New bio: McCartney had gal pals for 8 days a week
A MASSIVE NEW biography of Paul McCartney casts a sly eye on the revered rock star’s love life.
“Paul McCartney,” by Philip Norman, the author of the best selling “Mick Jagger,” comes in at 818 pages. While most of it is concerned with the icon’s musical career, it also peers closely at the women at McCartney’s side through the decades.
First off, doe-eyed McCartney was never the “nice” Beatle, the one even parents could embrace, though that’s how he played it in the early throes of Beatlemania.
According to Norman, McCartney hit it off with so many ardent young fans the numbers were legendary. McCartney once bragged to a cousin about a foursome he’d particularly enjoyed as the only male.
Eventually, the lad from Liverpool settled into a fairy-tale romance with the upper-crust doctor’s daughter, Jane Asher, even living with her family for a few years.
While McCartney and the waifish beauty were adored the world over as a couple, he never made a pass at being faithful.
In 1964, the two went house shopping in the tony district of St. John’s Wood. McCartney was just back from Los Angeles and fresh off some torrid nights with the teenage actress Peggy Lipton.
Lipton, who later starred in the hit TV series, “The Mod Squad” and married Quincy Jones, was just one of McCartney’s regular hookups throughout his five years with Asher.
Marianne Faithful’s nanny, Maggie McGovern, was another. She even stayed at the Cavendish Avenue house McCartney shared with Asher, who was often away pursuing work as an actress.
But Asher, McGovern, Lipton, and the many quick hits he scored on tour weren’t enough for the rock star’s raging libido. At some point, he added 24-year-old Apple music employee Francie Schwartz to the harem.
In 1968, on a trip to New York, after ending it with Asher, McCartney eyed a blond photographer. He’d met Linda Eastman before, but this time she snapped into focus.
The two were married six months later and stayed together until her death in 1998. There was never any suggestion throughout their 30-year union that Paul was anything but faithful.
In fact, Linda was vilified as being Paul’s Yoko, the woman who compromised his musical genius. Throughout the Cartier watch, a gift from Paul, many incarnations of his band she never seemed to have any Wings, she was a fixture. Both money. She’d hit Cox up for were derided for it. small loans when they were
Peter Cox, who collaborated shopping for ingredients. with Linda on her 1990 bestselling There were only two people “Home Cooking,” had an entirely that could stand up to Paul, according different take on the legendary to Cox. couple. Linda was no Delilah, One was his record producer, and Paul certainly wasn’t George Martin. The other was under her sway. his 1daughter, Stella, later to become Rather the opposite, in fact. an internationally acclaimed Whenever Paul would wander fashion designer. into the kitchen of their Sussex Once when the 17-year-old farmhouse, work would stop. overspent her allowance, Paul
“Everything would center on snapped at her, “Do you think him,” Cox claims. I’m made of money?”
While Linda wore a $30,000 “Well, yes, actually, Paul,” she shot back.
The cookbook was put on hold when Paul decided, after a 10-year hiatus, he was taking the band on tour again. Cox said there was a lot of back and forth about whether Linda would join him this time.
Paul seemed ambivalent, but in the end he hit the road with her at his side.
Paul’s grief when Linda died after being unsuccessfully treated for breast cancer was profound. In 1999, he delivered a drunk, slurry speech accepting his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
A few months later, at a function where he was handing out an award in Linda’s name, he met Heather Mills.
The 31-year-old, who had lost a leg in an accident and, like Princess Diana, campaigned against land mines, had turned her misfortune into gold. First, she sold her story to a tabloid, then in a memoir, “Out on a Limb.”
In time, Mills would be exposed as a pathological liar. But the revelations came too late to save Paul from “the biggest mistake” of his life. They were married and she was the mother of his youngest child, Beatrice.
In a sordid and seemingly endless divorce trial, Heather accused Paul of being an abusive drunk. When the judge awarded her a mere $50 million, which she considered a loss, Heather poured a pitcher of water over the head of Paul’s lawyer.
By then, McCartney was deep into a new romance with Nancy Shevell, a prominent New York businesswoman.
The two married in 2011, in Old Marylebone Town Hall.
It was there, decades before, that he’d wed Linda — a tribute, in its way, to both women. The two loves of his life. The book comes out May 3.