Nowhere Man (1996)

 

Nowhere Man 

By Art McCulloch

Daily News

September 22, 1996

    Sound engineer Howie Nicol's proudest possession is an award for his work on the Beatles' Anthology home video, currently selling in stores for a staggering $150. But behind the inscription on the little brass statuette lies the secret story of his dad's brief, but heady days as the fifth Beatle.

     It should have been Jimmie Nicols' ticket to ride. As the Beatles prepared to fly out on a 50-date tour, Ringo Starr collapsed with tonsillitis and was taken to the hospital. The band needed a replacement, a fifth Beatle, and they chose Nicol for 10 glorious days in the summer of 1964. 

    He joined the band for the start of their first world tour. Sitting shyly behind his drum kit, Nicol became the only outsider to play live with the Beatles as part of the band after they became famous. The fans screamed at him and tried to touch him. His face was in every newspaper and on all the TV screens, but not for long. Within a year, he was bankrupt. His marriage had collapsed, and he was on welfare. 

    Today, the forgotten Beatle lives with his second wife in a tiny apartment in London, eking out a living as a carpenter. The three surviving Beatles enjoy lives of luxury, but for Nicol, the glory days are gone. He no longer even owns a drum kit.

     "While I was with the Beatles, John had told me that I was a better drummer than Ringo, but that I'd miss the boat. When Ringo rejoined the band in Australia, and I was on the plane back home, I just felt like a bastard child sent back from a family that didn't want me," he says.  

    "My treatment by the fans was like night and day. The day before I was a Beatle, no girl would look at me. The day after, when I was in my suit and riding around in the back of a limo with John Lennon and Paul McCartney, they were all dying to touch me.

     "When the fans forget, they forget forever. After the Beatles, I played on for a few years, but then dropped out of music. Things didn't go well for me. It's a period of my life that I just want to forget about now. I mean, when you played with the best, the rest are just the rest."

     Despite this praise, Nicol insists, "I'm not and have never been a Beatles fan." The 30 years since his brief experience of fame has left their mark on Nicol. Now, age 57, with his thinning hair, stooped shoulders, missing teeth, and scruffy clothes, there is nothing to remind you of the smiling young man with the tight suit and the mop-top haircut. 

    The irony of Nicols' story is that the man who called him into the Beatles' lineup, their legendary manager Brian Epstein, is also the man who destroyed him. Epstein wanted a drummer who looked the part, but would mime his drumming, to tape recordings of Ringo playing to preserve the Beatles' unique sound. 

    What Epstein did not want was a musician with an established reputation, but what he got was a musician with principles. Nicol, who was working with Georgie Fame when Epstein called him, insisted on playing and refused to mime. Epstein was furious and spread the word to the world of promoters and booking agents that Nicol was trouble.

     Nicol, who was then 25, recalls when that call came through from Epstein. "I went to his office, I just couldn't believe it when he told me he wanted me to play for the Beatles. I was stunned. All the Beatles, with the exception of Ringo, who was already in the hospital, were there to meet me. I shook hands and told them how much I admired them, which I think embarrassed them a bit.

     But throughout it all, they were all very nice to me. Next on the agenda was money. I got very worried when Epstein started talking to me about money. They paid me $500 for the gig and a signing bonus. When John said, [Good God, Brian, you'll make him crazy,' I thought it was all finished. But then he said, 'Give him $20,000.'  Everyone laughed, but that night I couldn't sleep. I was a Beatle!"

    He was measured for his Beatles suit and had his hair cut into the trademark mop top. His five-year-old son Howard ran round to the neighbors, crying, "My dad's a Beatle!"  The next day Nicol was on a plane to Copenhagen for his first concert on the historic tour.  "It was fantastic. The best thing about being a Beatle is that you can have anything you want. Paul was not always the clean-cut person people thought he was, and John drank a hell of a lot. And although everyone thought George was shy, he loved to party all night with the rest of us."

     Nicol inadvertently made a lasting contribution to the group. Hunter Davies, a Beatles biographer, recalls after every concert, John and Paul would go up to Jimmy Nichol and ask him how he was getting on. All that Jimmy would ever say was, "It's getting better." It ended up becoming a joke phrase for the band. It stuck in their minds and later inspired the song "Getting Better" on the Sgt. Pepper album. It was in Melbourne that reality caught up with Nicol. Ringo had rejoined the band at the airport. Jimmie Nicol sat alone, waiting for the flight that would take him home to obscurity. 

    His manager announced to the world that he would be starting up his own band,: "He's a big name now. He's not just a 10-day wonder." Unfortunately, that's exactly what Nicol turned out to be. His band, the Shub Dubs, waited for bookings, but the calls never came. 

    Despite Lennon's plea to pay him more, he had made less than $4,000 from his work with the Beatles. He ended up joining a spoof act called the Spot Nix, and while on tour in Mexico, he met and married a Mexican Indian girl, Josephina. When he left the Beatles, Epstein and the band had given him a joke retirement present, a gold watch. In Mexico, Nichols smashed it in anger and resentment at fate and Epstein, as Nichol struggles to find carpentry work, the ex-Beatle insists, "I have thought about cashing in on it from time to time, but I don't want to upset the Beatles."

     The final irony is that Paul McCartney met Howie Nicol during the recording of the Anthology documentary. He told him how much he wanted to see Jimmie again and suggested Howie ask Jimmie to appear in the program, but the answer was no. What Howie didn't tell McCartney, says one of the people who worked on the documentary, was that Jimmie wants nothing to do with the Beatles. Those 10 days had ruined his life. He wished it had never happened

Racing with George

 July 14, 1996

George at Ravi's concert

July 2, 1996 -  Ravi Shankar concert in London 
 

The Family Way

 June 29, 1996

A pretty nice girl

 

June 7, 1996

No Film Starr

 From the Daily Mirror

May 21, 1996 

The Model of Hipness (1996)

 

John with John Dunbar in 1967

John looks as his wife Marianne Faithfull greets Peter Asher 

John Dunbar outside the Indica in 1966

The Model of Hipness

By Kevin Jackson

Sunday Telegraph (London)

May 12, 1996

    It was 30 years ago today, well, give or take, about seven months that one of the most momentous encounters in the history of the popular arts took place. Launched on the mischievous phrase, "Go and say hello to the millionaire."

     The millionaire in question was John Lennon. The addressee was Yoko Ono. The venue was the Indica Gallery London W1 and the date was November 9, 1966.  As one recent chronicle of those heady times put it, "The person who effected this introduction, whilst of historical significance, has never been widely acknowledged." Credit where it is overdue then,for good and ill, the man who brought John and Yoko together was the owner of the Indica Gallery John Dunbar.

    Today, Dunbar leads what seems an agreeably unfused life, drawing and making various art objects which he sells from time to time at exhibitions held in his roomy flat in Maida Vale. The latest of his productions is a suspended nest of wire that catches the light refracted from a prism mounted on a windowsill.

     A likable, unassuming chap, he seems happier to discuss the novels of Anthony Powell. "Just around the corner," he points out, "is the Little Venice canal into which Pamela Widmerpool threw a manuscript by X Trapnal" --than reminisces fondly about wild and crazy escapades with rock stars. Indeed, as he says, the craziness of some of those escapades is precisely what stops him from summoning up neat anecdotes of the period at will. In the words of the old gag: If you can remember the 60s, you weren't really there.

     Three decades ago, however, Dunbar was quite definitely one of the presiding spirits of what Time Magazine, unfortunately, christened "Swinging London." Friend and collaborator with Paul McCartney as well as the Lennon -Onos, husband to Marianne Faithfull, an energetic and influential go between from the worlds of avant garde art, film, and pop music and wittingly or otherwise, a youthful mentor to those who were hungry for the cultural omniscience he wore so lightly.

     In her autobiography, Faithfull (which he has not read, :in case it makes me annoyed"), his former wife recalls, remembers the Dunbar of the early '60s as being into bebop jazz, Coltrane, Charlie Parker, and Beethoven's last quartets. They first met in 1963 at a staircase party at his Cambridge College. Churchill.

     "John had a beautiful, sensitive face, and he was the model of hipness," she said. They became partners the same night and were married in May 1965. She gave birth to their son, Nicholas, that November. In the interim, Marianne Faithfull, the impressionable convent girl, had been discovered at a party by Andrew Loog Oldham, who recorded a Mick Jagger/ Keith Richards song entitled " As Tears Go By " and became a famous pop singer.

     The transformation had happened behind his back. They had rowed, and Dunbar went off to Greece for the summer of 1964. On his return, they met up in a cafe and were in the process of patching up their quarrel when a song called " As Tears Go By " came on the radio, followed by the announcement that the super new hit (that had been released on August 24) was now at number nine in the charts. She almost choked on her coffee, but the actual cool concierge of bebop and Beethoven proved unexpectedly tolerant about the whole pop scene, though he would have had good reason for foreboding. 

    For example, when Bob Dylan came to England early in 1965 for the concert tour, which was mordantly recorded in Don Pennebaker's documentary, Don't Look Back, Marianne received an imperial summons to his suite at the Savoy.  Dylan rapidly selected her for the role of chief concubine. His principal seduction ploy was to claim that he was writing an epic poem about her and then tear it up before her eyes in a fit of artistic pique.  Despite being every bit as awed by Dylan as everyone present, she resisted, pointing out that she was about to be married to an English poet.

     Dylan was duly scornful, the more so when he discovered that this English poet was no more than an undergraduate. When the two young men finally met, Dunbar was dressed in an untypically fogeish tweed jacket, a copy of The Guardian crammed into his pocket. Dylan went into a jealous rage and sneered at Miss Faithfull that her bea was a wearer of horn-rimmed spectacles and an intellectual jerk.

     Undaunted, she went on to marry Dunbar and the following week at the Cambridge register office. Dunbar was sufficiently romantic to gather his bride a bouquet of May blossoms picked from the nearby fields. Though their honeymoon was hardly the stuff of maidens' dreams. They spent it in Paris in the rowdy company of the beat poets, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Gregory Corso. "Mantra slathering, beatniks," according to Marianne Faithfull, "careening around our hotel room, throwing up, spilling cheap Rosee all over the place and ranting on about the Rosenbergs, Rimbaud, Tanger and Buggery."

     Their Chelsea flat became a popular center for the emerging London scene. Paul McCartney and his then-girlfriend Jane Asher were among the regulars. Dunbar began contributing a fortnightly column on art to the Scotsman, but his real ambitions were more practical. According to Marianne Faithfull, the whole cultural revolution was first plotted out in a Chelsea espresso bar as early as 1963. Other accounts suggest it was hatched rather later in 1965. When Dunbar was introduced to Barry Miles, known simply as Miles, by an American writer, Paolo Leoni, the three men huddled together. Miss Faithfull writes, "to plot the building of the New Jerusalem." Still working towards her A-levels at the time, she was deeply impressed by the sight of these "three mad intellectuals, all dressed in existential black, charting the future of the globe."

     The principal tools of this revolution were to be the Indica, a combined Art Gallery and bookshop. Its name, Dunbar explains, "comes from the classification 'Cannabis indica', although more respectable citizens would be told it was an act of homage to the then fashionable status of all things Indian." Back for the project, to the tune of about £1600, came from Peter, Asher, brother of Jane, and half of the singing duo Peter and Gordon. Together with Asher, Dunbar, and Barry Miles, who rented a building in Mason's yard off Duke Street for about £20 a week. Paul McCartney helped put up the shelves, designed and lettered the wrapping paper, and Indica opened in January 1966 with the bookshop (Miles domain) upstairs and the gallery (Dunbar's) downstairs. 

    The book shop was moved to Southampton Row a couple of months later, leaving the Mason's Yard premises to Dunbar and art. Neither Dunbar nor Miles was a model capitalist. "I never liked the business side of it too much," Dunbar says. "You know, actually dealing with the rent and the electricity bills." Yet the gallery initially thrived, partially because of the conspicuous patronage of the Beatles. Both Lennon and McCartney were bought from the gallery. And McCartney would often put a handout in their direction, partly because it was such a lively place, what with Ginsburg living in a flat next door, William Burroughs, Baleful president just around the corner, and Rowan Polanski, one of India's best customers, often dropped by late at night to make a new purchase. 

    "All of our exhibitions were very successful in terms of publicity," said Dunbar. "Because there wasn't anything else going on in London, so the papers couldn't leave it alone. Plus, there were pop stars and stuff around, and our openings were kind of wild."

     Soon, Indica was a noted center for every kind of fashionably non-painterly art, with a particular leaning toward the kinesthetic. At the same time, Dunbar's friendship within the rock world was flourishing. With McCartney, who, in those days, be it remembered by those who knew him as the 'cuddly one' that the girls liked was the avant-garde Beatle, the one who was into Luciano Berio and Stockhausen.

     Dunbar made a series of short, eight mm and six mm films, shooting random footage around London, and then retreated to McCartney's flat, where they would sit up all night editing them to the Beatles' own electronic compositions, "crazy stuff with guitar and cello," McCartney described it. As results were shown to Michelangelo Antonioni in London at the time to film Blow Up, but the master's response is not on record.

     All this amounted to a notable coup for a man fresh out of college. He had gone to Cambridge to read natural science, biological stuff, rather than a tedious course, and had only changed the history of art for his final year. Asked what knowledge of art he acquired by the time he graduated, he replied, "None," and laughs disarmingly. What Dunbar lacked in academic depth, however, he made up for with a good eye, a gift of constantly bumping into the right people, and a lifelong familiarity with creative types. 

    Dunbar's '60s were not all fun, however. Enjoyable notoriety and jollities at Indica were shadowed by disaster in his love life. After flirtations and fumblings in and around the rock world, Marianne Faithfull ran off with Mick Jagger and took their son with her.  Though they had long since been back on cordial terms, her flight began a period of estrangement, which reached its peak in 1972 when he took out a high court action against her and eventually regained custody of Nicholas.

     In the meantime, Dunbar, the great introducer, had accomplished his most far-reaching introduction. He says that he's now hazy on the precise details, but the general agreed-upon version runs something like this. On December 10, 1966 [sic], the Indica Gallery was to present a show entitled Unfinished Paintings and Objects.  Suspecting that his pal, John Lennon, would find it interesting, he invited the musician along for a private view the evening before. Lennon was perplexed by the objects on  show: an apple with a £200 price tag mounted on a pedestal, a board with nails hammered partway in, and a note saying, " Hammer a nail in" and so on.

     Dunbar led Lennon downstairs to a room in which assistants were darning a huge canvas bag, went over to the small Japanese woman dressed in black, and whispered, "Go and say hello to the millionaire." Yoko Ono walked up to John Lennon and presented him with a card inscribed with a single word, "breathe". John panted. The rest you know. 

     It was in the nature of the times that enterprises such as Indica seldom lasted long, suffering from its owner's understandable preoccupation with other matters. "Once you've done something like that, you know what an incredible hassle and pain in the arse it is". The gallery closed in 1967, and the bookshop went into liquidation at the end of 1966 owing £500.

     Dunbar retreated to the countryside of Northumberland for a while, eventually returning to the art world for a few years, with a stint with the British Council in the early 70s. Since then, he has served another son named William, in honor of the great Scottish poet William Dunbar, and set up as an artist in his own right.

     Some of his drawings have been published in the United States in journals edited by his brother-in-law, the poet Ed Dorn, and others. Sales of his sculptures and other objects seem to cover household expenses, maintaining him in the way of life he describes as "genteel poverty." Impeccable or not, he certainly appears to enjoy a thriving social life. Our first meeting had to be postponed because he'd been out on the tiles until seven that morning, and he wears the air of a man essentially contented with his lot.

 Not long ago, his son, Nicholas, now 30, also became a father. "Marianne and me-- grandparents," he laughs. "We never thought that would happen."

Birthday party photos

March 23, 1996 -  David Gilmour birthday party 
 

Speke Up (1996)

 

I Won't Let It Be Forgotten

By Ann Todd

Liverpool Echo

March 15, 1996

    Paul McCartney has given his blessing to a church project to brighten up his boyhood home. On his last visit back to Liverpool to officially open the Liverpool Institute for the Performing Arts (LIPA), Paul especially asked to be driven through Speke. He wanted to see his old home in Western Avenue and show his son James where he grew up. 

    As he traveled through the familiar streets, he told his brother Mike, he wanted to do something to boost this estate's image. Now he is to get together with Mike and Rector of Speke, Reverend Michael Plunkett, to come up with a plan. 

    Mike McCartney, who still lives in Mercyside said, "Paul felt that Speke had been neglected and we had to do something to help raise its profile." He told Paul about the annual Music and Arts Festival run by Reverend Plunkett, based in St Aidan's church. 

    Mike said, "Paul said the first school prize he ever won at Stockton Wood Juniors was a drawing of St. Aidan's church. He wrote to Reverend Plunkett to offer to help in any way he could, and the two are going to think something up together for the benefit of the people of Speke."

     Meanwhile, Mike is helping with this year's Spring Fling Arts Festival, which starts tomorrow with a jazz band and clowns outside St Aidan's. He has also got his showbiz pal Les Dennis, another former Speke boy, to make a guest appearance at the festival concert next Saturday, which Mike will compare. Mike said, "I was talking to Les one day, and he mentioned he was a Speke boy who went to Stockton Wood school." 

Beatle Blasts Radio 1 Ban (1996)

 Beatle Blasts Radio 1 Ban

No author listed

March 11, 1996

    Paul McCartney today hit out at Radio 1 bosses who have banned the Beatles' new single from their playlist. The Beatles are at number four in the charts with " Real Love " despite the BBC's refusal to play the track on its prime shows. They claim the single "lacks merit" and is a turn-off to young music fans.

     Multi-millionaire McCartney says, "If Radio 1 feels we should be banned, it's not exactly going to ruin us overnight. But as I see it, Radio 1 is part of the BBC, and the BBC is paid for by you and me.

    "I can afford the license fee, but from my time growing up in Liverpool, I know a lot of people have to work damn hard to find the cash."

     McCartney accused the station's "kindergarten kids" of being out of touch with the audience they were trying to woo after losing some 5 million listeners in recent years. McCartney said, "You can't put an age limit on good music. Just because I don't suffer from teenage spots doesn't mean I can't play the guitar any longer. I'm forever reading how bands like Oasis are openly crediting the Beatles as an inspiration."

Money Can't Buy the Beatles (1996)

 Money Can't Buy the Beatles

By Felicity McCormick

Yorkshire Post

March 5, 1996

    "Can't Buy Me Love" sang the Beatles 32 years ago, and yesterday proved they were not just empty words. For the love of John, Paul, George, and Ringo have turned down a £147 million offer to perform live on a world tour as the Threetles. It would have been the first time the Beatles had performed live for 30 years, and the first time they had been together on stage without John Lennon, who was murdered in 1980.

     But to Paul McCartney, "The size of the offer is scandalous. It's ridiculous, from a money point of view, most people would do it. But to me, the three of us isn't as exciting as the four of us. The Beatles were always the four of us. Of course, people will say that we could get someone else to fill John's place, but it just wouldn't be the same."

     A Beatles aide said, "Talk about real love. They have such love for John that they won't play with anyone else, even for a paycheck of $75 million each."

    The 22-night tour of America, Japan, and Europe, proposed by a consortium of German and American businessmen, would have seen Paul, George, and Ringo back on the road this summer, but they have always resisted offers to reform after their split at the end of the 60s, and they can hardly be said to need the money.

     Paul has an estimated £580 million with shares in the Beatles' two main companies, Apple Corps and Maclen Music. George Harrison has been rumored to be down to his last few million, but he still owns a quarter of Apple, or £75 million, and another £10 million through Maclen.  As for Ringo Starr, he has a quarter share in Apple and a fortune estimated at £30 million, much of it in offshore accounts.

£100,00 Plot to Kill McCartney a False Alarm (1996)

 I think this is sort of funny -- not that a rumor about a plot to murder Paul McCartney is funny, but the real story.  Some guys were in the middle of robbing some place and happened to see Paul walking down the street, and stopped their robbery to get his autograph!  And then they brag to the police.  "Yeah, we robbed that store -- but look here -- we met Macca!"  

£100,00 Plot to Kill McCartney a False Alarm (1996)

By: Julie Gatenby

Liverpool Echo

February 14, 1996

     Two star-struck crooks sparked a false alarm over a £100,000 plot to assassinate Paul McCartney. The story in a national newspaper today claimed a hit man had been hired to shoot the former Beatle. But Geoff Baker, a spokesman for the star, said "The whole thing was a ludicrous false alarm started after the two villains managed to get McCartney's autograph." He said McCartney, 53, "Happened to be walking down a street where the pair were plotting an armed robbery, and one asked him for his autograph. They went on to carry out the robbery, and when arrested, bragged to the police about getting the autograph." The story snowballed into a report that a hit man was hired to kill McCartney and tried to implicate the two robbers. Mr. Baker said, "It is a completely untrue, ridiculous, and absurd story, which has got right out of hand." A spokesman for Scotland Yard said they had no knowledge of any plot. 

My Pal Paul (1996)

 My Pal Paul

No Writer Listed

Ormskirk Advertiser

February 8, 1996

It's taken drummer Bernie Rogers 20 years to catch up with an old pal, and when they met, the eyes of the world were on them. His old pal is Paul McCartney, and the ex-Beatle made sure that the Aughton musician was a special guest at the opening of the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts last week.

     Bernie found that the musician had lost none of his scouse wit. "I hadn't seen him for 20 years, and the first thing he said was 'The grey fox!'" said Bernie. The two musicians were all part of the 60s Merseybeat era. "We all came up together," added Bernie, who lives with his parents, Aggie and Alec Rogers, in Town Green Lane.

     "I played many times with the Beatles on different shows. I used to be in Lee Curtis and the All Stars, Farren's Flamingos... you moved about then.

     "In 1965, I moved down to London to do session work." While Paul and the rest of the Beatles were finding fame in their own name, Bernie was establishing himself as a big name in musician circles. "I played drums with Dusty Springfield, Ben E King, and even Matt Monro. I backed them on TV shows like Ready, Steady, Go, and made hundreds of records and LPS playing drums for different artists. 

    "This experience will be invaluable to modern-day would-be musicians, as LIPA opens."  LIPA hopes that the experience of 60s artists will help present-day performers learn more about their art and different facets of show business. 

    Bernie also has another connection with LIPA. For a number of years, he has been organizing charity events at Liverpool's Empire Theater, with some £97,000 going to various good causes, and LIPA was one of the beneficiaries last year.

     But for Bernie, the drumming never stops, as well as using his talents and contacts to set up a 1996 charity show, he is also off back into the studios shortly to work with chart-topping band 10cc.

     But neither event is likely to capture the old Beatlemania atmosphere as the opening of LIPA did. Bernie had to be escorted through the screaming crowds by security guards waiting to see Paul McCartney. "People had come from America and Germany just to be there," said Bernie. "It was fantastic."

Star Opens School For Performing Arts (1996)

 

Star Opens School For Performing Arts

By Sarah Kreykes

North County Times

January 31, 1996

    Paul McCartney took his first steps towards fame in cramped and dingy Liverpool clubs. Now, the former Beatle is a major benefactor of a spacious and shiny school for others who have stars in their eyes.

     McCartney returned to his hometown Tuesday to officially open a $23 million performing arts college he helped found at his old high school. 

    The Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts will train young people from all over the world, awarding degrees in music, drama, dance, design, and management, the only British college to embrace all aspects of the Performing Arts. 

    The first 200 students began classes earlier this month.

     Looking around the former Liverpool Institute, which was once one of the city's leading boys' schools. An emotional McCartney said, "Attending classes there gave me the idea that you can succeed... conquer the world."

     In creating a college that offers business with ballet, lighting skills, and law, "we hope we have created something different that will produce well-rounded artists," McCartney told the students and 500 guests.

     McCartney, who has given more than $1.5 million to help turn the institute's imposing Gregorian stone buildings into a modern college equipped with the latest sound, lighting, and recording equipment, told reporters he will teach songwriting there. "I will be able to give them one or two little tricks of the trade. The rest is up to them", said McCartney, who has made millions from his songs, but confesses he cannot read music and finds the songwriting process a mystery.

By George, He's Got It (1996)

 

By George, He's Got It

By New Service Reports

January 26, 1996

    George Harrison won $11 million in a lawsuit accusing his longtime manager of living the high life at the former Beatles' expense.

     Harrison had claimed that Denis O'Brien bought himself yachts and villas around the world during their 20-year partnership, while Harrison suffered "enormous losses."

     The losses involved Handmade Films, a now-defunct company that made the movies Life of Brian and Time Bandits. A Los Angeles jury returned the verdict last week. A spokesman for Harrison said, "Winning's one thing, but collecting's another."

McCartney's Orchestra (1996)

 

McCartney's Orchestra in the Dark

By Joe Riley

Liverpool Echo

August 23, 1996

    Paul McCartney is in a wistful mood.  "I'm not afraid to shed a tear watching a sad film", he admits.

     Is this, at last, the soft underbelly of historic Cavern man? Not really. It's just that these things take time to surface. "When I was younger, I would try to hide my emotions," he tells me. "I used to have a problem with it, but these days, I'm more than happy to show them. I remember being in Africa, hearing 30 musicians play music in a style I'd never heard before. The power and emotion of it made me weep. And I mean, really cry. I was gushing tears. It was such a good feeling for me. It was a release."

     As a world audience converges on Liverpool for Beatle Week, Macca talks about the feelings behind the other music, the classical stuff. Paul McCartney's Liverpool Oratorio is coming home for its 100th performance next month. 

    The subject matter ranges from birth, marriage and death to sagging off from school and complaining about a late evening meal!  And Paul will be in the audience at the Philharmonic Hall -- a place he first knew for school speech days -- on September 21.

     Despite everything else that has filled Paul James McCartney's  [sic] eventful 53 years, he still finds that particular prospect amazing: "I've never got over the shock that people will actually sing my work," he confided. 

    "I wrote the oratorio because I was asked to for the Phil's 150th anniversary. I'm not sure I would have dared to otherwise, so I'm pretty encouraged that it's been performed in more than 50 cities around the world. I'm delighted that, by sheer accident, I'm in this incredible position that people will listen to what I do without me having passed any exam."

     That said, he ended up with a Fellowship of the Royal College of Music handed over by Prince Charles, a certificate worth sticking on any wall.

 To Paul. It's as if classical music is something grown-ups do, and not having a grown-up musical training, it still fills them with wonder. "I've not come to this style of composing in the accepted way. I'm not academic, and I don't have any academic training. I didn't pass any music exams at school, but then I couldn't have done because there wasn't actually a lesson.

     "For us, studying music was just being a bunch of boys in a room for 45 minutes listening to a classical record. The teacher would put on the record and leave the room being lads, that was fatal, because we just turned the music down and talked among ourselves."

     Consequently, when Paul composed this oratorio, he would hum or play whatever came into his head, and the conductor, Carl Davis -- now director of Liverpool's classical summer pop session at the King's Dock --would write it down. 

    It was a brave new world. And as Paul readily admits, he didn't know what an oratorio was until he read the definition in Newsweek. "That's true", he said with a grin, "and when I wrote it, I just ad-libbed my way through making up tunes. Not that tunes have ever been a problem. I've always loved melody, and I've always had an easy time writing it. It may well be that a lot of modern British composers aren't writing melody, and that may be my role if I want to get out of rock and roll. 

    "But I don't know where that ability comes from. It seems to come from nowhere. In fact, my most successful song, 'Yesterday,' came to me in a dream. I woke up with a whole tune in my head. I remember thinking, 'let's see what key it's in'. And it was G. I didn't plan it that way."

     He immediately adds in a self-mocking way, "Perhaps I shouldn't have said that. Maybe I should have said that it took me four months to write it in Tibet or somewhere. The thing is that the best melodies are often from the simplest, and for a long time, I suffered from the belief that if something was simple, it was therefore naive, and naivety implies some sort of stupidity."

     Hardly. "Yesterday" happens to be the most played music track in the world. "I use the term orchestral to describe my work these days", says Paul. "I don't actually like to use the word classical or call it serious music. That infers that the whole Beatles repertoire was a complete joke." At last mention of the Beatles, and now he brought it up. "There were enough classical influences there to fill a book," says Paul. "With the Beatles, we had this ballad called 'For No One', and because I always loved the sound of the French horn, I asked George Martin (the recently knighted Beatles record producer), if he could get a French horn on the song. 

    "So there I was sitting in George's house, showing him the chords and I hummed the tune, but when we got to this one note, George said we'd gone off the range for the French horn, but that was the game. We stuck it in. And of course, the best players could reach that note. "

    There was also the ending of 'A Day in the Life' on the Sgt. Pepper album, when Paul and John Lennon set out to use an orchestra in such a way that it broke all the rules. Says Paul, "For me, it's interesting to see how musicians react to what you write for them. With 'A Day in the Life', John and I really got into the challenge of being very complex with that big swirling orchestra thing. We wanted to use a whole symphony orchestra, but George Martin was a little nervous about what we were asking them to do, to start playing the lowest note on their instrument and to reach the highest note in the space of 23 bars without any music written for it.

    " That taught me a lot about orchestras. The strings did not like the idea at all, so they all stuck together and went up their scale together. However, the brass section was very happy. They liked the avant-garde put together. It gave us this great crunch of sound, and that was what I wanted to do, what you shouldn't do."

     Well, Bach did the same, so did Mozart, so why not McCartney? "I do like to break the rules", said Paul, "but that's how I tend to do things. I just fall in love with an idea, whether it's right or wrong."

     The Liverpool Oratorio has led to other classical pieces. A study called Leaf for Piano and a commission to mark the century of EMI records next year. "I'm very excited about that", says Paul. "It will be about an hour long and for a big orchestra, and ultimately, for any orchestra and any conductor in the world. The word 'symphony' is intimidating for me, because I feel then that I am stacking up against all the real symphonies. 

    "So I think of it as writing a functional evening's music. I realized that what we would call classical music was always turned on its head throughout history. I was pleased to learn that Stravinsky was booed at first, which gives me some encouragement, because his work is so accepted now."

Thumbs aloft for Paul

 

September 11, 1996

With George Emerson in Florida

 

December 12, 1996

The Extended Starkey Family

 

June 29, 1996 

Flowers in the dirt

Photo by Linda McCartney