Sir Paul McCartney celebrates his 80th birthday Image credit: Jim Dyson/Getty Images
Having just completed his latest tour of the US, Sir Paul’s birthday celebrations include his second celebration next Saturday, this time as his eighth – a powerful testament to how he enjoys life past retirement age in the state and a testament to his undisturbed star power.
Although he has gray hair and a weaker voice, he delivers a knockout show, studded with Beatles songs that people want to hear.
Seeing him live is as close as you can get to experiencing the magic of the Fab Four, though to this day he’s still a little vexed about the topic of who broke up the band.
When he was said in a recent interview that he caused the ultimate rift by starting his solo career in 1970, he firmly replied, “Stop there. I’m not the one who instigated the split. John [Lennon] He walked into the room one day and said, “I’m leaving the Beatles.” Is this instigated division or not? “
He continued, “There was a man named Allen Klein [their erstwhile manager] Who was going to take everything, everything we worked for. I had to fight.”
“The only way I could fight was to sue the other Beatles because they were going with Klein, and they thanked me for that years later. But I didn’t instigate a split. That was Johnny!”
Despite Lennon’s death for more than four decades (and George Harrison’s death in 2001), it’s clear that the breakup of the world’s favorite group remains a tender topic for Sir Paul, who was hurt badly when his friends turned against him.
George Harrison, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and John Lennon of The Beatles (Photo: GettyImages)
He spent subsequent decades trying to prove that he was more than just a crowd pleaser and his only great song was Yesterday, as Lennon once intended.
Sir Paul is a social and optimistic person who loves to be loved, as I write in my autobiography, The Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney, which I just updated.
While he is sometimes criticized for being too glorified, or even tu, fans see a musical genius who wrote or co-wrote dozens of classic songs. Whatever your point of view, he remains one of the greatest living
The British. Despite having been arrested on drug charges in the past, and spending several nights in prison in Japan in 1980, Sir Paul has been embraced by the institution as one of the country’s cultural icons.
Presiding over the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012, he was one of the select few, along with Sir David Attenborough, to be invited to honor Her Majesty once again during her last Platinum Jubilee.
Sir Paul and Sir David are companions of honour, an exclusive club of the most distinguished people of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth.
Artist David Hockney is another artist, and not so long ago he invited Sir Paul to dinner. Although the two men rose to international fame in the swinging 1960s, the evening wasn’t entirely a success.
Sir Paul is a great rider who knows most people would love to hear his stories about the Beatles, so he easily talks about the Fab Four.
But his tales fell on deaf ears with Hockney.
“I think David is a little tired, because he doesn’t like rock ‘n’ roll,” fashion designer Celia Bertwell, Hockney’s friend, and co-worker at dinner told me.
On the other hand, Celia is enchanted by meeting Sir Paul.
“We chatted more than anyone else. We are both northerners and we can see the rays of our youth in each other.”
Sir Paul Glastonbury will headline on his birthday (Photo: Rino Petrosino/Mondadori/GettyImages)
But Hockney soon had enough. His hearing is poor, so he struggles to follow conversations, and loves an early night. Celia laughs, “I think he really wanted to go to bed after dinner, but he couldn’t because it was Paul McCartney.”
“I have stopped several times [and said]”I think I’d like to go to bed now.” Then Paul says, “Ah, did you hear this?”
So another tale began, and Hockney had to pretend to be interested.
Few celebrities have been as famous as Sir Paul and have learned to treat celebrities with kindness. He can still be seen walking around without security and is uncharacteristically polite to fans. One day he walked into Celia’s store in Notting Hill when some customers were inside. I was impressed to note that he introduced himself to her clients.
“I thought it was a fairly nice demeanor. Not very friendly, but civilized.”
His personal life became happy again after the death of his first wife, Linda, followed by a disastrous second marriage to former model Heather Mills, which ended sharply in the Supreme Court in 2008.
During the divorce case, the judge revealed details of what he called the “enormous fortune” of Sir Paul, then audited the £387m. Mrs. Mills received a total of £16.5 million.
Sir Paul hits the road again, quickly getting the money he paid back to his ex-wife, while income from the Beatles’ Apple Corps continues to flow into his accounts along with royalties from wing beats and as a solo artist.
In 2011 he married for the third time his American girlfriend Nancy Shefel, a wealthy woman who does not respect publicity. Family remains very important.
Sir Paul and Linda had three children together (Mary, Stella, and James), while also adopting Linda’s daughter, Heather, from her previous marriage.
He had another girl, Beatrice, now 18, from his second wife.
Sir Paul spent confinement with Mary, 52, and her family, at McCartney’s estate in
East Sussex, a massive estate three times the size of London’s Hyde Park, including several homes.
He also owns a house in London, an office building in Soho, a Scottish estate and, in America, a summer house on Long Island and a farm in Arizona, where he and Linda loved horseback riding, a hobby he still enjoys. During lockdown, Sir Paul would often ride his Appaloosa mare, Cheyenne, across the lawns of his home in East Sussex.
Sir Paul says that music is a pleasure, not work, and he has always been amused Image credit: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images)
Always creative, he also recorded his latest album, McCartney III, at his recording studio, a converted windmill called Hog Hill Mill.
His adopted daughter, Heather, lives quietly nearby; His son James made modest forays into the music business; Marie takes pictures and Stella has become a trendsetter and recently received a CBE award. Sir Paul has eight grandchildren.
It is estimated that his fortune has more than doubled since his divorce in 2008 to £865 million, making him the richest person in British music and three times richer than Sir Mick Jagger.
The former Beatles and the Rolling Stones are the notable survivors of the golden generation of British rock stars who made their name in the 1960s, though as famous and popular today as ever, they still performed in front of huge crowds.
While Sir Paul and Sir Ringo Starr are the last surviving members of The Beatles, Stones have been reduced to two original members. Sir Paul sounded shaky when he recorded a tribute to drummer Charlie Watts at The Stones on his death in 2021.
“I knew he was sick, but I didn’t know he was so sick,” he said, looking uncharacteristically weary and rude. “My condolences to the stones. It will be a big slap to them.”
He put his foot in his mouth a few months later but called the Stones a “blues band”, having previously claimed that the Beatles were more musically sophisticated.
A furious Sir Mick – who will turn 80 next year – responded that, unlike the Beatles, the Stones were still going, “Incredibly fortunate they are still playing in stadiums…the other band isn’t there.”
Next Saturday, when Sir Paul takes center stage in Glastonbury, the Stones are set to perform in Hyde Park, central London, on their 60th annual tour.
Despite their age, these old rockers never want to stop.
“Imagine what it must be like, man, to be in front of 60-70,000 people all screaming and clinging to every word and every note,” drummer Jim Keltner, a mutual friend, recently explained to me. “I can’t imagine they’ll ever get tired of it.”
When asked not long ago if he had plans to retire, Sir Paul quoted country singer Willie Nelson, who is still 89, asking: “Retire from what?”
Making music is fun, not work, and as long as he is healthy, Sir Paul will continue to perform.
- Fab: An Intimate Life Of Paul McCartney by Howard Sounes (HarperCollins, £14.99) now released in an updated version
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