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.
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