FAB:
AN INTIMATE LIFE OF Paul McCartney
HOWARD SOUNES
To hear a playlist of music by Paul McCartney, chosen by the author and discussed in Fab, please visit www.fabplaylist.co.uk
Contents
Playlist
PART ONE - WITH THE BEATLES
CHAPTER 1 - A LIVERPOOL FAMILY
CHAPTER 2 - JOHN
CHAPTER 3 - HAMBURG
CHAPTER 4 - LONDON
CHAPTER 5 - THE MANIA
CHAPTER 6 - AMERICA
CHAPTER 7 - YESTERDAY
CHAPTER 8 - FIRST FINALE
CHAPTER 9 - LINDA
CHAPTER 10 - HELLO, GOODBYE
CHAPTER 11 - PAUL TAKES CHARGE
CHAPTER 12 - WEIRD VIBES
CHAPTER 13 - WEDDING BELLS
CHAPTER 14 - CREATIVE DIFFERENCES
PART TWO - AFTER THE BEATLES
CHAPTER 15 - ‘HE’S NOT A BEATLE ANY MORE!’
CHAPTER 16 - THE NEW BAND
CHAPTER 17 - IN THE HEART OF THE COUNTRY
CHAPTER 18 - THE GOOD LIFE
CHAPTER 19 - GO TO JAIL
CHAPTER 20 - INTO THE EIGHTIES
CHAPTER 21 - TRIVIAL PURSUITS
CHAPTER 22 - THE NEXT BEST THING
CHAPTER 23 - MUSIC IS MUSIC
CHAPTER 24 - A THREE-QUARTERS REUNION
CHAPTER 25 - PASSING THROUGH THE DREAM OF LOVE
CHAPTER 26 - RUN DEVIL RUN
CHAPTER 27 - THAT DIFFICULT SECOND MARRIAGE
CHAPTER 28 - WHEN PAUL WAS SIXTY-FOUR
CHAPTER 29 - THE EVER-PRESENT PAST
SOURCE NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
About the Author
Praise
Also by Howard Sounes
Credits
Copyright
AT THE START OF THE ROAD
‘They may not look much,’ Paul would say in adult life of his Liverpool family, having been virtually everywhere and seen virtually everything there is to see in this world. ‘They’re just very ordinary people, but by God they’ve got something – common sense, in the truest sense of the word. I’ve met lots of people, [but] I have never met anyone as interesting, or as fascinating, or as wise, as my Liverpool family.’
Liverpool is not only the city in which Paul McCartney was born; it is the place in which he is rooted, the wellspring of the Beatles’ music and everything he has done since that fabulous group disbanded. Originally a small inlet or ‘pool’ on the River Mersey, near its confluence with the Irish Sea, 210 miles north of London, Liverpool was founded in 1207, coming to significance in the seventeenth century as a slave trade port, because Liverpool faces the Americas. After the abolition of slavery, the city continued to thrive due to other, diverse forms of trade, with magnificent new docks constructed along its riverine waterfront, and ocean liners steaming daily to and from the United States. As money poured into Liverpool, its citizens erected a mini-Manhattan by the docks, featuring the Royal Liver Building, an exuberant skyscraper topped by outlandish copper birds that have become emblematic of this confident, slightly eccentric city.
For the best part of three hundred years men and women flocked to Liverpool for work, mostly on and around the docks. Liverpool is and has always been a predominantly white, working-class city, its people made up of and descended in large part from the working poor of surrounding Lancashire, plus Irish, Scots and Welsh incomers. Their regional accents combined in an urban melting pot to create Scouse, the distinctive Liverpool voice, with its singular, rather harsh pronunciation and its own witty argot, Scousers typically living hugger-mugger in the city’s narrow terrace streets built from the local rosy-red sandstone and brick.
Red is the colour of Liverpool – the red of its buildings, its left-wing politics and Liverpool Football Club. As the city has a colour, its citizens have a distinct character: they are friendly, jokey and inquisitive, hugely proud of their city and thin-skinned when it is criticised, as it has been throughout Paul’s life. For Liverpool’s boom years were over before Paul was born, the population reaching a peak of 900,000 in 1931, since when Liverpool has faded, its people, Paul included, leaving to find work elsewhere as their ancestors once came to Merseyside seeking employment, the abandoned city becoming tatty and tired, with mounting social problems.
Paul’s maternal grandfather, Owen Mohin, was a farmer’s son from County Monaghan, south of what is now the border with Northern Ireland, and it’s likely there was Irish blood on the paternal side of the family, too. McCartney is a Scottish name, but four centuries ago many Scots McCartneys settled in Ireland, returning to mainland Britain during the Potato Famine of the mid-1800s. Paul’s paternal ancestors were probably among those who recrossed the Irish Sea at this time in search of food and work. Great-grandfather James McCartney was also most likely born in Ireland, but came to Liverpool to work as a housepainter, making his home with wife Elizabeth in Everton, a working-class suburb of the city. Their son, Joseph, born in 1866, Paul’s paternal grandfather, worked in the tobacco trade, tobacco being one of the city’s major imports. He married a local girl named Florence Clegg and had ten children, the fifth of whom was Paul’s dad.
Aside from Paul’s parents, his extended Liverpool family, his relatives – what Paul would call ‘the relies’ – have played a significant and ongoing part in his life, so it is worth becoming acquainted with his aunts and uncles. John McCartney was Joe and Flo McCartney’s firstborn, known as Jack. Paul’s Uncle Jack was a big strong man, gassed in the First World War, with the result that after he came home – to work as a rent collector for Liverpool Corporation – he spoke in a small, husky voice. You had to lean in close to hear what Jack was saying, and often he was telling a joke. The McCartneys were wits and raconteurs, deriving endless fun from gags, word games and general silliness, all of which became apparent, for better or worse, when Paul turned to song writing. McCartney family whimsy is in ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ and ‘Rocky Raccoon’, also ‘Rupert and the Frog Song’.
There was a son after Jack who died in infancy; then came Edith (Edie) who married ship steward Will Stapleton, the black sheep