The long and winding high road: Former Beatle on his Scots inspiration
McCartney reveals how Argyll farm became a hideaway hit factory
Well, after it was number one for nine weeks 26 years ago, most of us probably remember the mists roll in from the sea and his desire is to be there.
Now Sir Paul McCartney has revealed how Scotland – and not just Mull of Kintyre – inspired and shaped many of his classic
songs. The former Beatle has told how his famous passion for High Park Farm on Kintyre where he escaped to with his wife Linda and children after the Fab Four split was not love at first sight.
In a book about his songwriting which, he says, is the closest he’ll get to an autobiography, McCartney admits initially being “not massively keen on the farm, frankly” but, crucially, Linda was. He said if it had not been for his wife’s enthusiasm, High Park would have remained “virtually derelict”.
The musician reveals the impact Scotland had on him in his new book The Lyrics – an autobiographical opus told through the words to 154 key songs that he wrote, and the stories behind them. “We really found ourselves in Scotland,” admitted McCartney.
In an attempt to avoid the taxman, Sir Paul’s financial advisors suggested he invested in property. The threebedroom run-down farmhouse had an asking price of £35,000, and came with 183 acres of land.
At the height of Beatlemania, McCartney, encouraged by his then girlfriend Jane Asher, bought it in 1966 but it was only when newly married to American Linda Eastman in 1969 that he decided to make it a home.
The farm would become home to Linda’s daughter Heather and the couple’s first child Mary. Stella, now a leading fashion designer, arrived in 1971.
“We were completely cut off on our farm in Scotland...So we just made our own fun. We drew a lot. We wrote a lot. We inspired each other. Linda took a lot of photographs, and I think Scotland helped her find a new side to her work, moving away from musicians and capturing nature and the everyday of family life,” said McCartney.
“I’d grown up in Liverpool and gone on the road with The Beatles around the world and then around again, and now here I was on a farm in the middle of nowhere, and it was sensational,” he said.
As well as the Mull of Kintyre – which became the 1977 Christmas number one and was the first single to sell over two million copies nationwide – McCartney wrote many of his best-known songs, such as The Long and Winding Road, Coming Up and Ebony and Ivory at his Kintyre farm and recorded the first demos in a converted barn studio dubbed Spirit of Ranachan.
It was also where he discovered vegetarianism and where he also got busted for growing cannabis. He subsequently bought five neighbouring farms over the years, creating a large wildlife haven.
But since Linda’s death in 1998, the ex-Beatle, who is married to Nancy, rarely visits the farm these days, with friends saying the memories are too closely associated with Linda, whose, statue commissioned by Sir Paul, stands in Campbeltown.