McCartney Still a Superstar (Washington D.C. 1976)

 

Backstage in Maryland 

McCartney Still a Superstar

By Jeannette Smyth

The Washington Post

May 18, 1976

    Paul McCartney was the first Beatle to take LSD 11 years ago and turn on a generation. Saturday night, 10 years after the Beatles' last tour of America, six years after the Beatles broke up, Paul McCartney introduced the girl he married to more than 22,000 roaring fans at the Capitol Center in suburban Maryland. 

    "I'd like to introduce you to my missus," he said. "My better half, Linda!"

     Oh, Paul, you broke a million hearts now approaching the shady side of 30 when you married her. The times have settled down now, and so have you. There's nothing like the chagrin an aging hippie feels to know that the Woodstock generation is fighting flab instead of a revolution. Nothing like the wrinkles one feels deepening in one's brow as one looks around the Capitol Center full of Beatle Maniacs, and baby, you still have their number after all these years. 

    They first heard you when they were six years old, but Paul, they'll never boogie like we did. They didn't have to flaunt their dope the other night because nobody would arrest them anyway. They didn't even dance. The only sign that there ever was a revolution was that long-haired girl in a pant suit integrating the men's room. "The lines in the women's bathrooms were too long. They're all in there, combing their hair," growls one young woman.

     Rock and roll is dead, along with the innocents who died in Vietnam, Height- Ashbury, and Mississippi. The only people who are outlaws enough to dance well anymore, the only people under 30 you can trust are the desperados at gay discos. 

    McCartney, who grossed $200,000 Saturday night for himself, his wife, and his new band Wings, doesn't think rock and roll is dead. "No way," he said in a dressing room interview after the concert, in which he was on stage for an extraordinary two hours. "It's good." He said, " It's been through a bit of a dip, and now it's better. I think people just like music: rock and roll, reggae, soul, funk, and the R&B. It looked a bit rough at times," he conceded.

     McCartney is one of the few '60s superstars who is still alive, still making money, still a superstar. "There are still definitely other stars," said Ben Fong-Torres, veteran editor of Rolling Stone Magazine, in a recent interview. "But not the phenomenon. There are no heroic statures of The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and Janis Joplin. They signaled new things. They went to the edge or over it, and signaled a new lifestyle."

     For McCartney, at least, who has settled down to domesticity. Sales are good. Nearly 25% of Britain's top 100 single records are old Beatles tunes. Capitol Records plans to recycle 26 old Beatles hits and an album to be released in tune with what a spokesman calls "the largest campaign in the history of the music business." Wing's latest album sold a million copies. 

    "They don't scream like they used to," McCartney said when asked how this generation of American audiences, differed from those 10 years ago. "But when I looked out at the audience tonight, they were going potty out there, weren't they? This was a crazy audience, one of the craziest we've had on this tour."

     How crazy could they be, baby? Only two were treated for fainting at the first aid station. Only 11 arrests were made, most for possession of alcohol, one for interfering with an officer. No drug possession arrests. Even though the Prince George's County Police doubled their usual rock concert patrol from 8 to 15 officers, "it was relatively quiet for a concert that size," said a police spokeswoman.

     Yes, some of them waited all night to get First Come First Served festival seating. Yes, they stampeded the barricades down in front of the stage where McCartney could see them. They elbowed each other to catch a glimpse of him. "He's the most important person I'll probably ever see," as one Woodstock generation oldie put it.

     Up in the stands, they loved him, giving him standing ovations and screaming, but they didn't dance on their seats or in the aisles. If that's the pottiest crowd he's had, then this is the oldest generation of young people we've ever seen. 

    "People don't want to lose their seats," said a 17-year-old Alexandria girl with braces and jeans who asked that her name not be used. "Most of them are drunk or stoned, and besides, people don't dance at rock concerts, not really." Yellow Submarine was the first Beatles tune she remembers hearing 10 years ago when she was in the second grade.

George and Billy

 

Days we left behind

 

Happy Hour

 May 15, 1971 - Cannes ,France 

Have a great weekend Beatle fans!

 

Portrait Label Drops Ringo Starr (1981)

 

I wondered what had happened in 1981 with Ringo's "Can't Fight Lightning" record.  During his press appearances for Caveman, he was also promoting this new album and then suddenly you stopped hearing him talk about it for a while.   What happened?   This article sort of clears that up -- and the album was released under the name "Stop and Smell the Roses" later in 1981.

Portrait Label Drops Ringo Starr; Album Distribution Plan Blamed

By Christopher Connelly (Rolling Stone affiliate)

May 13, 1981 

    Ringo Starr's latest album, Can't Fight Lightning, apparently, won't be thundering into record stores for some time to come. Starr's label, Portrait Records, has dropped the former Beatle from its roster after being unable to concoct an international distribution deal for the LP, according to Portrait vice president and general manager Lenny Petze. 

     "We let him go to make him happy," Petze said. "I'm very disappointed, because I think it's a tremendous album, but without a worldwide deal, the export problem would have been tremendous. In other words, people would only have been able to buy the album in Europe from U.S. dealers who would be exporting it. That would be disastrous for Ringo. He would lose a lot of sales over there without a label. We didn't want to cause him any problems, so we decided to let him go."

     Ringo Starr's lawyer Bruce Graykal would not comment, but a close associate of Ringo's, Peter Silbermann, disputes that assertion. "To my knowledge, that's absolutely not true," says Silbermann, who declined to say precisely what it was in Petze's account that he considered inaccurate. "It's such a sticky thing. I just can't go into it at this time."

     It would seem that the album's worldwide distribution could have been handled by CBS International, with which Portrait is affiliated, but Petze says that it wasn't. "They weren't interested at this time", says CBS International spokesman Julian Shapiro. "If he was offered here and we didn't sign him, it's got to be the same reason we don't sign anybody. It's a cost versus the expectation of sales basis." Indeed, whatever his personality, Starr's records have not sold especially well in the past. (With the exceptions of two gold albums, Ringo and Goodnight Vienna).

     Meanwhile, Ringo took a break from his busy schedule late last month to tie the knot with his longtime girlfriend, American actress Barbara Bach. The ceremony was performed on April 27 in London's Marylebone registry office, with hundreds of fans gathered outside hoping to catch a glimpse of the couple.

Ravi & George

 

Paul: We Put it All Into the Show (Cleveland 1976)P

Paul and Linda interviewed in Detroit

 

Paul: We Put it All Into the Show

By Jane Scott

The Plain Dealer

May 14, 1976

    We heard one of the Beatles Monday night at the Wings Over America concert at the Coliseum. Is there a chance of ever hearing all four of them on stage again?

     "I would say probably no," answered Paul, "and leave it at that."

     He spoke freely and spontaneously at a dressing room interview following the sellout show. The Cleveland Show, fourth in a 20-city tour, drew 20,731. 

    Belkin Productions had offered the famous four $4 million to do a concert back in 1969, but it has nothing to do with money. "We'd do it for 10 bob. It's only really because no one really is interested to do it," Paul said. "It's like a marriage when people keep asking divorced couples when they are getting back together."

    "You can't reheat a soufflé, my mother used to say," interrupted Linda. 

    But Paul didn't slam the door entirely. "Who knows what the future will be? What will it be in 1985?" he asked. 

    Linda, in ankle-length denim culottes and a sweater set, was barefoot on a chair beside Paul, completely wrapped up in the conversation. Stella, 4, the spitting image of her father, but with her mother's blonde hair. Mary, 6, and Heather, 13, raced around the room just like kids do from Parma to Paris. 

    The McCartneys said that they loved the Cleveland concert. They taped it. There is a possibility that a song done here could show up on a live LP. "Soily", the second encore song that has never been recorded, might make it too.

     For me, the interview was rescheduled for yesterday. I had interviewed the Beatles at the Sheridan Cleveland hotel during their appearance here in August, 1966.  I had tried for weeks to get this interview with Paul, even flying to the Detroit show last Friday. Paul looked only a little older. There are laugh lines around his eyes. Now his face is a little fuller. He's a little heavier. His hair is longer, but pulled back behind his ears, and he smiles just as easily. Yes, he has changed.

     "In the last 10 years, I've sort of changed, like we've all changed, basically, in many ways. I'm now married with three kids, which I certainly wasn't then. I don't know. I mean, I could go on for five hours, you know about the actual changes, but it's like it was the '60s, and now it's the '70s. I never really analyzed it."

     (You know what Paul said, back in 1966? Paul had twinkled at questions about his steady, Jane Asher, remember? But then he had said at the time they didn't want to marry until they were perfectly sure) 

    "Each LP will be different from preceding ones," he said. "Touring today," Paul said, "is different than it used to be for the Beatles. Touring was you didn't hear the music as much. That's the kind of basic difference between the music now that you've got to be able to actually put the notes in now. Then we pretty much did put the notes in. We could just about hear ourselves, but some nights we couldn't, and some nights it was a good job." He said he felt that you can hear a lot more with the better sound systems today. 

    The Wings system Monday night was flown above the stage. "The audience these days want to listen. They're more into music," he said. "It was a more hysterical time, a few years back, for everyone, maybe it's like the Kennedy /Ford difference here."

     Is Paul more serious now?  "I'll tell you what," he said. "I'm more myself than I used to be. I would be purposely unserious because you don't really need to get too serious with the press. It takes less time if you don't get serious," Paul said.

     Does the barrage of Beatles questions bother him? "It bothers me, only that I have to kind of keep saying 'probably no'. Then everyone asks why, and the questions are sort of endless. You know?" he said.

     Paul appeared comfortable and relaxed in blue denim slacks, a black sweater, and an off-white vest. He wore an ivory eagle around his neck.

     Does he still get the mob scenes that The Beatles did? "No, not really. Wings drew a mob Sunday night in Toronto, but generally speaking, they don't." This could be an advantage. Paul felt the scene had changed. "The Beatles always used to announce which airport or someone did. Now we don't," he said. "We try to put it all in the show. You know, people come and buy the tickets, and then if that goes down, we don't really get into the other side. People don't judge you by how many showed up at the airport," he said.

     Incidentally, you couldn't judge the Coliseum concert by the airport. Wings chartered BAC 1011,  luxury plane landed at the wrong one, Burke Lakefront. He said limos were waiting at Cleveland Hopkins airport, so the Wings group finally flew to Hopkins, then had to take cabs to the Coliseum.

     Paul's remark during the concert that Linda's mother was from Shaker Heights was no hype. "That was before she married Lee Eastman, Linda's father; she was Louise Linder, but she's gone now, "said Linda 

    "Lindender, wasn't it?" said Paul.

     Chances are that the McCartneys will stay in England in spite of the heavy taxes. "We like it there. It's still good fun in England. It hasn't sunk, you know, like some people think," Paul said, adding that they need a better system to run the country. 

    Does Paul still see John occasionally? "Yeah, if I'm in New York. He lives in New York. You know?" Paul said.

     The other Beatles? Paul doesn't see them much. They're still good friends. He said he had dinner with Ringo recently, but they live in different parts of the globe.

     Where does Ringo live now? "I'm not sure," Paul said. 

    Paul stared at me for a moment. "Say, I remember you now from that '66 interview," he said.

Jaggers Sail Into the Sunrise (1971)

 

All I ever read was that Paul and Ringo attended Mick Jagger's wedding in 1971, but not much more, so I decided to dig a little deeper.  First off, I discovered that Paul and Ringo did not attend Mick Jagger and Bianca Perez-Mora Macias's actual wedding.  But it sounds like it was pretty crazy -- the mayor allowed 100 pressmen into the courthouse because it was a public place, and Mick Jagger refused to go inside because he didn't want to get married in a "fishbowl."  The mayor got fed up and said if Mick and Bianca didn't appear in 10 minutes "to hell with the wedding."   Right after they were pronounced married, Keith Richards came barging in, cursing up a storm, saying that a fight had broken out outside!  Talk about wedding drama!  Newspapers claim that George Harrison was also at the wedding reception, but I do not see any other proof of that -- just one reporter stating it and others copying what the first person said.  I don't think George was there and after reading this report, I am even more certain. 

Jaggers Sail into the Sunrise

By Barry Simmons

Manchester Evening News

May 13, 1971

    Mrs. Mick Jagger stood sipping champagne at the private reception in St Tropez early today and told me, "Our wedding has been perfect, despite all the fuss."

     Before she and her new Rolling Stone husband sailed into the sunrise aboard their 120 ton honeymoon yacht, she said, "I'm sure we will be happy."

     Who will be accompanying them on their honeymoon cruise to Croatia and Sardinia? "You must be joking, mate," laughed Jagger. "We're going alone." He added, "I'll be back here in a couple of weeks for the Monaco Grand Prix."

     I danced alongside Mick and his beautiful wife, Bianca at their exclusive reception. Girls kissed each other passionately as men in hot pants withered and cavorted to the thumping, ear-splitting music under grotesque papier mache puppets swinging precariously from the ceiling. 

    The jet set reception held in a two-floor music hall next to the Café des Arts in the resort's main square failed to heal the feud between Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and the other Beatles. 

    Paul, who left the party early with his wife Linda, sat upstairs. Ringo and his wife, Maureen, remained on the ground floor.

     The only exceptions to the way out guests were the bride's groom's parents, Joe and Eva Jagger from Dartford. Mr. Jagger wore a sober suit, and his petite wife was in a print dress; both looked a little overpowered by the occasion.

Interviewed

 May 13, 2011