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| Paul and Linda interviewed in Detroit |
Paul: We Put it All Into the Show
By Jane Scott
The Plain Dealer
May 14, 1976
We heard one of the Beatles Monday night at the Wings Over America concert at the Coliseum. Is there a chance of ever hearing all four of them on stage again?
"I would say probably no," answered Paul, "and leave it at that."
He spoke freely and spontaneously at a dressing room interview following the sellout show. The Cleveland Show, fourth in a 20-city tour, drew 20,731.
Belkin Productions had offered the famous four $4 million to do a concert back in 1969, but it has nothing to do with money. "We'd do it for 10 bob. It's only really because no one really is interested to do it," Paul said. "It's like a marriage when people keep asking divorced couples when they are getting back together."
"You can't reheat a soufflé, my mother used to say," interrupted Linda.
But Paul didn't slam the door entirely. "Who knows what the future will be? What will it be in 1985?" he asked.
Linda, in ankle-length denim culottes and a sweater set, was barefoot on a chair beside Paul, completely wrapped up in the conversation. Stella, 4, the spitting image of her father, but with her mother's blonde hair. Mary, 6, and Heather, 13, raced around the room just like kids do from Parma to Paris.
The McCartneys said that they loved the Cleveland concert. They taped it. There is a possibility that a song done here could show up on a live LP. "Soily", the second encore song that has never been recorded, might make it too.
For me, the interview was rescheduled for yesterday. I had interviewed the Beatles at the Sheridan Cleveland hotel during their appearance here in August, 1966. I had tried for weeks to get this interview with Paul, even flying to the Detroit show last Friday. Paul looked only a little older. There are laugh lines around his eyes. Now his face is a little fuller. He's a little heavier. His hair is longer, but pulled back behind his ears, and he smiles just as easily. Yes, he has changed.
"In the last 10 years, I've sort of changed, like we've all changed, basically, in many ways. I'm now married with three kids, which I certainly wasn't then. I don't know. I mean, I could go on for five hours, you know about the actual changes, but it's like it was the '60s, and now it's the '70s. I never really analyzed it."
(You know what Paul said, back in 1966? Paul had twinkled at questions about his steady, Jane Asher, remember? But then he had said at the time they didn't want to marry until they were perfectly sure)
"Each LP will be different from preceding ones," he said. "Touring today," Paul said, "is different than it used to be for the Beatles. Touring was you didn't hear the music as much. That's the kind of basic difference between the music now that you've got to be able to actually put the notes in now. Then we pretty much did put the notes in. We could just about hear ourselves, but some nights we couldn't, and some nights it was a good job." He said he felt that you can hear a lot more with the better sound systems today.
The Wings system Monday night was flown above the stage. "The audience these days want to listen. They're more into music," he said. "It was a more hysterical time, a few years back, for everyone, maybe it's like the Kennedy /Ford difference here."
Is Paul more serious now? "I'll tell you what," he said. "I'm more myself than I used to be. I would be purposely unserious because you don't really need to get too serious with the press. It takes less time if you don't get serious," Paul said.
Does the barrage of Beatles questions bother him? "It bothers me, only that I have to kind of keep saying 'probably no'. Then everyone asks why, and the questions are sort of endless. You know?" he said.
Paul appeared comfortable and relaxed in blue denim slacks, a black sweater, and an off-white vest. He wore an ivory eagle around his neck.
Does he still get the mob scenes that The Beatles did? "No, not really. Wings drew a mob Sunday night in Toronto, but generally speaking, they don't." This could be an advantage. Paul felt the scene had changed. "The Beatles always used to announce which airport or someone did. Now we don't," he said. "We try to put it all in the show. You know, people come and buy the tickets, and then if that goes down, we don't really get into the other side. People don't judge you by how many showed up at the airport," he said.
Incidentally, you couldn't judge the Coliseum concert by the airport. Wings chartered BAC 1011, luxury plane landed at the wrong one, Burke Lakefront. He said limos were waiting at Cleveland Hopkins airport, so the Wings group finally flew to Hopkins, then had to take cabs to the Coliseum.
Paul's remark during the concert that Linda's mother was from Shaker Heights was no hype. "That was before she married Lee Eastman, Linda's father; she was Louise Linder, but she's gone now, "said Linda
"Lindender, wasn't it?" said Paul.
Chances are that the McCartneys will stay in England in spite of the heavy taxes. "We like it there. It's still good fun in England. It hasn't sunk, you know, like some people think," Paul said, adding that they need a better system to run the country.
Does Paul still see John occasionally? "Yeah, if I'm in New York. He lives in New York. You know?" Paul said.
The other Beatles? Paul doesn't see them much. They're still good friends. He said he had dinner with Ringo recently, but they live in different parts of the globe.
Where does Ringo live now? "I'm not sure," Paul said.
Paul stared at me for a moment. "Say, I remember you now from that '66 interview," he said.
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