Interview for Los Angeles Times

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“After the breakup of the Beatles, I was thinking of calling my first album ‘I’m the One It Hit the Most.’ Cause it really did hit me hard,” Paul McCartney said as he relaxed by the Beverly Hills Hotel pool.

“I thought ‘Oh Jesus, what am I going to do now?’ It’s really going to be difficult to get it going on my own,” he continued, reflecting on his feelings at the time of the split of the most successful group in the history of pop music. “But it kind of turned itself around and became a challenge. It’s corny to say it, but it did. It became a challenge to me. I thought either I was going to go under or I was going to get something together.“

It has been four years now since McCartney announced he was leaving the Beatles, thus formally ending what was an already crumbling, tense relationship. Since that break, McCartney has recorded five albums, formed a new band (Wings) and toured in Europe. He has also starred in a television special and received an Oscar nomination for his song “Live and Let Die.” He has, obviously, met the challenge.

But it hasn’t necessarily been easy—emotionally or artistically. There were numerous moments of self-doubt. While each of his albums has been a major seller, several of them have been rapped by critics. His latest album (“Band on the Run”), however, seems to have pleased both critics and fans.

The success of “Band on the Run”—it moved to No. 1 last week on the nation’s sales charts—and his plans to tour here with Wings contributed to a general optimism and confidence in McCartney’s mood as he talked candidly about the events surrounding the traumatic breakup with the Beatles and his life since.

With him by the pool was his wife, Linda, who is with him in Wings, and their three daughters. They had come to Los Angeles to attend the Academy Awards. His composition lost to “The Way We Were,” but it didn’t daunt McCartney’s spirit.

“We didn’t really expect to win,” he said, acknowledging the infectious, but limited nature of the song. If he had been conscious of an Oscar possibility when writing them, he would have tried to make it more substantial, he noted. Still, he said it was fun to get nominated and to attend the ceremony.

“A few people told us it was stupid to go to the Oscars,” McCartney offered. “They said ‘Why go? This man’s gonna say you lost and you’re not gonna have to sit there and… But that’s not the point to me.

“It’s not just this thing of winning, winning, winning. There’s also the matter of patience and long term and all that. I’m not too heavily into ‘I’ve got to to win everything.’ I know I can’t win everything. But I can win a lot. By attending the Oscars, we were just saying hello, glad to be here, we’re happy with what you’re doing.”

When I arrived at the hotel, McCartney was in the pool with one of his daughters. Linda was sunning herself on a nearby patio chair. Like Yoko Ono, Linda has sometimes received negative or ridiculing treatment from the press, but she was friendly, engaging as she moved back and forth between watching the children and sitting in on the interview.

Surprisingly, McCartney seemed more guarded in the early moments of the interview than John Lennon had been when I interviewed him a few months ago, but gradually he eased and talked with his increasing frankness and openness. Any Beatles reunion, it seems, would be temporary. Wings is clearly his chief interest.

You seem to feel in good spirits now.

Yeah, I am. I definitely did go through a bit of thinking ‘Oh blimey, I really do need the Beatles. Such a silly thing for us to break up.’

When was that?

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For about a year after the Beatles broke up. Off and on. It sort of depended on the weather or your mood. I’m just like anybody else. You wake up and it’s a lousy day … and it’s not going well and it falls in on top of you. For me, it wasn’t the job at the office that fell in. I didn’t enjoy going to the job one anymore. They weren’t there with you. So you’d have stayed with the Beatles, Paul? “So it got to be, but there wasn’t much they could do about it, so it inspired many a morning of saying ‘Listen, do you want to get back together?’ No one seemed like they wanted to so I just had to hang in there and work it out.

Looking back on your solo albums, how do you view them now? Let’s start with the first one, ‘McCartney.’
Well, I thought ‘McCartney’ was quite good. Some people still think it was my best album. But then it didn’t quite do it in every way. It did it saleswise, but it didn’t do it critically. It was very down home, funky, just me recording on my own, playing all the instruments. After it got known, I thought—it was very obvious in a way—I’ll just do the opposite next time. So, ‘Ram’ was quite the opposite way—big band, big production, everything they weren’t. But again, that was criticised although I thought we really did quite a good production job. So, I recorded ‘Wild Life’ in two weeks. The whole theory there was ‘Let’s go in and rehearse it and record it ourselves’—no frills. Here it just sat there, very ‘progressive.’ Then it goes like this: we’ll go right into another big one. So we did ‘Red Rose Speedway,’ which was more production and commercial … and we thought we’d bring it all together with the last one, ‘Red Rose Speedway.’ That was fine and fun.

Did you have a special feeling about ‘Band on the Run’?
Yeah, I liked the album. We went to Lagos in Africa to do it. It was a great feeling being there. It was more of the thing of just having a battle to get it done. Two of the guys in Wings left before we went to Lagos, one when we just left London. We were really forging a new Africa. And also some strange things happen once we got there. In Lagos, these guys were really sensitive about the idea of people ripping off their music. They couldn’t understand why we had come to Lagos.

We told them there was no dirty motive behind it. It’s just that we thought it would be sunny. We thought it would be a sort of holiday while we recorded. That’s all we wanted. But it turned out to be cloudy. It was the same season when we got here before, so we blew it. To add to it all, we got held up at knifepoint over there and robbed.

Why do you think the critical response has been better than for previous albums?
I don’t know. Maybe, it’s just a good album. I’d say what happens more to me, I keep hearing these things get on the radio and, before it has registered that it’s mine, I think that’s good and I’m over at the radio trying to pick [it] (realizes it’s his own song). But I feel the next one will be better.

When you did your first Wings tour in England, I understand that you just showed up unannounced at colleges because you didn’t want a lot of press there. Why was that?
It was because the Beatles had just broken up and there I was trying to think of a new band and I knew that the critics were there; they’d show no sympathy, no understanding at all … so the first year when going to say, ‘Well, of course … it’s different for him, having just come from …’ They weren’t going to give me all of that a try. They would just have said, ‘Nope, whoever that new band is, He’s blowing it.’ Which is what a lot of them did say: ‘Get back Paul, get back to the Beatles. This is silly’ and so forth.

You were the first ex-Beatle to tour. What was that a difficult decision?
Well, yeah, there was all that. I don’t think anyone was madly keen on the whole touring syndrome. Ringo wasn’t. It was just a little bit difficult at the time. Everyone had their own ideas that couldn’t be put into one salad. John wasn’t into touring. We weren’t madly arguing, because he didn’t really want to tour anyway, leaving his kids and family and stuff. There were all things from our old network of attitudes … and this was the kind of life that was banded forever.

John kind of liked the group to leave and that was kind of different than me. As soon as the group broke up, I said ‘Well, I’m going to go ahead with the band idea.’ And I went ahead with Wings. George was in some different kind of syndrome with his friends, so he wasn’t too madly into touring.

Was the reluctance of the Beatles to tour because of the craziness and hassle that surrounded the tours?
Well, yeah, there was all that. I don’t think anyone was madly keen on the whole touring syndrome. Ringo wasn’t. It was just a little bit difficult at the time. Everyone had their own ideas that couldn’t be put into one salad. John wasn’t into touring. We weren’t madly arguing, because he didn’t really want to tour anyway, leaving his kids and family and stuff. There were all things from our old network of attitudes … and this was the kind of life that was banded forever.

Do you agree with the general feeling that you’ll never get back together with the Beatles for a tour?
I really don’t know about the show thing because it’s the easiest thing in the world to assemble a Beatles package together and say ‘Right, here we go.’ But then I also see a lot of hangups about assembling a Beatles thing purely guesswork. I haven’t even talked to them about it. But it’s that possible, erm, miracle there. You might get a stage show or something …

Wouldn’t it be difficult going into the studio, trying to decide whose songs you’ll do, etc?
Yes, it would be.

Wouldn’t just doing a live show be easier?
No, a show is hard. If you go on and do a show, you’ve got to know how people are doing it today. Because I went to a Led Zeppelin gig. Zeppelin goes on and they do a good show because they have the thing together as a band. They’ve got absolute confidence in each other. You get a band that hasn’t played together for 10 years and pass up will, well, then it’s difficult.

Was there the suggestion you could do a set with Wings, Ringo doing a set with his band, John with his, and so forth?
Yeah, I don’t like that idea of the set with Wings. That’s just a bit like I’ll do a set with Wings, then John’s band would do a set with his band and Ringo and Stewart would do a set with the Faces. But that’s the same really. Why bring it all into one?

If someone made you an offer tonight, fee is just one and in some links together.
I don’t think anyone is going to do anything until the publishing thing (and Beatle agreements) is sorted out.

Are you still in touch with Allen Klein?
We’re all set to finish. We could settle today, this week. I don’t know what’s delaying it. It’s a long delay. We know it exists. And that’s the truth.

How did fans hang back?
The young kids, they weren’t totally lacking enthusiasm. If you go out to a school, they’ll like to see you because you are a Beatle. But as the years went by, I was seeing new fans that were just now kidding that we’d split.

If you had it your way, what would you do?
I’d like it just for once to all be together to rehearse a bit, work out a good show, and maybe a new Beatles album. I’d say that’s as far as anyone could take it now because everyone is doing new things.

Would you like to play with the others again?
I think it would be nice if we could all get together, get the business thing, play a little together, help each other a little. There wouldn’t be much of a set about the Beatles playing together. I think we’d get into all the old things in our head which think it difficult.

Would you stream old-time rock?
Well, no, you sort of recall times from Liverpool, school uniforms, the mates, the statements, the music we heard. Eventually, we all became famous.

If we were to get back on the track one day …
Right. We might try to get back on the track one day. If we were going to put out something, we might put out an LP together. But the thing is, it’s difficult when you’ve been through so much. The Beatles thing—we all knew the Beatles thing as a marriage thing. In a marriage, you keep the friendship like exes but there’s that sort of thing … friendships like exes have children as well! We want to aim for a good aim and that’s what we’re going for: we’re aiming high.

How many dates is Wings’ tour?
We’re starting with a tour in about spring. We’re definitely going to do it here next spring.

Was it hard in the beginning putting Linda in the group?
Criticism—yeah, it was a problem but not as much as other things. I’m sure it wasn’t just me because we had criticism but it didn’t really go on to me much. But it wasn’t as bad as you’d imagine. She’s good. She’s a good singer. We’re fine. I don’t care for her, I’m for her, she’s for me.

Have you thought about the Wings show yet?
Yeah, we did have ideas. We’ve got a lot of ideas and they’re going to be included in it. We’re going to be playing from ‘McCartney’ to ‘Band on the Run.’ I’ll do some, Jimmy McCulloch and Linda will do her song ‘Seaside Woman’ which we used in ‘Wide Prairie,’ and maybe Denny will do a song from his album. My show number went well. And one show number I’ll have is also a lot of ideas from the material. We want to aim for the best. That’s what we’re going for, we’re aiming high.