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| Paul McCartney - very fresh-faced as an early Beatle |
Cynthia Lennon is supposed to have said that Paul and John were as different as chalk and cheese. They just happened to come together when the Beatles formed. Originally they were called The Quarrymen, because John went to Quarry Bank High School. The later name was supposedly thought up by John’s other friend and the original bassist of the group Stuart Sutcliffe. He left to become an artist full-time and Paul took over playing bass guitar.
Paul, in fact, does not come out very well from the Stuart’s story Backbeat. While John boasted of being ‘a working class hero’, he actually came from a very middle-class background. Visit his house Mendips, which even has a name instead of a number, to see what I mean. It was Paul who closest to a working-class hero, as a visit to Forthlin Road shows. It was there that Paul’s father taught him all the many instruments and which he used to escape his background.
His mother Mary had to work to help support the family. She had breast cancer and must have been ground down by the need to be a loyal housewife and mother to two rowdy boys as well as doing a full-time job as a district nurse. With the cancer she suffered from, cycling to work must have been painful and she often used to tell her boys to ‘Let It Be’, a phrase Paul revived in a late Beatles ballad in which he refers to ‘mother Mary'..
Paul was always thought of as the ‘nice’ Beatle and he has generally enjoyed a better press than the others. It could be argued, however, that it was his desire to see the group on the road which really broke them up rather than Yoko Ono’s influence. He was the prime mover behind the rooftop concert on top of 3 Savile Row, where the Beatles had established the Apple headquarters.
The concert, incidentally. only lasted about forty five minutes before it was stopped. The posh tailors in the street were apparently worried about the noise, which was putting off their customers, so they contacted the police. The Beatles had not got permission to play the concert, just as they had not got planning consent to decorate the original Apple HQ in Baker Street. Things like planning permission were not part of their outlook.
Wearing my hat as a tourist guide, I sometimes do Beatles tours and always stop for a photo at Savile Row where the rooftop concert took place. The site is set to become a Beatles Museum next year. Although other groups and artists have enjoyed similar success to the Beatles, they are the band everybody has heard of and have overflowed the pop industry to become part of the mainstream, even in the tourist business.
George was known to be not keen on going on the road, John and Ringo largely indifferent. Only Paul wanted to see the band playing live again. The decision to end the group’s touring had been unanimous amongst them - screaming fans were making it impossible to hear themselves, the ‘more popular than Jesus’ debate was still ringing in John’s ears and the concerts were becoming increasingly meaningless, so they had to stop. Candlestick Park in San Francisco was the last time the Beatles played a full concert in 1966.
After that, they confined themselves to the studio a few years until they eventually split at the end of the sixties. By 1970 they had gone their separate ways and were immersed in lawsuits. Paul has had a successful solo career and sometimes plays all the instruments on his albums, which he can do thanks to the double-tracking system. Being an old-fashioned rock and roller, he has formed his own band and continues to play live.
Paul became increasingly the dominant Beatle, but was unable to fashion the group as he wanted and the increasing influence of his wife Linda and in-laws the Eastmans and his mistrust of Allan Klein, who served as the group’s manager after the death of Brian Epstein wh died at the age of just thirty-two, caused him to drift away from the rest of the group and eventually led to their break up, which he was responsible for as much as Yoke Ono.
Although rumours persist of the group reforming – particularly, it seems, when Paul has a solo album to promote - after the death of John Lennon this became effectively impossible. I think it is right that the Beatles did not become their own tribute band and never reformed. They lasted through the sixties (almost exactly) and, although I am not keen on defining eras by decades, there is still something about that one which makes it stand out from others.
Paul wrote the most covered Beatle song (Yesterday) and what I still think is their finest (Eleanor Rigby). Somebody (I think it was Coleridge) said that the job of a poet is to make the new familiar and the familiar new. While John did the first, Paul did the second. I always remember my father’s cousin saying how much she liked the Beatles because in Penny Lane the fireman had a ‘clean machine’, a simple idea beautifully expressed.
Paul was the most melodic Beatle, the most dedicated rock and roller and the one who wanted to bring them back to performing live, without which any band would die as inevitable internal tensions got the better of them. Maybe if the other Beatles had been with him on the need to play live, they might not have broken up as they did, From that point of view, Paul was the one who wanted – but failed – to keep the Beatles together.
Edwin Lerner (My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com)
Today is Halloween, which I slightly disapprove of, so I am continuing profiling the Beatles.
Next month it is George Harrison's turn, who really grew wings, after the band broke up,
