Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/060892/0608520.000

Text File | 1992-09-22 | 13KB | 257 lines

                                                                                PROFILE, Page 84

Paul At Fifty


"Bloody hell! That makes me old!" says Paul McCartney, with
a laugh and a wink. "So use me as a gauge and thank you very
much for noticing me."

By CATHY BOOTH/LONDON


    In the bucolic Sussex countryside south of London,
there's a farm where pheasants and peacocks roam wild. The yard
is dotted with cows and chickens, horses and sheep, even
reindeer. The owner designed the circular house himself. He
built the chicken coops too. His wife is noted for her meatless
lasagna and vegetarian burgers. They seem a nice couple, married
21 years, with four well-mannered kids.

    Meet Paul McCartney at 50. Or nearly: he hits the
mid-century mark on June 18. It's been a little more than two
decades since the Beatles, the biggest pop phenomenon ever,
broke up. Yet even now the baby-faced member of the quartet who
sent girls into spasms of screaming ecstasy on The Ed Sullivan
Show back in 1964 is still "the cute one." His stylishly long
hair has gone salt-and-pepper. When he smiles, crinkles arc
downward from his hazel eyes. He wears loose vests even though
there doesn't seem to be any pudge to hide. Otherwise, there's
nothing flashy about him: just a pair of old Timberlands on his
feet, a wedding ring with a tiny jade heart on his hand and that
cheeky irreverence well known to fans of the Fab Four.

    "I was thinking, what's this article going to be called?"
McCartney asks gamely with a grin. "My bet's on `Paul at Fifty'
so that everyone can go, `What? Jeez-us Curr-hrist! He's fifty!
He isn't, is he? Bloody hell! That makes me old!' That's what
they want. They want to use me as a gauge." He laughs and winks.
"So use me as a gauge, and have a good time, and thank you very
much for noticing me!"

    Use me as a gauge. Clever of McCartney to pick that theme.
The Beatles, after all, personified the 1960s. Their songs
reflected a generation's passage from '50s innocence to '70s
disillusionment, from teen love to psychedelic drugs and
mysticism. The four clean-cut boys in pudding-basin haircuts who
sang of love (yeah, yeah, yeah) became the tortured souls of Let
It Be. The other half of the Beatles' famous writing team, John
Lennon, is dead, struck down by the gun of a crazed fan in 1980;
as a result, Lennon's contributions to the Beatles have taken
on mythic proportions. But it's McCartney who remains the icon
of the '60s generation.

    Turning 50, McCartney is a man who has learned to live
with the snide remarks about his brassy American wife Linda,
with the accusation that he caused the Beatles breakup in 1970
and with Lennon's hurtful comments that he was a boring prig
who wrote only Muzak. "I still get wounded," he says, "but I've
come to the point where I tell myself, `Give yourself a break.
No one else will.' I like ballads. I like babies. I like happy
endings. They say domesticity is the enemy of art, but I don't
think it is. I had to make a decision: Am I going to be just a
family guy, or should I go up to London three nights a week, hit
the nightclubs, occasionally drop my trousers and swear a lot
in public? I made my decision, and I feel O.K. with it. Ballads
and babies. That's what happened to me."

    Since November, McCartney has been holed up weekdays in a
renovated 18th century mill overlooking England's southern
coastline. He is laying down songs in his private 48-track Hog
Hill Studio for an untitled album -- his 23rd since the Beatles'
breakup two decades ago -- and preparing for a new tour next
year. Hog Hill boasts the latest in electronic gear, but there
are nostalgic and whimsical touches too, like Elvis Presley's
bass from Heartbreak Hotel, the Mellotron from Strawberry Fields
Forever and a Megaroids video game. Next to the studio is a cozy
kitchen featuring a spread of Linda's veggie foods. Upstairs is
a retreat for writing amid the scent of fresh flowers and
patchouli.

    In between recording sessions recently, McCartney slipped
upstairs to talk about life after the Beatles. "I'm only
interested in looking back now because I have this misbelief
about my life. Did I really get here?" he asks while munching
on a cheese-and-pickle sandwich. He stares out at a view of
rolling green hills that is a long way from the council housing
of his Liverpool youth. "I hear myself telling stories to my
kids, and sometimes I ask myself, `Are you sure about this one,
man?' "

    Yes, we're sure. James Paul McCartney was the son of
working-class Irish parents. His father was a cotton salesman
and an ex-jazz trumpeter and piano man, his mother a midwife.
As a child, McCartney was a Boy Scout and a bird watcher. His
first real instrument was a Zenith six-string, which he played
left-handed. In 1960 he was just one of four unknown teenagers
performing in the squalor of Liverpool's underground Cavern
club. By 1965 the Beatles had stormed America, met the Queen and
been hailed as pop prophets. By 1971 -- before any of the four
hit 30 -- it was all over, ruined by a bitter business fight.

    Yet even now, The Guinness Book of Records lists the
Beatles as the most successful group in history, with more than
1 billion disks and tapes sold. McCartney is the most successful
songwriter in the history of the U.S. record industry, having
penned 32 No. 1 hits, vs. Lennon's 26. McCartney has racked up
more gold and platinum disks (75) than any other performer in
history. His song Yesterday is the most recorded ever, with more
than 2,000 versions.

    McCartney's unspoken fear is that he will be remembered
only as a pop singer who made pretty records. The Master of Ear
Candy, shallow and self-indulgent if catchy and commercial --
and, of course, never as good as his now dead collaborator,
Lennon. McCartney's critics forget that he was the prime force
behind such songs as Hey Jude, The Long and Winding Road, Penny
Lane, Eleanor Rigby and Let It Be. Post-Beatles, he was the most
successful survivor, with 17 gold albums and hits like Band on
the Run, Ebony and Ivory, Say Say Say and the James Bond theme
Live and Let Die. McCartney shallow? It depends on whether one
wants hummable riffs or Lennonesque angst.

    McCartney's answer to the doubters has been to work. He
struggled artistically after Lennon's slaying and his own 10-day
incarceration in Japan for marijuana possession in 1980, but he
continued to churn out albums, and he hit the road in 1989 after
a 13-year absence. His world tour attracted 2.5 million fans,
and in the U.S. he was the biggest single act in 1990, beating
out Janet Jackson and Madonna.

    McCartney is a rich man today, worth an estimated $600
million, although he claims not to know the full extent of his
assets. He has become one of the biggest independent publishing
tycoons in the world, holding the copyrights to 3,000 songs,
including the scores of such musicals as Guys and Dolls, A
Chorus Line and Grease, all the songs of his boyhood hero, Buddy
Holly, and many other pop favorites. In addition, his
London-based company, MPL Communications, has its hand in film
ventures like the artsy animated short Daumier's Law, which
debuted at the Cannes Film Festival last month.

    Up close, McCartney can flash his ever ready charm at
will. One minute he's open and sincere; the next he's closed,
in automatic public relations mode. He's a clever lad, practical
in business matters yet irreverent at heart. He's eager to put
you at ease, but he gets miffed if you pry too closely. Just a
few friends ever see the McCartney house, set in the forest in
Sussex. His Scottish estate is reachable only by foot across a
bog or by four-wheel drive. Decades of Beatlemania haven't
dehumanized him, but he has learned to be wary.

    McCartney likes to stress how ordinary he is. "One thing
that can bring you bad luck is when you start to get
bigheaded," he says. His M.B.E. (Member of the Order of the
British Empire) medal from the Queen and most of the gold
records are put away in storage. He's into organic farming and
carpentry. He sent the kids off to state schools. Heather, 29,
"theirs" although she is from Linda's first marriage, is a
potter. Mary, a dark-haired 22-year-old beauty, works at MPL
handling copyrights. Red-headed Stella, 20, studies fashion
design. James, 14, is a blond Paul look-alike and a Jimi Hendrix
fan who, as a right-hander, has to play his dad's left-handed
guitar upside down. The whole family is vegetarian; Linda even
has a line of frozen veggie dishes. "Imagine seeing your wife's
face looking out from the freezer department at you," hoots
McCartney.

    This Paul McCartney hardly seems like the man who would
sneak marijuana into Japan, who sent unsigned letters to those
who offended him or who begrudged money for his father, as some
disgruntled former associates and relatives claim. He also
seems a long way from the rocker who scandalized the world by
admitting he had experimented with LSD, although there's no
denying his repeated run-ins with the law over marijuana.
Whether McCartney has given up that habit is debatable. He
admits to only one vice: drinking Johnnie Walker Red Label
Scotch and Classic Coke. "Four, and I'm anybody's," he jokes to
friends.

    He is mostly Linda's, however. Although he has a circle of
acquaintances ranging from fellow musician and Liverpudlian
Elvis Costello to artist Brian Clarke, Linda is his best friend.
The critics have always carped that she can't sing or play
keyboards, that she dressed like a slob and, alas, has hairy
legs. She is still dismayed by such pettiness and knows that
onstage she seems ill at ease. "I'm an uncomfortable-looking
person anyway," she confesses, "but I love playing. It's fun.
And, of course, the real truth is, I'm in the band so Paul and
I can stay together." Yet she is a professional in her own
right. Her forthcoming book, Linda McCartney's Sixties, includes
her photos of famous friends like Hendrix and Janis Joplin, whom
she knew long before she knew McCartney.

    McCartney stands now over the control board, chewing his
fingernails. For three days, he has been fretting about just the
right sound for one track, a number reminiscent of Abbey Road.
Fans are forever pestering him with questions about the Walrus,
Rita the meter maid, Desmond and Molly, and, of course, the
secret message on Revolution 9. But McCartney refuses to
overanalyze the Beatles' songs. "They're just songs," he says.
"We never had a theme on a Beatles album, even Sgt. Pepper's
Lonely Hearts Club Band. We kinda knew we were reflecting the
times, but if you had asked me then, I would've said the songs
just sort of fell out."

    It nettled McCartney for years that the songs that fell
out were always credited to Lennon-McCartney, never
McCartney-Lennon. Time has healed the soreness of their 1970
rift. Sort of. "Even when John was attacking me in the press,
I thought he was the same great, lovable, complex guy," says
McCartney. "I nearly said hateable, but hateable's too far
because he's died. If he were alive, I could say that." He has
tried various other collaborators, from Michael Jackson and
Stevie Wonder to, most recently, Costello. But, he admits, "it
would be mad to think I'd written with anyone better since John.
He was a one-off, very special guy."

    Although he rarely goes to Liverpool today, McCartney is
lead patron of a fund-raising effort to turn his old school,
Liverpool Institute, into a Fame-type training ground for the
musically talented. When the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic asked
him to help mark its 150th anniversary, he ventured into
classical music and composed a 90-minute choral epic called Paul
McCartney's Liverpool Oratorio. It was a brave try for a man who
doesn't read or write music. But it turned out to be strangely
flat, a criticism that McCartney shrugs off. He was more worried
that rock friends would think it "fruity."

    When he's not working, McCartney says his list of things
to do includes finishing the family sports shed, sailing
Sunfishes and painting, a hobby he took up at age 40. Two
hundred abstracts, landscapes and portraits of Linda litter
their homes. McCartney laughs ahead of time at the reaction this
will elicit: "Bloody hell, look at him. Thinks he's Van Gogh,
does he!"

    He is constantly telling people he's not the big celeb
they expect. "Don't you ever feel you've lived a few lives?
Well, to me, the Beatles were another life," says McCartney.
"Certain people when they get rich wear a lot of fur coats and
big diamond watches. I've gone the other way. I'd rather be
remembered as a musician than a celebrity," he says, standing
up and snapping his fingers, signaling he wants to get back to
work.

    Last we saw, McCartney was still chewing a fingernail,
worrying over a riff in the studio. He didn't look much like
McCartney the rock icon. He was just a musician trying to get
it right.