McCartney Tells His Fans Linda Stays in Wings (1976)

 

McCartney Tells His Fans Linda Stays in Wings

By Colin Dangaard

The San Francisco Examiner

July 11, 1976

    Paul McCartney wound up a block-busting tour of the US recently. A new $6 million minstrel.

     "I love it, I love it!" Paul said at the end of the Golden Road. "Before I came here, people were saying I was just another ex-Beatle, but now they've accepted that the new group these days is Wings. At last, the Beatles are history."

     McCartney also winds up a lot richer emotionally. He's sure he loves his wife, Linda, even if some of the fans showed they do not. "She got a terrific hate later letter this evening," He admitted. "Oh God! It was awful!"

     Said Linda, her arm in his, "I don't mind. I really don't. I just think it's silly for somebody to be involved with something they're not even living."

    Despite criticism from fans over Linda, Paul insists there was no question that she would be part of the group when he formed it 18 months ago. "Linda and I teamed when the Beatles split, and we've been making music together ever since. She was a natural for Wings, although she got a lot of flack, but now the criticism seems to be a thing of the past. Generally, people in the beginning did not want her. They would say, 'We don't like Wings, and we particularly don't like Linda.' Now, after a show, people don't say that. 

    "I think it works with Linda, and anyhow, I love her! And I put that down in writing. I commit my bloody self! I do." Then he said, "I don't know what it is about Linda and I. We never intended to hook up with a person and stay with that person forever. It's just the way it happened with us. 

    "Now we're always with our kids. We enjoy each other. We're not show business types at all, really. We may seem to be show business, but we're not. I see Liz Taylor and Richard Burton leaping around Africa and all, but we're not like that. We're not the party crowd. We like to sit at home, put our feet up, turn the telly on."

     He laughs the way a man does when he has just trucked 6 million new dollars to the bank, the gross from the Wings tour. 

    Then he adds, "But you never know, blimey, I don't know whether we're going to stay together. Neither of us knows if it's going to keep together."

     McCartney has no doubts about his marriage to Wings. "When you think about it," he says,  "the Beatles were together eight years before they made a record. Wings has only just started. We're still getting to know each other. 

    "I don't particularly want Wings to achieve the same stature as the Beatles. It's not what we're aiming for. We just want to produce good music, the type people like. If people like us as much as they like the Beatles, I'd be happy, but that's not our objective."

     Not since the last Rolling Stones tour has the US seen such sellouts. In Fort Worth, Texas, $8.50 tickets were selling outside for $50, and everywhere lines stretched and stretched, but, strangely, the crowds were not riotous. When Wings was due in Seattle, the police chief there immediately phoned his counterpart in Chicago, the city Wings had just left. He asked if 60 men would be enough to keep Law and Order at the concert. As a result of that conversation, he assigned 30. 

    The crowds were evenly divided between young married couples who remembered the Beatles tour and teenagers who came to look at a legend.

     Asked one more time if he thought the Beatles would get back together, McCartney mimicked the voice of Muhammad Ali and said: "The Beatles split in '69 and since then they've been doing fine, and if that question doesn't cease, there ain't nobody going to get no peace."

     This week McCartney begins a vacation, after which he will write more songs and plan another Wings tour.