Post by TotalInformation on May 20, 2004 20:37:51 GMT
DAILY MAIL (London)
May 15, 2004
THE REUCTANT McCARTNEY
By ALISON BOSHOFF
He is the only son of billy (and heir to a Pounds 760m fortune). So why does James live as a penniless student, waiting on tables and wanting no one to know his name?
JAMES McCARTNEY generally finds it easy to pass through life unnoticed. He lives a slow-paced student existence in a small rented flat on the south coast, and only a few trusted friends are aware that this unassuming young man is the only son of billy, the former Beatle with a Pounds 760 million fortune.
Those who first enter James's social orbit are seldom trusted with his real surname - such is the desire of the youngest child of Paul and Linda McCartney to lead an anonymous life. To an extent, he is able to blend in at college because he is a typical student. He sleeps late and likes to drink, favouring bourbon whiskey. He makes ends meet with short-term, dead-end jobs, such as waiting on tables in local restaurants.
His hair is long, and his clothes very scruffy indeed. Only his extreme vegan lifestyle (James touches no meat or animal products, abstaining from both milk and honey) marks him out as being a little different from the crowd. But photographed this week walking with his sister Mary, there could be no doubt of his true identity.
His features closely echo his father's: that soft-cheeked moon face, the expressive doe-eyes and the small, downturned mouth are pure Paul.
Only his strawberry blond hair, shared with sister Stella, is owed to his late mother, Linda.
James's heritage, though, might be described as both a curse and a blessing.
He is a talented guitarist and more than passable songwriter - talents which presumably have run in the family from father to son.
However, seven years after recording his first track at the family studio with his father, he is still shying away from openly pursuing a musical career - paralysed, it seems, by the spectre of Paul's success. After all, how can James possibly hope to measure up to his father's achievements?
It also seems he wants no part of his father's fame or wealth, although both of these might be said to be his birthright, too.
While his fashion designer sister Stella moves happily in A-list circles - partying with Kate Moss and gossiping with Gwyneth Paltrow - and his sister Mary, a photographer, is self-confident enough to accept the patronage of high-powered friends including Cherie Blair, baby brother James prefers to fade into the background.
And although he is expected to inherit a great deal of money, for now James is happy to be almost broke.
Paul, who was recently described by daughter Stella as a 'tight *******', happily concurs with James's wish to pay his own way in life, and James himself confirms privately that, despite Paul's fortune, he receives no allowance from him. Indeed, until recently, the youngest McCartney was to be found earning a living as a waiter in a restaurant.
The Mail is aware of James McCartney's whereabouts, but out of respect for his privacy we are not publishing the details. For the McCartney heritage is responsible for some darker realities of James's life, too. The murder of John Lennon in 1980 - when James was just three years old - cast a long shadow over his childhood.
Born in September 1977 - two months before his father's group Wings had their biggest hit, Mull Of Kintyre - James missed out on the freewheeling upbringing enjoyed by his sisters and much older stepsister Heather.
Mary and Stella (who are nine and six years older than him respectively) spent their early schooldays on the road, being privately tutored while touring the world with Paul, Linda and the band. But James's arrival came very much at the tail end of the childhood-on-the-road experiment.
The drugs bust in Japan, when McCartney was jailed and deported for possessing marijuana in January 1980, helped to hasten the band's implosion, but it was Lennon's assassination, at the hands of deranged fan Mark Chapman, that changed everything.
In 1981, Paul and Linda retreated to the modest five-bedroom farmhouse they owned in Peasmarsh, near Rye.
'We wanted to lie low more,' said Linda later. 'There were death threats, some nuts, but we had to take them seriously. We have so much more security around us now. Our lives have really changed.' They left behind the family home in St John's Wood, London, and began to try to shield the children from any kind of publicity. The 159 acres of land around the farm in Sussex formed a barrier between them and the outside world, and the couple set about trying to bring up their children as 'normal' and 'grounded' individuals.
The philosophy behind this kind of upbringing was largely Linda's. The daughter of a showbusiness lawyer, she knew all about the pitfalls of a privileged existence. 'Linda came from a wealthy family. She saw a lot of false values,' said Paul.
They tried desperately hard to be ordinary. There was no gas supply on the farm and in later years no satellite TV. Paul would scrub the vegetables for dinner, and the children were expected to join in with domestic chores.
As Stella recently recalled: 'We lived in this little 1930s farmhouse in the woods, and there were six of us: just two bedrooms, one bathroom and tons of animals. We would drive up to Scotland in a Land Rover and there'd be four kids and four dogs in the back and Mum and Dad in the front.
'It was very much like living on a farm, with Dad shearing the sheep and painting the barn roof, and all of us cooking and planting vegetables. Very normal, in a very abnormal kind of way.' Family members recall that Linda and Paul were regular recreational pot smokers. Paul's stepmother, Angela, recalls Linda once joking around by cooing to baby Mary in her arms: 'Come on, baby, puff for Mummy.' Both believed, in a hippy-ish fashion, that it was wrong to inhibit the children in any way, and allowed them to draw on walls and furniture. As teenagers, they were permitted to race around farm roads in their parents' cars for fun - an activity which left James, then 17, with a broken ankle after he overturned the family Land Rover.
All the children attended the Thomas Peacocke college in Rye. But while Stella and Mary were teased about their father, James had a far easier ride - mostly because, by then, the novelty of having a famous name in the school had worn off.
One schoolmate described James as 'quiet and easygoing,' and said he was relatively popular - unlike Stella, who managed to make a few enemies.
May 15, 2004
THE REUCTANT McCARTNEY
By ALISON BOSHOFF
He is the only son of billy (and heir to a Pounds 760m fortune). So why does James live as a penniless student, waiting on tables and wanting no one to know his name?
JAMES McCARTNEY generally finds it easy to pass through life unnoticed. He lives a slow-paced student existence in a small rented flat on the south coast, and only a few trusted friends are aware that this unassuming young man is the only son of billy, the former Beatle with a Pounds 760 million fortune.
Those who first enter James's social orbit are seldom trusted with his real surname - such is the desire of the youngest child of Paul and Linda McCartney to lead an anonymous life. To an extent, he is able to blend in at college because he is a typical student. He sleeps late and likes to drink, favouring bourbon whiskey. He makes ends meet with short-term, dead-end jobs, such as waiting on tables in local restaurants.
His hair is long, and his clothes very scruffy indeed. Only his extreme vegan lifestyle (James touches no meat or animal products, abstaining from both milk and honey) marks him out as being a little different from the crowd. But photographed this week walking with his sister Mary, there could be no doubt of his true identity.
His features closely echo his father's: that soft-cheeked moon face, the expressive doe-eyes and the small, downturned mouth are pure Paul.
Only his strawberry blond hair, shared with sister Stella, is owed to his late mother, Linda.
James's heritage, though, might be described as both a curse and a blessing.
He is a talented guitarist and more than passable songwriter - talents which presumably have run in the family from father to son.
However, seven years after recording his first track at the family studio with his father, he is still shying away from openly pursuing a musical career - paralysed, it seems, by the spectre of Paul's success. After all, how can James possibly hope to measure up to his father's achievements?
It also seems he wants no part of his father's fame or wealth, although both of these might be said to be his birthright, too.
While his fashion designer sister Stella moves happily in A-list circles - partying with Kate Moss and gossiping with Gwyneth Paltrow - and his sister Mary, a photographer, is self-confident enough to accept the patronage of high-powered friends including Cherie Blair, baby brother James prefers to fade into the background.
And although he is expected to inherit a great deal of money, for now James is happy to be almost broke.
Paul, who was recently described by daughter Stella as a 'tight *******', happily concurs with James's wish to pay his own way in life, and James himself confirms privately that, despite Paul's fortune, he receives no allowance from him. Indeed, until recently, the youngest McCartney was to be found earning a living as a waiter in a restaurant.
The Mail is aware of James McCartney's whereabouts, but out of respect for his privacy we are not publishing the details. For the McCartney heritage is responsible for some darker realities of James's life, too. The murder of John Lennon in 1980 - when James was just three years old - cast a long shadow over his childhood.
Born in September 1977 - two months before his father's group Wings had their biggest hit, Mull Of Kintyre - James missed out on the freewheeling upbringing enjoyed by his sisters and much older stepsister Heather.
Mary and Stella (who are nine and six years older than him respectively) spent their early schooldays on the road, being privately tutored while touring the world with Paul, Linda and the band. But James's arrival came very much at the tail end of the childhood-on-the-road experiment.
The drugs bust in Japan, when McCartney was jailed and deported for possessing marijuana in January 1980, helped to hasten the band's implosion, but it was Lennon's assassination, at the hands of deranged fan Mark Chapman, that changed everything.
In 1981, Paul and Linda retreated to the modest five-bedroom farmhouse they owned in Peasmarsh, near Rye.
'We wanted to lie low more,' said Linda later. 'There were death threats, some nuts, but we had to take them seriously. We have so much more security around us now. Our lives have really changed.' They left behind the family home in St John's Wood, London, and began to try to shield the children from any kind of publicity. The 159 acres of land around the farm in Sussex formed a barrier between them and the outside world, and the couple set about trying to bring up their children as 'normal' and 'grounded' individuals.
The philosophy behind this kind of upbringing was largely Linda's. The daughter of a showbusiness lawyer, she knew all about the pitfalls of a privileged existence. 'Linda came from a wealthy family. She saw a lot of false values,' said Paul.
They tried desperately hard to be ordinary. There was no gas supply on the farm and in later years no satellite TV. Paul would scrub the vegetables for dinner, and the children were expected to join in with domestic chores.
As Stella recently recalled: 'We lived in this little 1930s farmhouse in the woods, and there were six of us: just two bedrooms, one bathroom and tons of animals. We would drive up to Scotland in a Land Rover and there'd be four kids and four dogs in the back and Mum and Dad in the front.
'It was very much like living on a farm, with Dad shearing the sheep and painting the barn roof, and all of us cooking and planting vegetables. Very normal, in a very abnormal kind of way.' Family members recall that Linda and Paul were regular recreational pot smokers. Paul's stepmother, Angela, recalls Linda once joking around by cooing to baby Mary in her arms: 'Come on, baby, puff for Mummy.' Both believed, in a hippy-ish fashion, that it was wrong to inhibit the children in any way, and allowed them to draw on walls and furniture. As teenagers, they were permitted to race around farm roads in their parents' cars for fun - an activity which left James, then 17, with a broken ankle after he overturned the family Land Rover.
All the children attended the Thomas Peacocke college in Rye. But while Stella and Mary were teased about their father, James had a far easier ride - mostly because, by then, the novelty of having a famous name in the school had worn off.
One schoolmate described James as 'quiet and easygoing,' and said he was relatively popular - unlike Stella, who managed to make a few enemies.
