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| Photos taken by Lawrence Blampied |
McCartney Interview Part 1
By Tony Fletcher
Jamming Magazine
No 13 1983
Interviewing Paul McCartney is not something an everyday fanzine writer (or in fact any journalist) tends to lose much sleep over. I mean, the man doesn't exist, or if he does, he's protected by millions of bodyguards and is totally inaccessible to the public. Wrong. The Jam and Paul McCartney happened to be recording their new album in the same studio back in January. With grateful help from Paul Weller, an interview with one of the world's most famous people was acquired. Quite simply, "Sure, do it tomorrow."
Despite such a healthy start, I thought Paul would still be guarded, untalkative, and act the superstar he undeniably is. Instead, I chatted with one of the warmest, most friendly people it's ever been my pleasure to meet. It's very hard to get starstruck with someone like Macca when he is actually sitting on a sofa right next to you, constantly hitting you to force a point home. We had been warned countless times that Paul doesn't talk about the Beatles and doesn't allow photos to be taken, yet we did both without any problems.
So, just for once in our lives, we have a bit of an exclusive. A lot of you might already have seen bits of this three-hour bonanza in the Sunday Mirror, but this is the full interview.
Q: Did you ever think your life would be like this? Were you very ambitious at the start, thinking "I'm gonna make it as a star?"
A: Oh yeah. When we were starting out, I remember standing at the bus stop where we used to live in Allerton in Liverpool, and thinking that if I won the pools, which was the only way you were going to get anywhere, I'd get a house, a car, a guitar, and an amp, and that was as far as I could see. To me, I thought that would cover it.
Q: There hadn't been any big pop groups as such to set the way, had there?
A: Well, the Shadows, but not really that big. No, we always used to have a joke, me and John saying, "Where are we going? To the top, Johnny!" It was only a joke at the time, but it set the direction and channeled our ambitions. Yeah, we're going to do it. We're going to get there. We're going to crack America. The great thing about us was we believed in ourselves. We could see that what we were doing was pretty good, but we never knew if it would succeed anywhere. We liked it. It's just we never knew if everyone else would like it.
Q: So how do you feel now? Do you sit back and think, 'Christ, did that really happen?'
A: Yeah, I do sometimes, but then I'm still the ongoing story. Generally, I think it's amazing. I can't believe the success we've had, but for me, I don't sort of sit around as though it's finished. I still think it's going on, even if it isn't. At 70, I think I'll stick the same way. I'll never really stop to look at it all. I haven't even got a record collection of the Beatles. I think sometimes I must be mad. Why didn't I just buy a copy of every one as it came out and kept it?
Q: Didn't you get given them?
A: Yeah. I think I got one free one. I think that all the engineers and producers used to get off the record company a street salary plus one free record. If you look at EMI figures and tallies, tally it up with the Beatles sales, the company suddenly balloons like mad, and when the Beatles split, it suddenly takes a dive, but yeah, it's pretty crazy. It's that being Paul McCartney, I've always said in all the interviews that I feel about the same as I did when I was five. Inside, I feel the same. I've grown up and all these amazing things have happened around me and to me, but it still feels like I'm the same little fellow inside me.
Q: I take it you always wanted to be famous, but did you ever want to be a god, which is what you are, or at least were?
A: No, you never think of that, do you? That's the trouble with all famous people. You've got your dreams of a car, a house, a guitar, ooh, but you forget about the things like the press, you forget about people who automatically think they can take photos of you or come up to you and ask for your autograph.
The thing is, though, that I was the kid outside the stage door. I used to hang around outside the Liverpool Empire when I was about 12 with short trousers (in those days you didn't get long trousers until you were about 14). I remember getting the autograph of the Crew Cuts this American group, and I was just knocked out because they were great fellas, and they didn't tell us to piss off or anything. So, I've always tried to be like that with fans, with people, trying to realize that they don't mean you any harm. It's just they freak out when they see someone famous.
Q: Does that ever get too much?
A: It does sometimes. Yeah, like the other day, that thing in the Daily Star, I was just walking in to the studio, and there was a fellow there who was obviously going to take a photo, but as I didn't feel like having my photo taken, I just turned my back on him to make it obvious. He said, "What's all this? Hang on". And I thought, "If he's cool, I'll turn around, and he'll be all right, but if he's not, if he's a journalist, he'll be snapping anyway." So I turned around, and he was. I just turned toward him, blocking his lens, and pushed him over.
Q: Was his camera smashed?
A: No! No, nothing! But then he goes down to the editor, who says, "Oh, this is good. Somebody famous pushes a poor photographer over. Now, what happened? Did he punch and kick you? Well, we'll stick in 'punched' and 'kicked' anyway." So, it looks like I'm going around laying out photographers, and people are saying, "This is really great for your image." (laughs) But that's the kind of game you get involved in. There is a downside to fame.
Q: Would you recommend to other people who want to be that famous?
A: I think it's okay to be that famous, but I think you've got to watch out for the things I'm talking about, because I think of the kind of people it freaks out the Marilyn Monroe, or whatever, a woman who's known for her beauty. When she starts to get old, she can't hold on to it, and the paper starts saying this, and people start saying that, and it gets to her head, cause until then she's only been coping with being beautiful and famous, but now she's coping with being ugly. You have to be ready for that kind of thing. The pressures are immense. (Lapse) Now it's not that bad. There may be a downside, but really, there are a lot of advantages to it.
Q: You look back on it all with a smile on your face.
A: Oh yeah, I think it's great. Absolutely, the advice is just to watch out for all the snakes ready to bite you, and all that stuff, but as long as you keep your head.
Q: It's not just all that fame with the Beatles, not the fact that officially you're the most successful songwriter in the history of the world.
A: Well, I don't know if that's true, but if it is, then that's great, because that's the kind of thing that you are working toward, even when you're 15, you think, "I wish I could write a few songs", so somebody telling me I'm the who's done in it most in the world is a slight freak out, because in fact what it is is I don't really believe it like other people do. I can't take all that in. I just think, "Yeah, I'm winning. This is great." I'm getting what I wanted, the prizes, rewards, and I'm shuffled. I don't really take it in. I do sometimes think, "Wait a minute, I must have been pushing pretty hard to get this far."
Q: When I was first, I (not able to read what this says) British teenagers to be affected by (not able to read what this says) affected by, and I was worried if that might have affected what makes the Beatles. For me all I can something as Beatles "Let it Be"was the last single on Top of the Pops, but for you it must have been really something because when you were growing up there was no rock and roll, then the next minute it was there.
A: It was exciting. Yeah, it was amazing. Till then it had been pretty shabby, you know, "hits and pop" Frank Ifield kind of stuff, then suddenly instead of hearing records you quite liked and tapped your feet along to, you were hearing records where your spine was going tingly, that was the difference. But I suppose you must got that.
Q: Yeah, but the music has always been there for me.
A: I see what you're saying. You're probably right, coming out of nothing, the nearest was just sort of Johnny Ray, Frank Sinatra.... girls would swoon over that, they were called "Bobby Soxers", but that wasn't our generation, that was people just a bit older than us, and then suddenly for me it was just seeing a picture of Elvis in the paper, a little ad in the NME saying "Heartbreak Hotel". All the kids on our street were going. "Did you see that? Who is that?"
Q: Did your elders hate rock and roll, like saying, "Christ, what is this?"
A: Yeah, they worried about us all becoming hoodlums, because till then my crowd had been going down the straight and narrow. You do reasonably well at your first school, good enough to get to grammar school, then you were going to be trained as teachers or doctors. Trying to go down that path. George was like that. But the thing that freaked the parents out was when we started wearing our tight trousers and wrinkle pickers, blue suede shoes at school. You do your hair up a bit, and then they astonishingly thought that you were in a gang beating people up. They didn't see it as just a fashion. My dad got me a pair of new trousers, but a mate of mine knew a little tailor where we had them taken in, so I got home and my dad said, "Are those the same trousers you had on this morning?" "Yeah, of course they are." We used to have two pairs of trousers and change on the bus. You had to do all of that because you didn't want to get into an argument with them, and you knew that if you were going to go to a gig or something, you didn't want to wear your school clothes.
Q: You first met John in the Quarrymen at a fete in Woolton, July '57 didn't you?
A: Yeah, a mate of mine at school had said, "Come along and see this group, they're great." We used to go to the fair together with these great jackets with flaps here, light blue with flames on them. Whoosh! We really thought that was it. Go down the fair just at the age, you know, but I went to see the group and loved it. It was a young group. Instead of dance music, John was obviously leading this thing, he had an acoustic guitar, brown wood with a hole, rather an S shape in it, and a bit of a crew cut with a little quiff, a bit like yours. He didn't know the words for anything! He'd obviously only heard the records and not bought them, but I was pretty impressed. I met up with John backstage in this little church hall and just picked up his guitar, which I had to play upside down because I'm left-handed, and played "20 Flight Rock." They were all impressed because I knew the words. Then somebody played the piano, and somebody sang "Long Tall Sally", and later they asked me to join.
Q: At what point, if there was one, did it occur to you as a group that there's something here, we're not just a bunch of kids playing in the street. There must be something good here?
A: At the beginning, we didn't really have much faith in ourselves. I don't think promoters were going particularly mad over us. We were just doing gigs and getting paid. We were always being beaten in talent contests by old ladies with spoons -- they always turned up! But then in Hamburg, we started to learn how to interest the crowd. We had to, because there was no one there to buy beer.
On Fridays and Saturdays, we started to build up a decent crowd, and even in the week, we started to build it up, and that was the first time they started taking any notice to us in Hamburg. We got back to England, and though they still weren't paying that much attention to us, we'd learned our craft a bit better. Then it really started to take off at the Cavern, and we built up a great little audience there. So, in Hamburg, we clicked; at the Cavern, we clicked, but if you want to know when we knew we arrived, it was getting in the charts with "Love Me Do, that was the one; it gave us somewhere to go.
Q: When your type of group was going, it seems that the aim was to play every night from 1960 through about 1963. You must have played at least 300 gigs a year. Nowadays, I suppose it's just changing times, you find that groups don't want to play every night. There's no point. It's better just doing one good gig a week. Was it something you always wanted to do? Saying, "We've got to play tonight, we've got to have a gig?"
A: It wasn't being physically hooked on gigging; it was just we wanted to do it. We wanted to get everywhere, have every newspaper write about us, play every single gig, earn money, get famous, and the way to do it then seemed to be to be you'd agree to every interview, photo session, or gig. But I do remember going up to Brian Epstein one day; we'd done a TV show called Thank Your Lucky Stars, and saying, "Look, we've got to have a holiday; it's going to our heads; we hadn't had one week off in the whole year." In truth, playing that much, getting that well-oiled as athletes or nothing else, was probably what pushed us so far. You revved your engine up to so much that when you let them go, you just coasted.
Like in Hamburg, we played eight-hour days. Playing like that, you get to have lots of tunes, if nothing else. So, what we used to do, even on the five-hour stints, was to try not to repeat any numbers. That was our own little ambition to stop us going around the bend. That gave us millions of songs, even though we could only just get away with dumb de dum de dum dum for half an hour, we would shout a title the Germans couldn't understand, keep ourselves slammed like" knickers." But eventually we built up quite a program. Hamburg was a good exercise, really, in commercialism. A couple of students would stick their heads around the door and we would suddenly get into a piece of music that we thought might attract them. If we got people in, they'd pay us better. That club was called the Indra, which is German for India, and we played at that, the Kaiserkeller, the Top 10, the Star, in that order. We nicked left, right, and center off other bands. There we'd see something that we'd like, and after they left Hamburg, they'd put it in our set. Well, you've got to, haven't you? We used to like going up and watching Tony Sheridan, because he was a little bit of the generation above us. Used to play some blues, really moody stuff. Essentially, we built up quite a program; we could do a lot of American R& B stuff, quite a bit of pop, and some ballads, so if you got stuck in a pub with a lot of old people, you could just pull something out of the bag for that.
Q: Did you always want to do that, though?
A: No, not really, that wasn't the side we wanted to do, but sometimes you were stuck, so we wanted to be the band that could cope with anything.
Q: I think of you lot in leather jackets, and imagine you'd have taken the attitude "We're going to play what we want, not what they want."
A: In those days it seemed we'd give them what they wanted. We did ballads anyway, because somebody like Gene Vincent would do "Up a Lazy River" or "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", and that gave it the authenticity for us to do it. We did a couple of sappy things, because girls seem to like them. There was a stage when we got cabaret bookings, and when people there are pissed at 11 o'clock, you got to do "My Way" or else.
Q: It took five years for the Quarrymen /Silver Beatles/ Beatles just to get a record out, which probably wouldn't happen now. Do you reckon that was good for you? That you really built it up?
A: If you're saying that being successful is good, which I would, though it's a bit dubious, then definitely not getting a record out for five years was good, because it's what contributed to all that we were. Separate for when it came that we really knew what we wanted to get on record, it was such a thrill being let loose in the studio that we almost ODd on it. We'd always wanted to be in the studio, and in the end we stopped touring because we loved it so much. Maybe what you're saying, though, I'd never thought about it. Maybe the reason being held back for so long meant that when we were let go we had all that pent up.
Q: I don't really think groups could do it these days. You must have been really dedicated to go through those five years.
A: I don't know. I'm not a part of it anymore. I don't really know how they do it these days. That's the truth. I don't know what the difference is. I always think if there's a good group, they will do it the same way we did.
Q: From what I heard, Hamburg was a pretty rough area. Was that an experience for you? Or did it come more natural being from Liverpool?
A: No, even though we were from Liverpool, we thought we were hard, but we weren't. We were pretty sheltered. None of us had really seen prostitutes, never really seen strip clubs.
Q: Did you get into rocks or anything?
A: You tried not to, but sometimes... We'd all been living at home, and then suddenly we were in this little room with a tiny bed, and with the bog of the cinema, we were at the back of, right next door to us. It was just four cement walls, and we could smell the bog of the cinema. It was horrible, really cold. It must be pretty similar to under the arches at Charing Cross. It wasn't as bad as that, but it was that kind of change. That's how it started out, but obviously the accommodation got better as we got a bit wiser. We just asked. At first, it was pretty rough, but it was great. What more do you want if you're a fella and you're 17/18, down in this dirty part of Hamburg with all your hormones working correctly, and you're getting paid to be there? It was great!
Q: What about the clubs you played at? Were they pretty rough?
A: They were gangster clubs, although we didn't really know about that. It became obvious because they used to use gas guns, and they used to fire them off occasionally. The waiters used to use them when the customers caused trouble, as the waiters were all big bruisers; they were gangsters and all that, but they used to cry, big softies, really. But I find them to be the softest anyway, the hard nuts. They didn't have to act that way with us, because we were just a band; they knew we were a bit girls' blouses. We didn't get that involved, though. From time to time, you couldn't avoid it.
Q: You all that living together in Hamburg must have made you pretty close.
A: Yeah, that's why it was a bit horrible when we broke up in the end. We had got tight with each other. That kind of thing does tend to bring you together. We'd be in a little Bedford van going on the motorway in the fog, and the windscreen would blow out, a stone would smash it, and it was so freezing with the windscreen out that we had to lie on top of each other, the four of us. It was the only thing we could do, just get a body heat sandwich, but you know each other after that kind of thing. So it was good that we could take the piss out of each other, bring each other down to earth, back to reality, and I think all of that when we were really going as a team.
Q: Why do you reckon was the Beatles' success?
A: I think it was because of all the stuff we'd been talking about. We practiced up a lot in Hamburg, practiced up a lot at the Cavern. We became the top group in Hamburg, or one of the top contenders, anyway. And then got back to the Cavern and became the top group there. Gerry and the Pacemakers were our big worry: were they going to do better? But I think it was all the practicing, all the experience, when it came to it. If you'd had one bad gig that might make some other group split up, we'd just go "sod it."
Q: Did you think it was anything to do with being the right group in the right place at the right time?
A: Yeah, I think it was a lot to do with all that too, but we made our own luck with all this stuff I'm talking about. You'd get all the other groups-- our style of group, and though it wasn't just we had to be in the foreground, our stage act was a lot of Shirrells, James Ray, Larry Williams, Little Richard, all the black American acts. It was all their stuff, so that separated us from everyone. All the other groups were doing Roy Orbison, the Shadows, or Cliff.
Then we started off the black polo necks and suits instead of ties and stuff. It was a slightly different look; the hair was different. Brushed forward, that was Astrid, we knew her in Germany, one of her mates, Jurgen Volmer, had it, and he and John went hitchhiking in Paris one time when he had some money. It was his birthday, and he had gotten £100 off one of his rich aunties. Was unheard of £100 in those days. That's the thing about John: he did have a slightly more well-off family than any of the other people. He wasn't particularly upper-class or anything, but there was a bit more money in his family, and he would occasionally see it in the form of a birthday present. So we hitchhiked over to Paris, spent the time wandering about. I lost track of where I was here.
Q: It was about the haircut.
A: Oh yeah, so Jurgen was in Astrid. Fuck it. What was I talking about? No, probably was as well. Gerry, Astrid, anyway. Jurgen was in Paris on that trip, and we said, do us a favor, cut our hair like you've cut yours, so he did it, and it turned out different, because his wasn't exactly a Beatles cut, his was a bit like Paul Weller's, but sure fell into the Beatles thing that we didn't really start.
Q: Did people think you were really original?
A: Oh, they did! Especially the British newspapers. The impression that got over was that it was just us that we'd started it all. We kept saying, "But there's millions of people in art schools who look just like this. We're just the spokesman for it."
Q: You seem to be treated to an extent as rebels by the press of this country. Did you feel that too?
A: Yes, we just spoke out a bit differently to the normal people that had gone before. Traditionally, if you asked a showbiz fella about his views on Vietnam or something, he'd hedge and say, "Well, I don't really like talking about that." We'd just say, "We think it's lousy, the Yanks should get out." Then it was outspoken: look at their hair, look at the boots. We did have a bit of an effort. There weren't many people going around like us, so we stood out. That was all.
But, as you say, we were the first lot after the war, rock and roll, and all that, and it was different. It was probably the first time anyone had just owned up to being working class, because up until then actors and everyone had disguised their voices (speaking posh) in order to get plenty of work, they'd have a nice rounded accent. I can go for Shakespeare or (initiates Cockney), I can do the heavy stuff.
Q: You just said this is what we are
. A: Well, there wasn't much choice with us. We were a bit the rebels, and John was the more rebellious because he was more outspoken. Anyway, I was a little bit the PR man because I knew somebody had to be. Plus, it was a bit to do with my family. Ours was like, "Come on in, have a cup of tea", whereas John's upbringing wasn't so much family. Though last time I said that, his auntie never forgave me, because she brought him up. She thought she'd done all right, and she did. She was great. She's a good skin. But he didn't have the close family thing, which made him a different kind of character. The closeness of my family meant I took on that sort of role.
Now, John was more an artist, a rebel, more obviously a Brendan Behan, Dylan Thomas character saying "fuck off, get out", which is great, because in the end someone would do that if needed. Saying it wasn't always John, George would often come out with it, or Ringo, or even me, but if there was a horrible (can't read word) in the room, it would be John who'd be most likely to come out with it, rather than just saying excuse me. He was a bit more direct.
Q: "Love Me Do" made the top 20, but would I be right in saying that in those days there wasn't so much music, therefore getting to number 20 didn't really mean as much?
A: No, not really. I think the truth is, if you got in the charts in the top 30, no matter, it got you noticed, It made you a chart group. We thought of ourselves as pop stars, you were in the record business, now you could think about the future, because now you've got in and closed the door behind you. So we took off like a rocket after that and tried to capitalize on it.
Q: The story goes that after "Love Me Do", George Martin wanted to record, "How Do You Do It" because it was a definite number one, but you demanded to do "Please Please Me" because you'd been in the charts. That you said "It's up to us".
A: Yeah, we wanted to have the choice, plus we thought, "How Do You Do It", which became number one for Gerry and the Pacemakers was a bit of a cop-out. We had this reputation as a Liverpool group doing all this R&B stuff. We used to like playing for the fellows in the audience, because they were the ones watching our fingers to see if we could play. Not putting the girls down, but for them it was all a bit "swoon swoon", and they didn't seem so interested in the music, so we used to play to those hard fellows who actually came up to us afterwards and asked "What was that chord?"
Q: How important was George Martin?
A: He was good. The first time he started to take over was with "Please Please Me." John brought it in as a kind of Roy Orbison ballad (sings real slow and soulful) "Last night I said these words to my girl, boom boom boom boom boom boom," and George Martin said, "Well, I think it's too slow, you should whack it up." We said, "Oh no,"
Q: It worked though.
A: It worked, taking control immediately, and then he had a lot of control. We used to record the stuff and leave him to mix it, pick a single ...everything. After a while, though, we got so into recording we'd stay behind while he mixed it, watching what he was doing with the later albums. He started to have less control, but he always was a strong figure in there. He's done the new album. He's good, technically strong for a professional producer who knows what he's doing. Occasionally we'd overrule him, like on "She Loves You", we end on a six chord (sings it) a very jazzy sort of thing, and he said, "Oh, you can't do that, a six chord, it's too jazzy." We just said, "No, it's a great hook, we've got to do it."
Q: What about George Harrison? Did you want to keep him away from songwriting?
A: No, not really. It was just that normally he didn't write songs. He just didn't do it. When we came to do the first LP, we said we've got to get Georgia in, he sings too, and Ringo, everybody wanted their tracks. So he did "Chains" and "Take Care of My Baby", which were in our set. Then pretty soon after that, John and I wrote him one. Eventually, he started writing songs, but never that many. I don't know whose idea it was, but it soon became established that me and John were the main singers. It was just as well, in a way, too, because not putting George down, I think he and John were better singers. (Laughs) He said modestly.
Q: Were you pleased with the songs you wrote them? Because you became so big, you knew each single was going to be a number one, and it must have been very easy to stick to a formula.
A: No, from what I remember, we were just trying to improve all the time, trying to get another hit, but trying to do something totally different. I don't think we ever really went for formulas. If you listen to it all develop, we'd always be trying something different, like a string quartet or something crazy.
Q: I can never believe that the LP 'Please Please Please Me' was recorded in a day.
A: That was great. It was a real buzz. I don't know how it got to be done, or who suggested it, but the reason we could do it, which is something I say to young groups now, was because we knew everything. We'd been playing the songs for months and months and months before getting a record out. So we came into the studio at 10, did one number, had a cup of tea, relaxed, did the next one, and did a couple of overdubs. We just worked through them like the stage act, and by about 10 o'clock that night, we've done 14 songs, and we just reeled out of the studios, John clutching his throat tablets.
Q: But it carried on that way, '64 through '65. You were doing world tours, yet still bringing out two LPs, four singles in a couple of years, as well as the films. All the others must have been done pretty quick.
A: We didn't hang around, that's for sure. On this new LP of mine, we've really taken as long as we'd liked, over a year, but that's just because I didn't feel like rushing it. But in those days, it wasn't a question of not having the time, it just took less time. We'd go in the studio at 10 o'clock in the morning, me and John would play the songs through to George, Ringo, and George Martin. We'd decide who is going to play what, and record it.
Q: Would you like to see it go back to that?
A: I'd like to see me go back to that, let alone music, but you've got to have a group that understands each other to do that. I'm not working as a group now. I'm working with different individual people, so it has to take a bit longer. But yeah, I think it would be good because it's fresh. Your ideas are more instant.
Q: You must have been selling a quite incredible number at your height.
A: Yeah, however it happened, the reasons were we got real practice. We really knew our shit. We knew exactly what we were doing, the effects we were having. We were getting a lot of gigs, working a lot, so there was no reason why it shouldn't work. It all just seemed to fit. As for the record sales, we just kept trying to sell more and more, trying to get another country, get America next. All these guys go to America, Cliff and the Shadows, etc. And never crack it. So, what we did was get rather cheeky. We said, "We won't go to America until we've had a number one." So we just played around Britain and Europe, built it up until one day we were in Paris when the telegram came, "You've got a number one!"
Q: That must have been a bit amazing.
A: Yeah, we leaped about. What we had only dared to think, almost joked about had happened, and then no one could boo us, because we could say "We're number one." It was like being on a kind of yellow brick road, as you went down it, you were looking for fresh things to do. Yeah, we'll try that. Sure, they want you to pose for the Daily Express, swearing. These do it, yeah. We just kept trying everything.
One thing that was very different from how it is now for us, for me, is it was very varied. We were used to doing all kinds of stuff in the course of a normal day. You might go and see a journalist, do an interview, do a photo session with someone, then you might do something that was totally unrelated, like a panel game on telly, or judging a beauty contest, or something. And then do a gig. We think "incredible." We must have been really desperate to do well. We must have been trying to prove something to someone.
Q: Is there any word that can describe Beatlemania?
A: (long, long, long pause) Manic, crazy. I don't know, any one word isn't enough for me. It was just buzz, might be the word for it, buzzing, but to me it's a bit of a haze.
Q: The whole thing about the Beatles is like nothing else in the world. When we were coming up yesterday on the tube, we were thinking "There won't be one person on this platform who won't know who Paul McCartney is." My parents can relate worldwide events to what record the Beatles had out at that time. That sort of thing is unthinkable to me.
A: (laughs) It's crazy. Occasionally, I think things like that, but look at me sitting here. I'm a fellow. I remember we were in Scotland with the kids, and I was lying in some field, as is my want, and one of the kids, who was very little at the time, said, "Hey, Dad, you're Paul McCartney, aren't you?" And it brought it home to me. Oh, yeah, it's like catching yourself in a mirror. What? But the thing is, it's not really what you think of yourself as. I said to someone the other day, "I am normal." He said, "You're not, you know, whatever you think, you're not normal." And that's right, I'm not normal, because to be normal would mean I have to do all normal things.
Q: And you can't really claim to have had a normal life.
A: No, I can't, but I thought a better word is "basic", not normal, but pretty basic
Q: (going a bit over the top here to try to comprehend the Beatles' success.) Beatlemania lasted something like four years, '64 through '67 which is as long as governments last, going from good to bad to good, etc. And I'm thinking that just in the past few days you've had your full page in the Daily Star. There's been a play on the radio, I'm hearing the records on the radio still, reading about your exploits in the gossip columns, hearing the Beatles mentioned in all types of interviews.
A: It is incredible. It must have been about a year before John died that I saw him after we'd managed to get our relationship cooled out again after all the bitchiness. He said he'd heard someone say somewhere, "Be careful what you wish for, because it just might come true", and that's a very true case, because we really wished for all of this fame, and you know what, we got it, and it's crazy because we didn't really think we got it. People wish very hard to win the pools, and we wished very hard to be famous, as you say, go down the tube station, and everyone would notice me.
Q: It's still just trying to emphasize it, that to someone who never lived through any of that, the Beatles are just about the biggest thing that ever happened to the human race, and yeah, it's crazy.
A: I don't believe it. You get that feeling of disbelief, and I'm very similar. It's like, I know it happened, I know we got really famous, and I know, as you say, people will all know who Paul McCartney is, and yet I don't know why I'm still working as though I'm trying to make myself more famous; it's crazy. I don't know, but all I think is, well, it's my job, it's what I ended up doing in life, and I like doing it, so I don't see any reason to stop.
At which the tape recorder uncannily clicks off, causing Paul to say that's not a bad way to end the interview. I mumble an apology and produce another C 90 from my bag, knowing we have to continue as we're only on to the mid '60s, and a few minutes later the interview is resumed. That will appear in Jamming 14, covering all the pressures of stardom, Paul's image, the Beatles split, Allen Klein, Apple, Paul's solo music, Shout, and loads more. Yes, folks, we too deliberately spread the juicy bits over two issues, so you have to buy both episodes. Don't forget to ask your friendly Jamming dealer to reserve you a copy of Jamming number 14 featuring part two of this interview.
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