Paul Has Met His Challenge
By Robert Hilburn
The Los Angeles Times
April 22, 1974
"After the breakup of the Beatles, I was thinking of calling my first album. I'm the One That It Hit the Most, because it really did hit me hard," Paul McCartney said, as he relaxed by the Beverly Hills Hotel pool. "I thought, 'Oh, Jesus, what am I going to do now? It's really going to be difficult to get it going on my own.'"
He continued reflecting on his feelings at the time of the split of the most successful group in the history of pop music. "But it kind of turned itself around and became a challenge. It's corny to say it, but it did. It became a challenge to me. I thought either I was going to go under or I was going to get something together."
It has been four years since McCartney announced he was leaving the Beatles, thus formally ending what was an already crumbling, tense relationship. Since that break, McCartney has recorded five albums, formed a new band, Wings, and toured in Europe. He had also starred in a television special and received an Oscar nomination for the song "Live and Let Die".
He has obviously met the challenge, but it hasn't necessarily been easy, emotionally or artistically. There were numerous moments of self-doubt. While each of his albums has been a major seller, several of them have been rapped by critics. His latest album, Band on the Run, however, seems to have pleased both critics and fans. The success of Band on the Run, (it moved to number one last week on the nation's sales charts), and his plan to tour here with Wings contributed to a general optimism and confidence in McCartney's mood as he talked candidly about the events surrounding the traumatic breakup with The Beatles and his life since.
With him by the pool was his wife, Linda, who is with him in Wings, and their three daughters. They had come to Los Angeles to attend the Academy Awards. His composition lost to "The Way We Were", but it didn't daunt McCartney's spirit. "We didn't really expect to win," he said, acknowledging the infectious but limited nature of the song. If he had been conscious of an Oscar possibility when writing the song, he would have tried to make it more substantial.
He noted, "Still, it was fun to get nominated and to attend the ceremony. A few people told us it was stupid to go to the Oscars," McCartney offered. "They said, 'why go'? This man's gonna say you lost and you're gonna have to sit there and.... but that's not the point to me. It's not just this thing of winning, winning, winning. There's also a matter of patience and long-term, and all that. I'm not too heavily into it, I've got to win everything. I know I can't win everything, but I can win a lot. By attending the Oscars, we were just saying, 'Hello, glad to be here. We respect what you're doing'. "
When I arrived at the hotel, McCartney was in the pool with one of his daughters. Linda was sunning herself on a nearby patio chair. Like Yoko Ono, Linda has sometimes gotten bad publicity from the press, but she was friendly, engaging, and as she moved back and forth between watching the children and sitting in on the interview.
Surprisingly, McCartney seemed more tense and guarded in the early moments of the interview than John Lennon had been when I interviewed him a few months ago. But gradually, he eased up and talked with increasing frankness and openness. Any Beatles reunion, it seems, would be temporary. Wings is his chief interest.
Q: You seem to be in a good spirit now.
PM: Yeah, I am. I definitely did go through a bit of thinking, Oh blimey. I really do need the Beatles. Such a silly thing for us to break up.
Q: When was that?
PM: For about a year after the Beatles broke up, off and on, it sort of depended on the weather or your mood. I'm just like anybody else. You wake up and it's a lousy day and it's not going well, and it all falls in. It was the idea that I'd pick up a newspaper and they'd say, Oh, you should have stayed with the Beatles, Paul. So it got to me, but there wasn't much I could do about it, outside of ringing everybody and saying, Listen, do you want to get back together? No one seemed like they wanted to, so I just had to hang in there and shut up.
Q: You were the first ex-Beatle to tour. Was that a difficult decision?
PM: Well, no, to tell you the truth, I was wanting to go out before the Beatles broke up. You know, you hear a lot of people say it, it's a cliche, but it's the greatest thrill to play to people. It really is. If you get it on in front of an audience, there's nothing like it. In a recording studio, you have to imagine that the audience was thrilled.
Q: Was your reluctance to the Beatles to tour because of the craziness and the hysteria that's around the tours?
PM: Well, yeah, there was all that. I don't think anyone was madly keen on the whole touring syndrome. I know Ringo wasn't. It was just a little bit difficult at the time. Everyone had their own ideas that couldn't be put into one good idea. John wanted big auditoriums. I wanted small auditoriums. Ringo didn't want, really want to tour anyway, leaving his kids and family and stuff. There were all things we could have worked out. I fancied doing some kind of live thing, but the band folded. John decided he was going to leave, and that was the kind of the last straw. About a year or so before that, Ringo had left. We all reassured him that we all thought he was the greatest drummer in the world, and that we wanted him, so he was cool. Then there were some arguments with George. I was a bit nasty towards him, probably during the filming of Let It Be. I was a little insensitive, I guess, whatever people go through. So George left during the filming, then he came back again. Then John eventually left. So I said, Oh, well, what the hell, I'll leave too. We'll all leave. It's ridiculous to go on like this. We're all bloody leaving each week. So that was it, really. We just went our separate ways. And I started to get the idea for Wings.
Q: Do you agree with the general feeling that you'll eventually get back together with the Beatles for a show?
PM, I don't know about the show thing; that's really a ways off. What might be possible? I mean, the easiest thing I could see is to record some tracks together, and that would be a Beatles album that I see as a possibility if we all fancied it. But please remember, this is purely guesswork. I haven't even talked to them about it, but that's a possibility. From there, you might get a stage show or something.
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