By David Zimmerman
USA Weekend
March 30, 1986
Each morning, Paul McCartney runs two miles through the chill air in fields and forest on his farm in Sussex. "It reminds me of when I was a boy," says the man whose music embodied the exuberance and angst of a generation.
At 43--- two-thirds of the way to the age that seems so remote in the Beatles classic " When I'm 64," he is as busy as ever. Each day, he returns from his run to the recording studio near his home to continue work on an untitled new album aimed for release this spring. It will be his first since 1984, when he wrote the soundtrack for his critically lambasted film, Give My Regards to Broad Street, and there's talk of another USA tour, his first since 1979.
In a rare interview, McCartney says he doesn't miss the old days and that he's found a new kind of happiness, centered in a five-bedroom home in rural England, where, despite search lights and security fences, he and his wife, Linda, and their four children live fairly modestly.
"I think it (the new album) will be a good one," he says, "but I can never talk about music." He's playing most of the instruments on the tracks and co-writing with Eric Stewart of the group 10cc, which had the hit "I'm Not in Love."
Ever faithful fans are hoping the new album will rekindle the old spark that produced some of the world's most popular songs. Fans and critics alike cite co-producer Hugh Padgham, who has worked with the Police and Phil Collins, as a promising choice. Last month, Padgham won a Grammy for co-producing Collins' album, No Jacket Required. McCartney says his longtime producer, George Martin, is "sort of retired."
Pagham says he and McCartney got together a couple of times, and "We thought we'd give it a go. I think we both agree that we'd like to get a tougher sound--- to be as modern as possible." To most critics, McCartney's music has been less than inspired for the past decade, although John Lennon's death jarred him enough to produce 1982's extraordinary Tug of War album, in which he eloquently conveyed his sense of loss.
"I think the consensus would be that he's in a creative slump," said Billboard magazine's Paul Grein. "Obviously, he's a perennial and preeminent songwriter, an artist of the past 25 years, but for most of the 80s, most people would agree he's been searching for a direction."
Jann Wenner, editor and publisher of Rolling Stone, says, "McCartney doesn't seem to have any clear artistic identity to carry him over the years." And Grein added that "While his title track for the recent movie Spies Like Us cracked the top 10, that's mostly a testament to his personal appeal and the fact that radio wants to play him and fans want to hear him."
McCartney himself, known as the world's most successful songwriter, rich enough to buy two and a half Bob Hopes isn't ready to rest on his records and his $600 million fortune. He has worked with such out front artists as Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder, and considers himself a contemporary, and he works as hard as everyone.
A recent 12-minute animated short, Rupert the Bear that he produced and scored, was shown in British theaters and became the country's top-selling video. A full-length feature, also based on the beloved British storybook character, is expected to follow.
He worked on a recent BBC production on Buddy Holly and his songs, for which McCartney owns rights. When not working, he watches a lot of TV, enjoys making pottery, and is a dabbler in portraits. Recently, he finished the likeness of his son James, who pronounced it was "excellent." "A high compliment," says father Paul. "It's one of his favorite words at the moment."
He'll talk little of the children who include Heather, 22, by Linda's first marriage, Mary, 16, and Stella, 14, who all have attended regular schools. "The less I say about them, the more normally they can grow up. But I will say they're all good kids," he adds before inserting that characteristic Liverpudlian twist that pulls back from straight out of motion. "I'll go on record as saying that. They may read this.
"The rural neighbors have helped," he says, "by joining a kind of conspiracy that allows a fairly normal life. They know I'm famous, but they know us as parents, and they see how I behave and that I want to be private. They know how they would feel if they wanted to go see their children in a school play."
And how does the self-described former 'Playboy of the Western world' discuss with his own brood the delicate subject of sex? "I'll go into all the facts as I know them. It's okay. Be very careful if you're going to sleep with someone. Be aware that babies can be made. The main thing I say is that I know what I was like at 16. I wasn't looking for marriage."
Linda, 44, played in his now defunct post-Beatles group Wings, but she is less active musically now. "The children take care of all of her time," says McCartney. There's no nanny. A neighbor sometimes helps clean. The country life, two hours from London, means the McCartneys can spin off their vegetarian philosophy into farming.
The Sussex farm produces grain and is home to a few sheep and horses. A farm in Argyle, Scotland, has 400 sheep. "The first few years, I didn't know what the heck was going on. We would just be getting to love the sheep, and they would go off in the trolley. But now none of our sheep go to the market. They all die of old age."
It's Linda, an accomplished photographer, who he says is the family's "mad nature lover." In retrospect, he knows it was an incredible, audacious thing to put her, a non musician, in Wings. "We were a courting couple. We just met. It was like, 'Would you like to join the group?'"
Though she did surprisingly well in the band. Criticism caused her to be "very hurt on a number of occasions," he says. As Linda said in a Playboy magazine interview, "I mean, how do you go out with Beethoven and say, 'Sure, I'll sing harmony with you,' when you've never sung a note? It was mad.' But McCartney's tenacity and gift for writing hits took Wings from a small, almost laughable beginning to a string of world number one hits that almost matched his Beatles success. He claims he made more money from Wings than from The Beatles, and that he couldn't have done it without Linda's perseverance. "She was very supportive as I was going through a lot of problems with the breakup of the Beatles."
Many of those problems were with Lennon, some financial, some personal. The two, particularly Lennon, took potshots in interviews and albums. Says Lennon's son, Julian, "Dad and Paul always seemed to have a love-hate relationship. They fought and loved like two brothers. The thing to remember is they couldn't have written so many great songs without having mutual respect. For years, Paul has sent me birthday and Christmas cards. I consider him a good friend."
The pain of Lennon's death is real to McCartney, yet he feels he must defend himself against those who say or think that Lennon's brilliance is greater than his own. "Surely, John wasn't an angel, and the rest of us idiots," he says.
He is, of course, no idiot, wisely taking the advice of his father-in-law, lawyer Lee Eastman, to invest his fortune in what he knew best, music. "I didn't want to have to learn about computers or anything like that," he said. McCartney told Eastman he liked Buddy Holly's music. Next thing he knew, Eastman had bought Holly songs. Later, they bought such standards as "Tenderly," and "Stormy Weather" and such coups as the rights to Annie and A Chorus Line. The fortune multiplied.
After Lennon's death, McCartney insisted that he come up with his own worth. Insiders report that the figure is $600 million -- higher than any previous estimate. "If it's true, I don't mind," says McCartney, who says his wealth is spread around and his charitable contributions mostly are kept confidential. "I'm really most interested in not wasting money. If I do anything, I try to make it work."
The Rupert the Bear movie is something McCartney has tried to make work for a long time. He had attempted to persuade the other Beatles to take on Rupert rather than Yellow Submarine. "I was reading one of the books to the kids one night, and I thought I'd love to see it move." As in the short produced last year, McCartney would supply Rupert's soft, high-pitched voice.
Some ventures, of course, haven't worked, namely the film Broad Street. He's not dwelling on those misfires. He's enthusiastic about the new album and maybe, just maybe, a USA tour soon afterwards. "I'm not ruling it out," he says. "People ask me that, since I suspect that John got shot, and people think that none of us dare tour again, but I like performing. There's a special feedback you get."
A Tour would require McCartney to put together a band. In Hunter Davies new revised edition of The Beatles (McGraw-Hill, 1985), he's quoted as saying he's "fed up with running a band. It's like being stuck with bad relations."
But producer Quincy Jones found McCartney a cooperative collaborator, and working with him and Jackson on the song "The Girl Is Mine." "Paul knows who he is, musically and personally, so there's no ego problems."
McCartney admits he's mellowed a bit. "If the office pressures me to make more money, it's bye, I've got to go home and see the kids'". Indeed, except for crow's feet radiating from the puppyish eyes when he smiles, silver flecks in the one-time mop-top, and a slight pouch that automatically sucks in when cameras appear, he can still almost seem the carefree boy who is running through the woods. "I still make a lot of music," he says, "and music keeps you young."
Extra
Lennon/McCartney - A Very Hard Act to Follow
By David Zimmerman
The looming figure in Paul McCartney's past is John Lennon, his songwriting partner, murdered in 1980 was the other half of a complicated love-hate relationship that brewed genius. With Lennon gone to legend, McCartney is left to sort out that relationship and finds his own creative skills sometimes doubted, and his motivations are often questioned.
Some of his musings.
Q: Do you believe that you reacted too callously to Lennon's death?
A: On the day John was shot, we all went into work. None of us could bear to sit at home. I was coming out of the studio, and one of the reporters stuck a microphone in the car window and said something like, 'What do you think?' It was such a loaded, huge question that I would have had to be Mr. Suave to answer. I said 'It's a drag', and I meant draaaaaaagg -- in the worst sense of the word, but it sounded so flippant. When I saw it in print, I thought, 'Oh God, no.'
Q: Do you regret sharing credit with Lennon on Beatles songs?
A: There's no one like John. It's a hard act to follow because he was so good, so clever, and particularly because we came up together. When we actually decided to become songwriters, we decided together to be a Rogers and Hammerstein and that we would share everything. That's why songs like " Yesterday", which are totally my work, were called co-written. I don't regret it. My heirs might regret it later.
Q: Did you really call Lennon a maneuvering swine?
A: When you're famous, you become an easy target. This spurious book (Philip Norman's Shout) came out with crazy theories four years ago. He was a very heavy John Lennon fan. So I rang a friend to unload on him. He happened to be a journalist. I never said John was a maneuvering swine. I said John had the ability to maneuver, and he was a political animal, aware of the legal system. He was very smart that way.
Things that I've said have been taken out of context. And the same thing happened to John. I remember John himself, pale-faced on American television, apologizing for saying the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. It's a frightening film for me to watch. I remember the Bible Belt kids knocking on our bus, but it was a constructive remark. Actually, we were supporting the church.
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