The McCartney Family (Mike McCartney 1981)

 The McCartney Family

By Mike McCartney

Daily Mirror

October 19, 1981

    I could hardly believe my ears. There was our kid on Telly for the first time with the other three Beatles, talking in the most incredibly phony Liverpudlian accent. "It's all part of the image," Paul explained later when I tackled him about it.

     Dad thought his mock Scouse accent was bad enough, but it was the last straw when he heard the blatantly Americanized "She Loves You, yeah, yeah, yeah," which became number one in 1963. 

    "All these phony accents won't get you anywhere, son," Dad told Paul. "Why don't you sing 'She Loves You Yes, yes, yes, that is much nicer.'" And that is just one of the tales in the story of us Macs, as we're known to the family, Mother Mary, Father Jim, Paul, and me, and lots of others. 

    It all starts, I suppose, when Mum, a devoted nurse, met and fell in love with and married Dad, who was an automatic setter lathe turner in Napier's aircraft factory in Liverpool. She was 31, and he was 39 when they married on April 15, 1941. 

    Afterwards, Mum gave up nursing at Walton Hospital in Liverpool to have her first child, James Paul McCartney, who was born on June 18, 1942, in a private ward of Walton Hozzy. 

    Just 18 months later, I chose to be born. Arriving at 10 a.m. on a cold morning of January 7, 1944, also at Walton, I was named Peter Michael and promptly taken to our new prefab bungalow home in Roach Avenue, Knownsley Estate, Liverpool.

     I was only 12 when I caught Mum upstairs in her bedroom crying to herself. She was holding a crucifix and a picture of one of her relatives, a Catholic priest.

     "What's up, Mum?" "Nothing, love." Being a nurse, she guessed what was wrong with her. Soon afterwards, they confirmed cancer of the breast, and within a month she was dead. It was that quick: one minute a loving, warm, hugging mother; the next, nothing. Just writing this brings tears trickling down my nose onto the paper. (We McCartneys always did have our bladders too near our eyes.)

     Mum's death affected us more than we'll ever know. Without me knowing what a soul was, her death touched it, reaching right down to the bottom of my heart. Before she died, she told our Auntie Dill, "I would have liked to have seen the boys growing up." It was then that Dad had to decide whether to be a father or a mother to his two growing lads. Luckily, he chose both. 

    We gave him very little help and a lot of cheek. He could have cracked up, got drunk, beat us up, brought women home. He had every justification for doing so, but he just soldiered on.

     Let's go back though to times when we were knee-high to a grasshopper, and as Dad would say, life was just a lavatory bowl of cherries. 

    My earliest memories grow less hazy around the time of our first school at Stockton Road. There, the balmy summer days proved alluring, and Paul would sag from school and go down to the bank of the River Mercy to swim nude in the then unpolluted water. Soon we moved to 12 Ardwick Road and the newer estate on the outskirts of Speke.

     Throughout his fat period, the only time that anything outwardly affected him, I remember that we had an argument with a shouting of "fatty," and running like hell to escape the ensuing wrath. Before long, we moved again to 20 Forthlni Road, Allerton, where we had the luxury of an inside toilet, which meant no more answering of warm pink tummies from overcoat bodies to ice-cold winter bog seats.

     Plus, passing the 11 plus, we both won places to the Liverpool Institute High School in the city center. I followed Paul to the Inny to discover he had established quite a reputation with the masters as being a bit of a lad. Silly bugger that I was, I tried to live up to him. I dared and got caught and got bashed over and over again, for among things not wearing my cap, going out to the out of bounds fish and chippy, and throwing water bombs, which were brown paper bags filled with water over a wall to the kids, prefects and masters.  I once half drenched a prefect, and although nobody would have admitted having thrown it, Peter Sissons, now one of our nation's television news readers, guessed it was me. So it was off to the head study again for another caning.

     While we were in the Inny, I saw again a lad who lived a couple of roads away from our old Ardwick home, George Harrison. He was obviously one of those working-class rebel chaps, and toward the end of our school days, he got more and more outrageous. The compulsory school uniform took second place to his extrovert dress sense, and his hair was the longest anyone could get away with. All Tony Curtis back, with a school cap perched on the top rear like a rabbi's skull cap.

    When his guitar-playing affinity with Paul was established in end-of-term school concerts, George would visit our new Forthlin Road home, and we slowly became friends. His dress by this time was even more interesting: full-length skin-tight drainies down to his bright fluorescent socks, even brighter lime green waistcoat under his blazer, and the first blue suede winkle picker shoes. These and the insistent chewing of gum became his trademarks. My sweet lord might not have wanted to know him, but his mum must have loved him.

     Round the same Elvis area in the same year Mum died, I used to see John, "Ted" Lennon with dranies, sides, suedies, and the lot walking to and from the art college past our school. When Paul had been introduced to this other older rebel, we became nodding acquaintances. When he had his glasses on, that is.

     Dad didn't take too kindly to John Lennon, though. "He'll get you in trouble, son," was his advice to Paul. But as Dad actually lived his "toleration and moderation" adages, Johnny Moondog wasn't exactly banned from the house, at least when Dad was at work.

     John used to come round and rehearse. It paid off. Six months later, after Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper were killed in that 1959 air crash, the Casbah opened with about 300 fans waiting to hear the Quarrymen. They went down. Fabobviouslytastic, and later had the first taste of superstardom, backing Johnny Gentle on a package tour of Scotland.

     Paul was waiting for his art and English A-level results, and his dad thought he was all set to make an honest living by getting a steady job. As I was the proverbial younger brother, Paul didn't usually confide in me, so you can imagine my surprise when, on top of the 86 bus taking us home, he suddenly took me into his confidence and said, "I have some amazing news. They've asked us to Hamburg." "Blimey!" "For stacks of money." "You mean you'll be famous?" "Oh yeah, lots of money and famous, and I can buy you lots of things too. But there's just one thing..." "What?"  "Dad!"

     Dad wasn't that easy to convince, as he really wanted Paul to go to teachers' training college. But in the end, Paul and the lads went off to Hamburg, and fame.

Established & Sons

 September 23, 2006 

Flowers in Vience

September 22, 1976 
 

Hello Vienna

 

September 18, 1976 

Paul McCartney Seeks New Image (1971)

 Paul McCartney Seeks New Image

By Judith Simmons

El Paso Herald Post

September 18, 1971

    The group watching the blaring roundabout in the Blackpool amusement park could have been any family on holiday, but the chap in the old jeans and white T-shirt was Paul McCartney, and the woman in a green maternity smock holding his arm was his wife Linda. She is expecting a baby in the autumn.

     With them were Linda's blonde daughter by her previous marriage, Heather, seven, and Paul and Linda's daughter Mary, who will be two this month. Mary has her mother's fair coloring and the large blue-gray, guileless eyes, which helped her father become the most loved of the four Beatles.

     Paul reminisced on the scene and the events of the holiday. "It was nice to be in Blackpool, having a bit of pleasure. We found a good little hotel where we weren't recognized. We got chucked out of a restaurant. We were told we could not be served because we were not properly dressed. Linda told the chap he was a fool, and we left."

     The caution he acquired with the group's breakup is apparently shed now. At 28, he is building a life and career with Linda, who is the same age. They are recording and composing together. Linda, like Paul, now sees experience in terms of song. He said, "This Blackpool trip gave me an idea for a song. I'm composing a tune in the raucous rhythm of the roundabout."

     The new band, the McCartneys' guitarist Denny Laine and drummer Denny Seiwell, often rehearse at the McCartneys' isolated farmhouse home in West Scotland. Paul is fanatical that no one should interrupt him. He said, "I made my name as a musician-composer, and I have got to have a place where I can concentrate on that side of my work without other aspects of my life intruding. We are trying to make a life the way we want it, be what we want to be, not what other people want us to be.

     "I don't want my children automatically striking poses when they see a photographer. Get the message. If people think I'm a crabby old thing, it's too bad. 

    "Three years ago, we stopped playing Beatles. The relationship between me and the others today is good, but I want to shed my Beatles contract."

     And Paul's idea for the future? "I've got lots of plans. For one thing, I have film rights in Rupert the Bear, and I shall be starting on that. I want to have the old kind of band, not to do it big, but just make music, play little places. Just play around. 

    "People on the group scene, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Moody Blues, all started just as music makers, but a whole big scene grew out of it, and we lost our personal privacy. I want to get it back. I hope it works that way. Well, anyway, we'll try."

Not Your Average Millionaires (1981)

The McCartney family in 1981 

 

Not Your Average Millionaires

By David Lewin

The Toronto Star

September 6, 1981

    Mr. and Mrs. Paul McCartney are a nice average couple with rather more than average achievements. They have four kids, three houses, and enough money in the bank to buy and sell your average millionaire 40 times over.

     At 39, McCartney is worth, to be precise, $40 million, and another couple of million rolls in like the sea every year.  Mr. McCartney writes songs. He is the most successful music maker in history. 100 million LPs sold. 100 million singles. Mrs. McCartney takes photographs, is a key member of her husband's group Wings, and makes cartoon films. She is also a mother, bringing up a family of young children who will inherit the vast family fortune.

     Paul and Linda McCartney are both aware of the problems that such an inheritance can bring. Their children are aged between 18 and three and a half. The youngest is a boy, James Louis. The other three are girls: Heather, 18, from Linda's first marriage; Mary, 11; and Stella, 9. The children have one bedroom, but not each, just between them in the four-room cottage on the farm in Sussex, which is their main home. 

    Paul McCartney said, "We may have to build a third bedroom now because our youngest is a boy, but we have deliberately kept them in one room because I want a close family, just as I had when I was growing up in Liverpool. I don't want a mansion where I have to telephone from the East Wing to make an appointment to see my kids in the West Wing. 

    "Of course, they are going to get a lot of money, but Linda and I are trying as much as possible to make their growing up an ordinary one. We don't have a chauffeur, and I drive my youngest kids to the local primary school. We don't send them to be privately educated, and they get 50 cents pocket money a week, just about enough to buy a packet of crisps.

     "When people come and visit us in the country, they tend to drive past our cottage the first time because they're looking for a bigger house. They think ours must belong to the gardener. The children go out visiting sometimes and come home and say,  'Daddy, our friend's parents must be rich. You should see how big a house they have got.'"

     The McCartney approach to money is typified by a recent trip they made to the south of France. They flew to Nice as tourists. Then they chartered a private jet to get back in time to have dinner with the family. "Money should make you free," said Linda McCartney. "So we don't waste it, but we use it when it is necessary."

     Linda McCartney was wearing a white jacket, a pair of faded blue jeans and yellow socks; her millions self-evidently don't go on clothes. "The jacket I got free from a film I appeared in," she said. "The socks are the most expensive item. They cost $2. The jeans cost less. They aren't designer-made."

     Paul McCartney wore a gray jacket, gray socks, and white trousers; he would be the despair of any boutique owner.

     I asked him whether having so much money blunted ambition. He thought for a moment and said, "Probably. Well, really, the answer has to be 'Yes, it does.' When we started, the Beatles used to say, 'Let's write a house,' then we'd say 'Let's write a car,' and finally it was 'Let's write a swimming pool.' But when you have got your houses and your cars and your swimming pool, there isn't much else to write. For me, music is a hobby, as the actress said to the bishop. 

    "I like it, so I'll go on doing it. If I stopped, I'd do woodwork. My goals now? Oh, happiness, the kids, stuff like that."

     Whatever happens, the royalties from his music will keep right on rolling in. "But we have no trust fund for the children," said Linda McCartney. "That would put too much pressure on them. Of course, they have expectations, but the important thing is for them to get their value structure right and not use the money as a crutch. It is difficult, but it can be done if we keep things as ordinary as possible."

     The McCartneys are different in temperament. Linda McCartney said, "We are opposites in fact. I am not intellectual. Paul is. I am the calming influence. In fact, I'm rather dull, falling asleep sometimes right after supper.  Paul stimulates me. I wait. He moves.

     "Of course, we have rows because at first, when we were married, I had an identity problem. Paul's life was the Beatles, and when they broke up, I had to make a new life for myself in England."

     Paul said, "There were moments when our marriage might not have worked. I'm not the charming Paul of my public image, and if someone knocks something I have written, which I think should be a masterpiece, I can be shattered."

     How do they resolve their fights? "In bed," said Paul. His wife hit him. Then she said, "My domain is the house. I don't mean doing the housework, but having it my way at home. Paul's domain is his work. Super stardom doesn't turn me on. Really, I'm very ordinary. I hope that doesn't hold Paul back. I want the marriage to last."

     It has for 12 years, the longest of any of the Beatles. Paul McCartney looked at his wife and said, "I can see us both growing old gracefully, but Linda won't be alone. I'll be around, and with her too."

The Liberation of Paul McCartney (1971)

 The Top of Pop

By Lillian Roxon

Daily News

September 5, 1971

    Poor Paul McCartney. One year the prettiest face in rock and roll. This year, the man everyone loves to hate. Everyone's at him. His old friend and workmate John Lennon has a nasty song about him in his new album. His old girlfriend and housemate Fran Schwartz has 20 pages about him in her just-finished and still very hush-hush book. His most devoted fans get into fights with him, and now Rock Liberation has chosen him as its next big target.

     Rock Liberation? Oh yes! If you think women's liberation is heavy, wait till Rock Lib gets really steamed up this fall. It was Rock Lib that staged that big party in the street outside Bob Dylan's house on his birthday this summer. Not that he was there or anything, but he sure as hell heard about it. And the next thing we know, there he was, liberated as all get out, up on stage at the Bangladesh concert with George Harrison, singing all his old songs and pouring money into the pockets of the poor and needy. Incredible.

     Maybe Rock Lib has nothing to do with it at all, but you can't blame them for feeling encouraged. So flushed with success, they have now turned to Paul, not early enough to get him to Madison Square Garden, alas, but still. 

    In what must have been more than a casual coincidence, the day the Liberators chose to shake up the former Beatle was also the day the women of New York chose for their second annual mass march up Fifth Avenue. What I think the rock people were trying to tell us was that they are all kinds of oppression, and that it is probably better to be born female than to have to listen to another Paul McCartney solo effort. 

    In any case, there they all were at 79th and Park, where the McCartneys sometimes stay when in town, waving placards and making speeches designed to goad Paul like Dylan back into the land of the living. It was no use telling them it's not nice to parade noisily outside people's homes, and that besides Paul is getting a band together with the talented and beautiful Denny Laine.

    It was no use pointing out that anyone truly interested in liberating rock might do better to use that energy promoting new, fresh artists instead of trying to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to old ones. It was no use because Rock Lib does have a point. Paul has been snotty and isolated. If musical aristocrats like Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Bill Wyman, and Charlie Watts could come out of their isolation to back Howlin Wolf in one of the most magnificent and important albums of the year, the London Hall and Wolf Sessions, then it's hard to see what Paul has been trying to prove all alone there in Scotland. The sooner he's liberated, if you ask me, the better

McCartney Tight Lipped About His New Quartet (1971)

 McCartney Tight-Lipped About his New Quartet

By Drew Johnstone

London Express

August 20, 1971

(Campbeltown, Scotland) Beatle Paul McCartney remained tight-lipped this week about the group that he and his wife Linda plan to launch on the pop scene later this year. Paul, who is staying with his wife at their Scottish farmhouse near here, revealed this won't be a media group like the Beatles. "We're out to provide good music, and we're not caring whether the public likes it as big a way as they did the music of the Beatles."

     In a three-minute interview, while he paused with his seven-month pregnant wife as they walked to a stream in a field alongside their hillside hideaway, Paul said, "I'm still keeping the wraps on the group for the time being. I will say that the group, which I hope will make its appearance in the winter, will be out to provide nothing else but good music. It's not a planned thing. It's just a case of good musicians getting together for their own personal kicks; the Beatles are finished, and I'm not planning to revive their type of music with this group."

 McCartney refused to be drawn when asked about two American musicians, Dennis Siewell and Hugh McCracken, both from New York, who arrived in Campbelltown less than two months ago and bought a cottage near his farmhouse. Siewell, who plays the drums, and McCracken, a guitarist, arrived in the town with their wives and stayed for a month at the Argyle Arms Hotel.

     Later, they were seen on numerous occasions with McCartney and his wife. McCartney refused to reveal whether they had been rehearsing together, at either his farmhouse or the American's cottage, less than a half mile away; all McCartney would say was, "There will be four of us in the group. Linda and I will be responsible for the vocals. That's all I want to say about the group at this moment."

Paul and the fam in Holland

 August 19, 1976 

Enjoying the Jamaican sun

 

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.

The Silent Beatles (1971)

 

The Silent Beatles on Jagger Juggernaut

By Sydney Curtis

Evening Standard (London)

May 12, 1971

    Two of the Beatles met at Gatwick today. There was no exchange of words in the airport's departure lounge waiting take off to Mick Jagger's wedding. 

    They sat for four minutes at the same table before their flight, the Jagger Juggernaut was called and said nothing to each other. The silent confrontation was between Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr.

     Paul was with his wife, Linda, his daughter, and Linda's daughter from a previous marriage. Ringo was with his wife, Maureen. 

    Earlier, I talked to both McCartney and Starr.

    McCartney, who had held up the plane for half an hour by his late arrival at the airport, was asked if there was going to be a reunion. He said, "No, it's a wedding."

     I asked him if there was any chance of the month-long Beatles rift being healed because of this wedding meeting. He replied, "Look, I don't want to talk about that."

     But when I told him that Ringo Starr was already at the airport, he grinned and said, "Oh, good lad."

     Asked why George Harrison and John Lennon had not turned up, he said, "I cannot speak for the others."

     Would he be talking to the other Beatles if they arrived at the wedding? "I don't know," he said.

     Earlier, I asked Ringo Starr if all the Beatles were going to St Tropez.  He replied, "We've made our own arrangements."

     Was the rift too great to be healed at a fellow pop idol's marriage? Ringo, wearing a white suit, black shirt, and sunglasses, turned aside without commenting.

McBeardy on the loose

 May 12, 1971

Taking off

 April 1971 

Family Wedding

 

April 27, 1981 

Injury Clips Wings (1976)

 Injury Clips Wings: McCartney Tour Delayed

No author listed

The News of Cumberland County

April 2, 1976

    Paul McCartney and Wings have postponed their American tour because of an injury to one of the group's members. Guitarist Jimmy McCulloch suffered a broken hand when he slipped in a bathroom. The injury came following the conclusion of the group's European tour.

     The American tour, entitled "Wings Over America", was to have encompassed 20 cities and 31 performances. The tour will be herland the debut of Wings in America, and also be McCartney's first personal appearance on a US concert stage in almost 10 years. 

    The ex-Beatle and his group were to have played Spectrum on May 12 and 14th. A spokesman for the group said Tuesday that the tour was being rescheduled to begin in May, but could not say whether the Spectrum dates for the group would be changed.

     Wings over America is the culmination of many months of planning and is the fourth and final leg of the Wings World Tour, which began in England in late 1975 and proceeded to Australia and Europe. Wings will be performing a set lasting between two and two and one half hours with no intermission. New sound and light apparatus, as well as special staging, have been designed especially for the tour.

     Wings will be arriving in the United States directly from Paris, where the group concluded its triumphant European tour on March 26. During the third leg of the World Tour, Wings performed to sold-out houses in Denmark, Holland, and Berlin, Germany. Wings consists of Paul McCartney, Linda McCartney, Danny Laine, Jimmy McCulloch, and Joe English. The four-member brass section that accompanied Wings in the United Kingdom, Australia, and the European segment of the Wings World Tour will perform on the American tour.

     The band will be performing material from all prior Paul McCartney and Wings albums, as well as songs that have been associated with Paul McCartney throughout his career. Also included will be selections from Wings' latest release, Wings at the Speed of Sound, the album, which has recently been released on the Capitol label, includes songs written by Paul and Linda McCartney as well as Jimmy McCulloch and Denny Laine, who will also perform their compositions during the course of the concert tour. 

    The album was certified gold immediately upon its release in the US. The brass section on the tour consists of leader, Tony Dorsey (trombone), who also arranged the horn section on Wings at the Speed of Sound, Steve Howard (trumpet, and fuglehorn), who has been featured on albums with Labelle, and has worked with Alan Tossant. Thaddeus, Richard (flute, sax) has worked with Johnny Taylor and Tony Dorsey over the last few years, and Liverpudlian  Howie Casey (Tenor sax) has backed such music luminaries as Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, Wilson Pickett, T Rex, and John Entwistle.

Back at Heathrow

March 25, 1971 
 

Honoring Stella McCartney

 

Living in a Home in the Heart of the Country

 

Tracks posted these photographs on Facebook with the following text:

Two previously unseen snapshot photographs taken at High Park Farm, the Mull of Kintyre farm owned by Paul McCartney. The images were captured shortly before Wings departed for their Wings University Tour in February 1972 and offer a rare, candid glimpse into life at the farm.

One photograph shows Denny Laine (left), Henry McCullough (centre) and Paul McCartney (right) relaxing outside a stone outbuilding, surrounded by several of McCartney’s dogs and puppies.

The second photograph features Paul’s adopted daughter Heather McCartney together with his daughters Mary McCartney and Stella McCartney, alongside Henry McCullough’s daughter Jesse McCullough, seated in the fields with the family’s pets.

Both photographs come directly from the estate of Henry McCullough and have not previously been published. Preserved within his personal archive, they provide an authentic and intimate glimpse into the relaxed environment surrounding Paul McCartney and those close to him at his Kintyre farm during this formative period.

McCartney in Angry Clash with Camera Men (1981)

 McCartney in Angry Clash with Camera Men

No writer listed

Liverpool Echo

February 18, 1981

Paul McCartney called the cameramen "monsters."

 Paul McCartney was involved in an angry clash with press photographers on the Caribbean island of Montserrat, where he and fellow ex Beatle Ringo Starr are making a record. A Jeep driven by McCartney was in a collision with a car containing the photographers, and McCartney got out and shouted at the cameramen. 

    Photographer Doug Jennings said that McCartney called them monsters and angrily lectured them for 20 minutes on why they should not bother him. No one was injured in the collision. The photographers claim McCartney deliberately rammed their car. Jennings said the incident happened as McCartney, his wife, Linda, and three children were on their way to a recording studio for a session with Ringo Starr. McCartney told the cameramen, "We're here only to record. There is no story. There is no Beatles reunion!"