It was the year after Linda’s death that he met the former model Heather Mills, whom he then married in 2002. Once more, hostility surrounded his choice of partner. There was reportedly a family crisis, with his eldest daughter, the fashion designer Stella, said to be at loggerheads both with her father and his intended bride of 34. The couple met at a charity awards dinner. “I just liked the look of her, same as had happened when I saw Linda. I was just physically attracted. Then we got together and found we had so much in common. And I was thinking, what if I hadn’t seen her?”
They married in the small village of Glaslough in County Monahan, with an inevitably starry list of guests, and strangers travelling from as far as Zurich to line the narrow lanes and cheer. “The more we go on, the more we realise how lucky the pair of us are. But that’s what I find all the time. My mum dies, and I find John. Linda dies, and I find Heather.”
Jim McCartney also remarried after bringing up Paul and his younger brother Mike. The boys’ mother, Mary, had also died of breast cancer. His second wife had been widowed and already had a five-year-old daughter. This girl, Ruth, is now 42 and, unbeknown to Paul, lives in California. By comparison with his father, who remarried eight years after being widowed, Paul’s getting together with Heather was swift. And even though his own children were grown up, it must have caused some difficulties for everyone.
Paul nods ruefully and says: “I think these things are part and parcel. It can be difficult, you know. For them [the children], for Heather, for all of us. But, you know, luckily these things clear up. Time is a great healer. These things have healed - amazingly. I’d prefer not to go on about any difficulties. I like much more the fact that we get over these things, that people grow, and they get used to stuff and get through things. So we are doing very well as a family.” At several points in this conversation, I find myself thinking how much nicer it would be if we were, in his words, just guys, rather than me being press and him being what he is. Impossible, of course, with me asking what I think are legitimate questions about how he copes with the raw and ragged bits of life familiar to the ordinary and unfamous, and him guarding his privacy with the ferocity of a man who knows what it is like to lose it. So it’s ironic. Someone like me would never have the chance to spend time with someone like him without the licence of belonging to the press. Yet it is that very belonging that blocks off certain avenues of discussion.
From what I’ve heard two of his friends say, he is great company, witty and generous. If he doesn’t much like the press, and he doesn’t, it is surely in part because he dislikes the thought of losing control of his image. And yes, that image is definitely at odds with the man. I’d go further and say it doesn’t really do him justice. At one point, when we are talking about the (false) rumour of him moving to America, he floats the following fantasy with me: “You and I have to write something for this bare page today. Look, it could be a lot of fun. How about... Stevie Wonder is moving to London to be near Paul, and the neighbours are up in arms. OK? That will run. Or else... Madonna has asked Paul to write the music for her new children’s book. I could do better than that if I spent half an hour on it. But no, for the 50th time, I am not dead [a reference to the 1969 rumour that Paul had died and it was a stand-in on the Abbey Road cover], and no, we are not moving to America.”
The posh papers (his word again) are not exempted. He goes into plummy-voice to imitate the reader of one such paper - not this one - learning that McCartney is to relocate. Perhaps it is my turn to be paranoid when I say there is a hint of aggression in it. But why has there been so much ill feeling towards his wives? And not just from the press. That would not be accurate. As he says: “Linda got a lot of flak when we married, and Heather has had similar types of experiences... I don’t know why. Look, I was due to marry Jane [Asher]. The public appeared to like that.” True enough. Jane came from an impeccably middle-class professional family. Because of their address and the girls’ hair colour, they were known as the Carrotts of Wimpole Street. Paul lived there for a while, and the couple were a classier Posh and Becks of the Sixties. And so much more wholesome than Mick and Marianne. “She was a nice girl. A British girl. And then I realised that I wasn’t in love with her. Which was a slight problem. Then I realised I was in love with Linda, and we got married and had a delicious romance. We met on the cusp of Jane and me breaking up. But number one, she was American. And we didn’t like Americans. And she was divorced.”
Wallis Simpson Syndrome. “That. And she had a child. These were all reasons for not liking someone. But like the Linda thing, it [the Heather thing] is clearing. People are realising who Heather is. We were at a stop-the-mines benefit the other evening. The simple perception of this was that Princess Diana dies and therefore anyone going into it is trying to be Diana. But Heather had been doing this a long time before. She gave a fantastic speech. She is a very intelligent girl, a very impressive woman. She left school at 13 with virtually no education. She’s just written an article for The New Statesman. You should read it. It’s in the Labour Party conference issue. A 90-year-old gent I met on holiday said [of the magazine]: ‘Oh, that’s a formidable book.’ This is the side that people don’t bother to find out about. She spends her days helping people.”
And when people said it was too soon for a new partnership? “I never listened to gossips in the street in Liverpool. ‘Ooo, look at ’im wairin’ those those tight trowsers. Look at the length of ’er skairt. It’s a bloody scandal!’ It’s just a variation on that.”
At the time of this conversation there’s a fortnight to go until the presidential election, so I ask him who he’s rooting for. Kerry is the answer. “I’ve got the Bushisms book. ‘Most of our imports are from overseas.’ From a president, I’m not so sure this is good.” Ever since Give Ireland Back to the Irish (banned by the BBC), I’ve had him down as a naïf. Or call it broad-brush. “Great Britain you are tremendous, And nobody knows like me, But really what are you doin’ in the land across the sea?” Can the medium of song change the way that people think and vote? “Well, Give Peace a Chance was something that did make a difference. I remember seeing thousands of people chanting that on the White House lawn... They’re not easy to write, those protest songs.”
His American contemporary Bob Dylan, an equally durable musician, managed a few in his time. “He’s a great guy. Great poet. I run into him every so often. I saw him in an anorak in the corner of some airport lounge. He’s so courageous. A guy from his band said, ‘Mr Tambourine Man went down well tonight,’ so Bob said, ‘OK, take it out of the set.’ I’m not like that. I’d say keep it in.”
Of course he would. This is not a man who got famous by being controversial, even if he was there at the heart of the biggest popular music revolution this country has ever known. The fact is that you could probably have set him down anywhere, any time, and his melodic brilliance would have propelled him to the top. Everyone sensed that in their own way, from George Martin right the way down to toddlers hearing those sounds coming down the hall from their parents’ transistor.
John Hammel comes up to call time and we make our way back off the roof. Paul gathers up his lunch box, which had contained the veggie roll made for him by Heather. The box is actually a little blue plastic handbag in the shape of an old Roberts radio, with a photo of the new Mrs Macca occupying the whole of one side. Through the attic with the components, down the steep steps and into the studio. He bashes out a Lady Madonna riff on the Crown Upright, then has a quick go on his famous Hofner violin-shaped bass. He got this one for £30 more than 40 years ago because he couldn’t afford £100 for a Fender solid. You wouldn’t dare put a price on it now. Then he picks up his acoustic six-string and starts singing.
I say I must be the smallest audience he has played to since he used to practise in the bathroom, and he nods. His eyes have gone all distant, just like they always did, and instead of hearing just soulfulness in the voice, I find I’m picking up a great weight of downright sadness. It’s that something in the throat, that compulsive catch that words, thankfully, can’t describe. It’s funny to think that, when it was a third as old as it is now, it only had to make itself heard on a stage to be instantly drowned by screaming girls. Even as it idles its way above the chords, with no one else about, it’s as distinctive in its own way as Frank Sinatra or Billie Holiday. But oh so mournful. Before leaving I ask him if the Beatles will ever re-form. I’m hardly the first. These days, sadly, it would only entail one phone call, from Paul to Ringo, or vice-versa. “I would if he asked me,” says Paul. There was a time when this would have constituted a scoop. He goes on: “I thought I was going to play with him once, but he got a shoulder thing.” The Who do it with just two of the originals. So if Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend were to join Paul and Ringo, you’d have the full line-up of vocals, bass, lead and drums. “Right,” says McCartney. “The Whootles.” Remember you read it here first. n
Each One Believing, sponsored by Sony Ericsson, runs at the Proud Galleries, 10 Greenland Street, London NW1 0ND, until November 27 (www.proud.co.uk). The book Each One Believing: Paul McCartney On Stage, Off Stage and Backstage is published by Chronicle Books and is available from Books First priced £15.99 (RRP £19.99) plus £2.25 p&p on 0870 160 8080; www.timesonline.co.uk/booksfirstbuy
