Paul McCartney (97 page)

During the next weeks, just one news story displaced 9/11 and the ‘war on terror’ declared by President Bush and blindly followed by Prime Minister Blair that was to have such dire consequences for the new century. On 29 November, George died from cancer, aged 58.

As with John’s death 21 years earlier, the headlines were a size normally awarded to great politicians or heads of state. Paul faced the massed cameras in Sussex and, unlike after John’s death, was word-perfect: ‘I’m very sad, devastated. He was a lovely man… I grew up with him and I like to remember the great times we had together in Liverpool and with the Beatles, and ever since really. I’m privileged to have known him and I love him like he’s my brother.’

They had last met a couple of weeks earlier at Staten Island University Hospital, New York, after George had learned that any further treatment was useless and that he wouldn’t see another Christmas. Paul and Heather went to New York for the day by Concorde, and Paul sat beside George’s bed, stroking his hand–something that would have been unimaginable in their macho, buttoned-up youth.

The sad irony of George’s final days was that he was effectively homeless. He would not return to Britain, afraid that fans would hold a ghoulish vigil outside Friar Park, and the journey to his house on Maui in the Hawaiian islands was too complicated, exhausting and vulnerable to media-nuisance.

Obsessively private to the last, he had hired the celebrity security consultant Gavin de Becker to transport him someplace where he could meet his end with his wife and son in absolute seclusion. This end-of-the-roadie subsequently announced his death had occurred in Los Angeles, at 1971 Coldwater Canyon.

No such address existed: George had actually passed away at Paul’s new property on Heather Road, Beverly Hills. In just that same way, when they were school friends at the Inny, he’d so often suggested, ‘Why don’t you come round to my house?’

Stella McCartney’s career in fashion continued to be stellar. After only four years of designing for Chloé, she had launched her own label in a joint venture with Italy’s glamour-soaked house of Gucci, which gave her total creative freedom. She was just 30, the same age at which her father had gone solo three decades earlier.

Stella still wanted to give Paul’s relationship with Heather a chance, and so invited them both to her first collection under her own name that autumn. It was a tough decision, for her mother had been at her first show for Chloé in 1997 with only months left to live.

As Paul arrived, he greeted the cameras with the peace sign that he and Linda always used to make together, and Heather followed suit. There is of course no copyright on peace signs but to Stella, under the stress of the occasion, it seemed her mother’s place was being usurped in the most blatant way. One of her friends later told the Daily Mail: ‘She was so angry, she told her dad there was no way she was having Heather to the after-show party so they both had to miss it.’

From burning towers to dreaming spires: the first performance of Paul’s oratorio Ecce Cor Meum took place at Oxford’s Sheldonian Theatre only weeks after the Concert for New York City. It was sung by the Magdalen College choir, whom he had personally rehearsed, and conducted by the college’s director of music, Bill Ives. The applause from the assembled academics was rapturous and at the end Paul was presented with a bouquet of flowers which, in its way, meant more to him than the most golden of discs.

Privately, he was unhappy with the performance, though blaming no one but himself. He’d composed much of the score on a synthesiser, unmindful that half the choir consisted of small boys, and many passages proved simply too tiring for them. Five more years would pass before he thought Ecce Cor Meum ready for a London premiere or release as an album.

At the beginning of 2002, he took Heather back to India to celebrate her thirty-fourth birthday. This time, they didn’t travel around, but stayed at a luxurious lakeside resort in Kerala. On her birthday morning, Paul filled their cabin with flowers and gave her a sapphire and diamond bracelet to match her engagement ring.

Afterwards, Heather went to Vietnam on another landmine mission while he plunged into preparations for his first world tour since 1993. The ostensible purpose was to promote the Driving Rain album (to which ‘Freedom’ had become a last-minute addition). But really it marked an end to mourning and the start of a new era, for Heather was to go on the road with him just as Linda used to. As the title of its live album would later announce, Paul McCartney was Back in the World.

Rather than use his excellent 1993 backing band, he formed yet another new one, re-hiring only Londoner Wix Wickens to play keyboards with the new title of musical director. The rest were seasoned American session men: lead guitar Rusty Anderson and drummer Abe Laboriel, Jr, both of whom had been on Driving Rain, and Brian Ray, a blond, suntanned young Californian doubling on guitar and bass. Ray was so awed by Paul’s own bass-playing that ‘I didn’t dare look up from my fingering for about the first six months’.

However, there was no suggestion of Heather joining the band as Linda had, even though she possessed some skill on the saxophone. This time around, love wasn’t that blind.

The first of two ‘Back in the US’ segments, which opened in Oakland, California, on 1 April, struck a determined note of novelty. Each show began with a performance by Cirque du Soleil, the young French-Canadian circus troupe which eschewed traditional and often cruel animal acts. As the Cirque’s gold-painted acrobats and ballerinas performed aloft, remixes of Paul’s dance music with Martin (Youth) Glover provided the soundtrack.

However, that was but a vigil to be patiently borne before the giant shadow of a violin bass loomed above the stage–and there once again were the eyes, still doe-like, the delicate jawline only slightly blurred, the hair as youthfully thick and shapely as ever, though now tending to not-quite-natural auburn, the T-shirt no longer saying ‘GO VEGGIE’ but ‘NO MORE LANDMINES’. The worshipping mega-celebs sat row on row: Sylvester Stallone, Jack Nicholson, Michael Douglas, Brian Wilson. Women shrieked louder than 1963. Strong men’s eyes filled with tears at the first notes of ‘All My Loving’.

He felt it his mission to raise his audiences’ spirits just as the Beatles had once, unknowingly, lightened the dark days after the Kennedy assassination. And it was no mere rock-star conceit. One woman he talked to in a meet-and-greet told him that after 9/11 she’d vowed never to fly again, yet had taken a plane to come and see him. And ‘Freedom’ was a show-stopper everywhere. ‘Let’s do it for all these fine people here tonight,’ he’d tell the band as they went onstage, ‘and keep this uplifting spirit going.’

George’s death cast a lesser but still monumental shadow. Paul’s tribute was to perform ‘Something’, his ex-bandmate’s best-known song, not with its usual high emotion and big production but alone, plink-plonking on a ukulele, an instrument they both loved.

In May, he had to fly home briefly for an exhibition of his paintings at Liverpool’s illustrious Walker Art Gallery. As teenagers, he and John would often play truant from school and college respectively to look at the Walker’s Rembrandts, Poussins and Pre-Raphaelites. John, the so-called ‘serious’ artist, had later been widely exhibited, but never like this in his home city.

The Walker’s Art of Paul McCartney exhibition (given premium place next to a display of Turners) comprised 70 canvases, painted over the past 20 years, and six sculptures made from driftwood picked up on the Sussex shore. The subjects were mostly landscapes, flowers and abstracts inspired by Celtic myth, though there were some rather self-conscious shockers such as Tits On Fire, Running Legs With Penis and Bowie Spewing–David Bowie being sick. The only one completed since Heather’s advent, titled Big Heart 1999, was a red heart with a nude figure scratched on it.

At the press preview, Paul recalled his long-ago wanders through these same galleries with John, subtly mixing self-deprecation and yah-boo. ‘If I’d said then, “I’m going to have an exhibition here someday,” I think I know what he would have said… I’m not trying to impress anyone but myself. I think I’ve shown the world enough already.’

Heather was at every one of those first 27 American dates and every night Paul dedicated ‘Heather’ to her with its declaration of undying love: ‘I could spend eternity beside your loving flame.’ Yet he also mentioned Linda and aimed ‘My Love’, his emblematic song for her, at ‘all the lovers in the house, and you know who you are’. The very lava lamp on top of Wix Wickens’s keyboard was a memorial to the ones Linda always used to position around the stage.

It still amused him that–alone in the nightly singing-along masses–Heather knew almost nothing about the Beatles and recognised almost nothing he’d written for them. ‘She hears something on the radio and says, “Hey, that’s pretty good. Is it one of yours?”’ he laughed. ‘I say, “Yes, it’s ‘Get Back’.”’

The documentary camera that shadowed them caught some affectionate moments, arm-in-arm in backstage corridors, sharing sushi aboard the tour’s private jet or making friends with a chimpanzee (to which Paul couldn’t resist giving a private keyboard-recital). But there were some barbed exchanges also. One hotel-suite scene shows him doing a telephone interview while Heather, a few feet away, pores over a laptop. He’s musing how once life on the road used to be all about ‘picking up girls’, but he wouldn’t try it these days. ‘It’s more than my life’s worth. I’d get hammered.’

‘You wouldn’t want to,’ Heather shouts from her laptop.

‘I can’t talk to you and do an interview,’ Paul answers with rather strained politeness, but she persists: ‘Say you wouldn’t want to or I’ll keep interrupting!’

He resorts to joke northern male chauvinism: ‘Shouting from the kitchen! Get back to the dishes, woman!’

In the early hours of 18 May, they checked into Miami’s Turnberry Isle hotel after the final show in that US segment. Soon afterwards, the sound of a fierce argument in their suite reached security guards patrolling the gardens below. One later claimed to have heard Paul shout, ‘I don’t want to marry you! The wedding’s off! We’ll cancel it!’ He then appeared on the balcony and threw Heather’s Indian diamond and sapphire engagement ring over the rail.

Contacted by hotel reception, he initially said nothing was wrong but then admitted a ring had been ‘lost’ and requested help in finding it. After a lengthy search of the garden by staff on all fours–in pouring rain–and deployment of metal detectors, the ring finally came to light under a bush. Paul, by then back in Britain, bought a first-class air ticket for hotel manager Rudolph Gimmi to deliver it and sent a £1500 tip to the finder.

There had been too many witnesses for the story not to get into the papers, and ‘MACCA THROWS HEATHER’S RING OUT OF HOTEL BEDROOM. EXCLUSIVE’ was the front-page splash in that Sunday’s News of the World. Little credence was given to Heather’s claim that they’d merely been ‘having a joke with the ring… playing catch with it’.

If rock had been in mourning in 2001, this year in Britain at least it had something to celebrate. On 3 June, the Queen’s Golden Jubilee was marked by a concert in the spacious and usually strictly private garden behind Buckingham Palace. The 50-year sovereign herself attended with Prince Philip, the Prince of Wales, his sons, William and Harry, and Tony and Cherie Blair. Twelve thousand spectators were admitted to the garden, the sound was relayed to about a million more outside in The Mall and the surrounding parks, and the event was televised live to a further 20 million.

The bill, appropriately enough, included Queen–whose guitarist, Brian May, kicked things off by playing ‘God Save the Queen’ on the palace roof–Elton John, Ray Davies, Phil Collins, Rod Stewart, Eric Clapton, Tony Bennett, Brian Wilson, Ben Elton and Dame Edna Everage. Paul, naturally, was the headliner, completing yet another extraordinary cycle in his life. When the Coronation had taken place in 1953, he’d won a prize for his essay about it.

His Golden Jubilee performance included a further tribute to George, though only hardcore Beatlemaniacs would have recognised its note of contrition. With Clapton he duetted on ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ from the fractious White Album, when George had brought in his mate Eric partly as moral support against a certain bossy bass-player. He also cheekily slipped in ‘Her Majesty’, his one-verse Valentine from the end of Abbey Road.

The ‘pretty nice girl’ received it all with the same equanimity she had bestowed on Commonwealth prime ministers and safety-pin factories throughout her reign. ‘Will you be doing this next year?’ Paul joked to her.

‘Not in my garden,’ the Queen replied tartly.

The contretemps with Heather in Miami had been patched up and on 11 June, a week before Paul’s sixtieth birthday, they were married in Ireland. The venue was Castle Leslie, a seventeenth-century pile near the town of Monaghan, from which his maternal grandfather, Owen Mohan, had emigrated to Liverpool.

A shadow was cast over the event, not by Heather’s past this time but by yet another middle-aged woman claiming to be Paul’s love child from a brief and forgotten liaison long ago. A 42-year-old Frenchwoman named Michelle Le Vallier alleged he had impregnated her mother, Monique, while he was ‘a struggling musician’ in London.

Le Vallier had changed her surname to McCartney, recording a song entitled ‘I Wanna Be a Beatle’ and, as final proof of her pedigree, playing a left-handed bass. Unluckily, the date on her birth certificate was 5 April 1960, which meant Paul would have had to father her in July 1959, when he was still a 17-year-old schoolboy in Liverpool.

The media were expecting the wedding–Hello! magazine had already unsuccessfully bid £1.5 million for exclusive photographic access–but believed it would be at Paul’s home on Long Island. Even when he and Heather arrived at Castle Leslie amid major catering preparations, he refused to admit what was going on. In the end, he was pre-empted by the castle’s 84-year-old owner, Sir Jack Leslie, an eccentric baronet who enjoyed bopping in local discos. ‘It’s a secret,’ Sir Jack said in a television interview, ‘but it’s on Tuesday.’