Fab

by Howard Sounes

  Just as Paul took comfort in the Rupert project after his Tokyo humiliation, it was soothing to work again with George Martin and Ritchie. In July, Paul went to the South of France to contribute to Ringo’s Stop and Smell the Roses album, bringing Laurence Juber and Howie Casey with him, also Howie’s fiancée Sheila McKinlay, who had sung on the same bill as the Beatles in the Sixties. Sheila would sing backing vocals on Ritchie’s new album. A couple of months later, Howie and Sheila married, which leads to a nice story showing how generous Paul can be, despite his reputation for being tight with a buck. Around this time Howie asked Paul if he could help him and Sheila buy a house. McCartney agreed to lend the Caseys £10,000 ($15,300). A couple of years later, Paul Winn from MPL rang Howie to point out that he hadn’t repaid any of the loan. Howie said that he was broke. The only way he could repay Paul was to sell the house. McCartney then called Howie personally and told him to consider the loan a gift. ‘He said, “Look, it’s a wedding present.” Thank you very much!’

  In the autumn of 1980, Paul gathered Wings together to rehearse again after a long lay-off, playing in a barn belonging to a friend in Tenterden, a small town near Peasmarsh. Wings then went into a local studio to work on a compilation album for CBS, which was still counting the cost of the failure of Back to the Egg. CBS wanted a Wings greatest hits album to recoup some of the millions they had advanced Paul. The star suggested instead that he revisit his archive of Wings demos and finish off songs that had not quite made it onto previous albums, releasing these, together with a selection of Wings hits, as a double album titled Hot Hitz and Kold Kutz. One of the songs that emerged from this process was the single ‘Goodnight Tonight’, which made number five in the US. CBS didn’t share Paul’s enthusiasm for the Hot Hitz and Kold Kutz album, however, which was never released.

  Paul segued from this aborted project into making what would become his new studio album, Tug of War. George Martin had agreed to produce, the plan being to make the record at George’s AIR studio in London and his new AIR facility on the Caribbean island of Montserrat. The album proved the death knell for Wings. ‘So what happens then is we do a bunch of rehearsals for Tug of War and the material just didn’t necessarily lend itself to Wings,’ says Laurence Juber. ‘Paul called one day and said, you know, “George is going to produce this and he doesn’t want to do it as a Wings album, so thanks but we don’t need you right now … “At that point I saw that the writing was on the wall.’ Paul was breaking Wings up, though Denny Laine stayed with him for a little while yet.

  Around this time an unwelcome ghost from the past emerged in the form of Erika Hübers (née Wohlers), the Hamburg barmaid who had claimed back in the Sixties to have given birth to Paul’s child. Although Paul had never admitted paternity, a lump sum had been paid by Brian Epstein to Erika plus maintenance for her child, Bettina, until she was 18, on the basis the family wouldn’t go public. Bettina was due to turn 18 on 19 December 1980. A couple of weeks before her birthday, the Sunday People newspaper splashed with ‘I AM BEATLE PAUL’S SECRET CHILD’, naming Erika and Bettina for the first time. Looking at the published picture of Erika - a plain, heavy-set burger-bar worker - it was hard to believe Paul had ever had a fling with her, while Erika’s contention that her daughter looked like the star stretched credulity. The girl had already started cashing in on her supposed link with McCartney by singing in clubs as ‘Bettina McCartney, the daughter of a Beatle’. Now she seemed to see a chance for a big pay day. Paul didn’t comment, but the matter refused to go away, adding to what had been a difficult year all round. It was about to get worse.

  Another echo of the past came from across the Atlantic in the form of John Lennon’s new studio album, Double Fantasy, his first for five years, and a solid collection of simple, muscular rock songs as far as his half of the record went. (Yoko had an equal number of tracks, and hers were less impressive.) The first single, the rockabilly-influenced ‘(Just Like) Starting Over’, was released in October 1980, and did reasonable business. It was still bumping along in the lower reaches of the charts when Paul began work on Tug of War at AIR in London that December. Once again, John’s distinctive voice was on the car radio as Paul was driven up to town from the Sussex farm each day by John Hammel, punching through the years with lyrics that had an emotional weight and a sense of personal honesty - qualities too often lacking in Paul’s work. That didn’t necessarily translate into sensational sales. Double Fantasy sold modestly in the run-up to Christmas, and received some negative reviews. Still, Paul knew there was good work here. It was the first time for years that John had made a real effort with his music, challenging Paul as he used to.

  McCartney was at home at Waterfall on the morning of Tuesday 9 December 1980 when the telephone rang. It was his manager Stephen Shrimpton calling to inform him that John had been shot dead in New York, gunned down overnight outside the Dakota building by a man who’d previously asked for his autograph. Neil Aspinall had been on the telephone disseminating the news, it being his unenviable task to inform 74-year-old Aunt Mimi that she would never see her nephew again. Neil always got the dirty jobs. Paul was in the house alone when he took the call; Linda was out doing the school run. When he saw Lin’s car coming back up the drive Paul walked outside to meet her. ‘I could tell by looking at him that there was something absolutely wrong. I’d never seen him like that before. Desperate, you know, tears …’

  Paul had a session booked at AIR in London, with Paddy Moloney of the Chieftains flying in from Ireland to play on a track. Denny Laine was also going to be in the studio. George Martin telephoned Waterfall to ask Paul if he wanted to cancel. He said he would rather come in to work. With the press gathering outside his gates, the London studio looked like a convenient bolthole.51

  Paul arrived at AIR at the same time as his record plugger Joe Reddington. As the men walked through the lobby to the lift, a journalist tried to follow them in and had to be ejected before they could ascend to the fifth-floor recording studio. Paul then attempted to do a day’s work. ‘He was just very, very quiet, and upset, as we all were,’ recalls Denny Laine. ‘He said to me, “I’m never going to fall out with anybody again in my life,” which is impossible to do, but that’s the way he felt. I knew he felt that maybe they didn’t make up like they should have done, so therefore he felt a bit guilty …’ As the musicians stood looking out of the window, they saw a furniture van below on Oxford Street with the name Lennon’s on the side, a type of van neither man had seen in London before. ‘We looked at each other and went, “Uh-ho! That was an omen.”’

  The phone rang. Joe Reddington picked up. ‘Can I speak to Paul McCartney?’ asked a woman.

  ‘He’s busy at the moment. Who’s calling?’

  ‘It’s Yoko.’ Joe knew instinctively it really was John’s widow, rather than a hoax. He told everybody to clear the room. ‘And [Paul] took the call. I just closed the door and he was crying - he’d lost his best friend.’

  Throughout that short winter day, journalists besieged AIR Studios. There were photographers waiting for Paul down at the entrance on Oxford Street, with snappers clambering over the rooftops to try for pictures through the windows. In these extraordinary circumstances, Paul’s office arranged for a private security firm to help Paul when he was ready to leave the building, employing a driver in a blocker car to get between the press and Paul’s Mercedes estate, which was brought round to the front door on Oxford Street. As always, Oxford Street was thick with traffic. It being nearly Christmas, the pavement was also crowded with shoppers.

  It was dark when Paul came down in the lift, surrounded by employees including Joe Reddington. As McCartney stepped out of the lobby onto the pavement, journalists clustered around him. Paul stopped obligingly so they could take pictures and ask him questions. Television crews were also present. Technicians switched on their special lights. ‘I was very shocked, you know, it’s terrible news,’ Paul said, when asked for his reaction to John’s death. He was usually relaxed with j
ournalists, having dealt with them all his adult life, but this evening Paul was distinctly edgy, his hazel eyes darting about, a touch of Scouse truculence creeping into his voice. He was also chewing gum, which gave the unfortunate impression that he wasn’t taking the matter as seriously as he might. Passing shoppers stared, a few members of the public stopping to watch and listen from behind the scrum of journalists. One of the TV reporters asked Paul when he’d heard the news John had been killed. ‘I got a phone call this morning,’ Paul replied, giving clipped answers.

  ‘From whom?’

  ‘From a friend of mine.’

  ‘Are you planning to go over for the funeral?’

  ‘I don’t know yet.’

  ‘What were you recording today?’

  ‘I was just listening to some stuff, you know. I just didn’t want to sit at home.’

  ‘Why?’

  Bridling at the impertinence, Paul replied: ‘I didn’t feel like it.’ When the reporters began repeating their questions, Paul concluded the interview with an offhand rhetorical question. ‘It’s a drag, isn’t it?’ he asked the newsmen, still chewing. ‘OK, cheers, goodbye …’ - after which he got in his red Mercedes and was driven away.

  The clip was used prominently in news broadcasts around the world that night, including Britain’s News at Ten. ‘“A drag” isn’t how the world will see it,’ commented the ITN newscaster sternly, highlighting the crassness of Paul’s remark. Just as when his mother and his father had died, and when Stuart Sutcliffe passed away, Paul had reacted awkwardly to death, saying and doing the wrong thing. Whatever he really felt - and of course he was shocked, and in time would feel genuine grief - he gave the impression on the day of not caring, which was very unfortunate because in death John Lennon was transfigured into a tragic hero, seen by many as a much greater man than Paul. On top of the Japanese bust, this was a dreadful end to a horrible year, as well as being one of the defining moments of Paul’s life. His partner in the Beatles, his best friend, with whom he’d fallen out and never been fully reconciled, was gone, and Paul had sent him on his way with a stupid comment. Perhaps it was true what people said of Paul, as he himself thought when the Beatles broke up, perhaps he really was a shit.

  20

  INTO THE EIGHTIES

  THE MEAN SIDE OF PAUL McCARTNEY

  Reportage of John Lennon’s murder was the most excessive coverage of the death of a pop star since Elvis Presley died three years previously, a sensation that lasted weeks. Yoko had her husband cremated privately on 10 December 1980. Mass public memorials were held in New York and Liverpool four days later, while John’s songs played seemingly constantly on the radio into the new year, the singles ‘(Just Like) Starting Over’ and ‘Woman’ both posthumously going to number one in the USA, as did Double Fantasy. John’s death also created a huge revival of interest in the Beatles, selling truckloads of the band’s albums on a wave of nostalgia that hasn’t abated. ‘It was John’s death that reignited the whole thing,’ notes Lennon’s college friend Bill Harry, who points out that the civic leaders of Liverpool had hitherto ignored the Beatles.Liverpool refused to do a Beatles statue. They refused to have Beatles streets named after them. Liverpool councillors [said], ‘The Beatles, we don’t want to know them, they were drug addicts … they brought shame to the city. We don’t want to have anything to do with the Beatles.’ [This attitude] was transformed after John’s death.

  All the surviving Beatles benefited from renewed sales of their back catalogue, leading to an ongoing, lucrative programme of repackaging and reissuing their records and films. While John’s death helped make Paul even richer, it also served to elevate his friend into the company of James Dean and Marilyn Monroe, show business idols who died young and were revered as a result like secular saints. This was absurd, and over the ensuing years McCartney tried to persuade the public that John wasn’t a saint, and that it was unfair to label Paul as a platitudinous balladeer in comparison to Lennon the intellectual and musical heavyweight. But if John wasn’t a saint, there was a grain of truth in this characterisation of their respective roles in the Beatles, and Paul’s attempts to adjust the public’s perception tended to make him look insecure.

  Having uttered his regrettable ‘It’s a drag’ comment the day the world heard John had died, Paul kept a low profile during the mourning period. He and Linda visited Yoko at the Dakota briefly, then returned to England where Paul resumed work with George Martin on the Tug of War album. Another old friend joined the team at AIR. Paul had known Eric Stewart since the Beatles and Eric’s first band, Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, were playing the clubs. ‘It was always Paul who would come out and say “Hi, how are you doing? How’s it going?” So we sort of kept in touch in that way, just crossing paths on gigs and things like that, for a long, long time.’ In the 1970s Eric enjoyed success with 10cc, creating such distinctive hits as ‘I’m Not in Love’, which he co-wrote, sang and produced at his Lancashire studio, named Strawberry in honour of ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’.

  Eric owned a second Strawberry studio not far from Paul’s estate in the south-east of England. Driving home from this studio one winter evening in 1979, Eric’s car came off the road and hit a tree. The musician was lying semi-comatose in Redhill General Hospital when Paul rang and asked the nurse to put the phone next to his friend’s ear.

  She said, ‘There’s somebody on the phone to speak to you. It’s Paul. Paul wants to speak to you.’ I said, ‘Who? What?’ I was full of drugs, a drip, not really caring much about anything, but completely oblivious, amnesic. ‘It’s Paul McCartney. He wants to say hello to you.’ And she put the phone next to my ear, and I said, ‘Hello?’ He said, ‘Hi, Eric, it’s Paul.’ And I said, ‘How are you? How are you doing?’ He said, ‘Fuck me! How are you? What have you been doing? It’s Paul.’ I said, ‘Paul? Paul! Right, Paul. Great. How are you? Fantastic. Yeah, I’m in … I’m in a hospital. Oh my God, how are you?’ It just woke me up … I don’t think I’d have been a cabbage, but it certainly did take me out of whatever state I was in at that point in time.

  In fact, Eric came to feel that his friend’s call helped save his life.

  When Paul began recording Tug of War he invited Eric to sing and play guitar on the record, beginning a five-year collaboration. Eric celebrated his 36th birthday as they started the project and Paul got their working relationship off to a nice start by giving his friend a drum machine as a present. ‘He’s incredibly generous, always has been,’ says Eric, who went on to play on many of the tracks on the new LP, including the title song, a ballad with a metaphorical lyric about the struggle of life, lifted enormously by George Martin’s production, as was the whole album. The record purred like a Rolls Royce under the hands of the master after years when Paul had been turning out old bangers that coughed and spluttered.

  Having started Tug of War in London, Paul transferred the work to Montserrat where George had built a studio complex on a farm overlooking the sea. Apart from the pleasant Caribbean climate, part of the attraction of AIR Montserrat was that everybody could be accommodated in private villas within a secure compound. Security seemed important after John’s death. Paul had worried in the 1960s about being shot by a maniac, when such fears had seemed like the paranoia of a young man who’d read too much about Lee Harvey Oswald. After all, who’d want to kill a pop star? When Mark Chapman murdered John Lennon, apparently to achieve fame, it became painfully obvious to PaulI and other leading rock stars that there was a real danger of being targeted by a copy-cat killer. (Bob Dylan gave a member of his road band a bulletproof vest in case he took a bullet for his boss on stage.) The fact that Ringo Starr was coming down to Montserrat to play on Tug of War made it doubly important to have good security at the studio, which was fenced and guarded, members of the press buzzing around the perimeter in hire cars trying to get pictures of the Beatles together. One day when Paul was driving his children around in a Mini Moke he had a run-in with two such photographers. ‘The man is
definitely scared,’ commented the Daily Express snapper afterwards, claiming Paul rammed their car with his jeep.

  Part of George Martin’s strategy for Tug of War was to surround Paul with new and more notable musicians than he had used in Wings, complementing a brilliant talent as a jeweller selects emeralds and rubies to set off a diamond to its best advantage. Although Denny Laine came to Montserrat, George Martin recruited new players to work alongside Paul, such as the bass guitarist Stanley Clarke and drummer Steve Gadd, two of the best session musicians in the business, as well as being close associates of Ringo’s.

  John’s death cast a shadow over Paul and Ritchie’s reunion on Montserrat. ‘It was a little bit heavy,’ recalls Steve Gadd. ‘If they wanted to get back together again they couldn’t now.’ Paul had a song he’d originally intended to give Ritchie for his new album, titled ‘Take It Away’. Now the guys recorded the song as a Tug of War track. Ringo and Steve Gadd both played drums, helping to create a swinging hit sound. When Ritchie, Steve and Stanley left Montserrat, Carl Perkins flew in to play with Paul on the likeable ‘Get It’. Then a still bigger star arrived in the form of Stevie Wonder, who’d agreed to sing with Paul on a song McCartney had written inspired by the black and white keys on a piano keyboard, from which he’d created a musical metaphor for racial harmony. Many listeners find ‘Ebony and Ivory’ annoyingly simplistic, but it possesses the ineluctable power of McCartney’s best tunes and became a massive hit. As much a musical genius as McCartney, and even more of a perfectionist, Wonder admonished Paul during the recording for being out of time with his handclaps. His claps were not ‘in the pocket’. ‘And you better believe I got it in the pocket,’ recalled McCartney. ‘He gets results and he knows what he’s doing.’