Post by TotalInformation on Jul 7, 2004 2:07:57 GMT
Still carrying that weight
July 3, 2004
In a revealing interview, Paul McCartney tells John Harris about his fight with Yoko Ono, the British press and what really happened at his daughter's wedding.
billy McCartney: sense of the put-upon underdog, sloughing off the more burdensome aspects of the Beatles' myth.
Picture:David Eustace
Prague's T-Mobile Park is a grim place: a scrappy rectangle of land 20 minutes' drive from the city centre, surrounded by the rusting remains of communist-era industry. Today, it is also spread with a layer of sticky mud, and rendered yet more unpleasant by the imminent prospect of rain.
Some people, however, have managed to erect their own small bit of sunshine. Pressed up against a security barrier is a fantastically excited middle-aged Russian man, dressed in the international uniform of those who have been hopelessly afflicted by rock music (black drainpipe jeans, Converse trainers, threadbare tour T-shirt), and accompanied by the obligatory embarrassed female partner.
"Paul! You are de best!" he yelps. "You still are de best! From Russia with love! You are de greatest!"
Up on stage, Paul McCartney - in Prague as part of a 12-date European tour - is leading his band through a soundcheck that takes in an apparently random array of music. He plays Coming Up, a 1980 solo single released six months before John Lennon's death, and rather grudgingly described by McCartney's one-time songwriting partner as "a good piece of work". He goes on to Honey Don't and Matchbox, 1950s rockabilly covers perfected during the Beatles' brain-pounding trips to Hamburg, whose recorded versions were sung by Ringo Starr. And he ends with a song from Abbey Road.
Written as the Beatles' internal bond was ripped apart by the entry into their lives of the impresario Allen Klein, it still sounds wonderfully crestfallen. "You never give me your money," he sings, "you only give me your funny paper/ And in the middle of negotiations/ You break down." It's a compelling sound: proof that a great song is something you can momentarily live in, a place populated by all kinds of ghosts.
The show that follows five hours later only proves the point. When McCartney sings She's a Woman and I Saw Her Standing There, the vast screens on either side of the stage are filled with the image of the moptop-era Beatles, sprinting from yet another fan ambush, or obediently mugging for the camera. A rendition of Band on the Run is accompanied by film of Wings, the post-Beatles enterprise that briefly gripped the 1970s mainstream just before the arrival of punk.
At the show's end, by contrast, McCartney stands at the lip of the stage alone. This is a relatively new thing for him: the Beatles took their famously low bows as an unbreakable quartet; with Wings and beyond, he was always accompanied by his first wife, Linda. It also represents a final reminder of the contrasting fates of McCartney and his two most celebrated colleagues - for while John Lennon and George Harrison have been divested of any imperfections and installed in that part of the hereafter reserved for musicians who somehow come close to being saints, Paul McCartney must still go about his labours in the world.
John Lennon and Paul McCartney, top, during a photo session for the Abbey Road album, and McCartney with Heather Mills. The animosity to her still rankles.
This, of course, brings forth all kinds of malign consequences. For every virtue posthumously attached to Lennon, McCartney's detractors can come up with a corresponding vice. John luxuriated in his genius; Paul is hideously unsure of himself. John sailed out to avant-garde extremes; Paul is a sugary balladeer. John was always dismissive of Beatles' nostalgia; Paul clings to it like a security blanket.
Precious little of this stuff adds up, of course: listen to a Lennon song as saccharine as Woman or as paranoid as his anti-Paul tirade How Do You Sleep? and you soon understand that the Beatles' famous belief that they were somehow "four sides of the same person" meant that their abiding characteristics were shared rather than split. Some of this stuff has coloured the more negative perceptions of McCartney, as he well knows. Unlike Lennon's work, the sentiments of his songs have usually been founded in magnanimity and generosity of spirit, but it's perhaps telling that on four occasions during our interview, his descriptions of his place in the public mind include the word "bastard".
He traces much of this not to Lennon's death in 1980, but to December 1970 - when, desperate to extricate himself from Allen Klein, he took the last resort of legal action against John, George and Ringo.
"The fact that I had to sue the Beatles was something that was very, very difficult, 'cos I could see what that would do in terms of perception of me," he says. "People could quite easily say, 'You know what? I'd never do that, no matter if it meant losing everything. He's a hard-hearted bastard. And a mean bastard. And a money-grabbing bastard.'
"And doing well didn't help. We'd tried to get Apple going, and in the short term it had failed spectacularly. And I started doing my own business, and it started to do quite well. That's what happened, and it resulted in that split: 'John's really cool, and Paul isn't.' "
His recent cuttings files have taken in two splurges of coverage that only heightened the sense of smouldering hostility. First came the enmity that accompanied his marriage to Heather Mills, later manifested in dissections of both her alleged tendency to embroider her personal history and rumoured spats with McCartney's children. Meanwhile, 2002 saw a splurge of coverage around McCartney's crediting of 19 songs on a live album to "Paul McCartney and John Lennon", in brazen contravention of the supposedly unimpeachable Lennon-McCartney brand-name. The latter brought forth a threat of legal action from Yoko Ono, and criticism even from Ringo Starr.
"It snowballed," he admits. "People were phoning me up saying, 'You're doing yourself no favours with this, you know'. I was like, 'What are you talking about?' 'Well, you know, you want to knock John's name out. He's dead. It's terrible: you're walking on a dead man's grave.' I was like, 'Get the f--- out of here.' "
McCartney is keen to call time on the affair and surprisingly willing to flesh out his feelings. He traces the controversy back to the publication of the Beatles' Anthology book in 2000, and Yoko Ono's refusal to allow Yesterday to be credited to anyone other than "John Lennon and Paul McCartney". Contrary to more outraged portrayals of his motivations, he is perfectly happy with the time-honoured Lennon-McCartney credit; but when the two are named in full in the Ono-endorsed order, he still feels a familiar twinge of irritation.
July 3, 2004
In a revealing interview, Paul McCartney tells John Harris about his fight with Yoko Ono, the British press and what really happened at his daughter's wedding.
billy McCartney: sense of the put-upon underdog, sloughing off the more burdensome aspects of the Beatles' myth.
Picture:David Eustace
Prague's T-Mobile Park is a grim place: a scrappy rectangle of land 20 minutes' drive from the city centre, surrounded by the rusting remains of communist-era industry. Today, it is also spread with a layer of sticky mud, and rendered yet more unpleasant by the imminent prospect of rain.
Some people, however, have managed to erect their own small bit of sunshine. Pressed up against a security barrier is a fantastically excited middle-aged Russian man, dressed in the international uniform of those who have been hopelessly afflicted by rock music (black drainpipe jeans, Converse trainers, threadbare tour T-shirt), and accompanied by the obligatory embarrassed female partner.
"Paul! You are de best!" he yelps. "You still are de best! From Russia with love! You are de greatest!"
Up on stage, Paul McCartney - in Prague as part of a 12-date European tour - is leading his band through a soundcheck that takes in an apparently random array of music. He plays Coming Up, a 1980 solo single released six months before John Lennon's death, and rather grudgingly described by McCartney's one-time songwriting partner as "a good piece of work". He goes on to Honey Don't and Matchbox, 1950s rockabilly covers perfected during the Beatles' brain-pounding trips to Hamburg, whose recorded versions were sung by Ringo Starr. And he ends with a song from Abbey Road.
Written as the Beatles' internal bond was ripped apart by the entry into their lives of the impresario Allen Klein, it still sounds wonderfully crestfallen. "You never give me your money," he sings, "you only give me your funny paper/ And in the middle of negotiations/ You break down." It's a compelling sound: proof that a great song is something you can momentarily live in, a place populated by all kinds of ghosts.
The fact that I had to sue the Beatles was something that was very, very difficult."
Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney
The show that follows five hours later only proves the point. When McCartney sings She's a Woman and I Saw Her Standing There, the vast screens on either side of the stage are filled with the image of the moptop-era Beatles, sprinting from yet another fan ambush, or obediently mugging for the camera. A rendition of Band on the Run is accompanied by film of Wings, the post-Beatles enterprise that briefly gripped the 1970s mainstream just before the arrival of punk.
At the show's end, by contrast, McCartney stands at the lip of the stage alone. This is a relatively new thing for him: the Beatles took their famously low bows as an unbreakable quartet; with Wings and beyond, he was always accompanied by his first wife, Linda. It also represents a final reminder of the contrasting fates of McCartney and his two most celebrated colleagues - for while John Lennon and George Harrison have been divested of any imperfections and installed in that part of the hereafter reserved for musicians who somehow come close to being saints, Paul McCartney must still go about his labours in the world.
John Lennon and Paul McCartney, top, during a photo session for the Abbey Road album, and McCartney with Heather Mills. The animosity to her still rankles.
This, of course, brings forth all kinds of malign consequences. For every virtue posthumously attached to Lennon, McCartney's detractors can come up with a corresponding vice. John luxuriated in his genius; Paul is hideously unsure of himself. John sailed out to avant-garde extremes; Paul is a sugary balladeer. John was always dismissive of Beatles' nostalgia; Paul clings to it like a security blanket.
Precious little of this stuff adds up, of course: listen to a Lennon song as saccharine as Woman or as paranoid as his anti-Paul tirade How Do You Sleep? and you soon understand that the Beatles' famous belief that they were somehow "four sides of the same person" meant that their abiding characteristics were shared rather than split. Some of this stuff has coloured the more negative perceptions of McCartney, as he well knows. Unlike Lennon's work, the sentiments of his songs have usually been founded in magnanimity and generosity of spirit, but it's perhaps telling that on four occasions during our interview, his descriptions of his place in the public mind include the word "bastard".
He traces much of this not to Lennon's death in 1980, but to December 1970 - when, desperate to extricate himself from Allen Klein, he took the last resort of legal action against John, George and Ringo.
"The fact that I had to sue the Beatles was something that was very, very difficult, 'cos I could see what that would do in terms of perception of me," he says. "People could quite easily say, 'You know what? I'd never do that, no matter if it meant losing everything. He's a hard-hearted bastard. And a mean bastard. And a money-grabbing bastard.'
"And doing well didn't help. We'd tried to get Apple going, and in the short term it had failed spectacularly. And I started doing my own business, and it started to do quite well. That's what happened, and it resulted in that split: 'John's really cool, and Paul isn't.' "
His recent cuttings files have taken in two splurges of coverage that only heightened the sense of smouldering hostility. First came the enmity that accompanied his marriage to Heather Mills, later manifested in dissections of both her alleged tendency to embroider her personal history and rumoured spats with McCartney's children. Meanwhile, 2002 saw a splurge of coverage around McCartney's crediting of 19 songs on a live album to "Paul McCartney and John Lennon", in brazen contravention of the supposedly unimpeachable Lennon-McCartney brand-name. The latter brought forth a threat of legal action from Yoko Ono, and criticism even from Ringo Starr.
"It snowballed," he admits. "People were phoning me up saying, 'You're doing yourself no favours with this, you know'. I was like, 'What are you talking about?' 'Well, you know, you want to knock John's name out. He's dead. It's terrible: you're walking on a dead man's grave.' I was like, 'Get the f--- out of here.' "
McCartney is keen to call time on the affair and surprisingly willing to flesh out his feelings. He traces the controversy back to the publication of the Beatles' Anthology book in 2000, and Yoko Ono's refusal to allow Yesterday to be credited to anyone other than "John Lennon and Paul McCartney". Contrary to more outraged portrayals of his motivations, he is perfectly happy with the time-honoured Lennon-McCartney credit; but when the two are named in full in the Ono-endorsed order, he still feels a familiar twinge of irritation.
