Paul Won't Get His Wish For Christmas (1985)

 

Paul Won't Get His Wish For Christmas

By David Zimmerman

USA Today

December 19, 1985

    Paul McCartney arrives at his office overlooking Soho Square and beelines to his prized 50s Wurlitzer. He punches Fats Domino's "Be My Guest." The jukebox balks.

     No matter, the McCartney charm, smile, and patter play on just as they have through a year in which his movie bombed, his buddy Michael Jackson beat him for rights to the bulk of Beatles songs, and his published remark that" John Lennon could be a maneuvering swine", outraged Lennon's fans.

     A new album and movie are in the works, and the Beatle who talked the most and feels the most misunderstood is anxious to set the record straight about John Lennon. 

    This morning, he received a Christmas card from Ringo Starr. There's less contact with George Harrison, who spends much time in Hawaii. "We're always trying to tell each other it's all right, but there's still all this trouble with a company that stopped existing in 1969. That's what I want for Christmas, and I won't get it this Christmas, but if the business thing is solved, we'd kiss tomorrow. "

    That's later. For now, there's Lennon, whose death left McCartney to sort out his relationship with a legend. "I'm not looking for anyone to say, 'Oh, you're the one who did this or that'," he says. "That's rubbish. It's that I love the truth, and it's scarce these days." McCartney says, "I loved John." That was the heart of the message he sent to Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, and son, Sean, shortly after publication of the swine remark, quoted from a conversation four years ago.

     Ono's responses so far? Silence. "If she didn't get the message the first time, I hope she gets it here", he says.

     Thus, McCartney, 43 again, is trying to make amends, just as he did after having shrugged, "It's a drag, isn't it," to a reporter on the day Lennon was shot.  I meant draaaaaaaaag in the worst sense of the word, but when I saw it in the papers, I thought, 'Oh my God. It seems so flippant."

     The controversy fed on the pair's years of estrangement during which they, especially Lennon, fired bitter, often cheap shots. "But I have to admit, John was special," says McCartney. 

    "I remember writing a song for the Sgt. Pepper album. Had most of it written, and I was singing, 'It's getting better all the time'. And John goes, 'It couldn't get much worse.' That was typical Lennon. It made the song."

     He didn't expect another such match because "He was so good and so clever, and we came up together."

     For his new album next spring, he's co-writing with Eric Stewart of 10 CC. The album will include "Spies Like Us", which director John Landis asked McCartney to write for the Dan Aykroyd/ Chevy Chase comedy. The video finds McCartney (Landis' idea) back on the famous Abbey Road crosswalk. He knows Beatles die-hards may howl, as they did at new arrangements of revered Beatles hits in McCartney's movie flop, Give My Regards to Broad Street. "They're just songs, really." He shrugs, undaunted. 

    McCartney is going ahead with the film he wanted the Beatles to make instead of Yellow Submarine, an animated musical featuring Rupert the Bear, the British storybook character. McCartney expects the film to renew charges that his work is saccharine. "There's an innocence to children's stuff that I really love. It reminds me of how uncomplicated things can be," he says, smiling his boyish face, only slightly altered by crow's feet around his puppy-ish eyes. "And I never have ever been ashamed of sentimentality, even though I've had moments when I knew it was very uncool. My kids don't get off on it. They say Daaaad."

     McCartney's not ruling out a USA tour. "I'm usually asked that based on the fact that John got shot and the rumor that none of us dare tour again. In actual fact, I'm no more frightened than I ever was."

     McCartney would like the sentimental and monetary pleasure of owning Beatles songs from 1964 to 1970. Only after Jackson locked them up for  $47.5 million did McCartney learn his friend had been negotiating for almost a year. "Business is business," he says, without bitterness. "You'd think he might have called me. I'd like them someday, particularly the songs like 'Yesterday' that nobody ever had anything to do with but me."

     Which reopens the who-wrote-what debate. For instance, Lennon claimed he helped write "Eleanor Rigby" and composed the tune for "In My Life." McCartney says Lennon contributed half a line to "Eleanor Rigby" and nothing to the "Life" melody.

     The pair had decided together to be like Rogers and Hammerstein. "Which meant that anything that was totally my work was called co-written. I don't regret it, but my heirs might regret it later."

     The years, just after the Beatles' divorce, were the worst. McCartney drew the hatred of the other Beatles for initiating the legal breakup. He drew his main support from his wife, Linda, and Linda took her share of knocks, especially when she was playing with McCartney's group Wings.

     "It started off like, 'Let's go have a laugh.' We didn't realize till much later that she'd become known as the keyboard player in a world-renowned group and that she had to be criticized. She handled it well, but, you know, she's only a girl. Emotional traumas, I think, don't fit so easily for women as they do for men. It may be a sexist judgment, but tough. I happen to believe girls are a little more delicate in that respect."

     McCartney describes the children, Heather, 22, Mary, 16, Stella, 14, and James, eight, as surprisingly normal at this time. The family lives a quiet life on a farm in Sussex. Vegetarianism reigns. All the sheep die of old age. Neighbors have joined the conspiracy of treating them like anybody else. He admits his estimated $500 million fortune (enough to buy two Bob Hopes) makes normalcy tough. 

    "It's what we started off writing for. John and I would say, 'let's write a swimming pool today'. But the trouble is, when you get rich, that comes to seem like a dirty philosophy. Then you're supposed to say, 'I don't want money.'

    "Being rich isn't just good for me," he says. "I do give quite a bit to charity, and I can help my friends and relatives." But the money can't buy love among the remaining Beatles, though McCartney says sharing the loss of Lennon brought some healing; he hopes for reconciliation or even collaboration.