Paul McCartney spends time with Linda Eastman in New York

In mid-August 1968, Paul McCartney invited Linda Eastman to visit him in London. They first met in May 1967 in London, spent additional time together when Paul and John visited New York in May 1968 for Apple’s promotion, and their romance blossomed in June 1968 during Paul’s promotional trip to Los Angeles for Apple.

Linda travelled to London, leaving Heather, her daughter from a previous marriage, in New York. She arrived in late September, while Paul and the other Beatles were finishing the recording of their new double album, “The Beatles.” The final recording session for the album was on October 18, 1968. Afterwards, the Beatles parted ways until the end of the year and reconvened on January 2, 1969, to begin the “Get Back” sessions.

On October 20, 1968, Paul and Linda flew to New York for a few days. During this trip, Paul met Linda’s family, particularly her daughter Heather, her father Lee Eastman, a show business attorney, and her brother John Eastman, a partner at the family’s law and management firm, Eastman & Eastman. Paul was impressed by the knowledge of Lee Eastman regarding music publishing rights and business. Following this encounter, Paul McCartney began to view Eastman & Eastman as the solution for the management of both The Beatles and their company, Apple, and he proposed this to the other members of the band in late 1968 / early 1969.

On October 25, 1968, Paul and Linda were seen in Liverpool. A comment on the blog “Meet the Beatles for Real” suggests the following timeline:

Paul, Linda, and Neil made a couple back and forth trips to NYC. Paul & Linda were there from the 20th to the 23rd. They came back & then they & Neil flew back to NYC on the 27th. On the 30th they flew to Jamaica and then came back to London on the 1st of November. They spent some time after that in Scotland.

From Meet the Beatles for Real: Paul returns to the Cavern 1968

This time spent in New York solidified their relationship, and they took the decision to be together. They came back together in London on November 1 with Heather. By November 5, they had travelled to Scotland, with a stopover in Liverpool, to spend time at High Park Farm, owned by Paul.

It was his idea. I wasn’t totally sure we could carry it off, but he was. He said he wanted to meet Heather, and to know about how I lived and where I lived. My God! He wanted to see New York. He really had never seen New York. He’d been there about six times, but always as a Beatle. Which meant as a prisoner. We figured it could be a disaster if he were recognized, and how could we make sure it would not get uncomfortable, so we did the disguise thing. He loved fooling people into thinking he was not him, that he was an ordinary bloke. Everyone in the world wanted to be him, and he wanted to be ordinary. For a few weeks. I still can’t believe the press didn’t find out.

Linda Eastman – From “Linda McCartney – A Portrait” by Danny Fields, 2000

A couple of things really struck me about her: I liked her as a woman, she was good-looking with a good figure and so physically I was attracted to her, but her mental attitude was, and still is, quite rebellious because she was brought up in this rather lofty, well-to-do world. It wasn’t huge conspicuous wealth, but relative to me it was huge wealth.

Paul McCartney – From “Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now” by Barry Miles, 1997

I had a full beard at that time so I wasn’t very recognisable as Beatle Paul, inverted commas, ‘I am a Beatle!’ Linda would take me to thrift shops, and there was a big army and navy store that we went to on 125th Street where I picked up an old uniform with a couple of stripes so I looked a bit like a Vietnam vet. I looked like the guy who would mug you rather than the guy you’d want to mug, so I was really quite safe on the streets with that disguise. Nobody was going to see me as me and nobody really knew Linda. She wore very casual jeans and a beige jacket, like a photographer, so it wasn’t a couple of very rich people walking round New York, it was more the kind of people you’d want to avoid, you’d let them go on the pavement. So it was good, we were very free consequently.

Paul McCartney – From “Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now” by Barry Miles, 1997

We had a lot of fun together, getting together the first time. We were exploring each other and our surroundings and there was a lot of fun attached to that, just the nature of how we are, our favourite thing really is to just to hang, to have fun. And Linda’s very big on just following the moment. We used to spend a lot of time just wandering around, going into bars, literally just exploring New York. New York has this great literary ambience. You could imagine Jack Kerouac or Norman Mailer or Dylan Thomas or William Burroughs hanging out in these little places rather than at the Carlyle. We never went to the Carlyle, it would more likely be Flanagan’s Bar.

Paul McCartney – From “Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now” by Barry Miles, 1997

So we wandered round New York, getting tighter and tighter. We’ve always been very close and that was the beginning of it all. It was a great change in my life. I’ve always had quite serious relationships, I didn’t have that many women. I had girlfriends and one-night stands a lot, the swinging sixties, sexual revolution. But this was the start of this new kind of relationship for me. I found it very liberating. I found it very good for me as a person. There was a newspaper headline, ‘Linda and Paul, 9000 Nights of Love’, because apart from when I was busted in Tokyo, we have pretty much spent every night together. Personally I never saw any reason to be somewhere that she wasn’t.

Paul McCartney – From “Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now” by Barry Miles, 1997

On the subway he did get noticed and a few people started following us a bit, but then we’d just get on a train and lose them. Usually if anyone recognised Paul on the subway it was all ‘Hey, man, groovy, peace’ — they loved him. Black guys too, because we used to go up to Harlem a lot. I remember walking around Harlem and some guy asking Paul about ‘Revolution’, ‘Did you guys really mean that song, how did you mean that? Were you being aggressive, were you not being aggressive?’ I did not change my lifestyle one bit and Paul dressed down to my way of life. He was definitely funking out a bit. I remember he got this great old herringbone coat at a thrift shop on 3rd Avenue for $10. It was brilliant.

Linda McCartney – From “Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now” by Barry Miles, 1997

It was on this carefree trip that Paul impulsively proposed marriage to Linda for the first time, inspired by a storefront Buddhist temple that advertised quickie weddings (it would not have been a legal marriage according to New York State law), and Linda, claiming that her first marriage had given her a negative feeling for the institution of wedlock, refused. Quite obviously, she knew she would be asked again. I rather think it was not the memory of her first marriage, which ended quite amicably, but the impulsiveness of the proposal that elicited Linda’s emphatic “no.” She wanted it thought out very carefully. This was not to be a relationship jumped into on a giddy walk in Lower Manhattan.

From “Linda McCartney – A Portrait” by Danny Fields, 2000

[Paul] flew to New York to stay with Linda, not in an expensive hotel, but in her small, two-room walk-up off Lexington Avenue. Yorktown was a safe and cosmopolitan district three blocks from Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was easy to hop on and off the subway to Harlem, or to wander into Irish bars and listen to music. Linda showed Paul where she shopped for clothes, in Goodwill, or thrift stores. He bought an ex-Vietnam combat jacket and a herringbone tweed overcoat that he wore for years. Paul loved the sense of freedom, and for ten days they ate in little German and Italian restaurants and hung out. Paul admired the way that Linda looked after her child. He would lie on the couch and watch while she fed Heather with real food and not take-out. “She had a wonderful maternal instinct,” he said. “I suppose in a way I was remembering how my own mum used to look after us.”

Tony Bramwell – From “Magical Mystery Tours: My Life with the Beatles“, 2005 – The way Tony Bramwell tells this story suggests Paul flew to New York to see Linda, before Linda travelled to London in September 1968 ; we haven’t found any other evidence of this.

Around this time, Paul was writing the song “She Came In Through the Bathroom Window” and needed a final verse. In the yellow cab to the New York airport, he noticed a mug shot with the driver’s name written in large black letters (Eugene Quits), with the mention “New York Police Dept” beneath that.

So I got “So I quit the police department”, which are part of the lyrics to that. This was the great thing about the randomness of it all. If I hadn’t been in this guy’s cab, or if it had been someone else driving, the song would have been different. Also I had a guitar there so I could solidify it into something straight away.

Paul McCartney – From “Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now” by Barry Miles, 1997

The “Out Of College” segment of “You Never Give Me Your Money” was also existing at that period:

I remember being on the subway once and Linda said, ‘Look, I’ve got to go to the dentist. You just take Heather up to the apartment, she knows the way from the subway.’ So I was led up from the 83rd Street exit from the subway, and then Heather walked me along pasta little shoe shop where we got her shoes, and then past the doorman, up in the lift. We had fun. I remember I was singing, “Out of college, money spent, see no future, pay no rent, but oh, that lovely feeling, nowhere to go!’ This was how it was then, it still is our favourite thing.

Paul McCartney – From “Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now” by Barry Miles, 1997

A few years later, after he’d broken up with Jane, he rang me and said, ‘Listen, I’ve just got back from New York, and I’ve met this wonderful girl, she’s American and she doesn’t know anyone over here. Do you mind meeting up with her and maybe go shopping or something?’ And I said absolutely. And I remember we went shopping in Knightsbridge. Linda had Heather with her, her little girl from her first marriage, who was only six, and then I took them for lunch at San Lorenzo. When Linda first came over the fans and media were horrible to her. They gave her so much stick. It was just sour grapes pure and simple. She’s a really good lady and over the years has been a fantastic friend to me and Carly and later Leigh and Ace. She’s a very special person and we all adore her. Their kids are amazing, very together and very normal and I’ve known them since they were born. The McCartneys are proof that money and fame don’t have to muck people up. It’s all a question of attitude, of family values. I so admire them. They seem to have got things right.

Twiggy – From “Twiggy in black and white: an autobiography“, 1998

Going further

The Beatles Diary Volume 1: The Beatles Years

With greatly expanded text, this is the most revealing and frank personal 30-year chronicle of the group ever written. Insider Barry Miles covers the Beatles story from childhood to the break-up of the group.

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