Autograph in the car

 

Chance meeting with Paul

 

Wedding Crown

 

John and Donovan were the best men at Magic Alex's wedding

McCartney -Just an Ordinary Millionaire

 McCartney - Just an Ordinary Millionaire

No author listed

Evening News (London)

November 30, 1979

    Suddenly, last summer, much to the surprise of the world, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr got together with a few friends to play some rock and roll. It was a performance that, for a decade, they had insisted would never happen. 

    "But no, it didn't feel strange at all," said Paul McCartney, dismissing the post-Beatle years of backbiting and love and hate with the cursory wave of his hand. "It was all pretty straightforward. We were having a bit of a booze-up and a laugh together, and we were with each other again. It felt pretty normal. It was only the next day, when everyone was making a huge fuss about it that I realized that our playing together was halfway important to anyone else."

     The occasion for this emotive music reunion was a wedding party held by guitarist Eric Clapton and the grounds of his baronial hall at Ewearst in Surrey. Guests included Mick Jagger, David Bowie, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and McCartney. 

    "It started with all the grown-ups sitting around having a drink and chatting. Some of our kids got bored, so they started playing with some of the musical instruments that had been left lying around on the stage.

     "Eventually, one of the adults got up, and then we all did. So there was George, me, and Ringo on stage, and suddenly everyone was joking about whether this was a reunion."

     The spontaneity and the sheer fun of the occasion seemed to have rekindled in McCartney the joy of his early Beatle days, so much so that guardedly, quietly, his thoughts have been turning toward the possibility of another reunion at a concert.

     Recently, the idea was given further impetus when an agent claiming to represent the United Nations approached each of the Beatles to ask them to play a benefit concert to raise money for the Vietnamese boat people.

     "George rang me up to talk about it," says Paul, "I said I'd told the guys that Wings were rehearsing and we didn't want to do anything yet but that we would try to do something sometime.

    " And George said, 'I thought that if you were doing something, maybe we'll get together and do something' or whatever. So that was just left. Then, just a week ago, I got a letter from Kurt Waldheim, the UN Secretary-General, saying that the guy who approached us hadn't been authorized to do so, but it would obviously be a great idea to do something, particularly with the situation in Cambodia now. So would I please take his letter as an invitation to do something, either individually or with The Beatles.

     "To tell the truth, I never think in terms of the Beatles because that was 10 years ago, and if I did, I'd be living in the past. So I tend not to think about it unless someone asks me, or something gets together, or unless, like at Eric's wedding, it just happened."

      Nevertheless, Paul has provisionally agreed to play a show with Wings at the end of December to raise money for the United Nations. "If we're lucky, and if he'd like to do it, there may be a chance George will play with us, but I've still got to ring him up and Ringo.

     "If people are in town when we're playing places, and they feel like doing it, then there's always a chance. But I wouldn't come to any show expecting it. I like to keep quiet about it because if anyone is going to be there, the last thing we need is a load of people saying that this is a big, special reunion."

     "I've never ruled out the possibility of The Beatles playing together for a show. I've always said, yeah, if anyone said we really want to do this and the four of us are really keen to do it, then yes."

     Sadly, there seems to be little possibility that John Lennon will be lured out of his hermit-like existence in his New York apartment block. "I have no idea if John wants to do anything again," says Paul. "I haven't spoken to him for quite a while because he's been keeping himself, quiet. But if you think about it, there's a fella whose father left home when he was a little kid, who lived with his aunt and his uncle. Then his uncle died, then his mother remarried, and used to come to visit him, but lived with another man, and while she was coming to visit him, one night when he was 16, she got knocked down by a car and killed. So that guy has grown up in a world where, basically, he's never had any family. He then got married to Cynthia, but he was in the middle of all the 60s dope and everything, and he never really got with a family. Now he's married again to Yoko, who, for him, is the love of his life. He believes he's found it, and they now have a son, and I think he's just taking every second that's left to him to enjoy that. And there's nothing wrong with that."

     Paul freely admits that there is a certain amount of pressure on him to follow John's example. "I'd love him to give up touring altogether," Linda tells me, but it's a bit like being married to a husband who is mad about golf. You might be able to talk him into giving up golf and staying at home with you and the children, but you'd be taking away a part of him. And marriage should be a give-and-take thing.  You should each share in the thing your partner wants to do. But in our case, it's more than just the fact that we have to go away from home. And I don't want that. I don't like it.  

    "It's also about me playing in the band. I mean, if you had a scale of musicians, Paul would be right at the very top, and I'd be right at the very bottom."

     Paul is similarly ambivalent about going back on the road. "If we didn't tour, my whole life would just be at home with the animals and the kids," he says. "That would be very nice. But I think everyone likes to feel that they have something other than just their home.

     "I still really don't know why I want to go out and play concerts. I haven't got a real answer, but we have just had a few months off now. We kind of feel that we have got a new band, and we really want to get out with that new band and play."

     Thus, it is that on Monday, the latest version of Wings begins a series of concerts at the Lewisham Odeon, the Rainbow, and the Wembley Arena. The lead guitarist, Lawrence Juber, and drummer, Steve Holly, have never played publicly with the band before, so it's no surprise that they were a little nervous.

     Yet McCartney himself, after all his years of experience and success, still suffers badly from nerves before a tour. "I've always been nervous about going on stage," he says. "The first time it ever happened was when I was a kid and won the Coronation essay in Liverpool in 1953. I went to the town hall where the Lord Mayor was, and I sat there in my short trousers with my mum and dad, hoping they wouldn't call out my name. I didn't care whether I'd won the prize or not, but they called my name, and my legs, for the first time ever, turned to jelly. But I pulled myself together and got up on the stage, and no one even knew I was nervous."

     Mind you, McCartney does have slightly more reason than most entertainers to feel confident. Every ticket for his current series of concerts was sold out within hours of going on sale, and his name appears three times in the Guinness Book of Records for achievements like being the most successful songwriter in the history of popular music. 

    This Midas Touch extends to his business activities with his vast music publishing catalog and fabulous art collection. McCartney's millions make him a prime candidate for the title of wealthiest man in Britain. 

    "The big draw is that everyone says that money corrupts, power corrupts, and I'm aware of that. I've seen all the films like everyone else. But most of my life, I was not well off, not until about 10 years ago, really, and most of the time, my biggest problem is trying to avoid all the pitfalls everyone else falls into. 

    "So I don't really feel I'm letting it corrupt me. You know, I've got power, but I don't really wield it over everyone just because I don't like people who do that. I try to make sure that everyone who works for us gets a great deal. I try to look after everyone and make sure they're happy."

     He also quietly gives away large portions of his vast income. He is reluctant to talk about this side of his life, however. "Coming from a working-class family, charity is a funny thing. I mean, in the street where I came from, a lot of people didn't want charity. They didn't like the people who gave the charity. Now, I'm one of those people who can give to charity, and naturally, I want to do it.

     "The last thing I want Linda and me to be is Lord and Lady Muck. I try to support charity quietly, but I don't want to set up a charitable foundation, as people are trying to persuade me to do. I don't want to end up as some kind of benevolent being. I'm much too ordinary for that."

     McCartney's awareness of the dangers of extreme wealth has led him to go to extreme lengths to ensure that he doesn't remove himself from reality. He refused to let a chauffeur drive him, and rather than live in a conventional rock shore mansion, he and his wife live with their four children cramped into a two-bedroom home on the Sussex coast for half of the year.

     Faced with this whole life is really amazing. "Well," he says, "I can't believe how well I live because I can actually still sit and chat with people. I can go into conversations with them dead easy and not feel too bad by it all.

    " But really it's the kids who give me the most happiness, more than my music. It seems tough for some people who have got a lot of money. They say 'the best things in life are free,' but I really think that.

The Fab Four

 March 31, 1995  

Meeting a Beatle

 

Teen Topics Reporters meet the Beatles

July 12, 1964 - the Beatles at the Hippodrome

 

Interview with the Beatles

No author listed

Worthing Gazette

July 22, 1964

    It was an excited Teresa Fry who came into the Gazette office this week. Teresa, art editor of Teen Topics, had managed to secure an interview with The Beatles when they played at Brighton Hippodrome. 

    Still starry-eyed, Teresa told me, "They were fantastic."  She was accompanied by Janet Beck, another member of the Teen Topics staff. 

    She waited four hours to see the group. "I thought that we would never be able to get in to see them," she said. "The officials at the door were terrible, even when we produced identity cards to prove that we were from a magazine. They seemed quite uninterested. "

    The hours of waiting and badgering paid off, however, and the girls were admitted. They had a long talk with Paul and George but were only able to spend a few minutes with John and Ringo, just long enough to get their autographs.

     After leaving the Beatles, Teresa and Jane walked calmly out of the stage door only to be met by hordes of screaming fans, all yelling, "They've seen the!. They've seen the Beatles!"

    "It was quite frightening, really," said Teresa.  "The girls were furious that we had been allowed in, and they had not."  Luckily, someone showed Teresa and Janet another exit, and they made their escape unnoticed.

     The full story of the girl's interview with Paul and George will be in the next issue of Teen Topics, which, incidentally, will be available anytime now. Teresa explained that with school and college exams, production of the magazine had been held up, "but we are now working really hard to get this issue out as soon as possible."

     Note for pop fans, as well as meeting the Beatles, Teresa and Janet, were able to interview the other stars who were appearing at the Hippodrome, The Foremost, The Jinx, and the new Scottish twosome, the McKinley Sisters.

The Beatles

Written by Julia Kitchingham

Worthington Herald

July 17, 1964

    Determined not to take the "no" of managers and backstage officials for an answer, Janet Beck and Theresa Fry, both on the staff of Teen Topics, enlisted the help of two other artists appearing with The Beatles at the Brighton Hippodrome on Sunday to get an interview with the group for their magazine.

    Janet and Theresa telephoned the McKinley Sisters in their dressing room and asked them to come to the stage door, hoping that they could help them to see the Beatles. While they were talking, Janet told me somebody shouted that The Beatles were just around the corner.

     Inside the building, Janet and Theresa made a dash for it. John and Ringo were too busy to talk, but the girls chatted with George and Paul for about 10 minutes. "We couldn't believe it," said Janet. After the interview, the girls watched most of the show from the wings. 

Hiding your Love Away

March 30, 1965
 

John Lennon on Love, Life and Music

 

John Lennon on Love, Life and Music

By John Blake

Evening News (London)

November 1, 1974

    "I would like," said John Lennon drawing deeply on his cigarette, "The Beatles to make a record together again." 

    The lean, worried genius whose ideas inspired a generation looked intense behind his strong spectacles as he lolled in a plush leather armchair in his New York office. In the course of an extraordinary exclusive interview, he talked for the first time about a Beatles reunion, his broken marriage, and his homesickness. 

    It's now almost exactly five years since the Beatles split, and Lennon, at 34, has decided the time is right to break his long silence.

     "I am still asked almost every day about the Beatles getting together again by waitresses and almost everyone else I meet." He says, "If we feel like it, we might make a record together sometime soon. I mean, I am a Beatles fan. I realize now that I do like the Beatles. When I hear them on the radio, I think to myself that some of those songs are really, really good. I personally would like the Beatles to make a record together again, but I don't really know how the other three feel about the idea. The trouble is that George and Paul still have so many hassles getting into the States that the four of us have never even sat down in one room together to talk, let alone record. It is feasible, though, that we could all find ourselves in the same recording studio, and that would be fun. "

    How does he regard the work that the four of them have produced by themselves since the Beatles? "Well, when I hear the records played on the radio, I still tend to think of them as individual Beatles songs. They still have that Beatly sound to them. I mean, if you took the best tracks from each of our own albums and put them together, you would have a great Beatles album. There just happened to be four albums instead of one. "

    Now, on Lennon's brilliant new album, Walls and Bridges, Elton, John joins him to sing harmonies and says, John, "When Elton sang along with me, it was like having George or Paul there again. It was the same good feeling."

     The biggest single barrier to a Beatle reunion is Lennon's drawn out battle with the US immigration authorities. They want to deport him as undesirable because of a drug conviction in Britain six years ago. Lennon, fending for his visa, has pumped hundreds of 1000s of pounds into fighting them.

     "About 18 months ago,  it really started getting to me, and it was dragging me down, interfering with my work, and affecting everything I did.," he said. "My lawyer doesn't even give me the details anymore. He thinks it will worry me or something. I think it could easily drag on for years, yet I'm not going to be kicked out in the next few days."

      Why does John want to stay in the States? "Well, I don't necessarily want to stay here all the time. I'd like to be free to travel anywhere. I like to think of the world as a kind of global village, and the one thing my money gave me was the freedom to travel about that village. But the thing is that just as Paris is the place every artist wanted to be in the last century, America is the center of the rock music world today. This is where it all began. It is the place where rock started and  there is still so much energy here.

    "I don't want to become an American citizen or anything. I just want to be allowed in and out like most other British people. Of course, there are times when I miss Britain badly, and I feel like climbing on a plane and going home. It's the little things you miss, like decent sausages or a pub I know in London, or seeing the autumn in beautiful places like Surrey or Wales.  I still consider myself an Englishman, and I'll stay that way until I die.

     It is estimated that Lennon's fight to stay in the States has cost him well over a quarter of a million pounds. Is he growing short on cash? "No, I'm still carning a bit from my songs, so I'm not hard up, and I know that if I needed money, I could go back on stage again. The offers get higher every day for a full Beatles reunion. I have been offered $7 million and I could get about 1 million just by myself. "

    As we spoke John called to his girlfriend May Pang, a Chinese American girl who was his former secretary and who came from the tenements of New York's East Harlem.  

     What has become of his marriage to Yoko Ono? "Well, it sounds funny, but Yoko and I are still good friends. Now we speak to each other almost every day."

Midas Man Now Showing

 

Anyone who knows me will know that I dislike biopics. Ever since I saw The Doors in the 1990s, I have had a dislike for this popular genre of film. Very, very few Beatles biopics interest me, and I really doubt I will see those four upcoming ones about the Beatles. 

But this particular film, Midas Man, about Brian Epstein, has grabbed my attention. I am such a fan of Brian, and I think any attention given to his life is a wonderful thing.  I am so happy that in the past decade, Brian has started to get the recognition he deserves.  Having a film made about him and his life is a huge step forward.  And while I haven't had a chance to see this film yet, I have heard really good things about it from other fans who have, and I think I will give it a chance.

Midas Man is currently showing, and I know a lot of fans really like bio pics, so I didn't want anyone to miss out on seeing this one.  Here is the official announcement and link.   If you get a chance to see it -- let me know what you think!  

 The “Fifth Beatle” finally gets his story told! 🎬

Discover the rip-roaring true story of Brian Epstein—the legendary manager who launched The Beatles—in MIDAS MAN, now playing exclusively in South Florida!

🍏 Watch the trailer and find a theater near you at MenemshaFilms.com

Featuring a star-making performance by Jacob Fortune-Lloyd (The Queen’s Gambit) and co-starring Emily Watson, Eddie Marsan, Eddie Izzard, and Jay Leno, MIDAS MAN follows Epstein’s journey as he takes The Beatles from their humble beginnings in Liverpool to worldwide fame—showcasing one man’s radical faith in the band and the sacrifices he made to help them succeed.

John in Yonkers

March 28, 1975

This past December I was in Yonker, New York and so I found the Broadway Diner and stopped by for a meal.  I also had to get a photo taken sitting in "John's" seat.   They do acknowledge that John ate there with a photograph of him sitting in the diner hanging on the wall.  
 

Clean Shaven Ringo

 

March 27, 1985

Ringo was soon to begin filming his part as the Mock Turtle in Alice in Wonderland and because of the extensive make up he had to wear for the part, he had to shave all of his facial hair.  He looks like a completely different person! 

Peter's Lucky Day!

 

March 27, 1995

The Many Faces of Paul McCartney

 March 26-27, 1980 

I Call Your Name

 

March 28, 1990

I love Ringo's performance of "I Call Your Name," and what an All-Star lineup!

Paul Needs Love to Stay a Star

 

Paul needs Love to Stay a Star

By Alasdair Buchan

Sunday Mirror

May 23, 1976

    After 15 years of music, Paul McCartney knows better than most how to cope with the pressure of a two-month tour of the United States. At the end of each grueling two-and-a-half-hour concert, he and Linda relax in their dressing room, sipping whiskey and coke and chatting to friends. After a while, they may drop into the press hospitality room with patience and professionalism, they fend off the same Beatles questions they've been answering for seven years, then a quick drive in a hired Cadillac on a Police Motorcycle escort to the airport and onto the privacy of one of the three houses they have rented in the States for the tour.

    Not for them nightly parties and hotel rooms until dawn and bleary lunchtime breakfast, which suits Linda well.  "Our job is playing music and recording," she says, "but I don't believe that means you have to live the part every hour of the day. The reason so many groups split up is that they try too hard to live up to the role others decide they should play."

     Getting away from it all is easier for Paul and Linda, thanks to their healthy bank balance. They own a home in St John's Wood, London, and a farm in Campbelltown, Scotland. There are Picasso and Magritte paintings on their walls, gifts from Linda's father, who was a lawyer, to both artists and was paid in paintings rather than dollars. But the McCartney lifestyle is not opulent.

     In London, Linda spends her time looking after a collection of pets and attending her vegetable plot. There are dogs, chickens, ducks, and a goose in the back garden. Linda's sponge cake made with goose eggs, is a family favorite. 

    "I love cooking," she says, "But I hate cleaning up. I get my daughter Heather to do that." Heather is Linda's 13-year-old from her first marriage. 

    Linda sings her first solo, "Cook of the House," on Wings, a new album; the chorus runs: "No matter where I serve my guests, they seem to like the kitchen best."  In a sense, the McCartneys regard all their activities as an extension of family life

    . A witty and pleasant bonhomie stemming from the relaxed confidence of Paul and Linda surrounds Wings, a big touring company; the McCartney children, Heather, Mary, six, and Stella, four, go along with their nanny-cum- auntie Rose, a Cockney whose refreshing earthliness would shock Christopher Robbin's Alice.

     Then there's a manager, his assistant, a road manager, an accountant, a wardrobe girl, two Greyhound bus loads of sound and tech technicians, a stage designer, two press officers, a tour photographer, and a bodyguard. 

    Paul and Linda also like to relax with friends who are not directly involved in making music. While I was with Wings, I felt I was part of the family rather than an observer. One gets the impression that Linda tries to lighten the public burden her husband endures as an ex-Beatle. 

    "A lot of people think you can knock a good star like Paul McCartney, and he'll still go on writing good stuff," she says. "People don't realize that at times, you almost have to put a star on a pedestal and say, 'hey, that's great. Well done'. People can criticize so much that they take the inspiration out of an artist," Linda says.

     "George Best was a victim of critics. What he really needed was someone to put an arm around him and say, 'Hey, love, what's wrong?'  You need someone to say 'you're a good guy. We love you'. But no one did. "

    Similar pressure in the music world, or the desire to avoid them, makes social life difficult for the McCartneys. "Most of the time, we visit other people's homes, or they come around to us," says Linda. They like the idea of popping down to the local for a pint, but they never do because of their famous faces. "We haven't figured out the answer to that one yet,"says Linda. 

    "I remember Eric Morecambe says he likes to go in and have a drink, but people keep digging him in the ribs with their spectacles on sideways, that he's got to smile, even if all he feels like doing is melting into the background after a hard day's work."

     But despite the built in defenses, Paul and Linda are generous and expansive with friends. The party they threw for close friends on the Queen Mary in California cost 40,000 pounds. Stars like Bob Dylan, Ringo Starr and Dean Martin came along. 

    Every day, the band gets presents of some kind, Wings, silver pennants, satin embroidered Wings, jackets, hand-dyed Wings T-shirts. 

    The presence you feel springs from Linda's desire to share her beautiful and comfortable life with her friends; the ease you feel in their company is a measure of the successful compromise Linda McCartney has made between her own quiet, gentle character and the raucous, often unbending pressures of her public life. When I left Linda and Paul in Houston, Texas, she kissed me and handed me a note saying, thanks for being so a part of us, and thanks to you, Linda. 

One to One Rehearsal

 

Uncle Ernie makes his arrival for Tommy

 March 26, 1975

Gather around the Beatles

 

Tommy Can You hear me?

 March 26, 1975 

Captured in New York City

 

Paul, Me and the Aggro

 Paul, Me and the Aggro

By Alasdair Buchan

Sunday Mirror

May 16, 1976

    Paul McCartney opened the door of his London home in St John's Wood to find a young fan standing there with her mother. To his horror, he learned that Mum was there to meet her prospective son in law. Him!

     The girl, whom Paul hadn't seen before, had convinced her mother that she and Paul were getting married. At the time, Beatle McCartney was marrying no one, and simply had to tell the girl's mother, "Sorry, your daughter has got the wrong idea."

     But seven years ago, when he met and married Linda Eastman, the daughter of a New York lawyer, it was against the fraught background of this sort of persisttence by devoted girls. 

    Linda recalls, "The fans went to war when I married Paul."

     Another fan wrote to Paul from America every day at the beginning of his marriage, signing her letters "Mrs. Paula McCartney."  A third, who had complained to the police that she had been assaulted by Paul, kept saying it was her who made him like that. "He used to like me ." That fan's only connection with Paul was the permanent vigil she had kept outside his homes in London and Scotland. The police took no action on her accusation.

     Linda 33 told me, looking back, "I think I took on a battle when I should have said that I understood and tried to talk to them, but it was difficult. I had been a free woman in New York when I married Paul, and I suddenly felt fenced in.

     "We would go home at night and find about 20 girls outside who had been standing there for five years. They each felt as though they were Paul's wife."

     If Linda overreacted by giving fans the cold shoulder, she had certain justification. "They would say, 'I hate you. You're horrible.'  'Why didn't he marry Jane Asher? At least we know her. 'They painted nasty things all over our wall and played their radios really loud at night outside our house."

     Heather, Linda's 9-year-old daughter by her first marriage to an American geologist, was ambushed when she came home from school and told how awful her mother was. "It puts a lot of pressure on us."

     Paul said, at the time, "You look out the window late at night, and there's always a figure standing under the street lamp."

     Seven years in, a growing tolerance by the fans has healed that antagonism. Said Linda, "I'm quite friendly with the kids now; sometimes we see the same ones, but many are doing other things, like getting married themselves."

     Now Linda McCartney is a relaxed, assured woman combining a career as a pop star with her life as a housewife and mother. She's five foot six inches tall, with blue eyes and a shock of straight blonde hair. 

     Outsiders tend to regard her as cold and hard but face to face, she is a warm and attractive personality. She is soft-spoken, extremely feminine, and can talk politely without seeming patronizing. She and Paul have three daughters, Heather, 13, Mary, 6, and Stella, 4.

     When the Beatles broke up, Paul decided, after a period of hermit-like isolation in his Scottish farmhouse, to form his new band, Wings, including Linda as a piano and organ player. Now, she's playing in front of audiences of up to 80,000 people during Wing's current American tour. 

    "I wouldn't have been a musician if it had not been for Paul," said Linda, "but Paul didn't quite know what to do when the Beatles split up in 1971. So one day, Paul and I were sitting around feeling quite cheerful, and Paul said, 'Let's get a group together.' Stupid me said, 'Oh sure.' Never thinking about little things like being able to play and sing in tune."

     The group was formed, and suddenly, Linda found herself caught in the crossfire of criticism. "I wouldn't have stuck it if Paul hadn't encouraged me," she said. "I guess I deserve much of the backlash because I couldn't really play. I learned chords naturally, but that's not enough. You need a feel for it. I wasn't naturally rhythmic like Paul. I must admit that I can see why everybody was so bitter about me joining with Paul, who has such talent."

     Paul Linda and Denny Laine, singer of the Moody Blues smash song "Go Now," hit on an admirably bohemian idea. They simply hired a van, put all their equipment in it, and headed up the M1. "We stopped at university towns,"  recalled Linda.  "The roadie went into the student union and said, 'I've got Paul McCartney here. Can we play tonight?' At one place, they paid us some coins they had taken at the door."

     The inevitable comparisons with The Beatles were made. John Lennon made rude sounds about the first McCartney album. This is behind them now, and Paul and John are the best of friends again. 

    Now that Wings has established itself as one of the world's major rock groups, both Paul and Linda have come to terms with the Beatles breakup. Paul plays five Beatles hits during Wings stage act, and Linda talks openly about the Beatles. 

    "I'd love the Beatles to get back together again," she said, "but for music's sake, not for all those millions of dollars everyone talks about. In any case, I think Paul is very content to stay with Wings. I'm bored by being asked if the Beatles will get back together. John Lennon was saying the other day that everybody seems to be five years behind in their thinking. He and Paul are busy trying to create new music, thinking of the future, and everybody keeps asking about the situation of five years ago.

    I remember an awful interview George Harrison had to endure. He was already split from his wife, Pattie, and was talking about his tour, but all the interviewer could ask was whether Pattie had been a good cook or not. "

    Though Paul and Linda work hard to establish a break from the Beatles, the subject of the group and its members often crop up in Linda's conversation. "It's a pretty big thing to fight the Beatles, you know," confessed Linda during a break in rehearsals in Dallas. "In a funny way, I still can't believe the group has really broken up. People say I persuaded Paul to break away, but that was nonsense. It wasn't even Paul who decided that the group should stop working together. John was the first to leave."

     The McCartneys only occasionally bump into George Harrison and Ringo Starr, although there is no antagonism between them. They see John and his wife, Yoko, a lot. "They are the closest friends we have in New York," said Linda.  "Yoko and I have a lot in common. Both of us sing with our husbands and have children to look after. She understands why I go on stage with Paul.

    " All I wanted was for Paul and I to be happy and lovely together and to share that with other people. Yoko understands that. The other day, she said that was the reason she and John posed nude on the cover of the record album. They thought it was beautiful and expected everyone else to understand, but all they got was terrible criticism. It can make you so cynical."