Tug Of
War
Paul
McCartney wants to lay its demons to rest.
“There
are so many memories that come flooding in," Paul McCartney says. “It's like
a psycho session the minute I get on this stuff. It's like I'm on a couch and
I'm just trying to purge it all"
The
memories are of the Beatles, of course, and the emotions that need purging are
the competing guilt and pride the great songwriter feels about his
collaborations - personal and musical with john Lennon.
“It would just be a maniac," McCartney says of Lennon's death. "It
wouldn't be a car accident. I kind of expected to just say, ‘He was a saint, he
was always a saint, and I loved him as a saint.’ But that would be a lie. He
was one great guy, but part of his greatness was that he wasn't a saint. He was
pretty sacrilegious and pretty up front about it; that was half the fun."
The
room in which McCartney spins his “psycho session" is almost immeasurably
tasteful.
It is on the second floor of the London building from which he directs his
activities. The windows overlook the neatly trimmed lawn of Soho
Square, filled this afternoon with office workers and winos. There is a forest
of deco mahogany woodwork, a de Kooning on the wall,
and a Wurlitzer jukebox of archetypal splendor.
Wearing
lawn moccasins, yellow socks and a blue and white striped shirt and trousers,
McCartney looks in good shape. A week previously I had watched him interviewed
for a BBC documentary, his face had seemed pudgy and
drawn, attracting your attention to the gray hair that has irrevocably
transformed the appearance of the famous moptop.
Perhaps on that day, however, he was simply worn out; when you reach
forty-four, lack of sleep can wreak a toll on your appearance.
Today,
even though he has been in the studio until three in the morning, remixing the
next single off the new Press To Play album, he looks to have lost ten years;
you are struck by how clear his skin is, and how alert his eyes.
He seems
sensitive to the manner in which some aspects of his good nature are seen now
almost as clichés. When the phone rings incessantly in the room (the outside
line to the main switchboard having somehow become diverted to it) he
graciously asks an assistant to get the telephone company to fix it. “Very
diplomatically done," I comment, without any irony. But I have failed to
recall how Paul's legendary "diplomacy" was perceived by John Lennon
as evidence of his “smarmy” nature. Although he is quite clearly only being
considerate to the assistant, my throwaway compliment causes him to visibly
tense.
Part of
McCartney's agility as a communicator has frequently been the paradoxical
mastery of revealing nothing whatsoever of himself to journalists. This was
particularly notable during the interviews he gave for Give My Regards To Broad
Street, an almost unprecedented barrage of publicity in which it seemed that
the more people he spoke to, the less he actually said. But perhaps this was
not unconnected with a comprehension of the transparent insubstantiality of the
work. "Broad Street?" he says now. "You don't stop things just
because they're not good: if you've done a bit of work you put it out: I mean,
if Picasso painted a thing..."
Today,
however, Paul McCartney is immensely forthcoming. Possibly this in turn is a
reflection of the confidence he feels in his new LP, a work that stands almost
on a par with Band On The Run, his finest solo record, and which in many ways
seems to have a direct conduit to post-Sgt Pepper Beatles albums.
The
principle strength of the new LP is the quality of the songs, six of which
McCartney co-wrote with Eric Stewart, the writer of such I0cc standards as
"I'm Not In Love," a song that is almost a
parody of a McCartney love ballad. ("It's quite close to my style, that.
In fact, I could say it's a McCartney rip-off, but quite close to my style is a
more diplomatic way of putting it. ") The numbers were written, he says,
in the manner in which he would work with john Lennon, sitting side-by-side,
watching each other search for appropriate chords.
The
interview has a relaxed, conversational tone, with no sense of formally structured
questions and answers. In the cold light of print, however, his replies
occasionally seem almost petty in their self-justification, a curious
consequence considering that such an emphasis is completely absent when Paul is
delivering the words to you in person.
"When
people come to interview me," he says, “they come with a clipboard and
it's not full of questions, it's full of ‘facts’. They just go to the files and
look it up. That's how I've become known as the one who broke up the Beatles.
That's how Willie Russell wrote his play [John, Paul, George, Ringo... and Bert]. I rung Willie up, I said, ‘Wait a
minute, man. John broke us up! Don't you want the real story? How did you get
your info? And he said, ‘I got it from the newspapers’. So the problem for me
is that it's kind of been historically cemented in place with movies and na-na-na. I have go to work a bit at correcting that, ‘Cause I don't want it to go down like that. I want people to
get a slightly more balanced view."
Musician: You've been in the
studio all night re-mixing tracks from the new album for single release. How do
you feel about the new LP?
McCartney:
I like it. I have a lot of trouble saying. "I think it's great." I wish
I was just a fan and I could genuinely like it without seeming wildly immodest.
I can't be objective yet. It's going to take me a couple of months. I can just
listen to McCartney I: I like that one. This one is growing on me.
Musician: So how do you react to
criticism?
McCartney:
When I see bad reviews, it'll hurt me. I am giving myself a bit easier time in
life these days. I've gone through so much criticism, and not just from
critics. From people like John, over so many things, that like a fool I just stood
there and said, "Yeah, you might be right." I just accepted that I was
to blame for all those things I was said to be the cause of. I'm beginning to
see it a bit differently now. I'm beginning to see a lot of what they say is
their problem, not mine. '
John was
going through a lot of pain when he said a lot of that stuff. He felt that we
were being vindictive towards him and Yoko. In fact, I think we were quite
good, looking back on it; many people would've just downed tools in a situation
like that, would've just said, "Look man, she's not sitting on our amps
while we're making a film." That wouldn't be unheard of. Most people would
just say, "We're not having this person here,
don't care how much you love her.”
But we
were actually quite supportive. Not supportive enough, you know", it would
have been nice to have been really supportive because then we could look back and
say, "Weren't we really terrific?" But looking back on it, I think we
were okay. We were never really that mean to them. But I think a lot of the
time John suspected meanness where it wasn't really there.
Musician: He was presumably
fairly paranoid.
McCartney:
I think so. He warned me off Yoko once: “Look, this is my chick!" Just because he knew my reputation. We knew each other rather
well. I just said, “Yeah, no problem." But I did feel he ought to have
known I wouldn't. That was John; just a jealous guy. He was a paranoid guy. And
he was into drugs...heavy. He was into heroin, the extent of which I hadn't
realized till just now.
lt's all starting to click a bit in
my brain. I just figured, "Oh, there's John, my buddy, and he's turning on
me." He once said to me, "Oh they're all on the McCartney bandwagon."
Things like that were hurting him, and looking back on it now I just think that
it's a bit sad really.
MUSICIAN: I saw that story on The
Observer the other week, about the manuscript of the Apple Beatles biography
and the vitriolic comments john made in the margins.
McCartney:
I think that shows the sort of pain he was going through. Look, he was a great
guy, great sense of humor and I'd do it all again. I'd go through it all again,
and have him slagging me off again just because he
was so great; those are all the down moments, there was much more pleasure than
has really come out. I had a wonderful time, with one of the world's most
talented people. We had all that craziness. But if someone took one of your
wedding photos and put "funeral" on it, as he did on that manuscript,
you'd feel a bit sorry for the guy. I'll tell you what, if I'd ever done that
to him, he would've just hit the roof. But I just sat through it all like
mild-mannered Clark Kent.
MUSICIAN: This was hurting you,
presumably.
MCCARTNEY:
Not half.
MUSICIAN: When did you actually
gel a perspective on it?
MCCARTNEY:
I still haven't. It's still inside me. John was lucky. He got all his hurt out.
I'm a different sort of a personality. There's still a lot inside me that's trying
to work it out. And that's why it's good to see that wedding/funeral bit,
because I started to think, "Wait a minute, this is someone who's going
over the top. This is paranoia manifesting itself." And so my feeling is
just like it was at the time: He's my buddy, I don't
really want to do anything to hurt him, or his memory, or anything. I don't
want to hurt Yoko. But, at the same, it doesn't mean that I understand what
went down.
I went
at Yoko's request to New York recently. She said she wanted to see me, so I stopped
off and rang her, and she said she couldn't see me that day. I was four hundred
yards away from her. I said, "Well, I'll pop over any time today: five minutes,
ten minutes, whenever you can squeeze me in". She said, "It's going
to be very difficult." I said, “Well, okay, I understand; what is the reason
by the way?" She said. "I was up all night with Sean." I said,
"Well, I understand that. I’ve got four kids, you know. But you're bound
to have a minute today, sometime."
She
asked me to come. I'd flown in specially to see her, and she wouldn't even see
me. So I felt a little humiliated, but I said, “Okay 9:30 tomorrow morning,
let's make an appointment." She rang up at about 9:00 and said. “Could you
make it tomorrow morning?"
So that's
the kind of thing I'm beginning to think it wasn't all my
fault. I'm beginning to let myself off a lot of the guilt. I always felt guilty
but looking back on it I can say okay, let's try and outline some things. John
was hurt: what was he hurt by? What is the single biggest thing that we can
find in all our research that hurt John? And the biggest thing that I can find
is that I told the world that the Beatles were finished. I don't think that's
so hurtful. I know he said it was for publicity for my album, but I don't even
think that's hurtful. Big deal! We waited four months after the group broke up
and then I announced it.
I'll
tell you what was unfortunate was the method of announcing it all. I said to
the guy at the office, Peter Brown, of book fame, "I've got an album
coming out called McCartney And I don't really want to see too much press. Can you do me
some question-and-answer things?“
So he
sent all those questions over and I answered them all.
We had
them printed up and put in the press copies of the album. It wasn't a number. I
see it now and shudder. At the time it was me trying to answer some questions
that were being asked and I decided not to fudge those questions.
We
didn't accept Yoko totally, but how many groups do you know who would? It's a
joke, like Spinal Tap. You know, I loved John, I was
his best mate for a long time. Then the group started to break up. It was very
sad. I got the rap as the guy who broke the group up. It wasn't actually true.
MUSICIAN: But legally you had to
do that to get out of the contract with Allen Klein. Didn’t you?
MCCARTNEY:
Yeah, legally I had to. I had to take the other Beatles to court. And I got a
lot of guilt off that. But you tell me what you would have done if the entire
earnings that you'd made—and it was something like the Beatles‘ entire
earnings, a big figure, everything we'd ever done up to somewhere round about
“Hey Jude" was about to disappear into someone's pocket. The guy I'm
talking about, Allen Klein, had £5 million the first year he managed the
Beatles. So I smelled a rat and thought, "£5 million in one year! How
longs it going to take him to get rid of it all?" So I started to resist,
and I was given a lot of pressure. The others said, "Oh, you're always
stalling," when I kept refusing to sign Klein's contract.
MUSICIAN: But the others
suspected you of looking after number one by wanting to bring in your wife's
family as managers.
MCCARTNEY:
Obviously everyone worried that because it was my father-in-law. I'd be the one
he'd look after. Quite naturally, they said. “No. we can't have him." So
in the end it turned out to be Klein. And I said. "Well, I want out of
this. I want to sue this guy Klein." They said, "You can't, because
he's not party to any of the agreements." So it became clear that I had to
sue the Beatles. So obviously became the baddie. I did take the Beatles to the
High Court, which was a highly traumatic period for me, having to front that
one out. Imagine, seriously, having to front that one out.
MUSICIAN: How did you feel
through all that?
MCCARTNEY:
Crazy, just insane. So insecure. Half the reason I
grew the beard.
MUSICIAN: People often put hair
on their faces to hide.
MCCARTNEY:
It's often a cover-up. And I had this big beard and I went to the High Court
and actually managed to save the situation. But my whole life was on the line
at that point. I felt this was the fire, this was the furnace. It had finally
arrived. And we used to get shakes in our voices in court. We used to get the
Nixon shakes, something we'd never ever had before. So we went through a lot of
those problems. But the nice thing was afterwards each one of them in turn
very, very quietly and very briefly said, "Oh, thanks for that." That
was about all I ever heard about it.
But
again, John turned it round. He said, "But you’re always right, aren‘t
you?" See, there was always this thing. It seemed crazy for me because I thought
the idea was to try and get it right, you know. It was quite surprising to find
that if you did get it right, people could then turn that one around and say,
"But you're always right, aren't you?“ It’s like moving the goal posts.
I mean,
it occurred quite a few times because I'm pretty ruthless, ambitious, all that
stuff. No more than anyone trying to break into show biz, but I can be pretty
forceful. If we've gotta make a record, I'll actually
sit down and write songs. This could be interpreted as being overpowering and
forceful.
MUSICIAN: I'd heard that you were
the driving force of the Beatles but that john would be more interested in
doing anything but what the Beatles were supposed to be doing.
MCCARTNEY:
Yeah. I remember doing Let It Be. We sat around the table in Apple and I came
up with this idea that we should get it on film. John said, "Why? What for?" I explained a bit more, he said, "l get it. You want a job! Yeah, that's it!" But it seemed
strange to me that he didn't. He seemed quite happy languishing out in St.
Georges Hill in Weybridge.
I always
wanted to make the group great, and even greater. When we made the Let It Be
album, and it was a bit crummy, I insisted that we make Abbey Road because I
knew what we were capable of. I didn't think that we'd pulled it off on Let It
Be and then with the Phil Spector remix, we kinda walked away from that LP. In fact, the best version
of it was before anyone got hold of it: Glyn Johns‘ early
mixes were great but they were very Spartan; it would be one of the hippest
records going if they brought it out. But before it had all its raw edges off it, that was one of the best Beatles albums because it was a
bit avant-garde. I loved it.
So then
we were doing Abbey Road and I got some grief on that because it took three days
to do "Maxwell's Silver Hammer." You know how long Trevor Horn takes
to do a mix for Frankie? It takes two days to switch on the Fairlight!
I had a group in the other day, spent two days trying to find the ON switch!
That's what we're into these days, you know.
I'm sure
I did piss people off at the time, much as I tried not to. It just seemed to me
when we had a session booked it was a cool idea to turn up. Like Sgt Pepper,
George turned up for his number and a couple of other sessions but not for very
much else.
MUSICIAN: George was supposed to
have resented you for always getting on his back.
MCCARTNEY:
He did resent it. On Abbey Road I was beginning to get too producery
for everyone. George Martin was the actual producer and I was beginning to be
too definite. George and Ringo turned around and
said, “Look, piss off! We're grown-ups and we can do it without you fine."
For people like me who don't realize when they're being very overbearing, it
comes as a great surprise to be told.
So I completely
clammed up and backed off: “Right, okay, they’re right. I‘m a turd " So a day or so went by and the session started
to flag a bit and eventually Ringo turned round to me
and said, “Come on... produce!" You couldn't have it both ways. You either
had to have me doing what I did, which, let's face it, I hadn't done too bad, or I was going to back off and become paranoid myself,
which was what happened.
A lot of
Wings was to do with that I‘d been told that I was so overbearing. If the
guitarists in Wings wanted to play a solo a certain way, I wouldn't dare tell
them that it wasn't good.
The
other example that really pissed George off was when we were making "Hey
Jude" and he was answering every line through the whole song! I just said,
“No man. I really don't want that. It's my song." The rule was whosever
song it was got to say how we did the arrangement for it.
That
pissed him off, and I'm sure it pissed Ringo off when
he couldn't quite get the drums to “Back In The
U.S.S.R." and I sat in. It's very weird to know that you can do a thing
someone else is having trouble with. If you go down and do it, just bluff right
through it, you think, "What the hell — at least I'm helping." Then
the paranoia comes in: "But I'm going to show him up!" I was very
sensitive to that. I remember sitting for hours thinking, "Should I say
this thing?" In the end it always came down to "You should have said
something." So it's very hard to balance that. In the end I have to say
that sometimes I was overbearing and sometimes they liked it.
MUSICIAN: Do you have much to do
with them now?
MCCARTNEY:
I'm just starting to get back with them. It's all business troubles. If we
don't talk about Apple then we get on like a house on fire. So I've just
started to see them again. I had a great day the other day when George came
down to visit me and for the first time in billions of years we had a really
nice time. George was my original mate in the Beatles.
MUSICIAN: More than john?
MCCARTNEY:
He lived near me in Upton Green and I lived in Ardwick
Road, half a mile away, so we took the same bus to the same school, and then we
got guitars at about the same time. We went through the Bert Weedon books and learned D and A
together and we were quite big buddies then. That was something I'd missed for
all these years. We'd got all professional and Beatles and everything, and you
lose that, obviously. He just came down the other day and we didn't talk about
Apple and we didn't touch an instrument. It was just back as mates, like on the
bus. He's very into trees and planting and horticulture, as I am more now, and
so we talked about planting trees. It was great to actually relate as two
people and try and get all that crap out the window.
MUSICIAN: He seems to be emerging
more now anyway.
MCCARTNEY:
We're all kind of coming to. We all brushed off this whole Beatles episode and
sort of said, “Well, it's no big deal.” Obviously it's a big deal! It was a
huge deal! If there ever was a big deal, that was it! So I don't think half of
us know what happened to us really. I can never tell you what year anything was;
literally the years all go into a haze for me. I keep seeing pictures of myself
shaking hands with Mitzi Gaynor and I think, “l didn't know I met her."
It's that vague. And yet I look as straight as a die in there.
MUSICIAN: Were you on speed or
something?
McCARTNEV: I don't think so. I
think it was just that life was speeding; you just met Mitzi Gaynor for five
minutes and then you'd go and meet Jerry Lewis' kids. It becomes very difficult
after a while to know if you met fifty of them. I keep seeing weird photos of
me with people that I didn't even know I'd met. It's embarrassing. Howie's got that problem too; he's got huge periods of his
life where he just does not know what happened.
MUSICIAN: When the money started to
come in, were you aware of that or were you just living your life and you'd
hear suddenly you were worth so much?
MCCARTNEY:
We used to ask them, "Am I a millionaire yet?" and they used to say
cryptic things like "On paper you are." We'd say, “Well, what does
that mean? Am I or aren't I? Are there more than a million of those green
things in my bank yet?" And they'd say, “Well, it's not actually in a
bank...we think you are." It was actually very difficult to get anything
out of them. The accountants never made you feel successful.
We had
the whole top five in America and I decided I wanted to buy a country house. I
wasn't asking for the world. In those days it would have cost about £30,000
top. So I went to the accountants and they said, "You'll have to get a
mortgage." I said, "What do you mean, mortgage? Aren't we doing well yet? We've got the whole top five in
the biggest market in the world! There's gotta be
some money coming in off that!" They always try and keep you down. So you
didn't actually get much of a feeling of being very rich. The first time I
actually saw checks was when I left Apple, and it wasn't me that saw them, it
was Linda, because we'd co-written a few of our early things.
MUSICIAN: There are lots of slams
about you and money. Miles, once the editor of International Times, who was a
friend of yours in the mid-60s, told me about finding your MBE and a bunch of
£20 notes stuffed into a sock drawer in your bedroom at the Asher house.
MCCARTNEY:
Yeah, I've heard that story too. I never remember actually having a wad of
money like that. Still, it was nice of him not to nick it anyway, wasn't it? I
did know Miles very well. He was my mate. We had many a wondrous stoned evening
in his place listening to all sorts of stuff.
That was
another of the interesting things. I think that I've got a certain personality
and if I give charity I don't like to shout about it. If I
get into avant-garde stuff, I don't particularly shout about that either.
I just get on with it. So way before John met Yoko and got avant-garde, I was
the avant-garde London bachelor with Miles in my pad in St. John's Wood. I was
making 8mm movies and showing them to Antonioni. I had all sorts of theories of
music-we'd put on a Ravi Shankar record to our home movies and it'd
synchronize. John used to come down from Weybridge,
looking slightly goofy and saying, "Wow! This is great! We should do more
of this!”
I used
to do a lot of that, but it never really came out. When John went avant-garde
you knew about it! He just had enthusiasm for whatever he was doing. I'm not as
upfront as John was. I'm a different personality.
I used
to sit in a basement in Montague Square with William Burroughs and a couple of
gay guys he knew from Morocco and that Marianne Faithfull-John Dunbar crowd
doing little tapes, crazy stuff with guitar and cello. But it didn't occur to
me to rave about William Burroughs in the next NME interview I did. Maybe it
would have been good for me to do that.
Yoko met
me before she met John. You won't hear that from them, ‘cause
they're Scott & Zelda. They want the story just how they put it out. She
turned up for a charity thing. She wanted manuscripts, any spare lyric sheets
you had around. Ours tended to be on the backs of envelopes and to tell you the
truth, I didn't want to give her any. They were very precious to me and the
cause didn't seem so great. So I said, “Look, my mate might be interested,"
and I gave her John's address. I think that's how they first hooked up, and
then she had her exhibition and then their side of the story started to happen.
I feel
as though I have to justify living, you know, which is a bit of a piss-off. I
don't really want to have to sit around and justify myself, it's a bit
humiliating. But there are lots of things that haven't come out. For instance,
when John and Yoko busted up their marriage, she came through London. He was in
L.A. doing Pussy Cats with Nilsson and having a generally crazy time of it all,
fighting with photographers and haranguing the Smothers Brothers, all because
he genuinely loved Yoko and they had a very deep, strong relationship. But they
were into all sorts of crazy stuff, stuff I don't know the half of. A lot of
people don't know the half of that. Hints of it keep coming out in books but
you never know if you can believe them...
MUSICIAN: You mean occultism?
MCCARTNEY:
All sorts. I certainly did get a postcard from Yoko saying, “Go round the world
in a southeasterly direction. It'd be good for you. You’re allowed to stop at four
places."
George
Martin got one of those and he sort of said, “Would it be alright if I go to
Montserrat?" and she said, “No." Actually, John did the voyage. John
went in a southeasterly direction around the world, but we all kind of went,
"Sure, sure we'll go round the southeast."
Linda
and me came over for dinner once and John said,
"You fancy getting the trepanning thing done?" I said, "Well,
what is it?" He said, "You kind of have a hole bored in your skull
and it relieves the pressure." We're sitting at dinner and this is seriously
being offered! Now this wasn’t a joke, this was like, “Let's go next week, we
know a guy who can do it and maybe we could all go together." So I said,
“Look, you go and have it done, and if it works, great. Tell us all about it
and we'll all have it." But I'm afraid I've always been a little bit
cynical about stuff like that—thank God!—because I think that there's so much
crap that you've got to be careful of. But John was more open to things like
that.
Anyway,
I was telling you about the marriage break-up thing. Yoko came through London
and visited us, which was very nice. Linda and I were living in this big old
house in St. John's Wood. She came by and we started talking, and obviously the
important subject for us is. “What's happened? You've broken up then? I mean, you're
here and he's there." She was very nice and confided in us, but she was
being very strong about it. She said, “No, he's got to work his way back."
Which was good. She would have been mad to just go and prostrate herself at his feet.
I said.
“Well look, do you still love him?" and she
said, "Yes." So I said. "Well, would you think it was an
intrusion if I said to him, ‘Look, man, she loves you and there's a way to get
back—sounds like a Beatles song. I said “Would that be okay? I'd like to be the
mediator in this because the two of you obviously have something pretty strong
going." She said she didn't mind and we went out to visit him in L.A. in
that house where all the crazy things went on. I took him into the back room
and said, "This girl of yours, she really still loves you. Do you love
her?" And he said he did but he didn't know what to do. So I said,
"You're going to have to work your little ass off, man. You have to get
back to New York, you have to take a separate flat, you have to send her roses
every fucking day, you have to work at it like a
bitch! Then you just might get her back." And he did. But you won't hear
that because then I'm in the story. I mean, if you hear it from John's point of
view, it'll just be that he spoke to Yoko on the phone and she said to him,
"Come back."
MUSICIAN: Was it the kind of
thing where there are two blokes who are good males and one of them finds a
girl and then the friendship breaks up?
MCCARTNEY:
"Wedding Bells" is what it was. "Wedding bells are breaking up
that old gang of mine." We used to sing that song. It was like an army
song and for us the Beatles became the army. We always knew that one day
“Wedding Bells" would come true, and that was when it did.
Trouble
is, in trying to set the record straight I don't want to blame John. I did this
thing recently with Hunter Davies and they pulled out the one line. “John could
be a maneuvering swine.“ Well, I still stick to that,
but I'd better not say it to the Sun
because I'm just going to get hauled over the coals again.
I'll
tell you exactly why I said that. We had a business meeting to break up the
Beatles, one of the famous ones that we'd been having—we're still having them
seventeen years later, actually. We all flew in to New York specially and were
at the Plaza for the big final settlement meeting. John was half a mile away at
the Dakota and he sent a balloon over with a note that said, "Listen to
this balloon."
Around
the same time at another meeting we had it all settled, and John asked for an
extra million pounds at the last minute. So of course that meeting blew up in
disarray. Later, when we got a bit friendlier—and from time to time there would
be these little stepping-stones of friendship in the Apple sea—I
asked him why he'd actually wanted that million and he said. "I just
wanted cards to play with." It’s absolutely standard business practice. He
wanted a couple of jacks to up your pair of nines.
MUSICIAN: You got an awful lot of
shit for saying "It's a drag?” after he‘d been killed.
MCCARTNEY:
Yeah. I think why some politicians are so successful is that they have a little
bleeper box in their heads and before they say something they run things
through and they can see it as a headline. If it doesn't look good they edit it.
I have that sometimes, but in moments like that all my bleepers
go out the window.
I wasn't
going to stay at home watching the television news. George Martin rang up to
ask if I wanted to cancel the session and I said, "No way, I‘ve got to
work through this day." We worked on a track called "Rain
Clouds." Paddy [Moloney], the aeolian pipesman of the
Chieftains, worked on that. He was the right sort of character to see that day,
‘cause Paddy's like a leprechaun. It was nice to have a sort of magic person
around. It was as if he was a sort of guru sent to help that day out. So we
just sort of beavered on, and without meaning to,
people would make jokes. "We'll do the film next week, we'll shoot
it." And the minute you heard the word "shoot" you kind of went,
"Huuuh urrh." Everytime you spoke you seemed to say “shoot" or “kill
me" or all these terrible things. Eventually I thought, "I've got to
go home now, there's no more work to be done." And as I came out of the
place somebody stuck the proverbial microphone in the window of the car, which
I'm mad enough to have open because you see, I'm quite outgoing and I was
telling the fans, “Thank you." "It's alright." But, anyway, I
said, “It's a dra-a-g." If I could’ve I might’ve
just lengthened that word “drag” for about a thousand years, to get the full
meaning.
By the
time the editors got to it I'm just one of a million punters making a comment:
"McCartney was asked by our reporter in downtown London last night at nine
o'clock his feelings on hearing of the death of his dear friend. His answer
was, ‘It's a drag’ Hey ho! On other matters, in the
Philippines." And people, hearing it said, "It's
a drag.’ 'That’s what he said?"
Hunter
Davies was on television that night, giving a very reasoned account of John.
All the puppets sprung right up there. I thought it was well tasteless. Jesus
Christ, ready with the answers, aren't we? Aren't we just ready with a summary?
Mind you, Hunter had admitted to us years ago that he already had our
obituaries written. They're on file at the Times and they just update them, which
is chilling to learn. So obviously he just pulled out his obituary for John and
went to it.
The
question is, which is the more sensitive: my thing or
his thing? He was the one I rang up about "maneuvering swine" too, so
it shows what a buddy he is, he immediately put it in print.
That
incident reminded me of John saying, “We're bigger than Jesus," which was
a Maureen Cleave article for the Evening Standard. John and Maureen were good
friends and in that context it was actually John saying to the church,
"Hey, wake up! We're bigger than you." He meant that the church
congregations were in decline.
But you
take it out of context, you send it to Selma, Alabama, you put it on the front
page and you've got little eleven-year-olds thumping on your coach window
saying, "Blasphemer! Devil worshipper!" I'll
never forget the sight of a little blond kid trying to get to us, and he would
have done it, if he'd have got to us. I mean, at eleven, what does this kid
know of life and religion or anything? He'd just been whipped up.
It's
like Philip Norman's book Shout. It's
shameful the way it says that George spent the whole of his career holding a
plectrum waiting for a solo. To dismiss George like that is just stupid, nothing
less. George was a major influence musically. The only thing I'm thankful for
is that now the truth is starting to come out, and when I see that
"wedding" changed to “funeral," I start to realize that it was
John's problem, not mine.
MUSICIAN: What was his problem,
do you think?
MCCARTNEY:
Heroin, a slight problem.
MUSICIAN: When did you know he
was doing heroin?
MCCARTNEY:
When he was living in Montague Square with Yoko after he'd split up with
Cynthia. He never actually told us, no one ever actually saw him take it, but
we heard. I was very lucky to miss that whole scene. I was the first one on
coke in the group, which horrified the whole group, and I just thought, “No
sweat." The minute I stopped, the whole record industry got into it and
has never stopped since. I knew the time was up when I saw Jim Webb—“Up Up and
Away"—offering me a toot. I thought, "Hello, this is getting way too
popular."
MUSICIAN: When was this that you
were doing it?
MCCARTNEY:
In L. A. It was Sgt. Pepper time, it was my circle of friends; the William
Burroughs, the Robert Frasers, the Rolling Stones crowd, and we'd use it to
wake up after the pot. But that was quite short-lived and I hated it. I soon
got the message that it was a big downer. There's a story that sums up all that
drugs thing. When I went out to LA at the time of that Pussy Cats album I was
offered angel dust. I said, "What is it?" and they said, "It's
an elephant tranquilizer." I said to the guy, “Is it fun?" He thought
for a moment and said, "No, it's not fun." So I said, “Okay, I won't
have any then." That sums it up, you know. You had anything man, even if it wasn't fun! You sort of had to do it—peer pressure. I was given a lot of stick for being the last
one to take acid. Now I wish I'd held out, in a way, although it was the times.
I don't really regret anything, actually. I remember John going on Old Grey
Whistle Test and saying, “Paul only took it four times! We all took it twenty
times!!" It was as if you'd scored points...
MUSICIAN: Real twenty-pints-a-night-stuff
isn’t it?
MCCARTNEY:
It really is! That's it, exactly! Very Northern.
It's the
same thing. If you get it right with one crowd of people, it's
wrong with another crowd, so you can’t win. But it was great times and I really
don't regret it. I love a lot of what we did: we had screwed-up moments too,
but who doesn't?
Like Geldof—there's this guy who does great stuff, but that doesn't
mean that he's a saint. In fact it's often the opposite with these people: It
just means that they've got Go Power.
I love
the story where they finished the USA For Africa record
and Geldof is buzzing, and Michael Jackson and his
family were all having a light meal at about three in the morning. They're all
devout Jehovah's Witnesses and they were all sitting there and Bob walks in and
says. "You lot fucking disgust
me!!" The jaws just drop.
He
didn't make himself too wildly popular. I think that's why he got a bit elbowed
in the States. They never mention him. It's the American guy they always
mention. I don't even know what his name is Ken something. They all thank him.
They never say, “And by the way, he got the idea off this mad Irish bog
bandit."
MUSICIAN: How did you feel at
Live Aid? The first time you'd been on stage for ages and it all went wrong.
MCCARTNEY:
When the mike went I felt very strange. It was very loosely organized and I turned
up not knowing quite what was expected of me, other than that I had to do “Let It
Be." So I sat down at the piano, looked around for a cue to go, there was
just one roadie, and I looked at him for a signal. I started and the monitor
was off and I thought, “No sweat, this is BBC, this is world television,
someone’s bound to have a feed, it's just that my monitor's off."
Then I wondered
if the audience could hear, because I knew some of the words of "Let It
Be" were kind of relevant to what we were doing. Anyway, I thought, "This
is okay, they can hear me, they're singing along."
I just
had to keep going, so it was very embarrassing. The terrible thing was that in
the middle I heard the roadies come through on the monitor, shouting “No, this
plug doesn’t go here!" I thought, “Hello, we have problems!" The
worst moment was watching it on telly later.
The
event itself was so great. It wasn't for my ego. It was for people who are
dying and it raised over £50 million, and so it was
like having been at the battle of Agincourt. It's something you'll tell your
grandchildren about.
MUSICIAN: That's your mother
invoked in "Let It Be," isn't it?
MCCARTNEY:
Yeah. I had a lot of bad times in the 60s. We used to lie in bed and wonder
what was going on and feel quite paranoid. Probably all the
drugs. I had a dream one night about my mother. She died when I was
fourteen so I hadn't really heard from her in quite a while, and it was very
good. It gave me some strength. In my darkest hour, Mother Mary comes to me. I
get dreams with John in, and my Dad. It's very nice because you meet them
again. It's wondrous, it's like magic. Of course, you're not meeting them.
You're meeting yourself, or whatever...
MUSICIAN: What about "Lady
Madonna"?
MCCARTNEY:
Lady Madonna's all women. How do they do it?—bless 'em—it's
that one, you know. Baby at your breast, how do they get the time to feed them?
Where do you get the money? How do you do this thing that women do?
MUSICIAN: Was it very traumatic
when your mother died?
MCCARTNEY:
Yeah, but I'm a bit of a cover-up. People like me don't find it easy to have
public grief. But that was one of the things that brought john and me very
close together. We'd both lost our mothers. It was never really spoken about
much; no one really spoke about anything real. There was a famous expression:
"Don't get real on me, man.”
MUSICIAN: How did you feel about
all the stick Linda got?
MCCARTNEY:
I feel sorry for her. She got a lot of stick, more than we admit to. It made us
stronger, really; the thing I'm beginning to understand now was that we were
just two people who liked each other and found a lot in common and fell in
love, got married and found that we liked it. To the world, of course, she was
the girl that Paul McCartney married, and she was a divorcee, which didn't seem
right. People preferred Jane Asher. Jane Asher fitted. She was a better Fergie. Linda wasn't a very good Fergie
for me and people generally tended to disapprove of me marrying a divorcee and
an American. That wasn't too clever. None of that made a blind bit of difference;
I actually just liked her, I still do and that's all it's to do with. I mean,
we got married in the craziest clothes when I look back on it. We didn't bother
to buy her a decent outfit. I can see it all now; why people were amazed that I'd
put her in the group. At the time it didn't seem the least bit unusual. But I
even had quotes from Jagger saying, "Oh, he's
got his old lady up on stage, man."
A lot of
people give her stick for playing with one finger, but as a matter of fact the Moogs in those days were not polyphonic. You can only play
them with one finger: you can play them with five if you like, but only one's gonna register. And by the time she did the '76 tour with Wings,
she was well good at stuff and actually I was quite surprised. I mean, she was
holding down the keyboard job with one of the big bands in the world. From
knowing nothing! I mean, the balls of the girl!
But
along with the public condemnation, there were always millions of people who
liked her. Our shows always did okay, and our records occasionally did okay.
Occasionally we'd have a whopper burger that'd suddenly make it worthwhile.
Then we'd have our big whopper failures, but as long as you measure them
against your successes, it's alright.
MUSICIAN: How do you feel about the
Wings output?
MCCARTNEY:
I was never very happy with the whole thing but I'm actually starting to think
that it was a bit churlish of me, because I'm meeting a lot of people now who
had a completely different perception of the whole thing. I met a nurse
recently who was a Wings fan! I mean, forget me, forget the Beatles; she was an actual die-hard Wings fan. I didn't think they
existed.
A lot of
the younger people coming up didn't really know the Beatles history. There are
people who don't know what Sgt. Pepper was. We find it a bit difficult to
understand. It's like not knowing what War
and Peace is. So it's okay. I was never very pleased with the whole thing,
but I'm warming to it now. I'm starting to look at it through my own eyes, and
saying, "Wait a minute. What did we do? Where did we go wrong?" Most
people would give their right arm for the Wings career, to have hits as big as
"Mull Of Kintyre,"
“My Love," "Band On The Run," “Maybe I'm Amazed."
MUSICIAN: But it came to an end
when you were busted in Japan. How did that happen?
MCCARTNEY:
It happened we got some good grass in America and no one could face putting it
down the toilet. It was an absolutely crazy move. We knew we weren't going to
get any in Japan. Anybody else would have given it to their roadies but I
didn't want them to take the rap. It was lying on top of the bloody suitcase.
I'll never forget the guy's face as he pulled it out. He almost put it back. He
just did not want the embarrassment. But it's a hysterical subject and I'd
prefer to skin ‘round it these days, because I don't want any of the pressures
that go with it, so I'm telling everyone. "Stay clean, be cool."
I'm
pretty straight. I know what crazy is.