Fab

by Howard Sounes

  When the Life team knocked on Paul’s farmhouse door he reacted with fury at what he saw as an intrusion into his privacy, telling the journalists to fuck off, throwing a bucket of water at them, and swinging at the snapper, Terence Spencer, who had already banged off a picture of the enraged musician, proving he was alive and kicking, or rather punching. A few minutes later Paul realised that a picture of him swinging his fists might be bad PR, so he went after the journalists and made a deal with them. In exchange for Spencer’s roll of film, Paul and Linda would pose for another, nicer picture, and he would say a few words. What Paul said in this brief interview was interesting.

  ‘Perhaps the rumour [that I was dead] started because I haven’t been much in the press lately. I have done enough press for a lifetime and I don’t have anything to say these days,’ he told the journalists, in what was a frank insight into his state of mind, adding:… the Beatle [sic] thing is over. It has been exploded, partly by what we have done and partly by other people. We are individuals, all different. John married Yoko, I married Linda. We didn’t marry the same girl … Can you spread it around that I am just an ordinary person and I want to live in peace?

  The Beatle thing is over! Paul had effectively made the announcement. Yet his comment went almost unnoticed amidst the nonsense of his supposed demise.

  Over the following months at Kintyre, Paul experienced something close to a nervous breakdown as he faced the fact that the band which had been almost his whole life since school was defunct, its members as redundant as Liverpool dockers. His best friend and partner didn’t want to work with him any more. Hurtfully, John would rather play with mutual acquaintances of theirs like Eric and Klaus. George and Ritchie didn’t seem to need him either. Paul had effectively shut himself out of Apple, because of his refusal to work with Allen Klein. There were no plans to make another album or film, or to tour. The only project on the blocks was Let It Be, which was his own failed attempt to unite the band. Who knew when that would be released? It was, in any event, old material now. All in all, a very sad state of affairs. ‘Paul was a Beatle. He was the most Beatley Beatle of them all,’ comments Tony Bramwell.

  He tried [to keep them, going] with Mystery Tour, and then with Apple, and got them all doing things other than sitting round doped, and then they all sort of left him on his own again. All he wanted to do was keep the Beatles together. He tried very hard at it. And when it got post-Abbey Road … there was nothing left to hold together any more.

  Paul stayed at High Park, sinking into depression. ‘I nearly had a breakdown, ’ he admitted to his daughter Mary years later for a documentary. ‘I suppose the hurt of it all, and the disappointment, and the sorrow of losing this great band, these great friends … I was going crazy. I wouldn’t get up in the morning; and when I did get up I wouldn’t shave or bother with anything; and I’d reach for the whisky …’ This was grim for Linda. She had a seven-year-old and a baby to look after, with a husband who was depressed and drunk. She later told friends it was one of the most difficult times in her life, while Paul reflected that he might have become a rock ’n’ roll casualty at this point in his career. He had, after all, experimented with a range of drugs up to and including heroin. He liked a drink. It would have been easy to booze and drug himself into oblivion.

  Linda told Paul there was a way forward. He could make music without the Beatles. She would help, if he liked. With his wife’s support and encouragement, Paul began to think about a post-Beatles career, relying on Linda’s advice, and in the process developing an even deeper devotion to her. They became one of those couples who are so close they are like twins, and though their relationship had its ups and downs, it proved adamantine until death.

  Shortly before Christmas the McCartneys returned to Cavendish Avenue, where Paul had a four-track recording machine installed. The first scrap of a song he recorded, as a test of the machine, would open what became his first solo LP. This test song, ‘The Lovely Linda’, is an insubstantial, even annoying track, ending with the unattractive sound of Paul sniggering. He also recorded two Beatles leftovers, ‘Junk’ and ‘Teddy Boy’, as well as an experimental percussion track, ‘Kreen-Akrore’. Some of the melodies were strong. Paul could always conjure a compelling riff - ‘That Would be Something’ and ‘Every Night’, for example - but he seemed bereft of meaningful words, with the result that nearly all the tracks he laid down are minor works. The sole exception was ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’, a powerful expression of his uxorious love for the woman who’d saved him from a situation that, as he sang, he didn’t understand. Paul worked on this homemade album, in the kitchen of his London home, at EMI and at Morgan Studios in West London, into the new year of 1970. Not only did he write and sing all the songs, he also played all the instruments and produced the tracks, the only other contributor being Linda, who sang shaky backing vocals in the manner of a schoolgirl thrust reluctantly onto stage at her end-of-term concert. Paul’s blind spot for his wife’s lack of musicality, a symptom of his devotion to her, would characterise and mar his subsequent career.

  As the McCartneys made their homemade record, John Lennon continued to work with Yoko in the Plastic Ono Band to greater effect. ‘Instant Karma’, recorded at EMI in late January, with George Harrison playing guitar and Phil Spector producing, had a big, rocking sound and challenging lyrics that outclassed Paul’s efforts.

  With Paul shutting himself off from the band, the other Beatles made decisions without him, giving the Let It Be tapes to Phil Spector to remix. Starting on 3 March, the American recast the songs in his Wall of Sound style, adding orchestra and choir to Paul’s keynote ballads ‘Let it Be’ and ‘The Long and Winding Road’. In doing so he over-egged the hymnal quality of ‘Let It Be’, and prefaced it with a sarcastic comment by John: ‘Now we’d like to do “’ark the Angels Come”.’ The Spectorisation of ‘The Long and Winding Road’ was even more egregious, giving the song a middle-of-the road sound rarely heard in the Beatles, though it would ironically be characteristic of Paul’s solo career. Was it a coincidence that Spector wrought his damage on 1 April, April Fool’s Day, when pranks are traditionally played on the unsuspecting? Paul certainly had no idea what was being done to his songs.

  A point of crisis was inevitable, and it came shortly after the Beatles realised that Ringo’s first solo album, Sentimental Journey, Let It Be and Paul’s solo LP were all due to hit the shops around the same time. John, George and Ringo decided that McCartney would have to be pushed back, and wrote to Paul informing him that they’d given EMI instructions to delay the release of his record until June. Ritchie was given the task of delivering the note personally to Paul, who was so incensed that he threw Ritchie out of his house, screaming: ‘I’ll finish you now. You’ll pay!’ Paul then went ahead with plans to release McCartney on schedule.

  To launch his new record and thereby his solo career Paul worked with Derek Taylor and Peter Brown on a question-and-answer interview to be given to the press in advance of the release, as well as being included with initial pressings of the LP itself. Over the course of four pages Paul explained how he’d made McCartney, working essentially on his own with Linda harmonising, ‘so it’s really a double act … she believes in me - constantly’. Asked to describe the theme of the album, he said, ‘Home, Family, Love’. As if to bear this out, the LP was packaged with family photos by Linda, including a charming picture of Heather with Martha, Heather’s nose blacked like the dog’s; a shot of baby Mary in Paul’s jacket in Kintyre; another of their standing stone. The crux of the questionnaire came when Paul spelt out his future vis-à-vis the Beatles. Asked if Allen Klein would have anything to do with his album, McCartney replied sharply: ‘Not if I can help it.’

  ‘Have you any plans to set up an independent production company?’

  ‘McCartney Productions,’ replied Paul, who had already taken steps to establish his own version of Apple. During the Beatles’ winter of discontent, Paul bought a company named Adagrose Ltd, changing
its name to McCartney Productions Ltd, later MPL Communications, the umbrella organisation under which he would conduct all his post-Beatles business. Initially, McCartney Productions was a small affair, run by Paul and one other director, Brian Brolly, the registered office being a firm of City of London accountants. McCartney Productions registered a loss for its first few years, but the company was cash rich from the start, with assets of £82,530 ($126,270) recorded on its first return, and it grew substantially. Importantly, Paul was the sole share-holder. In this new company nobody would be in a position where they could tell him what to do.

  To get back to the questionnaire, asked if he missed working with the other Beatles Paul replied, ‘No’. Ditto for ‘Are you planning a new album or single with the Beatles?’ He held back from saying the Beatles were finished, suggesting rather that he was giving the band a rest, while having no immediate plans to perform with them or write with John. Asked about the reasons for his break with the band, Paul cited what has become a music business cliché: ‘Personal differences, business differences, musical differences …’

  This Q&A was released to the press on Friday 10 April 1970, with Don Short given a heads up. As a result the Daily Mirror splashed the story: ‘Paul is Quitting the Beatles’. Although Peter Brown had helped Paul compile the questionnaire, he didn’t approve of what the boss had done. ‘It was sort of Paul giving the finger to the other three. You know, “I can do this without you, and I am. And here it is.” Which was sort of arrogant.’

  The Beatles story doesn’t end here. The band would never truly cease to exist so long as there was money to be made from exploiting its back-catalogue, and everything that Paul was and would do for the rest of his life related to what he had created with the Beatles. But John, Paul, George and Ritchie couldn’t continue making music together. The Sixties were over. The boys had become men, and Paul had to start a new life.

  PART TWO

  AFTER THE BEATLES

  15

  ‘HE’S NOT A BEATLE ANY MORE!’

  GOING ON AND ON TO GET HIS OWN WAY

  When Paul McCartney heard what Phil Spector had done to his Let It Be songs - to ‘The Long and Winding Road’ in particular - he dictated a stern memo to Allen Klein, copied to his brother-in-law[yer] John Eastman, making it clear that he disliked Spector’s embellishments; explaining that he’d already considered orchestrating ‘The Long and Winding Road’ and chosen not to, so he wanted the strings, horns and choir reduced, the harp removed, his vocal brought up, and the original piano reinstated. McCartney ended his note with the cold authority of somebody used to getting his own way, ordering: ‘Don’t ever do it again.’ Klein paid not a blind bit of notice, and the Spector-produced Let It Be was readied for release. George Martin and Glyn Johns were as dismayed as Paul by what they heard. ‘It’s revolting, the Spector thing. It’s just like puke,’ says Johns, still sounding angry.

  McCartney’s mood wasn’t ameliorated by the critical reception of the McCartney LP, released in a sleeve featuring a singularly uninteresting photo, by Linda, of cherries. The record sold very well, going to number one in America and number two in the UK, but the reviews were poor. ‘For most of the trip it’s just a man alone in a small recording studio fiddling around with a few half-written songs and a load of instrumentals,’ opined Melody Maker, then the Bible of British pop. ‘With this record, his debt to George Martin becomes increasingly clear,’ the critic went on, suggesting that without the producer’s input Paul’s work sounded thin. Most listeners agreed then as now that ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’ was almost a classic, but Melody Maker found ‘sheer banality’ elsewhere on the album. An irritated Paul responded with a note to the letters page of the music paper, in which he appeared to misunderstand the reference to George Martin. ‘It’s obvious George Martin had a lot to do with it,’ Paul wrote sarcastically. ‘In fact if you listen carefully to the end of the third track played backwards, you can almost hear him whistling.’

  Next came the movie Let It Be, which had been bowdlerised by Paul, George and Ritchie inasmuch as they insisted Michael Lindsay-Hogg reduce the screen time given to John and Yoko. Other sequences that Lindsay-Hogg had expected the band to veto were left in, including the Twickenham confrontation between Paul and George, as well as Paul’s attempt at Savile Row to persuade John to get the Beatles back on the road. ‘I was surprised that the thing between Paul and George got in, and I’m surprised that Paul talking to John stayed in, [because] they didn’t want any kind of washing of dirty laundry in public,’ comments the director. Over time George Harrison at least came to regret passing the movie for release. It was Harrison who blocked Apple from reissuing the movie on DVD, which is why it is now virtually impossible to obtain other than as a bootleg. The glimpses into the fraught relationships within the band were in fact the chief interest of Let It Be; that and the rooftop concert, which was a joy to behold, helping make the film and album a success in 1970, the LP going to number one on both sides of the Atlantic, Spector’s embellished version of ‘The Long and Winding Road’ becoming the Beatles’ 27th and last number one single.37

  McCartney would never be happy with the single or the LP, and 33 years later he contrived to have the album remixed as Let It Be … Naked. There were losses and gains, with changes to the running order that reinstated a welcome ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ from the rooftop concert, yet dispensed with John’s celebrated ‘I hope we passed the audition’ comment. By 2003 the whole matter of what was the best version of this album was moot because the world had long got used to the Spectorised Let It Be; while the producer himself had bigger problems to deal with, notably a murder charge.38 As he said, ‘[Paul] gets me mixed up with someone who gives a shit.’

  Paul turned 28 in June 1970. When the schools broke for the summer holidays, he and Linda took Heather and baby Mary to Kintyre where Paul had the brainwave of making an animated musical of the Rupert the Bear cartoon. The drawings had been running in the Daily Express newspaper since the 1920s, the Rupert Christmas annual being one of the delights of Paul’s childhood. Paul wrote to Derek Taylor at Apple to ask him to investigate optioning the rights to Rupert, emphasising that he didn’t want the other Beatles to know. This was one of the first bits of business McCartney Productions did, with Paul taking over a decade to bring Rupert to the screen. More immediately, he wanted to make another solo album, and in October he and Linda took the kids to New York to start work on the project, staying at Linda’s old apartment.

  Session musicians were called to blind auditions at a basement studio a couple of blocks west of Times Square, none told the identity of the artist who wanted to hear them play. One such was 27-year-old Denny Seiwell, a tall, lantern-jawed ex-Navy drummer who was active on the local session scene. Seiwell was amazed to encounter Paul McCartney in a West Side basement. ‘I went right into my Ringo impersonation, ’ says Seiwell, figuring he’d play what Paul knew. Paul duly booked Seiwell and a guitarist to work with him and Linda at the CBS studios in Midtown. Having got used to recording in big rooms at EMI, Paul had asked for and got a similarly commodious studio, one usually reserved for artists like Tony Bennett, who recorded with a full orchestra.

  Beatles fans soon heard about the McCartney sessions and gathered at the studio door. They included 16-year-old Linda Magno, a Brooklyn schoolgirl proud to call herself a ‘first generation fan’ in that she caught the Beatles bug when the boys came to the USA in 1964. ‘They don’t sing about violence really, it’s all love, peace,’ she says, explaining her attraction to the group. ‘And if you’re down in the dumps - this is what I’ll tell anybody - if you are having a bad day just turn on a Beatle album.’ Linda started following Paul during his 1970 visit to Manhattan, and continued to do so for years afterwards, becoming perhaps his most devoted American fan. She learned at the outset that Paul had his ‘rules’, about where and when he didn’t mind signing autographs and having his picture taken, and when he definitely didn’t welcome such attention, and if you wanted to
have ‘a good experience’ with Paul you paid attention to his rules. In return he would be friendly and cooperative, saying ‘Hi!’, giving the thumbs up, posing for photos and signing memorabilia.

  During the New York sessions, one of Paul’s rules was that he didn’t want fans coming round the studio in the morning when he and Linda had Mary with them, because he didn’t want Mary photographed. As soon as he started to have children Paul became mindful that his family might be the target of a kidnap gang, such as the one that infamously snatched the son of the aviator Charles Lindbergh in 1932. Even though a ransom was paid, the kidnap gang murdered the child. ‘[Paul’s] always had [this fear] of some bugger snatching [his kids],’ reveals his cousin Mike Robbins.

  Thank you very much, I’ve got Paul McCartney’s baby, I’ve run off with it, and that will cost you four million to get it back. And there are nutters around. His own children, when they were very small, he was watching them like a bloody hawk … He’s always a little bit edgy with strangers round him.

  If fans came to the studio in the afternoon, when Mary was with a nanny, he would pose for pictures. So long as fans complied with rules like this they found Paul and Linda reasonably affable, though Linda could be a little short with them sometimes. ‘He’s not a Beatle any more!’ she snapped at fans one day.