“
And, in the end
The love you take
is equal to the love you make.
”
”
Paul McCartney (The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics)
“
Close your eyes and I'll kiss you, Tomorrow I'll miss you.
”
”
Paul McCartney
“
Sir Paul McCartney once claimed that if slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian.
”
”
Melanie Joy (Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism)
“
I don’t care too much for money, money can’t buy me love.
”
”
Paul McCartney
“
He pointed up at the ceiling. “They play the Beatles all day every day, which means I get two of my favorite things together. Pizza and Paul McCartney.
”
”
Jenna Evans Welch (Love & Gelato)
“
As a boy, I thought everyone's family was like that, until I met people like John and realised that wasn't true, and perhaps it was the contrast of our different outlooks that produced a kind of magic. But I was born into that way of thinking, that it'll be okay in the end. Tragedy can happen but the page will turn, and I love that.
”
”
Paul McCartney (The Lyrics)
“
I vaguely mind people knowing anything I don’t know. --Paul McCartney
”
”
Jonathan Gould (Can't Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America)
“
I don't care too much for money,
Money can't buy me love
- The Beatles, 1964
”
”
Paul McCartney
“
I don't care too much for money,
Money can't buy me love
”
”
Paul McCartney
“
Sir Paul McCartney once claimed that if slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian. He believed that if we knew the truth about meat production, we'd be unable to continue eating animals.
”
”
Melanie Joy (Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism)
“
Sir Paul McCartney once claimed that if slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian. He believed that if we knew the truth about meat production, we'd be unable to continue eating animals. Yet on some level we do know the truth. We know that meat production is a messy business, but we choose not to know just how messy it is. We know that meat comes from an animal, but we choose not to connect the dots.
”
”
Melanie Joy (Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism)
“
One story sums up their magical quality. On June 30th 1968, at the height of Apple optimism, Paul McCartney and Derek Taylor were driving back to London from Saltaire, Yorkshire, where they had been recording the Black Dyke Mills Band on a song of Paul’s called ‘Thingummybob’. They were in Bedfordshire. Let’s pick a village on the map and pay it a visit, said Beatle Paul. He found a village called Harrold, which they found quite hilarious, and turned off the A5. Harrold turned out to be a picture-perfect village, with a picture-perfect pub at its heart. The pub was closed, but when the villagers saw there was a Beatle at the door they opened it up. Soon the whole village was in the pub, listening to Paul McCartney on the pub piano playing the as-yet-unreleased ‘Hey Jude’. Every Harrold resident danced and sang along, and the revelry went on until 3 a.m. It was beautiful, perfect, spontaneous and full of love. Harrold. You couldn’t make it up.
”
”
Bob Stanley (Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story of Modern Pop)
“
If you tell people you’re writing a book about the Beatles, at first they smile and ask, “Another one? What’s left to say?” So I mention “Baby’s in Black,” or “It’s All Too Much,” or Lil Wayne’s version of “Help” or the Kendrick Lamar battle rhyme where he says “blessings to Paul McCartney,” or Hollywood Bowl, or Rock ’n’ Roll Music, or the Beastie Boys’ “I’m Down”—but I rarely get that far, because they’re already jumping in with their favorite overlooked Beatle song, the artifact nobody else prizes properly, the nuances nobody else notices. Within thirty seconds they’re assigning me a new chapter I must write. And telling me a story to go with it. Every few days, I get into a Beatles argument I’ve never had before, while continuing other arguments that have been raging since my childhood. And though I’ve spent my whole life devouring every scrap of information about them, I’m constantly learning. I guarantee the day this book comes out, I will find out something new. Things like that used to pain me. But that’s what it means to love the Beatles—you never run out of surprises.
”
”
Rob Sheffield (Dreaming the Beatles: The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World)
“
The Enchanted Broccoli Forest. Oh, what a pleasure that was! Mollie Katzen's handwritten and illustrated recipes that recalled some glorious time in upstate New York when a girl with an appetite could work at a funky vegetarian restaurant and jot down some tasty favorites between shifts. That one had the Pumpkin Tureen soup that Margo had made so many times when she first got the book. She loved the cheesy onion soup served from a pumpkin with a hot dash of horseradish and rye croutons. And the Cardamom Coffee Cake, full of butter, real vanilla, and rich brown sugar, said to be a favorite at the restaurant, where Margo loved to imagine the patrons picking up extras to take back to their green, grassy, shady farmhouses dotted along winding country roads.
Linda's Kitchen by Linda McCartney, Paul's first wife, the vegetarian cookbook that had initially spurred her yearlong attempt at vegetarianism (with cheese and eggs, thank you very much) right after college. Margo used to have to drag Calvin into such phases and had finally lured him in by saying that surely anything Paul would eat was good enough for them.
Because of Linda's Kitchen, Margo had dived into the world of textured vegetable protein instead of meat, and tons of soups, including a very good watercress, which she never would have tried without Linda's inspiration. It had also inspired her to get a gorgeous, long marble-topped island for prep work. Sometimes she only cooked for the aesthetic pleasure of the gleaming marble topped with rustic pottery containing bright fresh veggies, chopped to perfection.
Then Bistro Cooking by Patricia Wells caught her eye, and she took it down. Some pages were stuck together from previous cooking nights, but the one she turned to, the most splattered of all, was the one for Onion Soup au Gratin, the recipe that had taught her the importance of cheese quality. No mozzarella or broken string cheeses with- maybe- a little lacy Swiss thrown on. And definitely none of the "fat-free" cheese that she'd tried in order to give Calvin a rich dish without the cholesterol.
No, for this to be great, you needed a good, aged, nutty Gruyère from what you couldn't help but imagine as the green grassy Alps of Switzerland, where the cows grazed lazily under a cheerful children's-book blue sky with puffy white clouds.
Good Gruyère was blocked into rind-covered rounds and aged in caves before being shipped fresh to the USA with a whisper of fairy-tale clouds still lingering over it. There was a cheese shop downtown that sold the best she'd ever had. She'd tried it one afternoon when she was avoiding returning home. A spunky girl in a visor and an apron had perked up as she walked by the counter, saying, "Cheese can change your life!"
The charm of her youthful innocence would have been enough to be cheered by, but the sample she handed out really did it.
The taste was beyond delicious. It was good alone, but it cried out for ham or turkey or a rich beefy broth with deep caramelized onions for soup.
”
”
Beth Harbison (The Cookbook Club: A Novel of Food and Friendship)
“
When rock bands like the Rolling Stones came to prominence in the 1960s, they were perceived as dangerously anti-establishment. Some exploited this reputation by promoting social revolution and sexual hedonism. Even now old rockers in their seventies retain an aura of wildness. Yet Sir Mick Jagger and his ilk changed very little in the society they professed to loathe, and today it is common enough to find our celebrated cultural rebels enjoying multi-millionaire lifestyles based on shrewd investments. They live in large mansions. They enjoy access to the best health care. They take exotic holidays, and so on. We may love the music of Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Elton John and Bob Geldof, KBE, but now we must see that it really is “only rock and roll.” Such people are part of the kinnocratic illusion (see Chapter 7), manipulating the story of being-like-us, fighting for fairness, making the world a better place with their sonic flares in the gloom.
”
”
Colin Feltham (Keeping Ourselves in the Dark)
“
What about your boyfriends?” I asked.
She shot me a look, but she said, “I admit I used sex to rebel against my mother, and I’ve had a few casual boyfriends since high school. I knew they were after my body, and I like sex, but that got me a reputation. I had never found anyone I could fall in love with except Paul McCartney. But that didn’t work out.”
That made me laugh but I was curious about her sexual adventurousness. Making the assumption, I asked her, “When did you start taking the pill?”
“I started taking it at sixteen because the doctor said that I needed to make up a hormone imbalance. My mother was not pleased, but that’s when I got my license to screw,” she said.
I laughed so hard at that that I fell off the bed. “You’re a witch,” I said.
“A sex witch,” Kara countered. “Come up here and I’ll prove it.
”
”
Tim Scott (Driving Toward Destiny)
“
McCullough had been telling interviewers that he was fine with his role in Wings, but he knew he was mainly trying to persuade himself that this was so. He had hoped that the acclaim his solo on ‘My Love’ brought would help Paul see that allowing him some creative input could be a good thing. Now he realized that this would be a never-ending battle. “I had been too long on the road to be told like a child to play this or that. I had come from working with Joe Cocker and somehow ended up singing bloody nursery rhymes.59 I felt it was time he allowed the musicians to have some of their own ideas used as part of this ‘group’ vibe. But all that was slowly being lost. . . . I was trying desperately to hold onto it because I wanted it not just for the band but for him as well—for him to show people that he wasn’t namby-pamby all the time, that he really had balls. And he does have an awful lot of balls, he just doesn’t seem to get it down on record.”60
”
”
Allan Kozinn (The McCartney Legacy: Volume 1: 1969 – 73)
“
We love being in each other’s company and Paul was determined that I would be involved in everything from composing to playing. Now that might have been fine if I was a musician; but at that time, I wasn’t. No way. I could pick out one-fingered notes on a piano. And yet here was my husband, former member of the Beatles . . . the greatest group ever . . . wanting me to be onstage alongside him. If you think that I was scared . . . you’re right. I was absolutely petrified at the idea of going onto a stage before an audience. They’d think I was a fake.
”
”
Allan Kozinn (The McCartney Legacy: Volume 1: 1969 – 73)
“
The final credit, common to the British and American releases was, “And Paul would love to thank Linda and Linda would love to thank Paul and thanx Denny”—not quite the wording one would expect from musicians trying to project a group image.
”
”
Allan Kozinn (The McCartney Legacy: Volume 1: 1969 – 73)
“
So that basically sums it up to me, love songs are eternal. I don’t think there’s ever going to be a time when there’s no one in love. I certainly hope not.
”
”
Paul Du Noyer (Conversations with McCartney)
“
Have you ever looked at a picture of yourself when you were a kid? Or pictures of famous people when they were kids? It seems to me that they can either make you happy or sad. There's a lovely picture of Paul McCartney as a little boy, and the first time I saw it, it made me feel good: all that talent, all that money, all those years of blissed-out domesticity, a rock-solid marriage and lovely kids, and he doesn't even know it yet. But then there are others — JFK and all the rock deaths and fuckups, people who went mad, people who came off the rails, people who murdered, who made themselves or other people miserable in ways too numerous to mention, and you think, stop right there! This is as good as it gets!
Over the last couple of years, the photos of me when I was a kid, the ones that I never wanted old girlfriends to see . . . well, they've started to give me a little pang of something, not unhappiness, exactly, but some kind of quiet, deep regret. There's one of me in a cowboy hat, pointing a gun at the camera, trying to look like a cowboy but failing, and I can hardly bring myself to look at it now. Laura thought it was sweet (she used that word! Sweet, the opposite of sour!) and pinned it up in the kitchen, but I've put it back in a drawer. I keep wanting to apologize to the little guy: 'I'm sorry, I've let you down. I was the person who was supposed to look after you, but I blew it: I made wrong decisions at bad times, and I turned you into me.
”
”
Nick Hornby (High Fidelity)
“
Paul McCartney makes lovely boutique tapes, resolute upon being as inconsequential as the Carpenters which in itself may be as much a reaction to John's opposite excesses as a simple case of vacuity. You could hardly call him burnt out--Band on the Run was, in its rather vapid way, a masterful album. Muzak's finest hour. Of course he is about as committed to the notion of subject matter as Hanna-Barbera, and his cuteness can be incredibly annoying at times.
”
”
Lester Bangs (Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader)
“
When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be
And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be
”
”
Paul James McCartney, John Winston Lennon
“
For many of the people in my immediate vicinity, it was clear that the Beatles (to say nothing of McCartney’s solo career) ceased to be a going concern once the Summer of Love commenced. Anything in the set list that was even mildly psychedelic—“The Fool on the Hill,” “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite”—went over like Timothy Leary at the 1968 Republican National Convention. Apparently, there are still people for whom Sgt. Pepper is a radical—perhaps too radical—musical experiment. This wasn’t a classic-rock-radio crowd, it was an oldies-radio crowd. I, too, was hoping to hear my favorite Beatles hits. But I also secretly wished that McCartney would play “Temporary Secretary,” one of the battiest tracks from one of his battiest solo albums, 1980’s McCartney II. I believe that “Temporary Secretary” is a legitimately great song, even if it is totally bonkers. “Temporary Secretary” sounds like a businessman discussing his staffing practices while also imitating a car alarm. It’s genius! But the main reason I wanted to hear “Temporary Secretary” is because I knew that it would confound all of the boomers in the house who stopped following Paul McCartney’s career after he wrote “Michelle.
”
”
Steven Hyden (Twilight of the Gods: A Journey to the End of Classic Rock)
“
Apparently, Paul McCartney and I were on the same wavelength that night, because five songs into the set, he played a number that only a small, demented fraction of the audience wanted to hear. And yet there he was, jamming on “Temporary Secretary,” seemingly oblivious to the mass confusion created by the song’s mind-bending mess of synth bleeps and slashing acoustic guitar and McCartney’s robo-ranting about needing a woman who can be a belly dancer but not a true romancer. I loved it, and I loved how the people around me didn’t love it.
”
”
Steven Hyden (Twilight of the Gods: A Journey to the End of Classic Rock)
“
CARY GRANT IS THE MCCARTNEY OF MOVIE STARS—HIS STORY has much to tell us about Paul’s. They share a spiritual connection, beyond their pronunciation of “Judy.” (Paul described his “hey Judy-Judy-Judy” ad libs as “Cary Grant on heat.”) They dazzled Americans as the ultimate English dream dates—yet both were self-inventions, street guys who taught themselves to pose as posh charmers. Both grew up working-class in hardscrabble industrial cities; both lost their mothers at a young age. (Grant, whose real name was Archibald Leach, was nine when he was told his mother had gone on a trip; more than twenty years later, after he was famous, he learned she was locked up in an institution and got her released.) Both dropped out of school to fight their way into the sleaziest sewers of show biz—Grant joined a troupe of traveling acrobats, which must have been an even rougher scene than the Reeperbahn—yet to them it was a world of freedom and excitement. But both found lasting fame by turning on the charm for Americans who saw them as dapper gentlemen. “Everyone wants to be Cary Grant,” Grant once said. “Even I want to be Cary Grant.
”
”
Rob Sheffield (Dreaming the Beatles: The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World)
“
Just because everybody loves The Beatles doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with The Beatles.
”
”
A.D. Aliwat (In Limbo)
“
After some more rehearsing, the Ramones—named for Paul McCartney’s touring alias during his Beatles days, Paul Ramone—got themselves a two-night weekend gig at CBGB, August 16 and 17.
”
”
Will Hermes (Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever)
“
bought a pristine copy of Man on the Run, a biography of Paul McCartney that began not with the Beatles, but with what McCartney did after they broke up. Parker had always preferred McCartney’s work to John Lennon’s, whatever effect it might have had on his standing with the cool kids. Lennon could only ever really write about himself, and Parker felt that he lacked empathy. McCartney, by contrast, was capable of thinking, or feeling, himself into the lives of others. It was the difference between “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane”: although Parker loved both songs, “Penny Lane” was filled with characters, while “Strawberry Fields Forever” really had only one, and his name was John Lennon. Parker might even have taken the view that Lennon needed to get out of his apartment more, but when he did, an idiot shot him. He’d probably been right to spend the best part of a decade locked inside. Ross appeared just as McCartney
”
”
John Connolly (A Game of Ghosts (Charlie Parker, #15))
“
I was fond of Jim McCartney and knew him well, but Paul didn’t even tell me he was dead,” Denny said. “I was stunned. I knew his mother had died when he was 14 but he had never mentioned a word to me about his father. . . . When Paul dropped that bombshell, I felt utterly deflated. Paul loved his dad—there’s no doubt about that. But death scares him, and he didn’t go to the funeral because he couldn’t handle it. It wasn’t lack of love that kept him away—he didn’t want to cry in public. He wants to appear like he’s got his act together whenever anyone is around. That’s the kind of person he is.
”
”
Allan Kozinn (The McCartney Legacy: Volume 2: 1974 – 80)
“
From the start, he envisioned a complicated piece with several strands of vocal counterpoint, as if to make the point that whether or not one considers love songs silly, they can have more than their fair share of musical complexity. On his manuscript from Hawaii, the lines sung contrapuntally are listed as “first line” (the rising “I love you”), “second line” (the rising, then falling “Ah, I can’t explain, the feeling’s plain to me / say can’t you see?”) and “third line” (the descending “How can I tell you about my loved one?”), indicating their order of appearance in the thickening texture he had in mind.
”
”
Allan Kozinn (The McCartney Legacy: Volume 2: 1974 – 80)
“
An album of Paul’s music was selected as the first rock album to be released officially by Melodiya. Technically, the album chosen for release was Band on the Run, but because the title track was replaced with ‘Silly Love Songs,’ the album was renamed ПОЛ МАККАРТНИ+Ансамбль (Wings)—Paul McCartney + Ensemble (Wings). The release, EMI cautioned Paul, would not make him appreciably more wealthy: as classical musicians who toured in Russia already knew, fees and royalties were paid in rubles, which were not freely exchangeable for Western currency. Classical players found that they were best off spending their fees in Russia and returning to the West with fur coats, vodka or other Russian goods.
”
”
Allan Kozinn (The McCartney Legacy: Volume 2: 1974 – 80)
“
He popped in to say hello to Paul,” Chris Thomas remembered, “and as usual, we played some songs, and we played him ‘Arrow Through Me.’ And Pete went, ‘That is fantastic. Absolutely bloody brilliant!’ He loved it. And he said, ‘It’s a stroke of genius not to have a bass on it.’ And the basic track was great; there wasn’t anything to do to it. Pete went home, and Paul put a bass on it!
”
”
Allan Kozinn (The McCartney Legacy: Volume 2: 1974 – 80)
“
Auntie Pat never married, although she was deeply in love with Paul McCartney, but he wasn’t available.
”
”
Liane Moriarty (Here One Moment)
“
When Wings toured Britain, Europe, Australia and North America between 1972 and 1976, Paul made a point of setting aside hefty rehearsal periods and working until the arrangements were tight and the performances were polished. But in October 1979, with a British tour set to begin at the end of November, Wings had barely rehearsed. And the British tour was just the start of what promised to be an extended touring period, with a visit to Japan planned for January pending the approval of the band’s visas—still a matter of concern, given the Japanese government’s refusal to allow Wings into the country in 1975 because of Paul’s earlier pot busts. Now, barely a month before their British tour was set to open, Wings did not even have a setlist. Paul had been able to suppress his feeling of discontent with Wings—not its current incarnation, particularly, but the idea of fronting a permanent band—while he was working on his solo project, and through all the activity in the weeks that followed. The question now was whether he could rekindle his love for the concept. The fact is, leading a band had been more of a slog than he bargained for, and the natural chemistry he had with the Beatles—developed as they grew from adolescent amateurs into stage-tested adults—had been impossible to replicate with a group of experienced players. He had been so desperate to have a band, after the Beatles broke up, that he approached it naively, believing it could be a band of equals. It took the departure of Henry McCullough and Denny Seiwell—the implosion of Wings Mark I—for him to realize that this was implausible. As the only marketable star in the band, it would never be equal, and more crucially, equality was not something he was suited for: he always had a clear idea of what he wanted to do and how he wanted to do it, and he was unwilling to brook any opposition. When Jimmy McCulloch, Geoff Britton and then Joe English joined the band, they were younger and the power relationships were clearer. But in Wings Mark II, Paul found himself having to sort out his young charges’ personal problems, and while he was generally there for them, the combined role of musician and guidance counselor grew tiresome. Laurence Juber and Steve Holley were excellent players and entirely professional, but Back to the Egg had not won critical accolades, and there were some in Paul’s circle who thought Juber and Holley lacked their predecessors’ rock and roll rawness.
”
”
Allan Kozinn (The McCartney Legacy: Volume 2: 1974 – 80)
“
And in the end
the love you take
is equal to the love you make
”
”
Paul McCartney
“
(Ray Davies, of the Kinks: “Paul McCartney was one of the most competitive people I’ve ever met. Lennon wasn’t. He just thought everyone else was shit.”)
”
”
Ian Leslie (John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs)