Photo by Chris Floyd
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You Say It’s My Birthday?
By Anthony DeCurtis, May & June 2006
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What could Paul McCartney possibly have known about being 60 when, as a
teenager, he wrote one of his most famous songs, "When I'm
Sixty-Four"? The Beatles later recorded the tune when McCartney was 24,
and, from that youthful vantage, 64 could only seem a time of cute, dithering
romance as a hedge against loneliness ("You'll be older too/And if you
say the word/I could stay with you"), dead-end domesticity ("Doing
the garden, digging the weeds,/Who could ask for more"), and a steady
descent into mortality ("Yours sincerely, wasting away")—all
with a wink and a nudge. London was swinging, and the Beatles were the avatars
of a seismic youthquake. Come on—who was ever going to get old?
 
As it turns out, all of us. If not old, we have—the lucky
ones—at least gotten older. Nearly 40 years after the release of
"When I'm Sixty-Four," which appears on the Beatles' 1967
masterpiece, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, many of us are
only a stone's throw from that number—as is the eternally cherubic
Sir Paul, who turns 64 on June 18.
Understandably, there was much about the future that McCartney could not
foresee back in the halcyon days of peace and love. For one thing, he would
have had a hard time imagining that he would still be playing rock 'n'
roll in his 60s. In an interview I conducted with him in London in 1987 for
Rolling Stone, McCartney looked back on the Beatles' early days and
noted, "You see old interviews with us now, and Ringo says, 'Well, you
know, I might get lucky and have a string of hairdressing salons.' That was
the apex of his vision at the time. And John and I are talking nervously:
'There might be 10 years in this.' Remember, we were 18, 20, maybe,
saying this. We couldn't see playing rock 'n' roll beyond 30. Of
course, by the time we were 30, it was still all happening."
And today McCartney rocks on. Last year he released Chaos and Creation in
the Backyard, a solo album that found him near the height of his creative
powers. Many critics—including me, in a lead review for Rolling
Stone—compared it favorably to McCartney, the album he put out
in 1970 that essentially marked the end of the Beatles. More personally,
he's in a new marriage, and less than three years ago he became a father
again. So, as he approaches 64, Sir Paul is hardly "wasting away," as
his song so pessimistically predicted. If anything, he's experiencing vital
reinvention and growth—but not without having been served his share of
sorrow and doubt along the way.
When I interviewed Paul McCartney a second time, in 2001, once again for
Rolling Stone, he described the emotional devastation he suffered when
his first wife, Linda, died of breast cancer in 1998. Their union was enviable
by any standard, but for a celebrity marriage it was an extreme rarity, and not
only because of its longevity. During their 29 years together, the couple
rarely spent time apart—to the point that Paul enlisted his wife to play
keyboards and sing background in his band Wings, even though she was a
photographer by trade, not a musician. Linda was roundly mocked, but Paul shook
off the barbs. Having Linda in Wings just made the band more fun for him.
Their greatest performance, though, was as parents. Paul and Linda had three
children together, and he also adopted Heather, Linda's daughter from a
previous marriage. All four children have gone on to lead stable, productive
lives, a tribute to the grounded, unpretentious way in which they were raised.
Heather is a renowned potter whose work is sold and exhibited around the world;
Mary, like Linda herself, has become a well-known photographer; Stella has made
a prominent name for herself as a fashion designer; and James is a guitarist
who has played on his father's albums. "I must say that is one of the
things that Linda and I always said: 'Our greatest achievement is our
kids,' " McCartney once told singer Chrissie Hynde for a story in
USA Today Weekend. "People say that they are really good
people."
Beyond that, Paul and Linda shared a passion for vegetarianism. They
determined to give up meat one day after making the emotional connection
between the leg of lamb sitting on their meal plates and the lambs they were
watching gambol on their farm in Scotland. Along with establishing a successful
line of frozen vegetarian meals, Linda became an ardent animal rights activist,
a commitment that Paul shares and continues to honor.
Fame, wealth, and accomplishment did not shield McCartney from the wracking
pain brought about by the death of a spouse. "I thought, 'How the hell
do I deal with this?' " he told me. "For about a year, I found
myself crying—in all situations, anyone I met. Anyone who came over, the
minute we talked about Linda, I'd say, 'I'm sorry about this.
I've got to cry.' "
But McCartney, the man who famously advised "Take a sad song and make
it better," slowly began to rebuild his life. He resumed his work as a
musician and songwriter, and he explored other aspects of his creativity, as
well. He published
Blackbird Singing (W.W. Norton & Co., 2001), a collection of his
poems and lyrics, and
Paintings (Bulfinch, 2000), a portfolio of the work he had done
privately as a visual artist for nearly two decades.
Most important, however, he fell in love again. He first spotted Heather
Mills, a model and anti-land mines activist, about a year after Linda's
death at a charity event where they were both presenters. He initially
contacted her about her work, but their relationship soon grew personal.
McCartney then went on the sort of complex emotional journey that will be
familiar to anyone who has once again sought romance after a beloved husband or
wife has died. In his conversation with me in 2001, he called it "the
married guilt."
"I beat myself up about that," he said about finding himself
attracted to Mills. Eventually, though, he came to understand that Linda would
have wanted him to be happy. "So I started going out with Heather,"
he recalled. "Started having a laugh, feeling good. 'Oh, my God. Am I
dating? I don't believe it. I haven't done this for 30 years! Can I do
it?' And it was 'Yes, you can.' I started to fall for Heather. And
that was it. That reawakening brought back a lot of energy."
McCartney's new romance did not sit entirely well with his children, at
least if you believe the tabloids, which have, in particular, gleefully
reported feuds between Mills and Stella. Keep in mind, too, that Mills was 31
when she and McCartney met, barely older than McCartney's biological
children and younger than the daughter he had adopted. Given Mills's age,
the couple's engagement also raised the prospect of a new family, something
that is often hard even for adult children to accept. Publicly, at least, all
the principals vigorously deny any rifts, and the press seems to have let up a
bit. McCartney and Mills married in Ireland on June 11, 2002, in front of 300
family and friends. And, on October 28, 2003, Mills gave birth to their
daughter, Beatrice Milly—just the thing to keep McCartney young.
Indeed, McCartney has sought youthful influences in all areas of his life.
In an admirable attempt to freshen up his approach to record making on Chaos
and Creation in the Backyard, he collaborated with producer Nigel Godrich,
who is 30 years his junior.
Godrich, who was personally recommended to McCartney by the Beatles'
producer, George Martin, had earned his own reputation working with bands such
as Radiohead and Travis. He proved anything but a yes man. McCartney recalled
walking out of a session because Godrich dismissed one of his songs as
"crap"—a word that McCartney had probably not heard spoken to
his face since the breakup of the Beatles. But he checked his ego and wound up
making an album that is both mature and bracingly contemporary. Chaos and
Creation garnered McCartney three Grammy nominations, and Godrich was
nominated for Producer of the Year.
In addition, the Beatle who most enjoyed performing live enthusiastically
hit the road last year, once again to rapturous reviews. McCartney was backed
by a small group of mostly younger musicians who played as if they were in
sweaty clubs rather than sold-out sports arenas. He toured for 10 weeks and
sold $83.2 million worth of tickets, making him one of the top-ten live
performers of that year. And he had started off 2005 earning nearly $3.5
million for performing just four songs during the Super Bowl halftime
show—that is more than $800,000 per song, a handsome rate even for a
billionaire like Sir Paul.
Given all that, you'd be forgiven if you thought that, having overcome
some setbacks, Paul McCartney is now living a perfectly untroubled life. But no
one's life is a fairy tale, and even rich, happily married knights struggle
with insecurities—or at least McCartney does. He has begun to think about
posterity, about the legacy he will leave behind. He has been shaken by
unflattering comparisons made between him and John Lennon since Lennon's
murder in 1980. And it's true—after Lennon died, some people
foolishly seemed to believe that in order to praise him, they had to denigrate
McCartney.
"The minute John died, there started to be a revisionism,"
McCartney explained to me in 2001. "There were some strange quotes, like
'John was the only one in the Beatles.' Or 'Paul booked the
studio.' I don't want to get into who said what, but that was
attributed to someone who very much knew better." It rankled McCartney,
who recalled all the slights: " 'John was the Mozart; Paul was the
Salieri.' Like John was the real genius, and I was just the guy who sang
'Yesterday'—and I got lucky to do that."
"I tried to ignore it, but it built into an insecurity," he
continued. "People would say, 'Paul, people know.' I said,
'Yeah, but what about 50 years in the future?' If this revisionism gets
around, a lot of kids will be like, 'Did he have a group before Wings?'
"
McCartney's proposed solution to this problem was far worse than the
problem itself. Over the past 10 years he has engaged in a protracted and often
public battle with Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, to have the writing credits on
a number of Beatles songs changed in various ways from the traditional
Lennon-McCartney citation to reflect that McCartney was either the primary or
the sole writer. To support his case, McCartney would point out, for example,
that he wrote "Yesterday," one of the most popular songs of all time,
entirely on his own, and none of the other Beatles even played on it.
But the Lennon-McCartney credit represents something far greater than either
of the two men individually. While it might be interesting, and even important,
for scholars and experts to determine the precise nature of each Beatle's
contribution to their songs, making too much of it diminishes the magic of the
Beatles' unrivaled collaborative achievements. For the moment, thankfully,
McCartney seems content to leave the credits as they are.
So, if age brings experience, satisfaction, and at least a modicum of
wisdom, it does not, alas, deliver ideal happiness. But that's precisely
what makes an artist with the drive and ambition of Paul McCartney strive for
more. And more will certainly come—more milestones, more awards, more
honors—all in recognition of a body of work seldom equaled. And so best
wishes on your 64th birthday, Sir Paul. It's been a long and winding road
for all of us, one made all the richer by the music you've provided to
light us on our way.
Anthony DeCurtis is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and the
author, most recently, of
In Other Words: Artists Talk About Life and Work(Hal Leonard, 2005). A
Grammy Award winner, he teaches in the writing program at the University of
Pennsylvania.
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