Everyone Loves You When You're Dead. Neil Strauss

      PAUL McCARTNEY: The record company said to me, “We don’t really need an album this year.” So I’ve just been making music for my own fun. It took the pressure off. It’s just a song album, a regular album, which is cool because there’s been so much Anthology [documentary and CD] stuff around the Beatles.

       So you’re in just the early stages of recording?

      McCARTNEY: Not even. My album probably won’t be out until next spring. There’s probably going to be another Anthology thing around Christmas, so I don’t want to go out in competition with that. It’s a dumb move, and also it doesn’t look right. It looks like I’m trying to upstage the Beatles. It looks like I’m trying to say, “Hey, I’m better than the Beatles.” No, it’s just not the thing to do.

       You’ve also turned Linda’s photographs33 into a short movie about the Grateful Dead. Did you do that before Jerry Garcia died?

      McCARTNEY: Yeah, the sad thing was that I was in touch with a couple of the guys. I spoke to Bob [Weir, Grateful Dead guitarist] and we had a good phone conversation. I said, “Hey, I’m putting this thing together, and I want to show it to you guys when it’s finished.” I finished it and I was just getting back in touch with them, then I went on holiday. When I reached America, I heard on the news that Jerry had died and I thought, “Oh shit, you know, I was just about to show the film to him.”

       Were you both friends?

      McCARTNEY: I’d been in correspondence with him, because he was a painter and I thought he’d like this. Unfortunately, I missed him and the bad thing then was I thought, “Oh shit, there’s going to be a lot of people out there who will think, oh, I’m cashing in on the fact that Jerry’s died.” So I immediately got out a press release and said, “Look, I’ve had this movie for a year now and it’s nothing to do with . . . What’s more than that, I’m not gonna release it now. You know, I’m going to wait for a little while.” So I suppose it has become a little bit of a tribute to Jerry because he’s died.