Fab

by Howard Sounes

  Considering all John had said about Paul over the past few years, the meeting was surprisingly cordial, the ex-Beatles feeling comfortable enough in each other’s presence to jam together. The time was right for a rapprochement. John and Paul’s contract with Northern Songs had expired, allowing them to benefit from their new songs via their respective publishing companies; both had enjoyed solo success; and John had come round to the view that Paul had been right about Allen Klein. In fact, all the Beatles had turned their backs on Klein and were now suing him. The boys had also agreed sensibly that their faithful retainer, Neil Aspinall, should head up Apple Corps, which he ran successfully until his retirement in 2007. Furthermore, John, Paul and George had contributed individually to Ritchie’s recent Ringo album, Paul giving his friend the hit, ‘You’re Sixteen’. In short, they were almost back to being mates. The day after the studio visit, the McCartneys paid a house call on John in Santa Monica, and this also went well. Before he left, Paul gave John some brotherly advice. He told him Yoko missed him and, if he felt the same, he should try and win her back, which is what Lennon did.

  Making full use of his new visa, Paul decided to take the family and Wings to Tennessee for a working holiday. It was musical associations that drew Paul to the Nashville area, the family’s love of horse-riding leading the McCartneys to rent a ranch from songwriter Claude ‘Curly’ Putman Jr. Success with the tune ‘Green, Green Grass of Home’ had enabled Putman to buy a 130-acre property outside Nashville, which the McCartneys rented for six weeks, arriving with a newly configured version of Wings. Denny Laine was still in the band, but there was a new British drummer, Geoff Britton, and a new lead guitarist, a diminutive 20-year-old Glaswegian named Jimmy McCulloch, who’d already experienced success with Thunderclap Newman. Talented but highly strung, Jimmy had a tendency to become obstreperous when drunk. ‘He had a London accent, normally,’ recalls Howie Casey, who worked regularly with Wings at this time. ‘Soon as he had a drink he became Scottish. I’ll see you. It was all that.’

  The Putmans went on holiday to Hawaii, leaving their ranch to Paul, who enjoyed playing at being a cowboy. He and Linda rode horses most days, while Paul also enjoyed riding a trail bike belonging to Curly’s son, Troy. They had a barbecue for Paul’s 32nd birthday, and invited Roy Orbison over for supper, rekindling an old friendship. Paul rehearsed Wings in the garage next to the ranch house and recorded with the band in a Nashville studio, laying down ‘Walking in the Park with Eloise’, a dance tune created by Paul’s dad, later released under the nom de plume of the ‘Country Hams’.45 Wings also recorded ‘Junior’s Farm’, inspired by their stay on the ranch, and this became a top ten hit in the USA.

  Paul enjoyed riding Troy Putman’s motorbike so much he bought a bike of the same sort for himself and, at the end of his Nashville vacation, put it on a trailer and hauled it up to New York, where the McCartneys called in on Linda’s family. The visit was so successful that a new element was added to the McCartney Year. Each summer Paul and Lin would bring the kids to spend a couple of weeks with the Eastmans on Lily Pond Lane, East Hampton, where Lee and John Eastman both maintained summer homes. The McCartneys usually stayed with John and his wife Jody, partly so that their children could play together.

  VENUS AND MARS

  One of the early signs of a second, nostalgic wave of interest in the Beatles came in 1974 with the staging of John, Paul, George, Ringo … & Bert at the Liverpool Everyman. The author was Willy Russell, a local playwright who’d developed a love of the Beatles while watching them on stage at the Cavern as a schoolboy. The premise of his play was that a former member of the Quarry Men, an invented character named Bert, attends a Wings show and is prompted to reflect upon the history of the Beatles, which is told with music in flashback. The play benefited from a superb cast, including Trevor Eve as McCartney, and transferred successfully to London.

  When excerpts from John, Paul, George, Ringo … & Bert were broadcast on BBC television around Christmas 1974, Paul was infuriated because the sequence he watched seemed to portray him as the one who broke up the band. ‘[The BBC] substantially showed the scene in which there’s the ultimate spat between John and Paul, and the scene was very specifically written to take account of the fact that-as history now acknowledges - the first person to announce he was leaving the Beatles was John Lennon,’ explains Russell, ‘but the way they edited the scene it pandered to the perception, as is still now the case, that Paul McCartney was responsible for the break-up of the Beatles … apparently Paul saw this and was incensed.’ As a result, McCartney blocked an attempt to produce a movie of John, Paul, George, Ringo and … & Bert. The success of the musical, though, and the interest in making it into a movie, showed how potent the Beatles story remained; while Paul’s strong reaction to the play demonstrated how deeply he felt about the way his part in history was represented, something that would become a veritable obsession. The affair also led to a meeting between McCartney and Russell, whom Paul would call on when he decided to make a film himself.

  In real life, the Beatles partnership was finally dissolved in London’s High Court in January 1975, a quiet end to a long and public war, with Paul the clear victor. He had achieved everything he wanted, plus the satisfaction of knowing that the others had come to the conclusion that he had been right about Klein. And Apple was now in Neil’s safe hands.

  A few weeks after the ruling, Paul and Linda took the children and Wings to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. The McCartneys had themselves made up as clowns so they could mingle with the crowd during the carnival. They also recorded tracks for their next album, Venus and Mars, the two dramatic opening tunes of which, ‘Venus and Mars’ and ‘Rock Show’, were created with a view to playing American arena shows in the near future. Taken together, the songs on the new album were much weaker than Band on the Run, with more than the usual amount of whimsy and silliness, including an arrangement of the theme to the television soap Crossroads. Apparently meant as a joke, choices such as this served to debase McCartney’s currency. He either didn’t realise this, or didn’t care. Probably the latter, judging by his decision to also have Wings record a commercial for a brand of white, sliced bread, as recalled by a friend from the swinging Sixties, Prince Stanislas Klossowski ‘Stash’ de Rola: ‘After a long time not seeing him, I went back to Cavendish Avenue once and Paul proudly said, “I’ve got something to play you,” and I was horrified because he had proudly played me Sgt. Pepper acetates [in the Sixties, and now] he played me a Mother’s Pride commercial that he’d composed!’46

  Venus and Mars, however, yielded one good single, ‘Listen to What the Man Said’, with at least one other worthwhile song, though not written by Paul. ‘Medicine Jar’ was written and sung by Jimmy McCulloch, a young man of considerable talent, but challenging personality. ‘I liked Jimmy, but he was a lot of trouble,’ recalls Denny Laine. ‘He and Paul clashed quite a lot.’ Jimmy reduced Linda to tears with sharp remarks about her musicianship. One might think that crossing Linda in this way was a sure way to get fired from Wings, but Paul levelled similar criticisms at his wife. ‘I did once say to her in a row I could have had Billy Preston [on keyboards],’ Paul remarked in 1976 (Preston being one of the best keyboard players in the business as well as being a former Beatles sideman). ‘It just came out.’ Meanwhile, the new drummer, Geoff Britton, wasn’t fitting in. He was let go midway through Venus and Mars.

  From New Orleans, the McCartneys flew to Los Angeles, renting an apartment in Coldwater Canyon as Paul put the finishing touches to Venus and Mars. On Saturday 1 March 1975, Paul and Linda attended the Grammy Awards, in which Wings were nominated for Band on the Run, winning two awards on the night, one for Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Group, and another for Geoff Emerick’s engineering - a worthy winner considering the trying circumstances under which the record had been made. John Lennon showed up at the ceremony, pale and thin, to present the award for Record of the Year to Olivia Newton-John singing ‘I Honestly Love You’. />
  Forty-eight hours later Paul and Linda were driving back to their rented home in Coldwater Canyon when they were stopped by police for jumping a red light on Santa Monica Boulevard. As the officer wrote a ticket he smelt marijuana and ordered the family out of their Lincoln Continental (it was late and the kids were sleeping in the back). Sixteen ounces of grass were found in Linda’s purse. She was taken away for questioning, her bail set at $500. Like many very famous people, Paul didn’t tend to carry much if any cash, and certainly didn’t have enough in his wallet to make bail. Ringing round his contacts, he located former Apple executive Peter Brown at the Beverly Hills Hotel, drove over and got a loan. ‘Linda took the rap because she was an American citizen,’ explains Brown, who talked the matter over with Paul. ‘Therefore it wasn’t onerous to her … we got him the money, and he went back and got her out.’ Although the matter was quickly resolved, this was the McCartneys’ third drug conviction in two and a half years.

  The next day Linda called one of her old journalist pals, Blair Sabol, whom she hadn’t spoken to since 1969, being one of the media friends Linda dropped when she and Paul got together. Linda’s former best girlfriend, the reporter Lillian Roxon, had never forgiven her for this slight, getting her own back on Linda by writing a catty review of Paul’s 1973 TV special, shortly after which Lillian died. No chance of reconciliation there. Linda had long ago made her peace with journalist Danny Fields, but Blair hadn’t heard from Linda until now, and like Lillian she got her own back on Linda in print, writing a caustic article about their reunion in the Village Voice. ‘Now you must understand the last time I knew Linda was in her groping groupie days [when] Linda was into photographing stars with little or no film in her camera,’ Blair later wrote.

  I remember how impressed I was with her come-on talents as she sat in front of [Warren Beatty] in a mini-skirt and her legs in full wide-angle split for at least six rolls of Ectachrome. Warren ended up ushering me out of his Delmonico’s suite within 30 minutes and kept Linda for two days. Her pictures turned out to be mediocre to poor, but we became fast friends.

  When Linda invited Blair to the LA studio where Paul was finishing Venus and Mars, Blair encountered a woman who seemed to have become totally false since her celebrated marriage, speaking in a faux English accent, also affecting a lazy rock ’n’ roll manner. ‘I mean Mahhhhhhn, I cahn’t stand this town,’ she said of LA. Linda shrugged off the latest drug bust: ‘Well, you know it happens to everybody and it’s time-consuming with the lawyers, but we’ll get it taken care of.’ Then Paul came in, wearing a hideous black satin smoking jacket with a dragon stitched on the back. ‘Linda’s told me so much about you. Really glad to meet you,’ he said politely. Whether he meant it, he made the effort. Blair warmed to Paul, but found Linda a complete phoney whose ‘manipulation of Paul’ was ‘obnoxious’; as if she was using him to make herself a star, which Blair seemed to think Linda had always wanted to be, though most people don’t see Linda that way. The prevailing view, rather, is that Lin was humouring Paul in trying to play the part of a band member.

  Evidently, the journalist kept her thoughts to herself at the time, because she received an invitation to a party the McCartneys were giving to celebrate the completion of their album. ‘It’s gonna be verrrrrry private,’ Linda assured Blair, affectedly. ‘No press and just our immediate good friends. You know, nice and quiet.’ This intimate party turned out to be a blow-out for 350 people on the Queen Mary, the retired ocean liner docked at Long Beach. Some of the most famous names in show business attended including Bob Dylan, who treated everybody to a rare display of his disco dancing. George Harrison also showed up, looking a little drawn after a difficult period personally and professionally. In recent times George had scandalised the Beatles family, and enraged Ritchie, by having a fling with his wife Mo. Pattie then left George for his friend Eric Clapton, after which George embarked on a poorly received US tour. On top of everything, he’d developed a cocaine habit. George’s presence at Paul’s party, however, underlined the Beatles rapprochement.

  In commercial terms, Paul had done considerably better than John, George and Ritchie since the break-up of the band. After a strong start with All Things Must Pass, Harrison’s career had fallen flat. Lennon had enjoyed chart success, but he’d also released flop albums, and he didn’t tour. After he returned to Yoko from his lost weekend, and they had their son, Sean, John essentially retired from public life, no further rival to Paul. And Ritchie was never going to be anything but a novelty act. Paul was leaving the boys in his dust. He had always been the most hard-working Beatle, the most prolific and focused. He was also the one who really enjoyed live performance, and he had the happy knack of being able to write hits whenever he pleased. His long-playing records were uneven, Venus and Mars typically patchy, with some tracks that are virtually unlistenable to today (try ‘Magneto and Titanium Man’), but this sort of soft rock was what the market wanted. The LP went to number one in the USA and Britain, with ‘Listen to What the Man Said’ a US number one. Sometimes an artist is in tune with his times. Paul had enjoyed that experience in the Sixties, spectacularly so, and his luck was holding into the Seventies. He capitalised on the success of his new records by taking Wings out on the road in the UK in the autumn of 1975, followed by an Australian tour, all part of the build-up to a major tour of the USA, where Wings songs were a staple of FM radio playlists. John Lennon might have scorned Paul’s material with some justification as Muzak, but millions of Americans happily tapped their steering wheels to the sound of Wings as they drove to and from their jobs in 1975.

  That Christmas, John and Yoko were home in the Dakota with two-month-old Sean, and their photographer friend Bob Gruen, when the doorbell rang. They were startled. People didn’t just come knocking on the front door within the Dakota. Security was too tight. Anybody paying a visit reported first to the security man in a gilded sentry box at the West 72nd Street entrance, then went to reception where staff would ring up to check before allowing anybody into the elevator. For a moment, John thought they might be being busted. He asked Gruen to see who it was. As the photographer cautiously approached the front door of the apartment he heard somebody singing ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’ outside. ‘So I called back to John and Yoko, “Don’t worry, it’s some kids from the building singing carols.’” Gruen then looked through the spy hole and saw Paul and Linda McCartney on the doorstep. The photographer opened the door and took the McCartneys through to John and Yoko, who were in their white bedroom, where they spent much of their time. Here, the two chief Beatles had another reunion which, according to Gruen, was a happy occasion: ‘they all seemed like giddy old school chums. Hugging, patting each other on the back… like high-school buddies who hadn’t seen each other in a long time and really liked each other.’

  In the new year, John and Paul received the shocking news that Mal Evans had died, killed in bizarre circumstances at the age of 40. Along with Neil Aspinall, Mal had been a faithful Beatles courtier from the beginning. He had also been underappreciated. On one hand Mal was made to feel part of the Beatles family, yet the boys were always quick to put him in his place, with Paul being cold towards Mal when the Beatles fell apart, getting the roadie to fetch and carry for him while making his first solo album, but telling him curtly that he didn’t want him in the studio, because he was with Linda now. Mal became a lost soul after the Beatles disbanded. He separated from his wife, Lily, moved to Los Angeles, where he shared an apartment with a woman named Fran Hughes, and tried to write his memoirs. He was due to deliver his manuscript on 12 January 1976. Eight days before the deadline, Mal became stoned and depressed. His girlfriend called his collaborator on the book, who came over. When they tried to talk to Mal he picked up a rifle. The police were summoned. When Mal pointed his gun at the cops, they shot him dead. In many ways his death seems like a suicide. Mal must have known the Beatles wouldn’t want him to publish that book, and that the choice he faced was dropping the project, and
losing money, or further estranging himself from the boys. Better perhaps to die.

  Closer to home, Paul’s father was in failing health. For the last few years, Jim McCartney had lived as an invalid in his Gayton bungalow, nursed by Angie. ‘She was very nice, Angie … My God she looked after Jim!’ comments their neighbour Doug Mackenzie - a tribute worth bearing in mind given that Angie’s reputation would be blackened in the months to come. The other member of the household was Angie’s daughter, Ruth, now a teenager, with ambitions to go into show business. In 1975 Ruth auditioned successfully for a spot as a dancer on a TV show with Paul’s brother Mike, going round to Paul’s house to tell him the good news. According to a press interview Ruth later gave a Sunday newspaper, Paul was far from being pleased. In fact, he was furious. Ruth alleged that her stepbrother pinned her against a wall, with his left hand above her, and used his right to wag a finger as he delivered a lecture about people in the business only wanting to hire Ruth because she was his sister. Although she asserted in her interview that Paul had yelled at her, Ruth concluded that ‘he meant it for the best’.

  Jim McCartney rarely left home now. When the weather was fine, he sat in his front garden watching the world go by. But most of the time he stayed inside, huddled by the fire, crippled by arthritis. A lifelong smoker, Jim also suffered from bronchitis. As his health deteriorated in February and March of 1976, there was tension between Paul and Angie over what should be done. On visits to the Wirral, Paul urged his father to be more active, as if Dad could will himself back into health. Then Jim developed bronchopneumonia, often a prelude to death in the elderly. Paul wanted Dad in hospital; Angie insisted she look after her husband at home. ‘We had a falling out as the rest of the family wanted Jim to die in hospital, where his life would have been prolonged by a few painful weeks. But Jim wanted to die in his own bed,’ Angie said, ‘so I kept him at home. It caused a lot of bad feeling at the time.’