Interview for RAVE Magazine

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Paul McCartney sat astride an antique chair, the gold of it touching his well-styled suit. He looked at home, relaxed and confident. His neat face was in repose, but his eyes were watchful. I thought how beautifully arrogant he looked, like some enthroned king, assured of his position and the adulation of his fans. Paul has always been assured of love, yes. As a child, outside Liverpool, his face, with its round eyes, and his hair so clean and soft and brown, endeared him to old ladies and mothers.

But Paul is not so sure of his Beatle throne, because he knows that, even now, it can turn as magically into an ordinary chair again, leaving him just a wealthy ex-pop-world entertainer, once fabulously famous as one quarter of a group called The Beatles.

He isn’t always the angelic figure he appears, either. There is a sparkle in the round eyes that chills, and a bite behind the choirboy mouth that can sting. Once Paul said of some autograph hunters, “Oh, let them in. They want to see if we are real. Get in your cages, fellows.” He objects, reasonably, to people who do not know each individual Beatle name. Writer Michael Braun reported in his book ‘Love Me Do’ that at the English ambassador’s party in Washington a woman approached Paul. “Which one are you?” she asked. “Roger,” Paul snapped. “Roger what?” “Roger McCluskey the Fifth,” he said, and walked on.

This side of Paul is kept strictly under control. It is a natural, understandable by-product of too much fame and too many sight-seers.

Basically, he is a warm, responsive person, whom I have always thought the friendliest of the four. Nowadays many people report they find him the most difficult to talk to. My experience is that he is still the same as he was at the beginning of Beatledom, when he was the unofficial spokesman, because of his natural good manners. At our first meeting he turned the interview into a lovely evening. Nowadays, probably because the tension of his world is so much greater, he seems to find it harder to get interested in conversations. It must be rather like sitting in the dentist’s waiting room and trying to carry on a conversation when all you can think about is that it is your turn next! When Paul is in his dressing-room, he is thinking of the pending show. He is often strung up, whistling, tapping his fingers, looking absently out of the window.

When he was in America he was asked whether he is still susceptible to criticism. He nodded. “Criticism is meant to keep you alive and strengthen your talent,” the journalist pointed out. Paul shook his head. “It doesn’t keep me alive,” he said. “It hurts.”

John is the Beatle who hates phoney praise, but Paul may well welcome its reassurance even if he recognises its falseness. He both flatters and responds to flattery. He likes you to say, “That’s a super shirt.” He smiles, and temporarily relaxes. In return he will often admire something of yours. He is interested in people enough to notice things about them. He cares about people, about what they think of him, and he thinks of them.

It has been reported that after actress Jill Howarth spent an afternoon in America in the company of The Beatles, she said despairingly, “I couldn’t get a conversation started with Paul. He didn’t react. I tried so hard.” That was probably the mistake. He avoids people who try to get at him too positively. But given time he will come round.

One question that he has been asked over and over is, “What, if anything, does he still want from life?”

He still wants security. All four Beatles have always had a thing about security. The story goes that they tried to take out life insurances when they were too young to keep up the payments themselves. Nowadays, they have all the security of a great fortune, but Paul still seems obsessed by what the future holds. He wonders what will happen in the future. Who will his friends be? Will he get married and make a good life for his wife and children?

Paul regards the past with affection. He laughs and scratches his head, and says reflectively, “The thrill of our first record selling will never be surpassed.”

I asked him recently why he feels the group went to such dizzy heights.

“We had a lot of luck,” he said, modestly, because it really seems they had far more than luck! “I suppose John and I can write good songs which helped, but we’re not great musicians, you know. I don’t really think of myself as a musician, but a member of a group. I got a thing going with the guitar, sure, but I can only make sounds by sense and feel, not by knowledge.”

The thing that has impressed Paul about his career is the number of records that the Beatles sold. The Beatles started as a recording group, and are still basically that. The films and the personal appearances they make are a by-product of records. Once they stop selling records they say they will stop doing everything else. They make films because they are recording stars, not because they want to be film stars. “Do you know we have sold somewhere around one hundred million records,” Paul said, incredulously.

Once he starts talking to you, he talks reasonably, his huge eyes

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