I don't think I have ever seen the full version of this photo with Ken Brown playing with John, Paul and George
An online Beatles fan club for and about Beatle fans
Tuesday, October 20, 2026
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.
A Concert to Remember
October 20, 2001
25 years since that night filled with emotions and pride -- The Concert for New York City
Monday, October 19, 2026
My Hell In a Dream World (Cynthia Lennon 1976)
My Hell In a Dream World
No Writer Listed
Daily Record
October 19, 1976
Beatle John Lennon was introduced to the drug LSD when someone secretly put it in his coffee, and soon he was sucked away into a dream world. His first wife, Cynthia, claims the drug was in sugar lumps served with the coffee after a dinner party at the home of a friend of fellow Beatle George Harrison, and when John and Cynthia finally came out of their drug trance, they looked at each other and set their feet on different paths.
"It was terrifying," Cynthia says in an interview in Women Magazine. "It was John's first time, as it was for all of us. He thought it was wonderful. I tried to pull him back, but I couldn't. There were so many people around him trying to influence him. They'd say, 'I can invent an island where you can have sunshine all the time,' and John believed them.
Cynthia, now 36, and Lennon were divorced eight years ago. She has married twice since. Of the Beatles, she said the four of them "always seemed to me to be very vulnerable. I was older than all of them and felt like their big sister, but the Beatles were married to each other, and in many ways, girls were superfluous".
Cynthia lived in a big house in the stockbroker belt of Surrey, and although her husband appeared to be the master of his own destiny, she said in many ways, he was quite Victorian. "When our baby Julian was two or three years old, if he wasn't perfect with his knife and fork and his table manners, there would be a troubled scene."
Cynthia gradually became aware of Lennon's friendship with the Japanese artist and filmmaker Yoko Ono, and she tried to escape to Italy. She said, "Everyone knew I was John Lennon's wife, and it made me some kind of celebrity. Before I knew where I was, there was a detective following me. John was having me tailed while he was back in Weybridge sleeping in our bed with Yoko Ono."
Cynthia moved out, obtained a divorce, and was shocked by the publicity. A brief, disastrous marriage to Italian hotelier Roberto Bassanini followed. There was difficulty too with Julian, who was now attending a state school in Wimbledon.
Cynthia said, "There were those who buttered him up because of who his father was, and those who used it as an excuse to bully him." Eventually, she met John Twist, who had also had a broken marriage. Soon, they were promising to marry as soon as they were free, and Cynthia swears he has brought her the peace she has been seeking in her eight years since her divorce from John Lennon.
She said, "I knew John was nervous with me. He was imagining all sorts of things. He's a mechanical engineer and had visions of me wanting a jet set life. It was only when he got to know me that he realized how wrong he was."
John, now her husband, said, "I expected her to be very conscious of who she was and to treat everyone else as slightly beneath her; it took me a long time to get used to the fact that she didn't."
When he moved out of earshot, Cynthia said, "He's a good man, kind, gentle, down to earth, and sane, but I do worry about him. He's married to John Lennon's wife and is stepfather to John Lennon's son, and that's hard for anyone to follow. I try to make it clear to him that for me those years are dead and buried."
Not for everyone, unfortunately. Cynthia said, "It can still be sad when you're talking to someone, and you regard them as a friend, and as you walk away, you hear them whisper, 'Know who that was, don't you?' But they'll get used to me, and then they'll let me forget." Perhaps.
After reading this article in the newspaper, John wrote an 'open letter' to Cynthia. Apparently, what she said hit a nerve with him.
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Paul in a purple shirt on TRL
October 19, 2001
I am pretty sure this was the only time Paul appeared on Total Requet Live on Mtv.
Paul and Linda pass the Credibility test (1976)
Paul and Linda Pass the Credibility Test
No Writer Listed
Daily Express
October 20, 1976
Paul McCartney was back at London's Empire Pool last night, very much on his own terms. The last time he played the 8000 capacity stadium was with the Beatles at the height of their fame 10 years ago.
Now with his group Wings, the homecoming was a moment of triumph after a 12-month, 66-city world tour, which has been watched by 2 million fans. At 33, he has had 14 years' experience at the top, achieving world ratings all over again with Wings, and is his own new material with the group, which has brought him acclaim in 1976. Songs like "Venus and Mars," "Jet," and the recent hit "Let 'Em In," which had the audience shouting its acclaim.
He introduced a couple of old Beatles numbers, which he never used to do when Wings was formed five years ago. The classic " Yesterday," which he sang crouched cross-legged on the floor underneath a single spotlight, had the crowd reminiscing. But "Band on the Run" soon reminded everyone that those days were long over.
Certainly, this was the coming of full credibility for Wings in Britain, especially perhaps for Paul's much criticized wife Linda. "We were always aware of the heavy criticism," said Paul. "It could be very hurtful, and it was rough at the beginning. But I think it's now over."
After tonight and tomorrow's sellout at Wembley, it will be back to their Scottish farm for the McCartneys, where they will consider a script for a new fiction feature film. "Work, "said McCartney, "must never stop."
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