Paul McCartney biography by Philip Norman due in May

I think Yoko has been able to say "no" to Paul many times...

Paul: Can we offer $1o million each for the publishing of the Lennon-McCartney catalog?
Yoko: No.

Paul: Can I switch the credits to McCartney-Lennon on "Yesterday"?
Yoko: No.

Paul: Can we finally release the Let It Be film on DVD/Blu-ray?
Yoko: No.

 

Yoko also disproves another assertion from that article - that McCartney never met a woman he didn't try to shtup.

 

I totally agree with you, Fivebyfive.

Going by his Daily Mail "expose," Cox strikes me as someone with a tenuous connection to someone famous who desperately tried to think up some dirt and failed. His "juiciest" revelation were that Linda disliked touring and she and Paul disagreed about whether to do what became the New World Tour. That should come as no surprise to anyone, least of all anyone who's read Linda's interviews where she quite plainly spoke about her conflicted feelings about being in Paul's band. Oh, and the other revelation from Cox - Linda sometimes wasn't in a great mood and seemed depressed. That would only be a shock to anyone under the mistaken impression Linda McCartney was some sort of android, and not a flesh and blood human being with feelings. He even tried to call Paul "cold" while describing a Paul who took time out of his busy schedule to actually have conversations and go for walks with the random dude co-writing his wife's cookbook. (Imagine Mick Jagger doing that!) Peter Cox never even met George Martin or Stella McCartney. He also comes across as a bit of a jerk in his story, admitting that he recorded Linda without her consent and peppered her with non-cooking questions (surely to try to get her to spill some dirt, which she failed to do) and did things like wave Jane Asher's cookbook in her face to "motivate" her.

The NY Daily News extract was a rehash of everything we've heard before. I had to laugh though, at the tone that we should be shocked at the anecdote of Paul denying a then 17 year old Stella more money after she once overspent her weekly allowance. Clearly we're supposed to admire her moxie at "standing up" to her dad ("Do you think I'm made of money?" "Yes I do, PAUL") but rather it sounds like a father who is shockingly levelheaded - despite his wealth and fame - dealing with a typical teenage daughter. Are we supposed to side with Stella in that anecdote? As a now super-successful middle-aged builder of her own empire, she's directly credited her dad and his lessons about money as a factor in her success. I bet even she wouldn't retroactively take her own side.

 

Sure, what part of the following from my original post are you having trouble with?

Well I won't rush to judgment and hopefully this piece is not too representative.

I always thought the timing was odd. I mean here is Paul in the midst of a divorce with Heather telling anyone who will listen what an evil no good husband he is and right on cue enter from stage-right appears Mr Cox to portray Linda as a lovely wife unhappy in her marriage because she was so put upon by her husband . He now says on his Wikipedia page that he has no such tapes that he never had them or had anything to sell and that he was wildly misrepresented in the media.

I think personally the thing that actually discredited him for me was that in the Daily Mail piece he said ""I didn't warm to Paul. There was an awful coldness about him. His eyes were deader than any I had ever seen."

More about the eyes! Seriously though - I have met Paul McCartney only once and in a capacity where I spoke to him very briefly and I can not say what kind of husband or human he may or may not be but I can tell you the eyes were alive, quite normal. Nothing remarkably dead or cold about the doe/cow eyes imo.

 

A quick translation.

 

I don't know why you're trying to turn this into an argument when we basically agree. My original post in the thread was in reply to no one and did not reference you or whatever panic attack you may be having about how this book has turned out.

 

Your last reply was in reply to me and I was responding to that to explain that I wasn't quick to jump on "Norman's s**t." You know you didn't need to reply you could have well you know let it go.

I'm not that invested in how this book will turn out there have been many mediocre ones if this turns out to be another it won't make any difference either way. It's not like I have to buy it.

I'm not having a panic attack thanks so much for your heartfelt concern. I am interested in the book though. I read Norman's open letter to Paul McCartney a few years back and he so clearly disliked McCartney so intensely. I don't think I've been aware of anyone before writing a biography for someone that only a little over a decade ago they expressed such strong derision for, so yeah I have my popcorn ready.

For anyone who hasn't seen Norman's open letter from 2003 it's here in that quality paper the Daily Mail of course: What's eating you Macca? »

 

Because it was during the divorce battle, I guess the motivation was money from the British tabloids and/or from Heather Mills to spill his dirt. Mills' ex-publicist claimed that Mills told her she had some of tapes that proved Paul was an abusive *******, so the publicist planted the story in the press. Later when she started to suspect Mills was a pathological liar, she pressed to see said tapes and all Heather could produce was a completely normal vacation video or something, and the publicist was appalled and quit. I remember hearing a rumor at the time that Mills wanted to get Peter Cox's tapes to bolster her story against Paul and hurt Stella McCartney (who Mills became convinced was Satan and the cause of all her problems). Then there was a story that Paul bought Cox's tapes, but Cox denied that and also now denies the tapes say anything interesting at all and that it was just the Daily Mail twisting things.

 

Good to know. I hate the bios where it's 90% up to 1970 and then their solo careers essentially amount to an extended epilogue. I'm currently reading the Harrisonbio Behind The Locked Door- I'm about halfway through and The Beatles just broke up. A good sign, IMO. Naturally, I want to see what the author has to say about the '74/'75 period.

Get writing, Arnie- we're all waiting, dammit!

 

Whatever way Macca chose to live his post middle age life, in his prime years he was a man about town, and was the opposite of a 'Citizen Kane' type figure. In his younger days as a Beatle, he appears to have taken every advantage of his status and opportunity to experience what his world and culture had to offer him, and it shows in the breadth and brilliance of his music. And the 70's Wings era is hardly a 'reclusive' existence FFS, i.e; travelling all round the world, mixing it and matching it in different recording locations etc etc.

 

I read that one, sad to say that I was mildly enthusiastic up to about the exact point you are at now, but was really disappointed and disengaged somewhat after that. I felt the book was ultimately another in the long line of semi-hack jobs done on individual Beatles. I can't even remember why I lost connection to the narrative, but something didn't ring true about the author's engagement in the George story. It ended up reminding me a bit of those Alan Clarkson books...paperback writer kind of expose's. The book disappointed ultimately because it was presented so nicely, but I ended up feeling it was lacking in real insight and depth after the break up period. Your mileage may vary, and I would like to hear your opinions.
My favourite and most insightful George book is the Simon Leung one, which despite the fan boi hagiographic feeling, gets much much closer to the depths of George as a musician and a man.
Anyone want a first edition hardback copy of Behind That Locked Door? Just send a stamped addressed elephant to.....

 

I have started reading this book but I'm only about 6 chapters in so the jury is still out. So far to be honest I am finding it a bit dull but that's only because having read Tune-in so far every aspect of the story is 100% familiar. That's not Norman's fault and those less familiar with the story may find it less of a march through familiar facts than I.

He makes his first reference to Paul's doe-like eyes in the prologue btw

I totally understand people's reservations or curiosity regarding the fact that Norman has been so negative towards Paul in the past, the quite recent past even, and is now acting as biographer. It does give this biography a certain 'back-story' and known colour but he made these remarks in the epilogue of the book to address this very thing and does seem to own his animosity and appears to be expressing a change of heart.



Of course it is a concern if he is using material from sources like Peter Cox in the book but I haven't gotten to those chapters and seen the context.

The preview for the book is on Amazon - there is a look inside feature available here:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/03...rd_t=36701&pf_rd_p=2437869742&pf_rd_i=desktop

So you can see the table of contents etc.

 

Blimey. I hope the rest of the book is better written than that. "As was his seeming total opposite"? Is that even English?

 

Yes, but I was referring to the 1980s era Macca, whom Cox met and described. Wings had gone, Lennon and been murdered, and - like so many big acts of the previous two decades - Macca was finding the new decade daunting. This was a time when he was still releasing new material but hadn't toured since 1979, the decade having begun with his disastrous experience in Japan. Long relationships with Denny Laine (and Lennon) had been abruptly severed. McCartney wasn't exactly a recluse in these years, or even under the radar, but he wasn't exactly prominent - and he only made one (unhappy) live appearance during that whole period.

 

Hmm.....well, there's at least one story....

 

Not sure if this has been posted already, but here is a link to an interview from 1987 where Philip Norman talks about Paul in fairly disparaging terms. I watched this interview only recently, so I was all the more surprised to see that Norman is now writing a book about Paul with his tacit consent!

The section of the interview I am referring to starts at 3 minutes 32 seconds...

 

That's a bit harsh. As a biographer, you need to be scrupulously thorough, and talk to as many people as possible, whether they were involved for one year or fifty. It's what you do with that material that is crucial - you need good judgement to evaluate the character and possible bias of the interviewee, you need to go back and double check as many facts as possible, you need to assess the relevance of the insights, etc etc. But you don't ignore people by pre-judging what they might say or how useful they might prove to be. You can learn a lot from someone who's being unfair as well as fair, or even indulgent. If you decide what kind of input you want before you get it, your 'level of research' is much more suspect.

As for the book as a whole, I'm fairly open-minded about it. Norman is a pretty serious biographer who knows how to approach the subject (I think it was the Sounes one that 'went native' and kept referring to Linda as 'Lin,' as if he knew her personally - a really irritating error of judgement). As has been stated many times before, his original Beatles book was very unbalanced, but he's improved since then, and this is certainly thorough.

The great danger to look out for in terms of media serialisation is which ones say the material is 'extracted' and which ones say it's 'adapted' from the book. Newspapers pay more to 'adapt,' because they can re-write it and rearrange it as they wish, often outrageously and against the wishes of the author (who usually isn't even consulted). An 'extraction' has to be an excerpt, pure and simple, exactly as the text is in the book. The scandal-mongers tend to avoid that option, for obvious reasons!

 

Yeah, I kinda knew what you were getting at, my point was more around the fact that to become a bit reclusive after being affected by a tragedy and the ending of an era 'Wings', doesn't necessarily equate to the mythical proportions of a Citizen Kane inverted opus. McCartney was informed by too wide of a cultural and musical millieu to become myopic and insular to the degree he is being tarnished with. Although habitual Pot use tends to withdraw people from the world around them anyway. But only his family would have really known how disengaged he was at the time. And the idea of an heiress like Linda Eastman not having autonomous finances is ludicrous. I think this guy was seeing things through his own lens a bit maybe?

 

Just like with Mark Lewisohn, these things take a great deal of time and cannot be rushed. I mean, you can only write so much at a bar stool before all sorts of friends start buying you drinks and you suddenly find yourself in the arms of a person who doesn't know the difference between "We All Stand Together" and "Give Ireland Back To The Irish. But one can't be picky in these situations...

 

I don't think Norman's comments on Macca were all that disparaging there: most people acknowledge that Paul does like to smooth over the conflicts and and prefers to focus on the good times.

 

Yes, I thought the 'lend us a fiver, will you?' coming from an heiress was a bit odd.

 

I hope that you are not confusing the Eastman name (of Linda's family---which was originally Epstein---how is that for a coincidence!) with the photography Kodak-Eastman company, which was often a source of confusion. Linda's dad, Lee Eastman, was a rich lawyer, probably quite rich, but I wouldn't describe Linda Eastman as an "heiress".

 

Yes. He showed his naivety by harping on about Paul 'rewriting' history. Any experienced biographer knows that EVERYONE rewrites history. The subject is a very untrustworthy chronicler of his or her own life. It would amaze some people how many celebs don't actually know the right details of such things as where and when they were born. Loads of autobiographers get the wrong house, street, sometimes date, etc. As the old joke goes, they were very young at the time... So a biographer knows not to take even the 'obvious' things as facts. It's also simplistic of Norman if he thinks that there's one perspective that's more true than all the others, rather than a Rashomon style mixture. But as I said earlier, he's not as bad as he once was, so I'll give it a go. It's a heck of a project to take on if you're not prepared to approach it with an open mind.

 

[QUOTE="For anyone who hasn't seen Norman's open letter from 2003 it's here in that quality paper the Daily Mail of course: What's eating you Macca? »[/QUOTE]

Yikes. If I read that back in 2003, I certainly forgot about it. That was a little more than mean spirited. And, for me, it questions just how much cooperation or approval McCartney really gave him.

There's a dig in nearly every single paragraph.

I can only guess that after the fact, Macca and Norman had a discussion, and Macca said something along the lines of "I wasn't myself, you are right." That doesn't sound plausible to me, though.

This back story certainly raises the book's profile, so maybe that's what this is all about.

I'll be interested to discover how McCartney is portrayed in it.

 

Anybody that went to Sarah Lawrence is not short of a quid. The richest most privileged Girls School in Christendom, No? Ok heiress might be a bit of a stretch, but she was from a family that was loaded. I doubt she didn't have access to her own finances or bank accounts.