary addict. ‘They’d sit in the garden together, doing crosswords,’ Paul’s stepsister, Ruth McCartney, remembers.

There was also the wider reaction to be considered. The announcement of Paul’s engagement at Christmas, when the Queen traditionally broadcasts to the nation, had an inescapable symbolism. And indeed, the betrothal of so adored a young prince to so eminently suitable a consort had sent a wave of goodwill through Britain and around the world, wiping out unfortunate recent memories of LSD and unmagical mystery tours. PR of that near-royal quality was not to be lightly cast aside.

So, rather like a dutiful young royal couple, he and Jane put on a public show of unity and affection while privately feeling growing coldness and estrangement. Ostensibly still sharing the same roof, they lived mostly apart, getting together only when neither had anything else in the diary, as a rule for holidays on the ski-slopes or in the sun.

On significant Beatle occasions, Jane always would be seen at Paul’s side, as loyally and unassertively as Cynthia was at John’s, Pattie was at George’s and Maureen at Ringo’s. Despite her hatred of drugs, she had joined Magic Alex’s pot-wreathed shopping-expedition for Greek islands; she had been with Paul for the first encounter with the Maharishi at the London Hilton, with him at Bangor when news of Brian’s death came through and for all nine weeks of meditating in the Himalayas. The sharpest-eyed of the Beatle media pack never suspected anything amiss between them.

Jane had always had to live with the knowledge that half the young, and not so young, women in the world wanted to sleep with Paul and that for him accepting the sexual opportunities which endlessly came his way counted as only a step beyond signing an autograph. What she didn’t know, and never would, was that for almost the whole time they’d lived together at Cavendish he was having a parallel affair with an actress and model named Maggie McGivern.

In 1966, 20-year-old Maggie had been hired by John Dunbar and Marianne Faithfull as a nanny for their six-month-old son, Nicholas. ‘One day, John was out, Marianne was entertaining some of her girlfriends and I was cooking a casserole for their lunch,’ she recalls. ‘The front-door buzzer went and a voice said, “It’s Paul McCartney to see John.” John wasn’t there but–who can blame me?–I still said, “Come up.”

‘Marianne never showed and while her friends stayed in the sitting-room, Paul and I sat at the kitchen table, ate the casserole and talked. It felt completely comfortable, as if we’d known each other all our lives. At that time, I was in a relationship I wanted to get out of, so I told Paul about that, and from what he said I gathered he was in a similar situation.’

Thereafter, he took to visiting the Dunbars’ rather more often, and talking to their beautiful, unintimidated young nanny as much as to them. Then he started calling when they were out and Maggie was alone in the flat with Nicholas. ‘He’d always phone up first, to make sure no one else was there,’ she remembers. ‘He’d sit and talk to me while I got on with looking after Nicholas. He seemed to enjoy just watching that.’

They spent their first night together, chastely, at the flat while John and Marianne were away in Paris. ‘Before Paul arrived, I’d smoked some pot, which had a really bad effect on me. All sorts of traumatic memories were going through my mind, and I was crying and jumping around. I remember Paul holding me, saying, “I gotta go, I gotta go…” When I woke the next morning, I felt perfectly fine again. I turned round and there he was, lying beside me.’

The affair remained totally secret, even from her employers. Paul warned her especially not to confide in the gossipy, mischievous Marianne. ‘I realised how insecure he was–and not just about his private life getting into the papers. As loved as he was by everyone, he was still always looking for approval. That went for his music as well, even though he’d been told for years how brilliant it was. I remember him playing me some of the tracks from the Revolver album and being really anxious… asking, “Do you think it’s OK?”’

After Maggie left the Dunbars’ employment to do film-extra and modelling work, more elaborate measures had to be taken to preserve their cover. They would arrange to meet at furniture auctions in Chelsea or Fulham, pretending to bump into each other accidentally at the presale viewing. ‘I often had to go away on jobs, and Paul would lose sight of me for a week or so. I used to wonder if I’d hear from him again… but he always sent Neil Aspinall out to find me.’

Paul allowed them to be seen together only very occasionally, when no telltale photographers or fans would be around. ‘We once went out for a drive in the country in his Aston Martin. Ike and Tina Turner’s “River Deep, Mountain High” was blasting out of the speakers, and it gave him the idea for “Good Day Sunshine”. He started beating out the rhythm on the dashboard. He was like a sponge. Whatever was going on around him, he’d soak up and turn into a song.’

Though Maggie had already tried pot, and would later experiment with LSD, she never took drugs with Paul. ‘I remember him showing me what looked like an ordinary tin of Benson & Hedges tipped [cigarettes] but with marijuana in them instead of tobacco. He carried them around in his pocket, not seeming at all scared of being busted. The feeling in those days was that because of what they were doing for British exports, the Beatles were untouchable.’

Paul never tried to hide her existence from the other Beatles or from Brian Epstein–another mark of their closeness at the end of Brian’s life. Her most ambitious outing with him was a trip to Paris in company with John and Brian; each travelled separately, meeting up at the Plaza Athénée hotel. ‘We all shared a suite and when Brian came in, he handed me a beautiful bouquet of red roses. “I like ’er,” John kept telling Paul. As we walked along Avenue Montaigne, I was getting a lot of looks from Frenchmen, so John made me go in front so that the two of them wouldn’t be noticed.’

As time passed, Paul grew more relaxed about being seen with Maggie. He even sent her an invitation to travel on the Magical Mystery Tour bus, but she was abroad at the time. A few weeks later, as he and the other Beatles watched the first rough cut in a Soho editing-suite, Maggie sat unobtrusively in a corner, doing a crossword puzzle.

To avoid the fans outside, they had to leave by a back door; John, George and Ringo bolting in one direction, Paul and Maggie in the other. ‘We managed to stop a cab but as we got in, one of the fans managed to slip in as well. She was sitting there between us, looking almost as shocked as we were. Paul stopped the cab and told her very politely that she’d have to get out. He was always very nice to the girls who pursued him, but very firm.’

She even spent the occasional night at Cavendish, once cooking breakfast for Paul and his brother, Michael, who by then was in on the secret. Paul’s live-in domestic couple, the Kellys, had left his employment in January 1967, after Mrs Kelly talked out of turn to an Australian newspaper, though he still hand-wrote her a reference calling her ‘efficient and trustworthy’. After trying another couple, the Millses, he found Rose Martin (no relation to George), an unflappable, unshockable woman who would serve him with irreproachable loyalty and discretion for many years to come. However, Rose was fiercely loyal to Jane, so treated Maggie with barely restrained hostility.

On one visit, Paul took her into the back garden to show her his meditation chapel. Maggie, it so happened, had learned Transcendental Meditation from a friend some time before the Maharishi taught it to the Beatles. But the technology that assisted Paul’s meditations came as a shock. ‘We were standing there, looking at the stars–then he touched a switch and the whole floor started to rise.’

Latterly, while still seeing Maggie McGivern, he’d begun another affair which, likewise, never got back to Jane. But in contrast to the discretion he exercised with Maggie, all his new colleagues and employees at Apple knew of his involvement with Francie Schwartz.

Francie was a 24-year-old New Yorker, striking rather than pretty, with a brisk manner and a head of tight black corkscrew curls. She had come over to London in April 1968, and–following the growing trend–made her way straight to Apple’s new offices in Wigmore Street. An aspiring film-maker, she hoped to pitch a script about a New York street entertainer she believed would make a perfect role for Paul.

At first, she was just one of the crowd haunting Apple’s reception area in hopes of a Beatle cash jackpot. Then one day, Paul walked by and noticed her. Taking her into a side room, he began questioning her about herself and her aims in life, then suggested a stroll along Wigmore Street. ‘He always did like Jewish girls from New York,’ says Barry Miles. ‘And always would…’ Francie never got to pitch her script idea but, instead, was offered a job in Derek Taylor’s press office.

At the end of April, Paul went back to Scotland with Jane, hoping to recapture the feeling that had made him propose four months earlier. But High Park Farm failed to exert its usual spell, and on his return to London he took up with Francie Schwartz.

On 11 May, he and John flew to New York to launch Apple Corps in the US, accompanied by Mal and Neil, Derek Taylor and Magic Alex Mardas. Unlike their first arrival in 1964, they landed at JFK Airport to be greeted by only a token 200–300 fans; Paul stayed at the apartment of Brian’s old associate, Nat Weiss, the others at an un-beleaguered St Regis hotel.

During the four-day visit, they held a business meeting with Apple Records’ new head, Ron Kass, sailing round New York harbour aboard a Chinese junk, and made a wisecracking TV appearance with the actress Tallulah Bankhead on Johnny Carson’s Tonight show. Most of the media interviews took place at the St Regis but on the final day there was a press conference at a different hotel, the Americana. The massed photographers included a rangy young woman with unkempt blonde hair and clothes of studied unfashionability, whom Paul had last seen at the Sgt. Pepper photo-shoot in London almost a year previously: Linda Eastman.

The American media were most keen to hear about the Beatles’ recent Indian pilgrimage, and by what rope-trick yesterday’s converts to Transcendental Meditation had become today’s would-be business tycoons. Despite himself having no quarrel with the Maharishi, Paul loyally echoed John’s line that they’d simply been hoodwinked. ‘We made a mistake. We thought there was more to him than there was. He’s human. We thought at first that he wasn’t.’

Surprisingly, most of the Apple sales-talk came from John. ‘We’re in the happy position of not really needing any more money,’ he began–a statement inconceivable from any modern rock star, and one that would soon come back to haunt him. ‘So for the first time the bosses aren’t in it for the profit. We’ve already bought all our dreams, so now we want to share that possibility with others.’

Paul’s strangely subdued air, he later said, came from a drugs-hangover and an atypical dose of stage-fright. For the first time in years of plumbing uncharted waters, he felt the Beatles were getting out of their depth. ‘We were talking to media like Forbes magazine and they were interviewing us as a serious economic force, which we weren’t. We hadn’t done any of the business planning… we were just goofing off and having fun.’

At a time when headlines in America were consistently grim–race riots, student revolt against the Vietnam War, Dr Martin Luther King assassinated just a month previously, Bobby Kennedy to suffer the same fate a month later–he hoped Apple’s new approach to business would at least strike a positive note, maybe even spread a little happiness. Was he himself happy, someone asked. The unexpected question received a totally unexpected downbeat answer: ‘Not completely happy, no. I’d be a fool to say I was.’

Since he’d last seen Linda Eastman, her photojournalistic career had continued to flourish; that very week, she’d become the first woman to shoot a Rolling Stone magazine cover with her portrait of Eric Clapton. She was in her usual centre-sightline position and after the press conference she and Paul picked up the conversation they’d begun 11 months earlier next to the fireplace at Brian Epstein’s house. When Neil signalled it was time to leave, Paul asked for her phone number. Having nothing else to hand, she scribbled it on the back of a blank cheque.

He phoned her later to say he wanted to see her but hadn’t a free moment before his return to London the following day. So as not to miss her altogether, he asked her to ride with him in the limo to JFK Airport, a journey that could take up to two hours if the traffic was bad.