Fab

by Howard Sounes

  Among Sir Paul’s friends and associates the consensus was that Heather was trouble. Many worrying stories were swirling around about her. Eric Stewart was so concerned about what he heard that he wrote a letter to Paul:She went to that charity show knowing she would meet him, and I do believe she said to somebody before that she was going to marry him, so I sent a letter warning him. I didn’t get a reply, but as soon as they got together the people I knew at MPL, all these old friends, suddenly [seemed] to disappear, they got replaced. Suddenly I couldn’t ring him there. I could ring him at home or at the studio, but there nobody would put you through to him. What’s going on here? It was like he was trying to sweep out anybody who knew him and Linda together.

  At least that was Eric’s perception of what was going on at MPL. When Paul introduced Heather Mills to another old friend, Tony ‘Measles’ Bramwell, with whom he’d been reconciled since their 1978 spat, Bramwell immediately remembered Heather as a girl who used to hang around the London clubs. ‘Heather looked at me in horror, knowing I’d been in the clubs when she was slapping around [looking for] a rich man.’ Unwilling to spend time in Measles’ company, Heather announced: ‘There’s nobody interesting here, I’m going shopping.’ Paul followed her meekly, Bramwell concluding that Heather was every bit as horrible as he had always found Yoko Ono to be.

  That summer Paul took Heather to Liverpool, where he was to preside over the annual LIPA graduation ceremony. Beforehand, he introduced his girlfriend to Mark Featherstone-Witty, who didn’t like her any more than Bramwell or Smith. ‘Normally, in a normal conversation, you meet somebody, “Tell me a little bit about yourself,” and at some point in the conversation you expect the favour to be returned,’ Featherstone-Witty observes. ‘Two and a half hours later she was still talking. Ha Ha Ha! I’ve met self-centred people in my life, but I think she has to get the gold star; she has the Oscar for somebody who is self-centred.’

  Yet Paul was smitten. After the ceremony, he drove Heather to the Lake District, checking into the Sharrow Bay Hotel on Ullswater where, one night before dinner, he dropped down on his knee and said: ‘I love you, Heather. Will you marry me?’ Paul presented his girlfriend with a sapphire and diamond engagement ring he’d bought in India in January. (The fact he’d waited six months before offering it to Heather tells its own story.) When the charity worker said she would marry him, the famous widower burst into tears.

  27

  THAT DIFFICULT SECOND MARRIAGE

  THE CONCERT FOR NEW YORK

  On the morning of 11 September 2001, Sir Paul McCartney and his fiancée Heather Mills were sitting in the first-class compartment of a commercial aeroplane at John F. Kennedy Airport, about to fly to London. As their aircraft taxied for take-off, the couple saw the familiar outline of Manhattan blemished by a pall of smoke rising from the World Trade Center. The captain asked everybody to remain calm as he found out what was happening. Passengers instinctively started calling family members on their cell phones. They were all still sitting there 17 minutes later when a second terrorist-guided aircraft slammed into the South Tower of the Trade Center, shortly after which came news of a third plane hitting the Pentagon and that, as a result, all commercial flights were grounded. When they had disembarked, Paul and Heather were driven back to Long Island where, like most people, the couple sat watching television coverage of these extraordinary events.

  Paul and Heather had been in New York so that Heather could collect an award for her charity work. Since getting engaged to Sir Paul, she had become more prominent in public life on both sides of the Atlantic, giving the impression she expected to be taken notice of independently of her fiancé, though she wouldn’t have received anything like as much attention if her name hadn’t been linked with his. Linda had always been happy to be Paul’s consort, never trying to overshadow him. With Heather there was the sense of a rival ego. Ever since she first sold her story to the British tabloids, she had revelled in media attention, albeit pretty second-rate stuff. Now she swaggered on an international stage. In fact Heather soon bored of sitting at home with Paul in Amagansett and left him there to fulfil ‘urgent charity commitments’ in the U K.

  When she returned to Long Island a few days later, Heather suggested to Paul that he ‘do a charity concert’ for 9/11. Paul wasn’t immediately keen. His new album, Driving Rain, was due out and he didn’t want to give the impression he was using the disaster to sell records. Heather told him not to be so silly. ‘Write a song about freedom,’ she suggested, picking a touchstone word used repeatedly by President George W. Bush in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, his speeches implying a link with Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, which the US subsequently invaded. Many observers, Paul included, came to see this as a blunder, there being no proven link between 9/11 and Saddam’s Iraq. ‘The opportunity that was lost was that people felt a massive natural sympathy for the people of America, and the political moves that followed 9/11 wasted that opportunity,’ he later remarked. ‘It was like someone in the playground got hit, and didn’t quite know who hit him, and he just decided to swipe out at the nearest person - and that turned out to be Iraq.’ In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, however, empathising with the hurt suffered by the American people, Paul acceded to his fiancée’s suggestion and set President Bush’s rhetoric to music.

  The song ‘Freedom’, co-written with Heather, was one of McCartney’s most lumpen compositions, with a heavy-handed football chant of a tune and lyrics that read like the words culled from Republican bumper stickers:This is my right, a right given by God

  To live a free life, to live in freedom

  Talkin’ about freedom

  I’m talkin’ ’bout freedom

  I will fight for the right

  To live in freedom

  Harvey Weinstein and the television company VH-1 were already planning a concert in aid of the firefighters and other emergency workers who had suffered and distinguished themselves during the attacks, with the Who committed to perform. Sir Paul was persuaded to abandon plans for his own 9/11 concert and join the VH-1 event. In doing so, he became the headliner, with some backstage bad feeling. ‘I think the Who feel that they were in before Paul,’ comments a VH-1 executive.

  The Who were the first people contacted, and they agreed to anchor it, and when other people heard the Who were in they started coming in. At the same time Paul was in town and [he] became the anchor and headliner of the Concert for New York, but as you might understand there was a certain amount of confusion among some of the other people who felt that, ‘Gee, I committed before Paul did, how come it’s become Paul’s concert?’ … It starts to get into a touchy area because different people’s egos are involved.

  Pete Townshend remembers events differently:When I was approached by Harvey Weinstein, Paul had already made a commitment I think - pressed by Heather Mills who was on a plane on the runway at Kennedy with him watching as the towers fell. He was simply unsure how the show was going to unfold. We did not commit to play on condition of being headliners or anchors. We just committed to do it … It may be of course that our MANAGEMENT [sic] were peeved that Paul should take over the anchor spot. But we would always defer to the Stones or the Beatles (Macca).

  The show at Madison Square Garden on 20 October 2001 was a highly emotional event featuring appearances by actors, sports stars and political figures, including New York’s Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Roughly half the acts were British, with David Bowie, Eric Clapton, Jagger and Richards, Sir Elton John and the Who all performing before Sir Paul took the stage in an FDNY T-shirt. Starting with ‘I’m Down’, he went on to perform two songs from his new album including the single ‘From a Lover to a Friend’, before closing with ‘Yesterday’, ‘Freedom’ and ‘Let It Be’, the finale being a foot-stomping reprise of ‘Freedom’, which was released as a single. The show, which raised millions for charity, naturally overshadowed the release of Driving Rain, a weak album that made little impact on the charts. Likewise, ‘Fr
eedom’ just scraped into Billboard ’s Hot 100.

  The momentous events of 9/11 also overshadowed the last days of George Harrison, who, having survived a knife attack by a maniac intruder at Friar Park in 1999, was in the US receiving treatment for cancer. His situation was terminal. Paul visited his old friend at Staten Island University Hospital in November. Theirs had always been a difficult relationship, from the Quarry Men until a year ago when the Anthology book was published. George had worked in the past with Genesis, a small British publishing house, to produce expensive, leather-bound limited editions of his book, I Me Mine, and his friend Derek Taylor’s memoir, Fifty Years Adrift. George had told the Apple board he wanted the Anthology book to come out initially in a similar, leather-bound edition. Paul was aghast. ‘Paul objected because he was vegetarian,’ reports George’s confidant Neil Innes. ‘So George was muttering about that. [The relationship] had got a bit strained towards the end with silly things.’ All bickering was now put to one side. Sitting by the hospital bed of his childhood friend, and colleague in one of the great musical adventures of the twentieth century, Paul took George’s hand in his and stroked it tenderly. As he left the hospital, he reflected that he’d never touched George like that before in all the years they’d known each other.

  It was with fast-fading George in mind, and the loss of Linda, that Paul prepared for the first performances of his choral work Ecce Cor Meum. Beforehand, Paul and Heather stayed again in Oxford as guests of Magdalen President Anthony Smith, who found he liked Ms Mills no more now that she was Sir Paul’s fiancée.

  You know when a woman loves a man she’s with, and there was no love there. Everyone could see it. Everyone around [them]. You could just see it, you could feel it, and he didn’t, or he had convinced himself that, because he was a good man, which he is, an extremely morally motivated person, in all things, I think, he felt he ought to love her. That’s my theory.

  The first performance of Ecce Cor Meum was held in the new college chapel, then before a larger audience at the Sheldonian Theatre. The piece was demanding and under-rehearsed, which Paul’s collaborator David Matthews found surprising in light of the fact that the normally punctilious Paul had previously made as much time and money available as was necessary to ensure his classical works came off well. Perhaps he was distracted by his new love. In any event, Paul got up on stage to excuse Ecce Cor Meum as a work in progress. He would make changes before bringing it before an audience again.

  Three weeks later, on 29 November 2001, George Harrison died aged 58. Paul received the news in a late-night telephone call from Olivia Harrison, who had her husband cremated in a private ceremony in California. The death was a momentous loss, the third Beatle to have left the stage before his time (counting Stuart Sutcliffe), and Paul seemed determined not to fumble his public reaction as he had when John died almost 21 years ago. Arranging to meet the press in the lane outside his Sussex estate, he spoke to reporters of how George was his childhood friend, a brave, beautiful, funny man whose music would live forever, revealing nothing of their difficult personal relationship. ‘I love him, like he’s my brother,’ he said mournfully as the crows cawed to each other in the trees.

  BACK ON THE ROAD

  In the new year, Paul took Heather back to India, where he bought her more jewellery, one of many ways in which he showed generosity towards his fiancée. He also advanced her £150,000 ($229,500) to decorate her new seaside home near Hove, writing off the original £800,000 home loan as a gift, and gave Heather a joint Coutts credit card - a useful accoutrement as they set out together on tour.

  Initially planned as a spring tour of 20 North American cities, the so-called Driving USA tour grew into a 14-month round-the-world odyssey with a sense that Paul was seeking to demonstrate to his fiancée what a big star he was. Though this may seem unnecessary to anybody with the slightest interest in popular culture, Heather professed herself largely ignorant of Paul’s history, claiming not to know that classic songs that came on the radio - ‘Back in the USSR’, for example - were by the Beatles. Her favourite group was the Australian heavy rock act AC/DC.

  Paul’s new road band featured the Americans Rusty Anderson and Abe Laboriel Jr from the Driving Rain sessions; he also rehired Englishman Paul ‘Wix’ Wickens who’d played keyboards on tour and on record with McCartney between 1989 and ’93. As an old hand, Wix told the Americans how exciting it would be to play with Paul on stage, ‘the right voice singing these songs, and you’re all part of it’. The last member to join the band was Californian Brian Ray, who would play guitar and bass (when Paul took up a different instrument). The musicians performed their first gig together when Paul sang ‘Freedom’ at Super Bowl XXXVI in New Orleans in February 2002, an event that also served to commemorate 9/11, the tour proper starting two months later in Oakland, California.

  Having associated himself so closely with 9/11, Sir Paul continued to wrap himself in the American flag during his progress across the United States in 2002, literally waving the Stars and Stripes on stage in Oakland, while subtly encouraging stories about his shows ‘healing’ America as the Beatles were seen to do in the Sixties after the assassination of President Kennedy. While he chose his words carefully - ‘there is a sort of healing thing going on again, and I’m proud to be part of that … we didn’t set out to do that with this tour, but we’re here at the right time …’ - such sentiments could appear opportunistic.

  Sir Paul’s journey across the USA was almost regal, in the style of a man who really was the king of pop, whatever Michael Jackson claimed. The routine was that Sir Paul and his fiancée arrived at the venue mid-afternoon in a black, presidential-style limousine, flanked by police outriders, the star letting his window down slightly to wave to the fans waiting on the rampway, with their cameras and old LPs, wailing ‘Paul! Paul!’ in the faint hope of an autograph. He then played a lengthy sound check before retiring to his private backstage area, cordoned off and personalised with an Indian theme - drapes, cushions and scented candles. Before the show, Paul received VIP guests here, did press interviews, and ate a vegetarian repast prepared by the nine-strong kitchen staff, who were briefed to serve ‘nothing with a face’, which included caviar. Fortunately, Heather was also vegetarian. Everybody else on tour was obliged to be vegetarian so long as they expected to eat at Paul’s expense.

  As the doors opened and the punters swarmed into the arena, Paul selected his stage clothes from two racks of trousers, shirts and jackets, and began his final, pre-show ritual. First he drank a cup of tea, then he went into one the vast backstage bathrooms, a corner of which had been prepared for his ablutions, which included inhaling warm water to clear his airways. Next he collected his band - Abe, Brian, Rusty and Wix - who stiffened to attention when ‘the boss’ entered their room. They sang warm-up songs together, Paul enjoying a comical chorus of ‘Hey Hey We’re the Monkees’; he then accepted a ritual Strepsil throat lozenge from John Hammel, whom he gave a high five in return, sucked the sweet for a few moments, took it out and placed it on a speaker cabinet, the same speaker every night. Paul is a man of routine. He would then peek out at the audience, turning back from the curtain with a pantomime look of terror as if to say: ‘THERE’S TOO MANY PEOPLE OUT THERE - I CAN’T GO ON!’ Finally, he went into a huddle with his band, asking God for a good show. Despite all the demands on His time, God usually obliged.

  On the other side of the curtain, the audience were being entertained by a pageant of actors in colourful costume - Indian god, Magritte man with umbrella, clowns and acrobats - who paraded down the aisles to ambient music, including snatches of Rushes, then mounted the stage in a Cirque du Soleil-style tableau. Just before the audience became too restless - ‘This is all very well, but when’s the darn show gonna begin?’ - McCartney stepped on stage to a roar of excited recognition. He stood there for a moment accepting the love as his band took their places, then struck up ‘Hello Goodbye’ from 1967, when the world was fab and nobody dreamed of terrorists c
rashing planes into skyscrapers. The 15,000 or so people in the audience - a wide range of ages these days from mothers with their babies to the elderly - visibly relaxed as the music smoothed their cares. As guitarist Brian Ray observed, the concert-goers seemed to grow younger before his eyes.

  Ever since his watershed tour of 1989 / 90, Paul had increased the Beatles content of his live show. Back in 1989 he played about 14 Beatles songs each night, slightly less than half the concert. Thirteen years later he played approximately 23 Beatles songs as part of a longer, 36-number set, with an all-Beatles encore. Tried and tested solo and Wings material such as ‘Live and Let Die’ filled out the middle of the programme, together with one or two recent numbers. Each night Paul spoke to the audience about his fiancée as an introduction to ‘Your Loving Flame’. Other numbers now assumed a memorial purpose. Paul played ‘My Love’ for Linda, something that seemingly irritated Heather. During a solo acoustic set, Paul introduced ‘Here Today’ as a song he’d written ‘after my dear friend John passed away’. He then exchanged his Martin guitar for a ukulele, telling the audience how, when he used to go round to George Harrison’s house, the ukuleles would come out after dinner, his friend being a George Formby fan. ‘I said to him, “I do a little song on ukulele.” I played it for him and I’ll do it for you tonight as a tribute to George.’ Paul proceeded to perform George’s most lovely song, ‘Something’, accompanying himself on ukulele, a very touching moment indeed, introduced in such a way that audiences might be forgiven for thinking this was the one and only night Paul had paid this musical tribute to his friend. In fact, once he realised how well it worked, Paul gave his ukulele ‘Something’, with a virtually verbatim prologue, every night. It became as much a fixture of his show as the audience response section of ‘Hey Jude’ and the explosions in ‘Live and Let Die’.