John and Neil's Side Quest

 September 16, 1966 -- John and Neil take advantage of a break in the filming schedule and go to France for a few days. 

True Confessions From Paul (1991)

 True Confessions From Paul 

CP

September 18, 1991

    Paul McCartney says he was the weirdest member of the Beatles, and it was he who taught John Lennon how to make the group's most progressive music. "I was the far out one," McCartney said Monday in an interview with the Toronto Star and other journalists in London. "I hate kind of having to tell everyone this because I feel really weedy."

     He said the popular assumption that Lennon was the spark behind such avant-garde ideas as the landmark concept album Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and the sound collage "Revolution Number 9" on the White Album is wrong. Although he acknowledged the White Album was put together by Lennon and Yoko Ono. 

    McCartney also says he was so immersed in drugs and sex during the 1960s, "I narrowly miss some lethal minds." He often wonders why it is that he survived when other big-name music stars didn't, but he says his carousing days are long over.

     "I think sometimes it was like a minefield for me-- the '60s," McCartney said the Beatles back in 1966 would have been content to remain as identical mop tops had he not insisted that the group start experimenting. He said Lennon had been happily leading the life of a golf-loving country manor lord with his first wife Cynthia, while McCartney was busy planning the Sgt. Pepper album. 

    "Then he changed. He met Yoko, and he totally threw over his marriage and all his golf clubs, and he got out of all that and became Mr. Avant-Garde." An image which has stuck.

     McCartney was pegged as the lover of sweet love songs, which he admitted is a big part of his style then and now.  He bristled at a suggestion that the songs Lennon wrote on his own, both as a solo artist and with the Beatles, were better than his. "I know Lennon's music isn't better. I'm not even sure it's as highly rated or more highly rated than mine. I think it's a fantasy in the minds of a few journalists."

     He admitted being puzzled that he made it to 1991, while so many other rockers didn't, including Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Jim Morrison of the Doors.

     "There was a lot of stuff going around. A lot of my contemporaries were indulging in certain things I was trying to steer clear of, particularly heroin."

     But times have changed for McCartney 49, who will release his first extended work of classical music on October 7. His hair is noticeably gray, and he doesn't eat meat or smoke tobacco. "I'm grown up now," he said. "I'm not just primarily concerned with teeny bopper affairs anymore. I'm a father of four," McCartney said.

     He was a virtual stranger to most of classical music, even though he had helped to arrange the music for strings in such Beatles classics as "Eleanor Rigby" and "Yesterday." His new work, "Liverpool Oratorio", is a nostalgic look back on his hometown of Liverpool.

     "You just get bored writing pop songs after so many years of doing it because it's pretty much formula, "he said. 

    McCartney also said he's pleased to see Canadian Bryan Adams doing so well with his latest hit, "Everything I Do, I Do It for You," the theme song from the movie Robin Hood, that has surpassed any Beatles songs for the most weeks at number one on the pop charts. "He's cool, man. Really cool," McCartney said. "I like him. Good luck to him, I say."

Later Music Made 'Under the Influence'

Reuter

September 18, 1991

     Former Beatle Paul McCartney said in a recent interview that much of the rock group's later music was inspired by drugs. "From Rubber Soul in 1965 on, every Beatles album was produced under the influence of drugs, especially marijuana and LSD," McCartney told the German news magazine Der Spiegel.

     "Everything in the 60s was drug-inspired: music, literature, cinema. The Vietnam War was carried out under drugs," he said in the interview conducted in London.  Asked if he had been an alcoholic and drug addict, he said newspaper stories that he was a booze and heroin zombie were exaggerations. "I snorted heroin one single time. It's a wonder I didn't succumb to addiction."   McCartney said he was so involved in alcohol and other drugs that "I nearly perished. Who thinks about eating when there's LSD?"

     After the Beatles broke up in 1969, McCartney formed his own band and is still recording, touring, and writing songs. He said drugs were now a thing of the past. "I'm a very, very lucky person," he said. "Next year I will be 50, and I am constantly discovering new things."

Hey Bulldog

 

Love this photo!

Photo by May Pang 

 May did such a nice job capturing father and son here.  That is such a genuine smile from John looking at Julian.   Please don't tell me that this is A.I.  Why do I have a feeling that it isn't really a May Pang photo and is A.I.?  Maybe because I have never seen a photo where John's hair was wavy like that?  Maybe because John's hand looks weird.  I want this to be a real photo though. 

Ringo demonstrates

 September 16, 1971

The largest crowd they played for

 

Same guys a few years a part

 

Red Rose Wings

 

I think this a great photo of early Wings.  I bet they all wore black and red to promote Red Rose Speedway and purposely sat on the red chairs, but they look so cool!  Why does Denny S. have "Red Rose Speedway" (is that a sticker?) on his boot?  Check out Linda's heels!  

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."

Flying