By Michael Laster
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band wasn’t just a commercial success – it was a massive cultural happening. Just as people remember exactly where they were on 9/11, or the moon landing, many also have strong memories of listening to Sgt. Pepper for the first time. All four Beatles, plus George Martin, played? key roles on the album, but as a whole, it was largely Paul’s vision, which was, in part motivated by a competitive streak with Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys. Paul wanted to make sure the Beatles held onto their edge, which they did.
Just as John made headlines with his “more popular than Jesus” comments, Paul picked up where John left off in terms of controversy. He told a reporter that he took LSD, making him one of the first pop stars to admit that he took it, even though his use, compared to John, was quite mild*. After being accused of being an irresponsible role model to young fans, he allowed a reporter to interview him outside his home. The interview almost seems like a Monty Python sketch, with both parties accusing the other of being the irresponsible one. Obviously, Paul lays out a false dichotomy of having to tell the truth, or lie when he just could have refrained from commenting at all. Just like bebop jazz musicians who believed drugs would make you a better player, there’s no doubt that many young musicians believed that LSD was the key to making great records. But to be fair to Paul, back in 1967, it was not uncommon to believe that the widespread use of LSD would lead to a cultural, and ultimately political renaissance.
After Sgt. Pepper, their next album was Magical Mystery Tour, which wasn’t just an album, but a film, mostly directed by Paul. He felt that the Beatles needed a creative project to hold them together after the unexpected death of their manager, Brian Epstein. It featured the Beatles on a psychedelic bus tour, without any cohesive narrative. Unfortunately, most TV audiences in England were not ready for an escapade into psychedelia, but even if they were, they were robbed of half the psychedelia. It was shown in black and white instead of in color, which The Beatles blamed for its poor audience reception.
As we’ll see, it would not be the first time Paul’s foray into film ended as a flop. Fans now generally have a more positive view of the film, though at the time, it was their first major setback after Sgt. Pepper. The color version was shown around Christmas that year, which is when Paul and Jane became engaged. At this stage in their career, Paul was the key Beatle to lead the change in their sound from primarily guitar-based, to including more piano.
Three of Paul’s songs for the album – which feature Paul on piano – became classics, such as The Fool on the Hill, Hello Goodbye, and Your Mother Should Know. Paul soon followed these with one of his most iconic piano-based tunes, Lady Madonna, sung in his Fats Domino voice. It’s the perfect hybrid of boogie-woogie in the verses, complemented during the bridge by a shift back to the Victorian era, where the days of the week get listed like a Mother Goose nursery rhyme.
When George brought the Beatles to a retreat in India to study with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, he encouraged the others to focus on meditation, but Paul couldn’t help but spend the majority of his time on guitar. When they returned, Paul had at least a dozen new song ideas ready to go for their next album, including Rocky Raccoon, Mother Nature’s Son, I Will, Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, Helter Skelter, and Back in The USSR. The songs Honey Pie and Martha, My Dear were two other songs to form part of Paul’s growing list of old-timey numbers, once again with impeccably tasteful orchestration by George Martin.
Despite being branded as the hopeless romantic, when he and Jane were away from one another for extended periods of time due to her work, he continued living the life of a rock star bachelor. To paraphrase biographer Philip Norman, as angelic as Paul’s face may be, he would have to be endowed with the self-control of a saint to resist the daily, if not hourly, temptations of celebrity that all four Beatles were spoiled with ever since their Hamburg days.
On a TV interview that year, Jane announced her engagement to Paul was over. She never commented on her relationship with him and in interviews, she solely focuses on her acting career. After the breakup with Jane, Paul broke off his relationship with Francie Schwartz, but continued to see Maggie McGivern, while also dating a new love interest, photographer Linda Eastman, whom he met a year earlier. This highly chaotic period in Paul’s personal life overlapped with John’s new love affair with Yoko Ono. John and Yoko were completely inseparable, and it created a significant strain not only in the studio, but between their friendship. These tensions would soon be exacerbated by the managerial void left by Brian’s death, and an upcoming tug of war over the search for a suitable replacement.
Nevertheless, Paul was still as creative as ever. He wrote Hey Jude, which originally came to him as Hey Jules, as a way to console John and Cynthia’s son Julian about how to handle the separation of his parents. The real question Paul would have to ask is whether he himself could stay optimistic in the face of the challenges up ahead. Hey Jude is the Beatle’s best-selling single from the second half of their career, selling over 8 million copies, and staying at Number 1 in the US for over 9 weeks.
The tensions continued into the sessions for what came to be the Let It Be album. Ever since Epstein’s death, Paul had the impossible task of trying to hold the Beatles together without the others perceiving him as being too bossy. Ringo temporarily quit the band during the White Album sessions, due to feeling unappreciated, with some pointing to the catalyst being Paul’s perfectionism over a certain drum part on Back in the USSR. Paul ended up playing drums on the song himself. Eventually, on the Let It Be album, Paul’s perfectionism caused George to temporarily quit.
There seemed to be a fundamental disagreement between George and Paul that was never fully articulated, due to poor communication.
George felt that being in a band should be collaborative, with everyone getting an equal say. He felt he should have just as much freedom in the guitar parts of Paul’s songs as George gave Paul on the bass parts to his songs. But Paul often had a very clear idea in his head of what everyone’s part should sound like, which ironically made his talent both a strength and a liability when it came to group unity. Even though some of the other Beatles at different periods expressed their criticism of Paul as being a control freak, the hours of tapes of rehearsal sessions show that while he was opinionated, he was never intentionally demanding or disrespectful towards the others. His contributions to the album include Two of Us, Let It Be, The Long and Winding Road, and Get Back, which he wrote on the spot during a quiet moment to himself during rehearsals. The Beatles considered these sessions a failure, and abandoned sorting through the hours of recordings for over a year.
Meanwhile, Paul got back to writing songs for other artists, including the angelically-voiced Welsh singer, Mary Hopkin. He produced much of her album, and suggested she sing the old Russian song Those Were The Days, which quickly became a hit on her album Post Card.
In March of 1969, Paul and Linda announced their engagement after learning that Linda was pregnant. Linda, who had had her flings with various rock stars like Mick Jagger and Jim Morrison, and Paul, who had lost count of his flings, both giggled their way through their marriage vows. Paul raised Linda’s daughter, Heather from her previous marriage like his own. John and Yoko would marry a week later.
The next few months were filled with torturous meetings about who should manage the band and their hemorrhaging business ventures. Allen Klein previously managed the Rolling Stones, and Mick Jagger tried to warn John of his shady practices. But Klein knew exactly which strings to pull in terms of praising John’s lyrics, and more importantly, expressing interest in Yoko’s art. Paul saw Klein as an opportunistic charlatan, and preferred Linda’s father and brother, Lee and John Eastman, who were successful entertainment lawyers. But John, George and Ringo were too deeply mesmerized by Klein’s lofty promises to listen to Jagger’s warnings, or Paul’s intuition. It also didn’t help that the two Eastmans would scream at Klein, hurling insults at him, which was a bad strategy, even if the accusations were justified. John loved Klein for his working-class persona, and hated the Eastmans for what he considered to be their upper-class snobbery.
In spite of the headaches of these meetings, the music continued to hold the band together, even if by a thread. They completed their final album, Abbey Road in August of 1969, with Paul contributing Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, Oh! Darling, Golden Slumbers, and Her Majesty. He worked with George Martin to craft the final medley, where Paul contributed You Never Give Me Your Money, She Came In Through The Bathroom Window, Carry That Weight, and The End.
You Never Give Me Your Money was based on Paul’s frustrations with Klein, and Maxwell’s Silver Hammer was an upbeat vaudevillian tune about a serial killer and his victims. It’s hard to imagine Paul writing a song this dark during any other period in his life.
A week after the final Abbey Road sessions, Linda gave birth to their first child, Mary, named after Paul’s mother. They would have two more children over the next decade. Stella was born in 1971 followed by James in 1977.
Less than a month later, the thread that held John to the Beatles finally snapped. After a concert in Toronto with Yoko and a backing band, John decided he didn’t need the other three when it came to pursuing his creative vision. In a boardroom meeting, he told the others he was leaving the group. Paul was completely in shock, and believed that this was another example of John acting impulsively. While he waited it out, he and Linda moved to Paul’s farm in Scotland to start recording a solo album, simply called McCartney. It’s the first example in rock music of a multi-instrumentalist acting as a one-man band, showcasing his talent as a performer and arranger.
Two songs stand out as instant McCartney classics – Junk, a haunting ballad written back in India, and of course, one of his most iconic songs of all time, Maybe I’m Amazed. For those who take part in the ridiculous framing John vs. Paul, those who side with John often criticize Paul for making up silly songs about imaginary characters, writing shallow generic love songs, and not wearing his emotions on his sleeve. But Maybe I’m Amazed is proof that Paul is just as capable of writing highly expressive and autobiographical songs when he’s moved to. In this case, it took an existential crisis to make it happen.
The personal, legal, and musical drama resulting from John’s departure were still far from over. To Paul’s frustration, Klein was still in charge of the Beatles’ finances, and there was still the matter of finishing mixing the Let It Be album. After producer Glynn Johns failed at creating a viable album from the sessions, the other three Beatles brought in Phil Spector. Paul, favoring George Martin, was displeased with Spector as an arranger, specifically the strings and choir he added to The Long and Winding Road. Finally, Paul’s ability to keep the secret of the Beatles’ breakup would snap when he decided to take it upon himself to announce to the world that he was no longer in the Beatles.
During the period after the release of his solo album, he was suffering a minor break down.
Quote “I was going through a hard period. I exhibited all the classic symptoms of the unemployed, the redundant man. First you don’t shave, and it’s not to grow a groovy beard, it’s because you can’t be bothered. Mornings weren’t for getting up. I might get up and stay on the bed a bit and not know where to go, and get back into bed. Then if I did get up, I’d have a drink. Straight out of bed. I’ve never been like that. There are lots of people who’ve been through worse things than that, but for me this was bad news because I’d always been the kind of guy who could really pull himself together and think, “Oh, screw it!”, but at that time, I felt I’d outlived my usefulness.”
He remembers Linda having the patience of a saint, taking care of her own daughter Heather, their newborn Mary, and giving Paul unconditional support in spite of his depression.
In the meantime, Paul’s anxiety about Klein gutting their current and future earnings were seeping into his dreams, turning them into nightmares. He asked his lawyers if there was any way he could sue Klein individually to be able for Paul to have his own account that wasn’t managed by Klein. They told him “No”, that he’d have to sue his bandmates to dissolve the partnership.
After days of thinking it over, he decided if that was the only way, he had to be the one to pull the trigger. He claims “it was almost as if I was committing an unholy act.” Paul filed the lawsuit at the end of 1970 and won a favorable ruling in 1971, which began dissolving the Beatles’ partnership. Klein retained management of the other three until they fired him two years later.
Like John did with Yoko, Paul wanted Linda to travel with him everywhere, in addition to being a part of his new sound. She started singing backing vocals starting with his next solo album, RAM. Unlike the home recordings included in his last album, RAM was a return to the aesthetic that most Beatles fans were used to, teaming up with producer George Martin again for orchestral arrangements, plus two session guitarists and a drummer. Even though critics panned it at the time, it was highly successful commercially, specifically the track Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey. The album is considered a masterpiece by most commentators today because of its ambition and stylistic variety.
In 1971, Paul and Linda hired Moody Blues member Denny Laine and drummer Denny Seiwell into their new band, Wings. Linda would continue to sing backing vocals while playing some simple keyboard parts or tambourine. They released the album Wildlife, which received many negative reviews, and is still viewed as one of the weaker albums relative to the Wings albums that would soon follow. They decided that instead of drawing too much attention to themselves too early, they’d get into form by playing surprise gigs at universities. Paul brought his whole family on their tour of Europe, and encouraged the other musicians to do the same, traveling in a double-decker bus. Paul hired a tutor for the children to travel with them.
It was no secret that Paul loved marijuana, especially given the fact that it’s the subject of Got To Get You Into My Life. Paul’s first drug bust was in Sweden in 1972, followed by another arrest and conviction for growing it on his farm in Scotland.
In spite of being a proud Brit, he was strongly anti-colonialist, writing one of the only overtly political songs in his life, Give Ireland Back to the Irish. It immediately was banned by the BBC.
Paul was asked by George Martin to write the theme song for the James Bond film, Live and Let Die in 1973, and it has since become a favorite during his live shows. That year, Paul released Wings’ second album, Red Rose Speedway. It was also considered second-rate by critics, but his ballad My Love did reach Number #1 in the US.
Paul, Linda, and Denny Laine went to Lagos, Nigeria to record Wings’ next album, Band on the Run. While the experience was largely positive, he and Linda at one point were faced with the reality of the country’s poverty and crime firsthand. Luckily, he memorized his arrangements, and the recording went on as normal.
Band on the Run was the first of Paul’s solo albums to be both a critical and commercial success, selling over 7 million copies. The album is one of the highlights of his entire post-Beatles output, including many fan favorites like Jet, Mrs. Vanderbilt, Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five, and, of course, the title track. In part 3, we’ll examine his time spent imprisoned in Japan, the various losses in his life, including John and Linda, his foray into classical composition, his knighthood by Queen Elizabeth, and his post-Wings solo career up to the present.
Mike Laster is an NYC-based composer, songwriter, and freelance guitar and piano teacher. He is also the bassist of the band Blue Spruce. Being a graduate of the City College of New York, he graduated magna cum laude and was selected by the faculty for the Presser Scholar award for excellence in music. Mike has studied with composers Daron Hagen, and David Del Tredici, and has written for orchestra, string quartet, solo piano, and film, in addition to various indie rock songs. He has also worked on several film scores, such as the short Denture Adventure, and Interreflections by activist Peter Joseph.