When They Were Boys (12 page)

Jim and Paul and his younger brother, Mike, later a celebrated musician and photographer, forged a closeness rarely found among teenagers and parents, especially after Mary died in 1956, following surgery for breast cancer.

The boys, shattered by their mother's death, lived for a while with relatives but reunited with their grieving father a short time later. It was a unifying coincidence that both Paul and John lost their mothers in their teenage years. That was a big hole for both, though Paul had a better support team in his father and brother.

The father and his oldest son had something that John Lennon would have given just about anything for: a relationship as a child with a grown man built on love and respect.

Paul told me years ago, before the media-blackout years of his life, “Dad is a very encouraging man, even though he wasn't crazy in the beginning about my career choice. He was . . . a wonderful man.”

Boyhood buddy and longtime Beatles associate Tony Bramwell, who looked up to Paul and still does, remembers, “The McCartneys were sweet people, always welcoming. Some of us felt it was a home away from ours.”

Kevin Roach, who works in the Liverpool Record Office and wrote
The McCartneys: In the Town Where They Were Born
, has gotten closer than any chronicler to the essence of the McCartney family.

Roach says the McCartneys were quite typical of many families in the forties and fifties.

“They were a down-to-earth working-class family. And theirs [Paul and Michael's] is a positive story of two boys growing up in Liverpool, searching for their path.”

He recalls the neighbors and friends who described them as close.

“Every family in Liverpool protects each other. Even if they didn't have fame, the families of a working-class city would guard their interests like gold in a vault.”

When Roach was researching his book, he made a golden discovery. At age ten years and ten months, Paul wrote an essay at the Joseph Williams Primary School in Speke. The essay, about the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, was written in attractive and neat cursive handwriting. One of his teachers entered the essay, unknown to Paul, in a citywide competition. Paul won and was feted, with his smiling parents present, by the Lord Mayor of Liverpool. He was said to be quite nervous on stage—odd, considering what a stage presence he would eventually create. It was his first public appearance, and his first press notice. It was only months later that he entered the Liverpool Institute High School for Boys, a prestigious school. (Today the school is called the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts. The Institute's number-one patron is James Paul McCartney.)

The well-written essay, discovered by Roach in the city records, became the subject of a tug-of-war. Mike McCartney, who served Roach well as liaison to Paul for the book, insisted that Roach return the essay to Paul. A surprised Kevin Roach didn't know what to do.

“Paul insisted that it was his. Turns out he didn't even know it existed. But it wasn't mine. In actuality, the copyright belonged to the sponsor of the
original contest: the Liverpool City Council. I went back and forth with Mike, and eventually Paul relented. He did get a copy, a digital copy, which I'm told is locked in a vault.”

The minor episode is nevertheless typical of the strong feeling of ownership that the McCartneys have.

“They are very guarded,” Roach reiterates. “Remember that they are probably the most investigated and examined family in the world. They will defend. They will not respond to malicious material, nor will they offer much in the way of quotes.”

One example of the McCartneys' reticence is their failure to respond to a real lie that made the rounds over the decades. In light of this preposterous accusation, Roach performed an extraordinary investigation, in his own right, that helped the McCartney family.

Flyers distributed on the perimeter of the 1964 farewell salute to the Beatles at Liverpool City Hall charged that Paul McCartney was the real father of a little boy. Was it a shakedown? No one knew for sure until recently, when the young man in question proved to Roach and John Gannon—his coauthor on
The Beatles: Living in the Eye of the Hurricane
—that there was no way Paul was, indeed, his father.

Roach's description of a family unwilling to address even its own honor is telling of its extreme caution. With the exception of the early days, and entertainment-oriented interviews, both McCartney sons can really be described as a closed book. Paul is a sensitive man, perhaps just as eager to be viewed in a positive light today as he was in those rarified early days. Michael McCartney is constantly afraid that access to him will injure his brother. I admire the brothers' all-for-one-and-one-for-all posture. It is commendable, but dangerous, especially when less responsible elements of the contemporary media look for dirt. “No comment” to most people means the subject of a report has something to hide. And to the public eye, perception always seems to trump reality.

That air of protectiveness is a positive tribute to the bond of family, yet it is also a bond of silence that opens the family up to distortions.

About two people in their lives, there is no mystery. Father Jim, who was
also in a band as a teenager, was extremely supportive. Mother Mary was determined that Paul follow a disciplined path. She was happy that, at the time of her death, Paul was on a steady road to becoming an academic.

Kevin Roach and other McCartney watchers agree that there was an irony in the tragic loss of a mother.

“Most people believe that her death may have inadvertently freed him up, given more space to pursue his dreams. You really have to wonder,” Roach says. “Paul's dad was always a fan, what Americans would call a cheerleader, a devoted dad who always beamed with pride. There were certainly generational differences, but he was more with it in understanding changes in culture than a lot of moms and dads of his own generation.”

Jim was also a source of musical inspiration, playing his favorite hits from the forties on his home piano, and creatively rigging up an electrical extension connection, complete with earphones, from the radio in the living room to the boys' bedrooms. This handiwork allowed the boys to enjoy Radio Luxembourg in their beds. While other parents disdained the early moments of rock 'n' roll as vulgar and dangerous, Jim McCartney was able to shed his classical and jazz history to understand that his boys were embracing the music for
their
times.

Young Paul rarely enjoyed his music classes at school. Early on, though, he thrilled at the hands-on approach of learning on his own. One of his greatest investments was trading in the trumpet his dad gave him for an acoustic guitar that cost fifteen pounds.

For Paul, there was always a passion for music, as witnessed on November 5, 1956, when his hero, his own music man, Lonnie Donegan, played the Liverpool Empire Theater. Paul could not get a ticket, so he stood outside with other fans hoping to catch a glimpse of his idol—in retrospect, it was an ironic mirror image of the fans who would do anything to get a glimpse of the Beatles in years to come. So the boy who would become world-famous stretched out his neck and caught a glimpse of inspiration Lonnie, not knowing that his friend George Harrison had been funded by his parents to get tickets. George was inside on
all
the Donegan concerts, and would tell people later that he “was never the same.”

In the coming months, Paul would take to riding the streets with a good friend and classmate, Ian James. They had guitars on their backs. They were ready to rock, but there were few takers. Paul started treating his guitar as a holy object, tuned and at the ready. All he needed was an audience.

Although George was the ultimate guitar man, throughout his life, Paul has also treated his strings as an extension of his body and his mind.

Even in private moments, like the relaxing hours in the rear of the tour plane, you could see Paul playing and listening to the sounds of his guitar. I would look back to the Beatles compartment on the Electra every now and then. John was always reading. They were all smoking. And above the haze of the cigarette smoke, I would always see Paul working on his guitar.

It should be noted that Gentleman Jim, as he was called by the Liverpool elite, scheduled Paul for music classes, but young Paul disdained formal musical lessons and relied more on his “ear.” Neither he nor John ever read music then, but what ears!

Beatles researcher Ron Ellis agrees with writers Roach and Gannon about the young Paul McCartney.

“Paul was sensitive to a point, but he covered it up well with a cheerful disposition, while John used his abrasiveness as a Teflon cover.”

Freda Kelly says the gene pool made a big difference for handsome, young Paul. Kelly became close to the senior McCartney. Kelly, the fan-club maven, had constant contact with the families. She could sense from Gentleman Jim that he had given Paul the basics for success at personal communications.

“We called him Uncle Jim,” Kelly says. “‘Don't call me Mr. McCartney,' he would say graciously.

“Uncle Jim was proud of his oldest son, and his desire to succeed, but he was also ferociously protective. Paul and his brother loved him, really respected him. I remember on Wednesdays he would come to the NEMS [North End Music Stores, Brian Epstein's Liverpool headquarters] and take me out for coffee. I have to say I really adored him. . . . I really did. He was just a marvelous man. It was easy to like him. He was a man of deep respect, and ferocious support of his boys.”

“Did you adore him as much as you adored his son?” I ask.

“Well, that's another story. You'll never get that one, Larry.”

We both laugh.

“I had a crush on each one of them at one time or another, but Paul just had this magical sense of hopefulness. He was a man who would always think about tomorrow, like his dad, Uncle Jim.”

Throughout his life, as a little boy, in school, and as the bike-riding guitar man, Paul was an optimist.

The boys' frequent press man and assistant to Brian Epstein, Derek Taylor, remembers, “We would get into jams, something would happen, and he would always emerge somewhere or other and smooth it over. He got us out of difficulties. I always described it as ‘the Mary Sunshine approach' to life.”

Kelly also remembers a similar optimism.

“Paul was always confident. He never really changed. He may live in a different world now, all rarified and that, but I can imagine that underneath it all, he's the same as he was.”

Kelly, one of the most admired people on the Liverpool scene, recalls a teenager brimming with panache.

“For a man his age, he exuded warmth to everybody he met. And remember, this was a great offset to John's directness.”

Brian Epstein, whose savvy catapulted the Beatles, knew that John was the true leader. But Brian also enabled Paul.

“Brian Epstein's arrival on the scene,” Bill Harry remembers, “affected the transition that turned John's boys into Paul's men. Brian allowed the leadership to change, but still gave John all the affection and respect that he needed. Make it clear. Brian allowed a big change—John's group became Paul's group, not necessarily in public, but certainly helping to shape the group in private.”

Along with all the positives of Paul's early life, and his sterling career, there are some other behavioral traits to explore, which began early and lasted forever.

While Ringo, from the early days until today, always seemed annoyed by the vagaries of celebrity and public life, Paul has always enjoyed contact with people. He seems to need the adoration, which is not uncommon in show
business, and because he is Paul McCartney he enjoys the luxury of controlling information and situations. The real story on the firing of Pete Best has direct links to Paul, as you will soon read. The independence and power that Paul exhibited at the time of the group's breakup showed him as territorial, and obsessed with taking appropriate credit. His desire for control over media content began early. It was difficult for me to penetrate his political or spiritual views during interviews, unlike with John and Ringo. But on one subject, he was forcefully outspoken. John always seemed to be the conscience of the group, but Paul took the lead in this particular case.

It happened during the 1964 tour. I advised the Beatles in their Las Vegas hotel suite that their upcoming concert at the Gator Bowl football stadium in Jacksonville, Florida, was going to be racially segregated. Immediately it was Paul who stood up first and said, “Well, that's rubbish. Tell them we are not going to play there if Negroes [the term used by many in the sixties] are seated separately.”

John echoed, “No way.” And the rest followed. The Gator Bowl management balked at first, then acquiesced. The concert was not segregated—the first time that happened in the legendary stadium. Paul's lead on this issue was emblematic of his affinity for artists held back because of race—a striking irony for a British lad who grew up in an atmosphere full of racial and religious prejudice.

Before the Gator Bowl experience, it was Paul who encouraged the group's embrace of Joe Ankrah and his magical all-black vocal group, the Chants. Watch an old video of the Chants, who began in Liverpool, and you will be enchanted by their demeanor, stage presence, and wonderful harmonies in the doo-wop style. Ankrah told me, “It was bad enough that the modern moods [racism] never gave a black group a chance, but if not for Paul and his friends, we would have never stayed together. . . . In fact, I think that meeting the Beatles changed the direction of my life.”