Paul McCartney in 1979 (Evening Standard, April 1979)

            There’s a little bit of Paul McCartney in all of us. That’s his reward for having been one of the most prodigious popular composers of the past 20 years. Wherever we go, McCartney as well as the rest of us, we hear his music, on the radio and TV, in films, in aeroplanes, in lifts, classrooms, discotheques and football grounds.
            Generations of children have grown up knowing Yellow Submarine as a nursery rhyme; Eleanor Rigby is dressed up and played by symphony orchestras in concert halls; Mull of Kintyre is defrocked by football fans on the terraces; and Yesterday is probably hummed and whistled as much as any tune is ever hummed or whistled.
            It’s easy to be pompous and pie-eyed about popular music; it is also very silly. But it does seem to me that Paul McCartney is possessed of that most enviable of gifts; he can, by the turn of a musical phrase, provide a short cut to our emotions. His talent is totally accessible to anyone with a note in his head.
            This is how I see McCartney. But how does McCartney see himself? During the past few months he has been recording a new album in London, and for the first time since I watched in acute embarrassment while George Harrison and he rowed over a guitar solo while making the Abbey Road album, I’ve found myself sitting around watching him work.
            To be honest it’s much more pleasant to be around McCartney these days than it was during those last nerve-plucking days of the Beatles. I’m not saying that he’s the chummy Prince Charming unaffected bloke of the Beatle Paul myth; he isn’t, and he never was.
            But no one who went through what he did could remain unaffected. He still betrays an air of off-hand arrogance occasionally, but he is much more approachable these days, and quite able to discuss his work without sounding falsely modest. And he is refreshingly prepared to admit that he sees himself in the tradition of Gershwin or Cole Porter.
            “When I was a little boy people like that were my idols,” he says. “I always thought that it must be a great life to write music, and because my dad used to play in a band I was always encouraged a lot at home. I still can’t read music though. I keep thinking that it’s about time I learned, but I’m afraid that if I do it will spoil me and I won’t be able to write any more.
            “I used to go for piano lessons when I was a kid, but I hated it because I had to practise endless scales. I’d write little tunes even then, things like When I’m Sixty Four, but the teacher would never let me play them to her.”
            On the subject of the quality of his own work McCartney becomes vague, as though finding it difficult to remember some of the hundreds of songs he has written.
            “I have to like Yesterday,” he says, “because it must be my biggest song. And it’s also very complete. I also like Here, There And Everywhere for the same reason. Of the newer stuff I like Band On The Run quite a lot. But I change my mind from day to day. I always seem to like whatever I’m working on.
            “And I’m also affected very much by what the children think.” (He and Linda have four.) “I mean, sometimes I write things which I quite like but I’m afraid to do them because I think they seem too … obvious, I suppose. I wrote one recently for the Mills Brothers, but the children liked it so much that I decided to do it myself and put it on the new album.”
            Linda McCartney was once one of the most vilified people in rock music, and it can’t have been much fun for her during the early years of their marriage when rock music journalists took to their Thesauruses to discover new ways of insulting her. But 10 years on, her effect upon Paul has been most mellowing, and apart from her role in the home she does appear to act as his chief encourager and best friend.
            And while across the studio he was recording one side of his latest single she confessed to still being a fan. “He’s actually incredible,” she said with more enthusiasm than most husbands expect from their wives. “On Friday he decided he needed a new single, on Saturday and Sunday he messed about in the house writing it, on Monday he explained to the group how it should go, on Tuesday we recorded it, and here he is now on Wednesday re-doing the vocals.
            “He just never stops. Ideas seem to come to him all the time. He likes riding and making things with his joinery set, but he’s always thinking about his music.”
            On Sunday night the TV special Wings Over The World will be shown on BBC-2. It was, explained McCartney, his idea to take a film crew across America and Australia when they went on tour.
            “I also wanted to show what happened to us after the Beatles broke up so I’ve also included all kinds of bits and pieces of films of us at home and on the farm in Scotland.”
            It was to Scotland that he retreated during all the legal aggravations which accompanied the break-up of the Beatles. “At first I felt very lonely,” he says. “I’d done it all with the Beatles and I had to sit down and decide whether I wanted to change course at that point in my life and become a brain surgeon or a lorry driver … or to start off in music all over again.
            “Eventually I realised that the only thing I could do to get over what had happened was to go out and sing. But then I thought about all the things I didn’t like about fame and success, like being expected to behave like a superstar and turn up to all the receptions and shows. So I decided that this time round I wouldn’t let myself get trapped into that part of it.”
            One of the things I’ve admired  about McCartney is his decision not to slip away and join the spivs as a tax exile in some sunny oasis. He is, in fact, a real little Englander, still arguing the wisdom of entry into the Common Market, bothered by metrication and always quick to point out the good points about England. “The U.K. is O.K.,” he says, as though launching a political campaign.
            Of course he’s as rich as Croesus and probably tax at his level has become an academic exercise in virtual infinities anyway, but it’s nice to meet someone these days who isn’t perpetually moaning about having to sneak off to California because they “just can’t afford to live here”.
            Actually he really doesn’t enjoy discussing money at all. “I try not talk about it,” he says. “It’s a bit like discovering a gold mine at the bottom of your garden. It’s embarrassing to talk about, and there’s always the fear that if you do, everyone else will want to take it off you.”
            And so the McCartney children go to the local village primary and comprehensive schools, receive no particular tuition in music (“they just play recorders like the other kids”) and are kept as far from the glamorous life of show-business as possible.
            Despite his reluctance to talk about or display his wealth he can’t hide his excitement when he explains how he went into music publishing in New York two years ago and had a couple of unexpected strokes of luck.
            “I had some money to invest,” he says, “and I didn’t want to put it into things I didn’t understand, like hotels or a haulage company. So when the chance to buy a New York music publishing house came along it seemed the perfect thing for me, because I was already publishing a lot of Buddy Holly songs.
            “But actually it turned out to be massive. I surprise myself whenever I think about it. We own the rights to all kinds of songs by Hogey Carmichael, and then some of the all time classics like Stormy Weather, After You’ve Gone, Witchcraft and Tenderly.
            “And then we also publish some great shows like Chorus Line and Hello Dolly. But the really amazing thing is that when we bought the company there were a couple of little shows in the catalogue that no one was interested in. They turned out to be Annie and Grease.”
            “Grease?” said I, as my mouth dropped open. “Your company publishes Grease?”
            “Unbelievable, isn’t it?” he said, and smiled.
            It should be; but it isn’t.

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