Meet the Beatles for Real

Wednesday, October 21, 2026

Sorting the mail

Trudy Medcalf and Dawn from the Beatles fan club in Canada sort through the Beatles fan mail with a little help from George, while the Beatles were in New York in 1964. How could they focus on fan mail when George is next to them?

Time to Celebrate

October 21, 1976

No Longer a Man on the Run (1976)

Paul: No Longer a Man on the Run

By Gordon Blair

The Daily Record

October 22, 1976

Today, The Record gives you an exclusive interview with Paul McCartney, but what a task it was for Gordon Blair to get that chat with an ex-Beatle star. Why? Because of his wife Linda.

She made it quite clear that interviewing Paul is no easy job if she is around; she sat chewing gum and butted in almost every time a question was asked. First, she put on a Scottish accent; then it was a Liverpool accent, at least they were supposed to be.

The other members of the band sat quietly while Paul answered most of the questions, but not Linda. There was no way he was going to take the spotlight away from her.

Paul McCartney, legend, hero, and surely the most loved musician in the world, has stopped running from the Beatles. At a time when he is desperately trying to establish Wings, he has at last realized it -- he will never escape from his Beatles image; all the talk this year of McCartney threatening to punch people in the nose if they asked when the Beatles would reform is over.

"I was a mug," he told me. "I thought I could get away from that image. I was proud being a part of the group, but it ended, and I didn't want to die. I wanted to go on in a different direction with Wings, but people kept bringing me back to the Beatles.

"It got to such an extent that I used to disguise myself until one day I actually dressed up as an old man, and two girls in the street said, 'Hello, Paul.' I felt daft, and I stopped dressing up."

The large question mark, which hangs over a possible Beatles reunion, remains unanswered. McCartney has been eager to put together a one-off concert, but he has found the other three less than helpful. He is the most talented and courageous of the Fab Four, and it is worthwhile considering the fact that they know it. Paul told me he has tried to get some reaction from the other three, and they just don't want to know.

"Sure, I get bored answering the big question," he said. "But what can I tell people? I told John we had to make a decision, and he said, 'What do you want? A written refusal from all of us?'"

McCartney has grown in stature from being a scrawny, frightened little Liverpool Beatle in the 60s. He has become internationally important. People like Henry Fonda, Jack Nicholson, Diana Ross, Liz Taylor, Elton John, and Roman Polanski have joined his adoration club, and people listen to what he has to say when his wife Linda allows him to talk, that is.

Mrs. McCartney is not content to remain in the shadows like Denny Laine, Jimmy McCulloch, and Joe English, the other members of the group. She wants her piece of the action, and throughout my meeting with Wings, I couldn't help thinking, "Whose band is this? His or hers?"

We were talking backstage at the Wembley Empire Pool, London, where Wings played three sold-out concerts this week. It signaled the end of a mammoth 13-month world tour, which brought their music to 2 million people in 10 countries.

The other members of the band looked tired and drawn, but not Paul. Not even the new mustache took away his cherub-faced good looks. He had been on stage for more than two hours without an interval and walked into that drab, bare room looking younger than ever. McCartney is as eager to tell the world he hasn't changed. He went to great lengths to explain how he and Linda enjoyed the pure and simple things in life," fresh air, and children"

"In America," he said, "when we had a night off, Linda and I used to go out for a night out like normal people." Normal for the McCartneys means taking their private jet for the night out to some city of their choice. "Yeah," he says "The plane just waited for us, and took us home."

During the summer, the McCartneys and their children spent a lot of time at their farmhouse in Cambletown, where he has a sophisticated recording studio, but there is little time for relaxation, for a man who has reached more crossroads in his life than most men.

Last night he finished up the Wembley concerts. Today the band is back in the studio working on a three-record set for Christmas. The next hurdle is Russia. The album Band on the Run is to be released there this year, and a concert visit could follow. If that concert is as spectacular as Wembley, the Russians can expect to be roasted. It felt, dare I say it, as though I was listening to a Beatles concert again.

Celebrating the newlyweds

Beatles head on a stick

Photo by George Harrison

Tuesday, October 20, 2026

These guys are going places

I don't think I have ever seen the full version of this photo with Ken Brown playing with John, Paul and George

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.