McCartney bio toasts a rock legend
Veteran author revisits the former Beatle with new acclaim
British writer Philip Norman, whose comprehensive new biography, Paul McCartney: The Life, is out Tuesday, acknowledges he “used to share the perception of Paul as someone who was blessed with such amazing gifts that he must be pleased with himself.”
But then Norman came to realize that the living rock legend is “also insecure. ... He’s in his 70s now, and he still thinks he has to prove himself virtually every night onstage.” In fact, McCartney launched a new tour, One On One, in April.
Born 10 months before McCartney, Norman, 73, was “thought to be anti-Paul” for a long time, he says. He met McCartney, briefly, as a rock journalist covering The Beatles in 1965. In 1981, Norman published Shout! The Beatles in Their Generation, which generated some criticism for “its over-glorification of (John) Lennon and bias against McCartney,” as Norman writes in The Life, adding, “Paul himself hated the book, so I heard.”
So imagine Norman’s astonishment when McCartney phoned him personally, more than 20 years later. The author was working on another biography, John
Lennon: The Life, and had reached out; McCartney agreed to answer any factual questions that arose via email. It was again through email, about 3½ years ago, that McCartney granted “tacit approval” (quoting the rock icon’s message) for a book tracing his own story.
Explaining his own change of heart, Norman admits to “ignorance on my part” — and perhaps a tad of jealousy. Early in Paul
McCartney: The Life (Little, Brown), the author refers to “years I’d spent wishing to be him.” In its more than 800 pages,
The Life certainly dismantles the popular myth that, as Norman puts it, “John was the avantgarde, adventurous Beatle, while Paul was tagged as the safe, mainstream one. The shadow of that misconception was always over Paul, when he was actually responsible for some of The Beatles’ most experimental work.”
Outside the studio, too, McCartney, who had followed contemporary art even as a boy in working-class Liverpool, “was living in the heart of London while John was in the suburbs. He told even John about Timothy Leary and LSD, and John picked up on that — though Paul was a more moderate person, John a much more addictive personality.”
Lennon was also “the serially monogamous one,” quips Norman, who in the book documents the frisky bachelorhood McCartney enjoyed before marrying American photographer Linda Eastman, who became his musical partner in Wings and a celebrated animal rights activist before dying of cancer in 1998.
“People didn’t think this incredibly charming, good-looking pop star wanted to settle down,” says Norman, who compares McCartney “to David Beckham today. Paul really wanted to have a family.” The Life includes interviews with McCartney’s widowed stepmother, Angie, and stepsister, Ruth, who testify to the pop star’s natural rapport with children. (McCartney has five children, including Linda’s daughter Heather, whom he adopted.) Norman also spoke with John Eastman, Linda’s brother and the lawyer who represented McCartney in his 1970 lawsuit against the other Beatles and Apple Records.
McCartney’s subsequent struggles for Beatles song copyrights (which famously went to Michael Jackson), and with second wife Heather Mills, are also examined. But Norman maintains that money is not what McCartney wants in the end.
“The love that comes to Paul is so immense, from so many people,” Norman says. “He can’t do without it, really. And he gives them back enormous happiness.”
McCartney “was actually responsible for some of The Beatles’ most experimental work.” Philip Norman