Paul at MPL

Photos by Tore Skaar and Anne Kristin Ekern

Paul at MPL

McCartney Observer

By Tore Skaar and Anne Kristin Ekern (Norway)

Summer 1980

 

After a lot of struggling, we managed to meet Paul and Wings for the first time on June 15, 1979 – the very last day of our visit to London.  It was merely an hour before our bus left for the airport!  Wings were being interviewed live on Capital Radio when “Back to the Egg” had just been released.  Ray Brown (at the Musique Boutique) had hinted that the group was to be interviewed live about 3 pm.  It was our last chance to see them, and we had to hurry.  Naturally, we were somewhat depressed this last day in London, after all the seeking that gave no result.  Well, Wings arrived, all of them in good spirits, and the dream of seeing Paul had come true.  He was very nice, joked and smiled, ever the diplomat!  We took some pictures and well, the end of the story is rather sad.  Somehow the film disappeared when it was sent for developing, and we’ve never seen anything of it since.

So, therefore we set out with bigger hopes when we made our trip the second time around this year.  Having arrived in London on Saturday, July 5^th, we went up to St. John’s Wood on Sunday.  Paul was not living there this time either, so we walked to Abbey Road/EMI aftwerwards.  We didn’t really expect Paul to be there, and we were right.  Someone there said, when we asked where Paul was, “I think he’s in Scotland.” Now, that made us a little depressed again.  After all, it was July, the album (McCartney II) was out quite a while ago, and it wouldn’t really be strange if Paul was on holiday.  But we were determined not to give up.  Having gained quite a lot of experience from the first trip, we learned one thing:  Trust no one!  They all tell you different things!  Whether it’s Tony Brainsby, Sue at MPL, or someone at the EMI Abbey Road – well, it’s a shame, but you can’t really trust any of them.  One of them says Paul is out of the country on holiday; the other says he’s rehearsing at a secret place (far away from London, of course) or that he’s in Scotland, etc etc. so once again – here’s the advice that you all ought to go by: TRUST NO ONE!  THEY ALL TELL YOU DIFFERENT THINGS!

Soon already the next day, this statement proved to be true.  On our way to Oxford Street – we came from “Musique Boutique” – we decided we might as well drop by the MPL in Soho Square.  It was just after 4 o’clock in the afternoon, and the door was locked.  However, a girl came out and was actually very friendly.  Answering the questions about where HE was, she said, “He’s upstairs.”  We couldn’t believe it, and we got so excited.  So, of course, we couldn’t leave the place now, and we started to wait for him to come down.  A Mexican boy called Enrique was also there.  And whom did we see when we had just crossed the street and looked toward the first floor, but Paul! It made us so happy, and we waved at him with a lot of gestures.  He smiled and waved back.  It looked as if he was happy to see us.  He was sitting in a chair, so we could only see his head.  He had a conversation going on with an unidentified person.  Apparently, it was a day of business meetings for Paul, and we were pretty lucky to be here this day, as he's very seldom at the MPL.  Later on, we also saw Linda and baby James on the 3^rd or 4^th floor.  We waved at them, too, and they waved back.  Linda helped every smiling James with his waving.  They all seemed happy that day. Well, Paul finally went out of the room and seemingly took the elevator to another floor, so we had to wait longer.  And, would you believe it, who came walking towards MPL just after we had arrived there – George Martin!  We didn’t get to speak with him when he arrived, but after an hour or so, he came out again, so we ran to him and said “hello” and “thank you for all the great records that you produced.”  He was very nice, wrote autographs and posed for us.

And we waited for Paul.  After two hours of waiting, he finally came down with James on his arm.  Linda also came.  As we started for the front door, Paul suddenly opened the door and waved us towards him!  “What the hell, is he going to invite us in?” we thought.  He didn’t do that, but he asked us if we were going to take photos, and we said yes, and he just said, “OK.  Well, just wait and few minutes, and we’ll come out.”  We could hardly believe it.  It was so nice of him!  It just goes to prove that he cares about his fans.

There were some people inside, and they chatted for a couple of minutes.  Then they came out, and Paul started posing at one, and then Linda too.  We clicked away with our cameras, and we managed to get some good photos of the event.  Paul then said that they had to leave, and they went into their Rolls.  We ran out into the street to take as many photos as possible.  Paul rolled down his window, and James sat on Linda’s knees.  Linda smiled – so did Paul – and we all said goodbye to each other.  Then they drove away. 

It was Monday, July 7, 1980, at 6 pm, and a day we’ll never forget. 

Paul outside of MPL in Soho

 August 31, 1982

MPL at SoHo

 

May 18, 1982

On Wednesdays we wear pink

 

Fans at MPL

 July 8, 1986 - MPL 

Leaving MPL

Photo by Vinnie Zuffante

Green Monday in front of the jukebox

You know I'm a sucker for a photo of Paul standing in front of his MPL jukebox!   Another one to add to the collection. 

January 17, 2020

New Juke Box photos

September 5, 2019

Always someone waiting to see them

Leaving the office

Macca spotting

The right place at the right time

A group of fans were standing outside MPL in London, hoping that when Paul McCartney exited the building, he would sign autographs and allow photos.    Lucky for them, that is exactly what happened.   Even luckier was the delivery guy that just happened to have been making deliveries that day in Soho.  (noticed the yellow helmet in the photographs above)  He was on his scooter and noticed the commotion going on outside of MPL and spotted Paul McCartney in the small crowd.   He got right up there and got an autograph too and then got back to work. 

Saw him standing there

A moment to himself

Inside MPL

This seems to be a fairly recent photo and it appears that Paul still has the same couch and jukebox in his MPL office that he had in the 1980's.    Paul...a man that doesn't change thing very often.

MPL -- September 1984

I am still sifting through the stack of "With a little help from my friends" fanzines that I got back at the beginning of the year.  While reading through issue #49 (from January 1985),  I found this nice story about meeting Paul outside of MPL in 1984 written by Laurie Ross.   I wonder what issues Paul had the year before with Italian fans?

Both photos taken by Laurie Ross

MPL –September 1984

By Laurie Ross

Sometimes trying to locate the elusive Macca can be a frustrating experience.  After three days of waiting at AIR and MPL, my friends and I decided to take a day off.  Being down to my last few pounds, I chose to stay in London and see how much damage my Mastercard and I could do to Oxford Street while the others opted for day trips into the country.  After an exciting morning of doing my laundry, I headed down Oxford Street and bumped into a London friend of mine who told me Paul’s car was parked on a side street near MPL.

I headed there to find the usual crew of fans who had seen nothing.  Everyone always heard that if Paul’s at MPL, you can see him, so we figured that John (his driver) was using the car for some other purpose.  After 30 minutes or so, I got up to go for lunch, and for some reason had the incredible urge to take it back to Soho Square with me.  From time to time I glanced up at the building, and on one of the floors there was some fella waving his arms about – in the same way Paul does.  But he did not stand up and I figured that if he was there, the other fans would have told me.

All of a sudden a figure comes bounding to the window and waved to one of the fans – well we all flipped!  It was Paul!  I stood for the next 25 minutes or so just willing him to peek out the window again, but no such luck.   John came out to bring the car to the front of the building and we all made a mad dash for the door.  As John went in, he warned us not to take any photos without permission.

After five minutes of hopping around the pavement with a bad case of nerves, out he comes.  The next five words utter made me cringe, “What are you doing here?”—directed at the small group of Italian fans.  It wasn’t said with a friendly tone at all.  This was the same group that apparently made Paul’s life such a misery in August/September 1983.  As a “peace offering” they offered him a Wimpy box with fish and chips in it.  He said, ‘Is that my lunch?” as they handed it to him, then “A Wimpy!”  When he opened it up he said, “Oh, you can keep it, it’s alright.  I’m a vegetarian.”  One of the girls said, “Since when?” (Can you believe that?) And he replied, “Since many, many years.”  He was asking the Italian girls where they were from and when they said Italy, he said, “Big Italy.”  They asked for photos, and he obliged, so I asked for one and he said “sure.”  I thought, why stop at one, so while he was busying signing autographs, I kept snapping.

At one point he did a cute little pose for the Italians.  I kept thinking to myself, “Why is he being so nice to them when they’re such jerks?” but oh well.  He was about to get into the car and a fellow asked him for an autograph, so Paul asked John for a piece of paper and then he said to me, “Can I borrow your pen?” to which I must have looked stunned, because he repeated, “your pen?” but by the time I rooted through my purse, someone else had given him one.  I asked him when “Broad Street” would be out and he replied, looking right into my eyes, “October 26^th in American and like in November here.”

At one point he looked over and saw a German fan standing there with a glum expression on her face, and he said to her, “Don’t worry, it won’t happen!” to which she replied, “What?” And he said to her, “Whatever you’re worried about!”

He finally managed to get away from us all, and I ran to the one-hour photo lab with my film clutched in my hot little hand.

Once again, Paul McCartney proved to me that there can’t be a kinder or more gentle man on this earth—he really and truly cares about all of his fans.

And the bag across his shoulder....

Standing outside MPL

I recognized this as MPL right away.   I think this is a really nice photo of Paul. 

Jukebox Jury

MPL and Air '73

I love finding the stories that go along with the photos I have in my files.   I am excited that I located the stories that go with my all time favorite photo of Paul and Linda!   I am also happy that this story was written by Pat Simmons.   I love Pat's style of writing.   She always makes me laugh and writes in such a way that I really feel like I am there with her.    

This story is found in the Fall 1981 issue of the McCartney Observer.

Air ‘73

Pat Simmons

If you ever want to meet one of the Beatles and make a complete idiot of yourself, invite me along.  I seem to have a knack for doing just that.  After 17 years, I’m still totally awestruck by them, and when seeing any of them, my entire being seems to turn into one large blob of Jell-O.  Let me demonstrate.

It is October 1973, the last time I’ve been to England.  Kris S., Kathy B. and I are nosing through a huge bookstore around the corner from Soho Square.  Kris, who has been in England for several weeks already, asks us if we’ve seen MPL yet.  We hadn’t, so Kris takes us there.  When we arrive, we see a limo conspicuously waiting outside – you couldn’t miss it, it was taking up the whole street.  Quaking Kathy and I push brave Kris up to the car to try to worm out of the driver if he happens to be waiting for Paul, and of course he snaps an irritable “No!”  Deciding he probably is, we cross the street to the square to hide behind the shrubbery and hope.  Sure enough, before too long, out bops Paul and Linda.  I was so complete startled to be seeing them so totally by accident that all I could croak out was “there he is.”  Kathy and Kris, who’d been sitting down on a bench with their backs to MPL’s doorway, said later that I said it so calmly they wondered “that who is?”  When they saw my gaping mouth however, they whipped around and saw them too.  Kathy had never met Paul before and was becoming so unglued that she managed to get hopelessly entangled in her camera straps, while doing a little jig trying to get free and swearing for all she was worth.  My but it was quiet on that street…

Our legs like lead, it took us a while to get our butts across the street, and by that time, Paul and Linda  had gone around the corner and disappeared into another building.  We stared at each other dementedly for a few minutes, and then decided to station ourselves at the corner.  When we saw them come out of the building again out of the corner of our eyes, the three of us proceeded to stare straight ahead at the lamppost.  Something about the way we were staring at that lamppost with our eyes bugged out of heads and cameras around our necks might have given Paul a little clue that we were fans, so he walked right up to us and shone a flashlight in each of our faces.  Kathy and I went into spastic silence, wanting so much to say something intelligent, and our brains not cooperating.  Kris managed to squeak out, “Is this a stick-up?”  Paul and Linda cracked up, and lingered for a minute, wondering if we were going t come out of our comatose state and be able to carry on a conversation.  My jaw was flapping up and down like an unhinged door but nothing was coming out, so giving up, they started walking toward MPL again.

Realizing they were leaving, Kathy came out of her stupor and said something like, “We’re blowing this, somebody do something!”  Yes, it was a quiet street.  He had to have heard her, and was probably eating up the entire episode with a large spoon.  Kathy’s outburst had shocked me out of my stupor, and suddenly, saying “Oh, ok!” on legs that certainly couldn’t have been mine, I started trailing after Paul, mumbling, “Uh….Paul?”  He didn’t turn around, so I croaked a little louder, “Paul?”  This went on until the time they had reached MPL, and suddenly Paul spun around, nearly giving me a coronary, and raising his eyebrows, said “Yes?”  He does like to make people suffer, doesn’t he?   I babbled out, “Ah, er..would you think I was obnoxious if I asked if you’d pose for a photo?”  Even as I said it, I couldn’t believe it.  Meantime, Paul seemed to be getting more amused by the second.  “No, I wouldn’t,” he said patiently, grinning broadly.  I could hear Kathy, still at the corner with Kris say, “all right!” and the town of them joined me.  The first photo I took, after feeling a tad guilty and asking Linda to be in the photo too, I was shaking so hard that Paul said, “You’re shaking, you’d better take another one!”  The fact that the second photo did come out much clearer was no doubt largely due to the fact that he was at the time looking toward Kris and Kathy as they took a photo.  Something about when that man looks straight at you that definitely puts you in an unbalanced state.

While posing for Kris and Kathy, Paul noticed Kathy’s camera, and whistling and seeming impressed, he crowed, “Ooooh!  Top Conn, ooooh!!!”  I thought later I should have held up m y camera and said “ooooh!  Instamatic, ooooh!!”  but it’s one of those things you don’t think of til a week later.

It seems to me some other things were said, but in the state we were in, it all seemed like a dream.  It would be one thing if we were at a studio where he was recording and knew we’d be seeing him eventually leaving the building; it’s quite another thing to see him totally by accident!

After Paul and Linda had gone back into MPL, Kris took off to call a couple of friends, who made it there in record time.  A short time later, when they emerged from the building again, Marla sent them off with a huge wave which, once in the back seat of the limo whose driver had said he wasn’t waiting for Paul, and turning around to look through the back window at us, Paul skillfully duplicated.  My worst humiliation of the whole event came a few hours later when I realized what I was wearing:  a jacket with HDN and Sgt. Pepper patches sewn on it!  Well, all I’d known was that we were going to a bookstore!  Embarrassed is not the word (try mortified!)

At this time, Paul was working on “Helen Wheels” at Air Studios, so just about every day, we’d go over there to see him arrive.  He delighted in parking around the corner on a side street  (illegally; he got tickets every day!) and walking through the crowds of people on Oxford Street, preferably in rush hour, enjoying immensely the double takes office workers would give him, staring after him as though to say, “Nah, it couldn’t be him!”  The one time he created a real stir in the throngs when he arrived decked out in plaid jacket, a top that looked like a maternity dress, baggy trousers, and complete with a “hat” that looked like underwear or shorts!  Linda was dressed equally weird (but then she usually was anyway), and they passed at the doorway of the studio to do a little dance step before going inside.

Another time at the studio, Marie had stopped him just before he went in the door to show him some concert photos she’d taken of him earlier in the year.  He stopped and admired himself for a while and when he turned to go into the building, collided straight into me.  For the briefest instant he grabbed my arm, said, “Sorry” and once again left me a babbling idiot.  He can run into my anytime!

The “guards” in this building were really nice, a lot nicer than EMI guards had been of years past.  Many times when it was cold outside they would let us wait in the lobby, and eventually even over by the elevators.  One particular night after hours and hours of waiting, my bladder was about to explode.  I    hated the thought of leaving and missing him, though.  I continued to wait, pain mounting, till I could stand it no more.  I walked up to the guards’ desk like a penguin asking if they knew if there was a commode nearby in a pub or something, and noting my slightly green coloring, took pity on me, saying “You can use the one on the 4^th floor here.”  They had been so nice to us I didn’t want them to get in trouble.  Particularly when I found out that was also the floor Air Studio was on!  But they insisted it would be all right if I hurried and came right back downstairs.   I begged someone to come with me, but nobody would budge so the elevator door closed and took me up to the floor.  I was even petrified to get ouf the elevator.  I would hate to have to answer Paul’s question of “What are you doing up here” if I should run into him.  But, when you’re desperate, you’re desperate.

I followed the directions once up there that the guard had given me, but I couldn’t find anything remotely resembling a bathroom.  Beyond one of the doors seemed to be closet, but I wasn’t THAT desperate.  I was just about to turn around and go back downstairs and ask for directions again when I heard whistling and several people talking at the same time.  And one of those voices was Paul’s!  Panic and full bladder to not mix.

I couldn’t run to the elevators, I’d never beat him down there.  So I did the only think I could think of, which was to hightail it down the stairway.  Did you ever tyro t run down four flights of marble stairs with a painfully full bladder?  I wailed down those stairs like a steam locomotive, and by the time I reached the lobby, God only knew what colors I was turning while I was panting to get my breath back.  The rest of my friends were still waiting by the elevators, so when Paul and gang paraded into the lobby I was the only fan up there at the time, and he looked straight at me and broke into another huge grin, either having heard the commotion of me stampeding down the stairs while waiting for the elevator, or who knows, maybe he remember my HDN patch.

Ah, the embarrassing moments we fans have known.  But we wouldn’t’ trade those memories for anything, would we?