Paul McCartney might just be our greatest living rockstar…he was a friggin' Beatle,
after all.
But even if you're a big fan, there are quite a few things you might not know about him.
This is the untold truth of Paul McCartney.
It's probably the biggest and most tightly held misconception in rock music history:
Yoko Ono broke up the Beatles.
She didn't, actually: The Fab Four split up in 1970 due to a combination of divergent
creative interests and caving under the pressure of being the biggest band in the world.
Ono, a Japanese-American conceptual artist and musician, bore the blame for the breakup
because John Lennon fell under her avant garde spell during the final years of the Beatles.
In 2016, McCartney told Rolling Stone:
"We were kind of threatened [then].
She was sitting on the amps while we were recording.
Most bands couldn't handle that.
We handled it, but not amazingly well, because we were so tight."
As he told Howard Stern in 2018,
"She was just sitting in on the recording sessions and we'd never had anything like
that.
But looking back on it, you think, the guy was totally in love with her."
While some uninformed Beatles fans might still blame Ono for the band's demise, it sounds
like McCartney is well past all of that.
As he explained to Rolling Stone:
"[These days, our relationship is] really good, actually."
And it seems like he shook off any negative vibes rather quickly.
In 1968, he contributed a blurb to the cover of Lennon and Ono's joint album Unfinished
Music No. 1: Two Virgins that read:
"When two great saints meet, it is a humbling experience."
As McCartney explained to Rolling Stone:
"My big awakening was, if John loves this woman, that's gotta be right.
I realized any resistance was something I had to overcome.
It was a little hard at first.
Gradually, we did.
Now it’s like we’re mates.
I like Yoko.
She’s so Yoko."
The early Eighties saw two of music's biggest superstars, Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson,
team up for some duets.
Among them, McCartney sang alongside Jackson on "The Girl is Mine," the leadoff single
from 1982's Thriller.
And Jackson repaid the favor for "Say, Say, Say" off McCartney's Pipes of Peace.
The songs went to #2 and #1, respectively, on the Billboard Hot 100.
Jackson and McCartney became fast friends.
And after Thriller became the best-selling album of all time, they became equals.
Shortly thereafter, Jackson reportedly asked McCartney how to deal with his sudden, unbelievable
wealth.
McCartney's advice?
He should invest in music publishing or buy up the rights to as many famous songs as possible.
Jackson took that advice to heart and bought a 50 percent stake in Northern Songs…the
publishing company that owned the Beatles' catalog.
Well…he beat out McCartney for the rights to his own songs.
In a 1989 interview, McCartney said he thought Jackson was joking about the whole thing:
"He'd say, 'I'm gonna get your records, y'know.
I'm gonna get your songs.
I'm gonna buy your songs.'
And I'd say, 'Love it.'"
As he told David Letterman in 2009,
"We never kind of got to it.
And I thought, 'Mmm.'
So we kind of drifted apart.
It was no big bust up.
We kind of drifted apart after that."
In its first season, Saturday Night Live, known as NBC's Saturday Night at the time,
was about the hottest thing in pop culture.
Well, creator/executive producer Lorne Michaels jokingly attempted a huge publicity stunt
on a March 1976 episode: He personally and directly pleaded with the Beatles to reunite
on his show.
"In my book, The Beatles are the best thing that ever happened to music.
It goes even deeper than that: You're not just a musical group, you're a part of us.
We grew up with you."
Then came the pitch:
"The National Broadcasting Company has authorized me to offer you this check to be on our show.
A certified check for $3,000."
Of course, the joke is that the Beatles could have named their price to get back together...
and they certainly would've asked for a lot more than three grand.
Meanwhile, a few blocks away from NBC's New York studios where Saturday Night aired live,
Paul McCartney was hanging out with John Lennon at his apartment in the Dakota building.
They were actually watching SNL and saw Michaels make his offer…and they even considered
entertaining it.
As McCartney told Charlie Rose:
"We said, 'Come on, should we go?
It's just down the road.'
And for half a second, we nearly went."
To think what could've been…
Paul McCartney isn't just a singer, songwriter, and bass guitar player, he's also an actor.
McCartney played exaggerated versions of himself in A Hard Day's Night and Help!, and in 1984
he starred in and wrote Give My Regards to Broad Street.
Also, It would seem that McCartney has been offered quite a few notable roles over the
years…all of which he declined.
In 1967, filmmaker Franco Zeffirelli began production on a big-screen adaptation of Shakespeare's
Romeo and Juliet, and he wanted McCartney to be his Romeo.
In Conversations with McCartney, the rock star recounted the situation:
"I said, 'I can't do it, man, you're kidding.
I'm just a musician.'...He said, 'No, I really know you could do this.
You look absolutely how I see Romeo.
It would be perfect.
Come to Rome and we make a film, it will be beautiful.'
I bottled out."
Maybe that was for the best.
Can you imagine him taking on the role of Romeo?
"Did my heart love 'til now?
Forswear it sight."
In 2015, Friends casting director Leslie Litt told Huffington Post that she attempted to
secure McCartney for the popular sitcom.
In the fourth season, Ross was going to marry a British woman named Emily in London.
The show really wanted the former Beatle to play Emily's father, a role that eventually
went to actor Stephen Waltham.
Litt says she inquired through McCartney's manager, but he let her down himself with
a faxed letter.
As she tells it:
"He thanked me for my interest and said how flattered he was, but it was a very busy time
for him."
In the '90s, all three then-living Beatles made individual cameos on The Simpsons.
After Homer becomes a barbershop quartet superstar, he meets the late George Harrison at a music
industry party.
Ringo Starr writes Marge a long-overdue thank-you note for a portrait of him she mailed him
decades earlier.
And in the 1995 episode "Lisa the Vegetarian," Paul and Linda McCartney encourage Lisa Simpson
to embrace the meat-free lifestyle.
"Linda and I both feel strongly about animal rights.
In fact, if you play 'Maybe I'm Amazed' backwards, you'll hear a recipe for a really ripping
lentil soup."
Paul and Linda McCartney agreed to the cameo on one condition: Lisa's vegetarianism couldn't
just be a phase, she had to commit to the diet for the duration of the series.
So far, Simpsons writers have kept their word.
Paul McCartney is still pushing musical boundaries and challenging himself to try new things.
He first experimented with tape loops and trippy effects on the Beatles' "Tomorrow Never
Knows."
In 1993 he started an electronic music-heavy project called the Fireman, at first, anonymously.
The group evolved over three albums from bleeps-and-bloops into full-fledged experimental rock.
His unlikely partner in the project was Youth, also known as Martin Glover, the bassist in
the '80s goth band Killing Joke.
Around that time, McCartney and Glover collaborated with the artsy Welsh band Super Furry Animals
on an ambient record called Liverpool Sound Collage, and with DJ/producer Freelance Hellraiser
on the 2005 EDM release Twin Freaks.
Those weren't his only collaborations, though.
In 2012, McCartney teamed up with Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl, the surviving members of Nirvana,
to record and perform new music.
He's clearly not one to rest on his laurels.
Paul McCartney may seem like the most innocent Beatle, but he was also the first member of
The Fab Four to experiment with drugs.
"Have you taken LSD?"
"About four times."
"And where do you get it from?"
In an August 1964 meeting of the minds, Bob Dylan hung out with the Beatles in a New York
hotel and casually offered the Fab Four some marijuana.
Dylan evidently thought it was no big deal, since he always though John Lennon sang, "I
get high" in their 1964 hit "I Want to Hold Your Hand."
The lyric is actually "I can't hide," but hey, it would be rude to refuse, so each Beatle
tried Dylan's joint.
Reportedly, McCartney was the only one blown away by the experience, remarking that
"[Marijuana got me] thinking for the first time, really thinking."
As The Beatles' music got more druggy and experimental as the '60s wore on, marijuana
explicitly influenced McCartney's songwriting.
In fact, McCartney has this to say about the song "Got to Get You into My Life":
"It's actually an ode to pot, like someone else might write an ode to chocolate or a
good claret."
McCartney remained a loyal consumer of the sticky icky for decades, but he's since given
it up.
In 2015, he told the Mirror:
"I don't do it anymore.
Why?
The truth is I don't really want to set an example to my kids and grandkids.
It's now a parent thing."
He goes on to say,
"Instead of smoking a spliff I'll now have a glass of red wine or a nice margarita.
The last time I smoked was a long time ago.”
The Beatles get all the accolades nowadays, but Paul McCartney has actually fronted two
enormously successful bands.
Sure, Wings wasn't as popular as the Beatles, but what band is?
His '70s group still churned out an impressive 14 top 10 hits in the U.S., including classic
rock staples like "Band on the Run," "Silly Love Songs," and "Coming Up."
After some solo efforts in the early 1970s, McCartney decided to form a band, recruiting
drummer Denny Seiwell and guitarists Denny Laine and Henry McCullough to form Wings.
McCartney's self-taught wife Linda was also in the mix: She played keyboards…despite
having no prior professional musical experience.
"People would say, you know, 'What's he doing with his old lady up there?'
You know."
"Quite a gutsy thing to do, really.
Because she didn't have the experience that you had."
"It was a very gutsy thing to do."
Well, Seiwell and Laine were seasoned musicians and reportedly resented Linda's involvement.
In Man on the Run: Paul McCartney in the 1970s, Tom Doyle wrote that even in the band's early
rehearsals:
"There were already murmurs of dissent within the ranks over Linda's role in the band."
According to the book, McCullough even suggested that McCartney fire and replace his wife,
which he resisted.
But as Doyle writes,
"Once, in a moment of irritation, [McCartney] threatened to replace her with [former Beatles
collaborator] Billy Preston."
Band on the Run is probably Paul McCartney's best work of the '70s.
It's the only Wings album to rate on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list,
and it's one of the band's top sellers, probably because it's a hit machine; it produced "Let
Me Roll It," "Helen Wheels," "Jet," and the epic title track.
It's a joyful, rollicking record, which belies the peril McCartney and the bandmates endured
trying to make the thing.
They opted to record at a studio in Lagos, Nigeria.
It was monsoon season, and Nigeria was also beset by political instability and high crime
rates, one night Paul and Linda McCartney were mugged on the street, and the bandits
stole the initial Band on the Run demo tapes.
Then one day during a recording session, McCartney suddenly collapsed, and his bandmates rushed
him to a hospital, believing he'd suffered a heart attack.
Then there was the opposition.
Afrobeat icon Fela Kuti publicly accused McCartney of stealing and appropriating African music.
McCartney cleared that up by inviting Kuti to the studio to hear some tracks.
As McCartney explains:
"He came 'round to the studio, and I played him all my stuff and he said, 'Oh, nothing
like it.'"
Paul and Linda McCartney were "Relationship Goals" long before that was ever a thing.
First connecting in 1967, the former Linda Eastman was a renowned rock 'n' roll photographer,
and she and Paul married in 1969.
They were, of course, as thick as thieves, playing in Wings and raising children together.
According to Rolling Stone, they only spent about 10 nights apart during their entire
relationship, the period when Paul was detained in Japan for marijuana possession.
Tragically, Linda McCartney died at age 56 from complications relating to breast cancer
in April 1998.
Her memorial service occurred in early June 1998 at the majestic Church of St.-Martin-in-the-Fields
in London's Trafalgar Square.
More than 700 mourners saluted Linda McCartney by singing hymns and songs, including "Blackbird"
and "Let it Be."
In the wake of this sad day, a de facto rock reunion took place: George Harrison and Ringo
Starr showed up to pay their respects and support their old bandmate.
They all sang, which means Linda McCartney's funeral hosted something of a very tender
Beatles reunion.
In 1999, Paul McCartney was asked:
"Were you putting on a brave front or did you think she had beaten this disease?"
"I was putting on a brave front.
Yeah, you've got to."
He went on to say:
"I was very privileged to have thirty years with a very beautiful, strong, unusual, amazingly
talented woman."
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