Part 1
PAUL: I guess the ultimate luxury professionally is to be able to change your direction, to work in another medium. It's what a lot of people would like to be able to do. It has also given me a change to see professional actors at work, and now I can tell the acting profession, "Nobody need worry about me; there's no danger from me." Laughs Still, it's been great fun and I've learned a lot. It's a good little film, a nice evening out. I only regret I didn't write a completely new score.
LINDA: But he's written a great theme song for it. The music is all live, and Paul's had a chance to work with great musicians again. He's started coming home happy again, fulfilled. Paul is a perfectionist. He hasn't been happy, he hasn't had a chance to work with the best since the old days.
PLAYBOY: Since the Beatles.
LINDA: Yes.
Paul nods.
PLAYBOY: Paul, it's been nearly four years since John Lennon died and you haven't really talked about your partnership and what his death meant to you. Can you talk about it now?
PAUL: It's . . . it's just too difficult . . . very feel that if I said anything about John, I would have to sit here for five days and say it all. Or I don't want to say anything.
LINDA: I'm like that.
PAUL: I know George and Ringo can't really talk about it.
PLAYBOY: How did you hear of John's death? What was your first reaction?
PAUL: My manager rang me early in the morning. Linda was taking the kids to school.
LINDA: I had driven the kids to school and I'd just come back in. Paul's face, ugh, it was horrible--even now, when I think of it. . . .
PAUL: A bit grotty.
LINDA: I knew something had happened. . . .
PAUL: It was just too crazy. We just said what everyone said; it was all blurred. It was the same as the Kennedy thing. The same horrific moment, you know. You couldn't take it in. I can't.
LINDA: It put everybody in a daze for the rest of their life. It'll never make sense.
PAUL: I still haven't taken it in. I don't want to.
PLAYBOY: Yet the only thing you were quoted as saying after John's assassination was, "Well, it's a drag."
PAUL: What happened was we heard the news that morning and, strangely enough, all of us--the three Beatles, friends of John's--all of us reacted in the same way. Separately. Everyone just went to work that day. All of us. Nobody could stay home with that news. We all had to go to work and be with people we knew. Couldn't bear it. We just had to keep going. So I went in and did a day's work in a kind of shock. And as I was coming out of the studio later, there was a reporter, and as we were driving away, he just stuck the microphone in the window and shouted, "What do you think about John's death?" I had just finished a whole day in shock and I said, "It's a drag." I meant drag in the heaviest sense of the word, you know: "It's a--drag." But, you know, when you look at that in print, it says, "Yes, it's a drag." Matter of fact.
PLAYBOY: You tend to give a lot of flip answers to questions, don't you?
PAUL: I know what you mean. When my mum died, I said, "What are we going to do for money?"
LINDA: She brought in extra money for the family.
PAUL: And I've never forgiven myself for that. Really, deep down, you know, I never have quite forgiven myself for that. But that's all I could say then. It's like a lot of kids; when you tell them someone's died, they laugh.
PLAYBOY: Because they can't cope with the emotion?
PAUL: Yes. Exactly.
LINDA: With John's thing, what could you say?
PAUL: What could you say?
LINDA: The pain is beyond words. You can never describe it, I don't care how articulate you are.
PAUL: We just went home, we just looked at all the news on the telly, and we sat there with all the kids, just crying all evening. Just couldn't handle it, really.
LINDA: To this day, we just cry on hearing John's songs; you can't help it. You just cry. There aren't words. . . . I'm going to cry now.
PLAYBOY: Do you remember your last conversation with John?
PAUL: Yes. That is a nice thing, a consoling factor for me, because I do feel it was sad that we never actually sat down and straightened our differences out. But fortunately for me, the last phone conversation I ever had with him was really great, and we didn't have any kind of blowup. It could have easily been one of the other phone calls, when we blew up at each other and slammed the phone down.
PLAYBOY: Do you remember what you talked about?
PAUL: It was just a very happy conversation about his family, my family. Enjoying his life very much; Sean was a very big part of it. And thining about getting on with his career. I remember he said, "Oh, God, I'm like Aunt Mimi, padding round here in me dressing gown"--robe, as he called it, 'cause he was picking up the American vernacular--"feeding the cats in me robe and cooking and putting a cup of tea on. This housewife wants a career!" It was that time for him. He was about to launch Double Fantasy.
PLAYBOY: But getting back to you and your flipness over John's death, isn't that characteristic of you--to show little emotion on the outside, to keep it all internalized?
LINDA: You're right. That's true.
PAUL: True. My mum died when I was 14. That is a kind of strange age to lose a mother. "Cause, you know, you're dealing with puberty--
LINDA: Gosh, we've got a 14-year-old right now!
PAUL: Yes, and for a boy to lose a mother--
LINDA: To have been through so many other growing pains, how can a body take all that and still continue?
PAUL: It's not easy. You're starting to be a man, to be macho. Actually, that was one of the things that brought John and me very close together: He lost his mum when he was 17. Our way of facing it at that age was to laugh at it--not in our hearts but on the surface. It was sort of a wink thing between us. When someone would say, "And how's your mother?" John would say, "She died." We'd know that that person would become incredibly embarrassed and we'd almost have a joke with it. After a few years, the pain subsided a bit. It was a bond between us, actually; quite a big one, as I recall. We came together professionally afterward. And as we became a writing team, I think it helped our intimacy and our trust in each other. Eventually, we were pretty good mates--until the Beatles started to split up and Yoko came into it.
PLAYBOY: And that's when all the feuding and name-calling began. What started it? Did you feel hurt by John?
PAUL: You conldn't think of it as hurt. it was more like old army buddies' splitting up on account of wedding bells. You know sings , "These wedding bells are breaking up that old gang of mine." He'd fallen in love, and none of us was stupid enough to say, Oh, you shouldn't love her." We could recognize that, but that didn't diminish the hurt we were feeling by being pushed aside. Later on, I remember saying, "Clear the decks, give him his time with Yoko." I wanted him to have his child and more to New York, to do all the things he'd wantedis child and more to New York, to do all the things he'd wanted to do, to learn Japanese, to expand himself.
PLAYBOY: But you didn't understand it at the time?
PAUL: No, at the time, we tried to understand. but what should happen was, if we were the least bit bitchy, that would be very hurtful to them in this--wild thing they were in. I was looking at my second solo album, Ram, the other day and I remember there was one tiny little reference to John in the whole thing. He'd been doing a lot of preaching, and it got up my nose a little bit. In one song, I wrote, "Too many people preaching practices," I think is the line. I mean, that was a little dig at John and Yoko. There wasn't anything else on it that was about them. Oh, there was "You took your lucky break and broke it in two."
LINDA: Same song. They got the message.
PAUL: But I think they took it further--
LINDA: They thought the whole album was about them. And then they got very upset.
PAUL: Yeah, that was the kind of thing that would happen. They'd take one small dig out of proportion and then come back at us in their next album. Then we'd say, "Hey, we only did two percent. they did 200 percent"--and we'd go through all of that insanity.
PLAYBOY: In most of his interviews, John said he never missed the Beatles. Did you believe him?
PAUL: I don't know. My theory is that he didn't. Someone like John would want to end the Beatle period and start the Yoko period. And he wouldn't like either to interfere with the other. As he was with Yoko, anything about the Beatles tended inevitably to be an intrusion. So I think he was interested enough in his new life to genuinely not miss us.
PLAYBOY: Did you ever try to find out how he felt about it, about you?
PAUL: I knew there was the kind of support that I'd though he felt for me. But obviously, when you're getting slagged off in public, it shakes that faith. Nah, it's just John mouthing off. I know him. But, well, the name-calling coupled with the hurt--it became a bit of a number, you know?
PLAYBOY: Was the way you two went at each other good for the music?
PAUL: Yeah. This was one of the best things about Lennon and McCartney, the competitive element within the team. It was great. But hard to live with. It was hard to live with. It was probably one of the reasons why teams almost have to burn out. And, of course, in finding a strong woman like Yoko, John changed.
LINDA: But that way, you lose yourself.
PAUL: Yeah, I think that probably is the biggest criticism, that John stopped being himself. I used to bitch at him for that. On the phone with me in the later years, he'd get very New York if we were arguing. New York accnt "Awright, goddamn it!" I called him Kojak once, because he was really laying New York street hip on me. Oh, come off it! But, through all of that, I do think he was always a man for fresh horizons. When he wanted to learn Japanese for Yoko, he went to the Biarritz.
LINDA: I like that! Biarritz! You mean Berlitz.
PAUL: Yeah, he wanted fresh challenges all the time. So it was nice of Yoko to fulfill that role. She gave him a direction.
Paul leaves to take a telephone call.
LINDA: I was just going to say that I think if John had lived, he might still be saying, "Oh, I'm much happier now. . . ."
PLAYBOY: And you don't believe it?
LINDA: The sad thing is that John and Paul both had problems and they loved each other and, boy, could they have helped each other! If they had only communicated! It frustrates me no end, because I was just some chick from New York when I walked into all of that. God, if I'd known what I know now. . . . All I could do was sit there watching them play these games. . . .
PLAYBOY: But wasn't it clear that John wanted only to work with Yoko?
LINDA: No. I know that Paul was desperate to write with John again. And I know John was desperate to write . . . desperate. People thought, Well, he's taking care of Sean, he's a househusband and all that, but he wasn't happy. He couldn't write and it drove him crazy. And Paul could have helped him--easily.
Paul returns.
PLAYBOY: Has the McCartneys' relationship with Yoko changed since John's death?
LINDA: No comment! Only kidding. That's what she said. PAUL: When someone asked Yoko if the Beatles had supported her after John's death, she said, "No comment."
LINDA: Even though Ringo flew over to see her and all of us called her.
PAUL: The thing is, in truth, I never really got on that well with Yoko anyway. It was John who got on well with her--that was John who got on well with her--that was the whole point. Strangely enough, I only started to get to know her after John's death. I began wanting to know if I could be of any help, because of my old friend. And at first, I was a bit put off by her attitude of "I don't want to be widow of the year." That's what she said. At first, I felt rebuffed and though, oh, well, great! Well, sod you! But then I thought, Wait a minute, come on. She's had the tragedy of a lifetime here, and I'm being crazy and insensitive to say, "Well, if you're not going to be nice to me, I'm not going to be nice to you." I feel I started to get to know her then, to understand what she was going through instead of only my point of view all the time--which I think is part of growing up anyway. And I think then I was able to find quite a lot of things in common with Yoko.
PLAYBOY: Such as?
PLAYBOY: We're in similar positions--our fame and the people we know. . . .
LINDA: Yoko said to me when John was still alive, "We are the only people going through the same problems." But our differences are still there, too. Being her business partner is a real problem.
PLAYBOY: Once you began to understand Yoko, Paul, did you two talk about John?
PAUL: Yes. We did. In fact, after he died, the thing that helped me the most, really, was talking to Yoko about it. She volunteered the information that he had . . . really liked me. She said that once or twice, they had sat down to listen to my records and he had said, "There you are." So an awful lot went on in the privacy of their own place. So, yes, it was very important.
PLAYBOY: How much did John's praise mean to you when he was alive?
PAUL: a lot, but I hardly ever remember it, actually. There wasn't a lot of it flying about! I remember one time when we were making Help! in Austria. We'd been out skiing all day for the film and so we were all tired. I usually shared a room with George. But on this particular occasion, I was in with John. We were taking our huge skiing boots off and getting ready for the evening and stuff, and we had one of our cassettes. it was one of the albums, probably Revolver or Rubber Soul--I'm a bit hazy about which one. It may have been the one that had my song Here, There and Everywhere. There were three of my songs and three of John's songs on the side we were listening to. And for the first time ever, he just tossed it off, without saying anything definite, "Oh, I probably like your songs better than mine." And that was it! That was the height of praise I ever got off him. Mumbles "I probably like your songs better than mine." Whoops! There was no one looking, so he could say it. But, yeah, I definitely did look up to John. We all looked up to John. He was older and he was very much the leader; he was the quickest wit and the smartest and all that kind of thing. So whenever he did praise any of us, it was great praise, indded, because he didn't dish it out much. If ever you got a speck of it, a crumb of it, you were quite gratefull. With Come Together, for instance, he wanted a piano lick to be very swampy and smoky, and I played it that way and he liked that a lot. I was quite pleased with that. He also liked it when I sang like Little Richard--Tutti-Frutti and all that. All my screaming songs, the early Beatles screaming stuff--that's me doing Little Richard. It requires a great deal of nerve to just jump up and scream like an . .. idiot, you know? Anyway, I would often fall alittle bit short, not have that little kick, that soul, and it would be John who would go, "Come on! You can sing it better than that, man! Come on, come on! Really throw it!" All right, John, OK. . .. He was certainly the one I looked up to most--definitely.
PLAYBOY: Do you remember your first meeting with him? A picture in the Beatles biography The Long and Winding Road is supposed to be the earliest of you two together.
Paul looks at photo in book.
PAUL: That's my mate Len Garry and Pete Shotton. Haven't seen him for years. This was the original Quarrymen. John was playing ukulele chords taught to him by his mum and he was singing Come Go with Me, by the Del Vikings, but he was making up his own words, because nobody knew the words in those days; nobody had the record: We'd only heard it on the radio and loved it. I met John that day. I knew the words to 25 rock songs, so I got in the group. Long Tall Sally and Tutti-Frutti, that got me in. That was my audition.
PLAYBOY: Did you know you were auditioning?
PAUL: No. I was just meeting them. I happened to sing a couple of songs backstage with them. I had a friend called Ivan Vaughn, who was my contact with all these guys; he was my schoolmate. A big, daft guy, like we all were. We all used to talk a lot of nonsense. I mean, our catch phrase is still Chrome Rock Navel.
PLAYBOY: What does that mean?
PAUL: I dunno. Sounds good, doesn't it? Scottish accent Chrome Rock Navel. Aye, all right, laddie! All our old letters say "From Chrome Rock Navel." John and all of us used to do all that stuff.
PLAYBOY: So you played with words from an early age?
PAUL: Yeah, you might call it sarcastic literary, because now everything is so much more important and serious, you know? but as kids on the streets, we just called it wisecracks. Sure, it was an ability with words. It became one of the Beatles' specialties. You know, where producer George Martin would say, "Anything you don't like." and we'd say, "We don't like your tie." That was George who actually said that. All those little famous Beatle wisecracks; we were all into the humor of the time--Peter Sellers and the Goons and forecasts: "Tomorrow will be muggy, followed by tuggy, wuggy and thuggy!" He was about 12, a smart little kid. Another one was, "Yes, your Worship; yes, your battleship!" I remeber that in a courtroom scene.
PLAYBOY: Did you ever envy his cleverness when you wrote together?
PAUL: No, not really. Just his repartee. I envied his repartee. But it wasn't a question of envying each other. Each of us was as good as the other. We used to sag off school Play hooky. . We'd go to my house and try to learn to play songs. He had these banjo chords, I had half a guitar chord--and don't forget, we started from exactly the same spot, Liverpool. Almost the same street, only a mile or two between us. Only a year and a half of age difference, knowledge of guitar, knowledge of music. Pretty similar. I had a little bit more knowledge of harmony through my dad. I actually knew what the word harmony meant. Laughter So, you know, we started from the same place and then went on the same railway journey together.
LINDA: It's just the critics who say, "Well, John was the biting tongue; Paul's the sentimental one." John was biting, but he was also sentimental. Paul was sentimental, but he could be very biting. They were more similar than they were different.
PAUL: With me, how I wrote depended on my mood. The only way I would be sort of biting and witty like that was if I was in a bad mood! Laughter I was very good at sarcasm myself. I could really keep up with John then. If I was in a bad enough mood, I was right up there with him. We were terrific then. He could be as wicked as he wanted, and I could be as wicked, too.