The opening track on this double CD was not an old recording, or at least not in the same way these museum pieces were old. It was the ‘new’ Beatles song ‘Free as a Bird’, released as a single in December 1995. ‘It sounds like them now,’ said George Harrison enthusiastically, but in truth ‘Free as a Bird’ was a disappointing dirge. Jeff Lynne’s production was part of the problem. It gave the Beatles the same smooth sound as ELO. Also, the basic song wasn’t very good. Even though EMI gave ‘Free as a Bird’ a massive launch it failed to hit number one in the UK, kept off the top spot by Michael Jackson’s overblown ‘Earth Song’, to McCartney’s chagrin. The Anthology project as a whole generated a mountain of money, though. MPL turned over £ 6.4 million ($ 9.7m) in what had otherwise been a quiet year, with Paul paying himself £1.9 million ($2.9m), including pension contributions, with the Anthology continuing to earn the boys millions for years to come. Two further CD sets were to be released in 1995/96, with a VHS box set of the documentaries retailing at £99 in the UK, and an expensive Anthology book in the works. All of this, however, was of little account to Paul, for he now faced the terrifying news that Linda had cancer, the same cancer that had killed his mother.
25
PASSING THROUGH THE DREAM OF LOVE
LINDA HAS CANCER
When Linda McCartney found a lump under her arm she went to see her general practitioner, who told her it was nothing to worry about and prescribed antibiotics. Still feeling unwell, Linda sought a second opinion, receiving the results by telephone at Blossom Farm in December 1995. Linda rang Paul to tell him she had a cancerous tumour in her left breast. Before going into hospital to have the lump removed, Linda also confided in Danny Fields and Carla Lane. ‘She said, “Look, I want to talk to you, come on in the house,”’ recalls Carla.
We sat in the kitchen and she just looked at me. She said, ‘I have cancer,’ and I went to open my mouth, and she put her finger up and she said, ‘Shush! Nothing. Don’t think about it. I want you as my friend to know, but we’re not going to talk about it.’ I said, ‘OK.’
Then Linda changed the subject, and rarely spoke of it again.
On Monday 11 December 1995 Linda underwent a lumpectomy - the removal of the cancerous tumour and surrounding tissue, rather than a whole breast - at the private Princess Grace Hospital in London, not far from the McCartneys’ St John’s Wood home. Paul and Linda then retired to their Sussex estate to allow Linda to recuperate. When the story broke in the press, as it inevitably did, immediately becoming a major story, Paul came up from the house to talk to the reporters gathered outside his gate in Starvecrow Lane. ‘The operation was 100 per cent successful, thank God,’ he told the media, ‘and the doctors have told her now just to get some rest.’
As he watched his wife, Paul was reminded of his mother’s terminal illness. Linda was enervated like Mum had been. It was a mark of how poorly Linda felt that she wasn’t with her husband on 30 January 1996 when he stood on stage in his old school assembly hall, now the Paul McCartney Auditorium, to open the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts.
To give Liverpool its Fame-type school had taken longer and cost more than anticipated, almost £6 million more than the original £12 million budget ($18.36m), with Paul loaning LIPA £1.5 million ($2.2m) to help bridge the gap, a loan that became £2 million ($3.06m) with tax relief when he declared the money as a gift, bringing his total contribution to £3 million ($4.5m). Despite such munificence, some Merseysiders grumbled that Paul could have paid for the whole thing himself, part of a surprisingly widespread feeling that the Beatles let the city down. ‘They never came back, really, when they left in the Sixties; they never came back to raise Liverpool’s profile,’ grumbles Dave Holt, a former Cavern-goer, over a pint in a Mathew Street pub. ‘Paul McCartney comes back occasionally to play - it seems he comes back when he needs a pay day.’ This attitude is unfair. Paul had maintained a home on Merseyside all these years, visited frequently in a private capacity and, in backing Mark Featherstone-Witty’s school, rescued the Inny from dereliction and brought new blood to the city, literally so in terms of the students who now came from around the country, and abroad, to study there, with corresponding social and economic benefits for Liverpool. LIPA also brought some welcome show business razzmatazz back to Merseyside, with Paul’s personal and ongoing close association with LIPA helping persuade other celebrities to become patrons. Some commentators believe the opening of the institute helped begin a wider regeneration of the city. ‘You had the Derek Hatton-era in Liverpool, which was pretty ghastly for the city, and everywhere was being run down, and it so happened that McCartney started to develop LIPA really before there was much hope in the city. It was one of the first things. And I think that gave other people hope, and things developed from there,’ says local radio personality Spencer Leigh, referring to improvements that continued through 2008 when Liverpool became European Capital of Culture, with a vast amount of new building work and other enhancements to the city. And rich though Paul was, £3 million was not an insignificant amount of money to give away.
While Paul had been generous, he had not frittered money on LIPA, and most of the difficult conversations he’d had with Mark Featherstone-Witty were about finances. At times of crisis, such as the overspend on the roof, Paul’s reaction tended to be expostulations of: ‘You don’t know what the fuck you’re doing!’ - which was the sort of thing he used to yell at Apple staff. While not pleasant, Paul’s criticism was on target then as now, as Mark admits with laughter: ‘There would always be the [reaction] from Paul, unless you’re careful, “You don’t know what the fuck you’re doing,” which of course would be partly true, unfortunately, because you don’t do this, in one’s lifetime, too often.’ On Inauguration Day, though, with the refurbished auditorium filled with happy faces, all rancour was forgotten. Paul gave a passionate speech in which he talked about the tremendous start in life he’d received in this building (apparently forgetting that he had lost all interest in his own studies as a boy after music entered his life) ; now he hoped others would benefit. ‘Obviously one of my feelings now is how proud my mum and dad would have been …’ he said. Then he stopped, choked with emotion, thumped his lectern, and continued: ‘But I won’t go into that because I’ll start crying.’
Any reference to Paul’s parents was liable to tap a deep well of emotion in this highly sensitive and sentimental man, but this very public display of feeling was also to do with Paul’s underlying concerns about Linda, who was now undergoing chemotherapy, despite the fact that the drugs she was taking had been tested on animals. This went against everything Linda believed in as an anti-vivisectionist. ‘If a drug has got to be used on humans then legally it has to be finally tested on an animal,’ Paul later acknowledged. ‘This was difficult for Linda when she was undergoing treatment.’
Despite the feelings of sickness induced by the drugs, Linda continued to work the phones for Paul, as she had always done, calling Danny Fields and asking when he and his colleagues at the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame were going to induct Paul as a solo artist; also calling Yoko to ask her, as a personal favour, if she would let Paul have his name before John’s on ‘Yesterday’ when the second volume of the Beatles’ Anthology CD series was released in March. The fact that Paul’s most successful song was credited to Lennon & McCartney had always niggled with him; while it was well known that John had never thanked anyone for crediting him with that tune. John and Paul’s joint authorship of the Beatles song book was, however, a principle upon which Lennon & McCartney royalties were divided, and Yoko was reluctant to grant a favour that might set a precedent. If they went through the catalogue deciding which were John’s songs and which were Paul’s it might become apparent that, more often than not, Paul’s songs made more money. The credit on ‘Yesterday’ developed into ‘a major issue’, in Paul’s words, concluding unhappily when Yoko told Linda she would never allow Paul to have his name before John’s, a rebuff the McCartneys took hard, consi
dering the fragile state of Linda’s health when she asked the favour.
With Yoko and Paul again at daggers drawn, and George Harrison declining to collaborate with Paul on any more ‘new’ band songs, the brief entente in the Beatles War was at an end. Still, Paul remained on good terms with his minor ally Ritchie, with whom he had a melancholy new bond. The previous December, Ritchie’s first wife Maureen had died of leukaemia at the age of 48, a death that touched Paul and Linda personally because of their own situation, because Mo was so young, and because she’d been an original member of the Beatles family, one of the first four girls alongside Cyn, Jane and Pattie. Mo was somebody Paul had been on holiday with, and seen constantly during the early days; she was also the mother of Ritchie’s three children - Zak, Jason and Lee - who were like cousins to Paul’s kids. He responded to her death by writing a moving song, ‘Little Willow’, encouraging Mo’s children to be strong, rather as he had written ‘Hey Jude’ to buck up Julian Lennon after John abandoned his family. ‘Little Willow’ is a good and a touching tribute to Mo, whom Ritchie had remained close to after their divorce, and in May Ritchie came to Hog Hill Mill to record two new songs with Paul: the ballad ‘Beautiful Night’ and their first co-written song, ‘Really Love You’, both of which were produced by Jeff Lynne. These were powerful tunes, performed with gusto, Paul and Ritchie apparently able to forget their troubles in their music, while Paul’s concerns for Linda seemed to bring a new sense of reflection to his lyrics.
Although Paul and Linda gave the impression publicly that they were confident of beating her cancer, Linda still wasn’t well enough to be with Paul in June when the Queen visited LIPA. Shortly after this, Linda privately acknowledged how ill she was by making out her last will and testament. It was a simple matter. She left her entire estate in trust to Paul, who was appointed co-executor of the will along with John Eastman; the income from the trust was to be paid quarterly to Paul until his death, after which the trust would be shared equally between the couple’s four children. Directing that her executors ‘pay the expenses of my last illness and funeral’, Linda signed the document at Hog Hill Mill on 4 July 1996, an appropriate date for a woman who had never relinquished her American citizenship. Also appropriately for a woman who’d made her life in the rock ’n’ roll world, the witnesses were her husband’s roadie and his studio engineer - John Hammel and Eddie Klein.
Publicly, the McCartneys maintained an optimistic ‘we can beat this’ façade, as composer David Matthews recalls: ‘She never gave in … she was very brave. I think she believed she could overcome it. After all, she was living on all this very good food. That’s supposed to be good for cancer.’ Paul and David were working together now on Standing Stone, a symphonic tone poem of sorts (one with words) rooted in McCartney’s interest in Celtic mythology, and intended as a centenary celebration for EMI. The starting point for the work was the enigmatic standing stone on the McCartneys’ Scottish estate. Musing on what ancient hands had planted that slender but still massive finger of rock in the land had led Paul to paint a series of pictures and then, while jogging around the lanes in Sussex, he conjured up the beginning of a complementary epic poem, starting with the creation of Earth and a man who is, or believes himself to be, the first man, a character who comes to a new land where he meets a woman and erects a standing stone in gratitude for his survival; after which their peace is broken by invaders (as Kintyre was invaded by Vikings 1,000 years ago). Finally, the hero defeats the invaders using the cunning of Odysseus.
‘Standing Stone’ is a long (36 verses), densely woven and sophisticated poem unlike anything Paul had committed to paper before, making one wonder if it was all his own work. In fact, he did have some help with the editing of the poem. When the music of the same name was eventually released on CD, there was a discreet credit at the end of the liner notes: ‘Standing Stone poem edited by Tom Pickard’, with a similarly low-key acknowledgement when the poem appeared in the book, Blackbird Singing. Recommended to McCartney by their mutual friend Allen Ginsberg, Pickard had been invited to Blossom Farm to meet Paul at the end of 1995.
Paul gave me a copy of his long poem, ‘Standing Stone’, and said that he was using it as a model for the musical piece of the same name. He thought the poem was too long and wanted help editing it. This seemed natural to me, as most of the poets that I know, including myself, get close colleagues to help them knock off the rough edges and tighten up loose lines and generally give it a polish. Not exactly a shoe-shine relationship … maybe it required an occasional fellow cobbler’s skill too.
Over a month or so we went through every line together - mostly making them tighter, reversing order occasionally. He was an easy person to work with - completely without ego. He was happy to make changes where he saw the sense of it, and we pretty much agreed. Sometimes I’d suggest changes to a line but he would insist on keeping it, and that was a happy circumstance for me, picking up a few tips from a great songwriter. I mean we were approaching the thing from different perspectives, bringing two traditions together. He had already done that himself, writing it as a lyricist and a poet, and those traditions don’t always sit well together - but I thought in that long poem he pulled it off admirably. But essentially, the epic was already written in full, by him alone and I just brought some editing, line-tightening skills to the table. Some of how I see poetry washed into it, pretty much like a musician might influence a piece in a session with a lick here and there … the work is his.
This poem was not incorporated in the music of ‘Standing Stone’, but meant as a complement to and inspiration for the symphonic work. There would be a chorus, but the singers would be given simpler lines to sing. Nevertheless ‘Standing Stone’ was a project on ‘the biggest possible scale’, as David Matthews acknowledges, with ‘huge pretensions’. The music itself was complicated, created over a long period of time with the help of a cabal of expert assistants. In addition to Matthews, the composers and arrangers John Fraser, John Harle and Steve Lodder all helped. Paul referred to the men as his Politburo. ‘Again, I was trying to get him to do it, and again going through it for dynamics and phrasing which took ages,’ says Matthews. ‘It was very difficult to get him to cut anything. Sometimes I’d think it should be shorter in places, but he wouldn’t agree. He had his own ideas.’
Paul and Linda returned to Kintyre that autumn with three of their children: Heather, approaching her 34th birthday; Stella, now 25; and 19-year-old James. Their neighbours Alice and Duncan McLean were retiring from High Ranachan Farm, and Paul and Linda wanted to buy the McLeans’ 303 acres which, added to their existing landholding, would given them approximately 1,000 acres, roughly the same amount of land as they owned in Sussex and Arizona. As always, their motive was to preserve the landscape and its wildlife in a natural state - while also putting as much distance as possible between themselves and the public. The McCartneys went to visit the McLeans to tell them they were going to make an offer for the farm, which was accepted. Duncan McLean was happy to sell to Paul for the right price even though he knew McCartney wouldn’t farm the land as he and his brother had done. The men had a drink on the deal, Duncan pouring out drams of Glenmorangie whisky, to Linda’s apparent disapproval. ‘I don’t think she liked Paul to drink,’ observes Mrs McLean. ‘Linda was edging it away from him.’ The women went into the kitchen to make tea. ‘[Heather] told us she had a little pottery business and she wanted to be independent of her mum and dad, and didn’t want to be dependent on them for support.’
While Heather seemed fragile, Stella was as hearty and robust as Paul himself, whom she resembled strongly in personality and features, and was soon to be appointed Creative Director of the French fashion house Chloé. James was a quieter person who shared Dad’s passion for music. When he took up the guitar, Paul advised his son to have formal lessons, to which the boy retorted: ‘You didn’t, Dad.’ So a third generation James McCartney learned to play music by ear. Just before the trip to Scotland, Paul and James
had recorded a song together, ‘Heaven on a Sunday’, James trading guitar licks with his father. A true family affair, Linda sang backing vocals. It was one of the last times she would record with Paul.
SIR PAUL AND LADY Mc CARTNEY
As Lee Eastman had predicted, the time came when Paul McCartney’s considerable contribution to his country’s cultural and economic life had to be recognised with more than an MBE. Paul and Linda’s propensity for getting busted had probably delayed the receipt of more elevated honours, but it was now 16 years since the McCartneys’ last arrest and, what with Paul’s recent meeting with Prince Charles at St James’ Palace, and his charitable work with LIPA and his local hospital in Rye, Paul’s friends felt it was high time he received a KBE, elevating a Member of the Order of the British Empire to a knight of the realm.
Although Paul would always tell friends he didn’t expect to be addressed as Sir Paul, as if he hadn’t expected the honour, and didn’t want to be seen to be swanking it, the knighthood was instigated by one of his closest associates, and supported by a campaign of friends. Having had a conversation with Paul’s manager along the lines of ‘Oh look who’s got a knighthood now, while Paul is overlooked!’, Mark Featherstone-Witty took action. Anyone can nominate friends and colleagues for honours by filling out a Cabinet Office nomination form. Mark did so, suggesting Paul would be a worthy recipient of a KBE. This was done apparently without Paul’s express knowledge. Mark soon received a reply from the Cabinet Office. ‘Some man rang back from the office that deals with these things, enquiring if I knew that Paul already had an award, his MBE. The implication, I suppose, was that this was enough. At that point I gave him a piece of my mind.’ Mark also rallied support from friends and influential music industry figures, including Sir George Martin, who’d received his KBE the previous year. Their campaign was successful. News that Paul was to be knighted was announced in the New Year’s honour’s list, on 1 January 1997, the ceremony scheduled for March.
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