Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney (56 page)

In an unremittingly negative series of articles headlined ‘The Real McCartney’, Laine told
Sun
readers that Paul and Lin habitually smoked two ounces of grass a day when he knew them in Wings and routinely smuggled their stash through customs. Laine said that Paul and Linda got a thrill out of cheating authority like this, laughing at the police who escorted them. He further alleged that the McCartneys, in their same thrill-seeking way, routinely stole small items from hotels. Habitual dope smoking, he suggests, had a detrimental effect on Paul’s music. ‘That’s why Paul’s albums take ages and ages to make. He just cannot be decisive about anything.’ He also described Paul as a tight-fisted, inscrutable man, with few friends, who liked the sound of his own voice and patronised those around him, including his brother; while some MPL staff lived in fear of their boss. Finally, Denny mocked Paul’s complex about his mother. ‘He’s a mummy’s boy who didn’t have a mummy after his mother died when he was 14. He would be lost without Linda now.’

These stories, published over four days in January/February 1984, constituted the most personal attack on Paul since John Lennon had savaged him in
Rolling Stone
in 1971. Like Lennon, Laine had been close enough to McCartney to speak with authority. Paul was furious, though he didn’t sue.

All of this trouble and bad publicity forms the backdrop to the completion of
Give My Regards to Broad Street
, the project that had ballooned from a TV special into a multi-million dollar movie. In the early part of 1984 Paul was shuttling between his home in Sussex, the MPL office in Soho, and Elstree film studios, where Peter Webb was directing production numbers on three sound stages.
⁵⁴
As a release date approached, executives from 20th Century Fox jetted in for meetings with McCartney and Webb, who had found directing a non-acting leading man ‘a problem’. Further complications were caused by the fact that Paul was simultaneously working on a soundtrack album, with covers of Beatles songs, new versions of recent solo material, such as ‘Ballroom Dancing’ and ‘Wanderlust’, and a terrific new theme song, ‘No More Lonely Nights’, which he’d written over a weekend in response to Webb telling him they needed an extra song to end the picture. Celebrity mates were roped in to play on these tracks, including Dave Gilmour, Ritchie and Eric Stewart, with the A-team of George Martin and Geoff Emerick in the control room. Such a gathering of talent created a soundtrack album far superior to the movie it rode piggy-back on.

Peter Webb flew to Los Angeles to screen a rough cut of
Broad Street
for Fox. ‘They had paid $6.8 million for a Hollywood musical and they got Paul McCartney’s home movie, albeit nicely shot,’ says the director, who recalls Harvey Weinstein leaning over his shoulder at the end of the screening and saying, ‘Next time show me the script.’ Editing was done in London, Webb commuting to Sussex to show Paul and Linda the result. ‘Linda was quite involved in giving it quality control … we’d meet at this secret recording studio. It was a bit too secret because we could never find it.’

The secret venue was Hog Hill Mill, a windmill Paul had bought a couple of years back, near the village of Icklesham, itself not far from Peasmarsh, subsequently having the mill restored and a recording studio, offices and living quarters built under its sails. The complex was surrounded by a dry moat so passers-by using the public footpaths over the hill could not see into the windows, and included a private museum of Beatles memorabilia, including the boys’ old Vox amps, Paul’s Höfner violin bass, the mellotron he played on ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ and other pieces of vintage Abbey Road equipment, displayed behind sliding glass doors.

There was friction between the McCartneys and Webb at this late stage in the movie-making process. The director didn’t always feel his work was respected, ‘let alone appreciated’, by Paul, gaining the impression that the star wished he’d hired a name director; ‘we were in the big time, but we were the pub team [and I was] the pub director. I’m sure McCartney would have loved to have a Dick Lester.’
⁵⁵
Webb then suffered a serious personal setback. He says he was ‘hospitalised’, refusing to clarify whether this was for a mental or a physical problem, only going so far as to say guardedly that he was ‘removed from the frame’ and ‘hospitalised for a lengthy period’ towards the end of the production, with the result that Paul had to direct a final sequence of the picture himself. ‘I think he was concerned about “my health”. He must have been because there were [so many] flowers in my house,’ says Webb. ‘I thought somebody had died.’

This unhappy episode was a precursor to the premières of
Give My Regards to Broad Street
in October 1984. There were four major premières, Paul and Linda travelling first to the USA to open the picture in New York and LA, followed by a Liverpool screening. Before the première at the Liverpool Odeon, Paul was honoured with the Freedom of the City, a ceremony in the Picton Library - where he’d received his Coronation prize in 1953 - and a civic luncheon, during which Paul was reunited with Ann Ventre, the Forthlin Road neighbour he’d taken to the pictures as a lad. Nowadays Ann worked as catering manager for Liverpool City Council (a new name for the old Corporation). Although they hadn’t seen each other since he left home, Paul recognised Ann instantly, and asked after their old neighbours. The première that evening went better than in New York and LA. ‘The [audience] were polite. There was applause at the end,’ recalls BBC Radio Merseyside broadcaster Spencer Leigh. ‘It was evident there wasn’t much story, but you hadn’t seen the musical sequences before and they were OK.’

The London première was more important, drawing the national newspaper critics to the Empire Theatre, Leicester Square. The day started with a macabre ill omen when one of Paul’s Cavendish Avenue neighbours, a fellow musician named Wells Kelly, the drummer with the band Meatloaf, came home from a party, put his key in the front door of a house across the road from Paul’s, and choked to death on his own vomit before he could get inside. Neighbours passed by the house for hours the next day before anybody realised that the man standing rigidly at the front door was a corpse. That evening, the audience in the Empire watched another theatrical death.

Broad Street
featured Paul McCartney playing himself in an old-fashioned jukebox musical, the scenes strung together by the thinnest thread of a story. Unless he got the master tapes of his new record back by midnight, Paul stood to lose his company. The songs were strong, the musical sequences attractively filmed, and Paul was adequate as a leading man, but the dialogue was witless, the supporting characters ill-defined, the story bereft of interest. Eric Stewart sat aghast in the audience with fellow members of 10cc.

I remember Kevin Godley turning round to me [at the end] and saying, ‘How could they spend that much money on a pile of crap like this? And why have they let it out?’ ‘Yes, well, are you going to tell Paul that?’ … There was a very embarrassing silence at the end.

Paul had committed to an intensive publicity campaign for this turkey, speaking earnestly in the picture’s defence to anybody who would listen while critics gave him a unanimous thumbs down. On top of a sheaf of bad reviews in the USA, Quentin Falk told readers of the
Daily Mail
: ‘this is a truly terrible movie’, the blame for which had to rest with Paul. ‘His screenplay is relentlessly banal, formless and, most unforgivingly, humourless.’ Met with scorn and mockery, Paul became defensive, then gave up the film as a lost cause. For his director, Peter Webb, making the picture was ‘a damaging experience in every way’. After getting out of hospital, he went back to making commercials.

There was a financial cost. Paul had struck deals with 20th Century Fox to the effect that the studio would lend MPL $5 million (£3.2m) to make the picture, secured on rights to the film. MPL was now obliged to pay this money back, as well as meeting a $1.8 million (£1.1m) shortfall. Consequently, MPL profits were significantly down for a couple of years. Some of the financial damage was offset by the success of the soundtrack album,
Give My Regards to Broad Street
, the rights to which Paul had wisely withheld. The album made number one in the UK, while the single ‘No More Lonely Nights’ was a top five hit in the USA and UK. The single might have done better still - it is one of his best post-Beatles songs - had it not been associated with such a bad film. All told, this celluloid adventure had been a calamitous mistake, one which Paul would excise from his CV, hardly ever referring to it, and, according to Webb, refusing permission for its DVD release in the UK. When Paul came to look back on the picture, he noted that Steven Spielberg required five drafts of every movie script. Paul acknowledged that he should have worked as hard: ‘you’ve got to have that fifth draft’. Unfortunately, as David Puttnam observed, Paul didn’t possess the will to make that extra effort, preferring to get by on talent. It is a character flaw that has marred his career.

There was some consolation in the animation short that accompanied
Broad Street
on its theatrical release. Paired with the picture was
Rupert and the Frog Song
, co-written and executive produced by Paul, and directed by Geoff Dunbar, as a pilot for their
Rupert Bear
movie. It was well received, winning a BAFTA. The theme song ‘We All Stand Together’, though often mocked as an example of McCartney at his most lightweight, should be heard as a children’s song, in the same tradition as ‘Yellow Submarine’, in which context it is perfectly charming. Released as a single in November 1984, the song made number three in the UK charts and won Paul his 18th Ivor Novello.

Paul felt encouraged to press on with the feature-length
Rupert
film. Then Geoff Dunbar received a call from the star. ‘I’ve got a bit of news,’ Paul told his animator. ‘We can’t do Rupert … He’s been stolen away from us.’ Having identified Paul’s interest in making a
Rupert
movie, another producer had acquired the option, informing Paul that he couldn’t proceed without his cooperation. So Paul pulled out. He and Linda had the animation bug, though, and continued to work with Dunbar on other short films, including one inspired by the squirrels they put food out for in their Sussex garden. To amuse his children, Paul made up stories about these engaging creatures, one of whom he named Squiggle, later becoming Wirral the Squirrel, in honour of Paul’s Merseyside home. We shall return to him later.

PRESSING ON

Having worked with George Martin since the Tokyo bust, Paul felt the need of a change of producer as he approached his next studio album. George wanted a rest from the demanding Paul, too. When everybody was sitting down at the annual Buddy Holly Week lunch in September 1984, George asked Eric Stewart if he would take the helm on the new record.

George said to me at this Buddy Holly Day dinner, ‘I think you should help Paul with his next album. I’ve got other things to do. I need a break and I think Paul needs a break as well. We’ve got two great albums there,
Tug of War
/
Pipes of Peace
, but I think some new blood should come in.’ I said, ‘He’s not asked me.’ He said, ‘Would you be interested?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’

Having established that Eric would accept the challenge, Paul invited his friend to Sussex to co-write some songs. It was a winter’s day when Eric drove to Peasmarsh, the snow thick on the ground. Although Paul and Linda were now living in their new farmhouse, Paul had arranged to meet Eric at Waterfall, the little round house in the trees which he still owned. The house was looking pretty as a picture when Eric came up the drive.

So I got there in the snow and I said, ‘It’s beautiful outside, it’s so beautiful, the sun’s out.’ He said, ‘That’s great, OK, [starts singing]
It’s beautiful outside
… Right, get it down, write it down.’ And we wrote the whole song within [minutes]. Simple as that.

This was ‘Footprints’ on what would be the album
Press to Play
. Another song, ‘Angry’, came with similar ease a few days later in response to Paul reading an unflattering article about himself in a newspaper. Stewart can’t recall what the story was, but it may well have been a negative article about the
Broad Street
débâcle.

I walked in another morning and I said, ‘You look a bit tense,’ and he said, ‘Yeah, I’m fucking angry.’ I said, ‘What’s the problem?’ He said, ‘The Press - look at this. [Holds up a paper]. What the Hell gives them the right to tell me what to do with my life?’ I said, ‘What? Hold it. Write it down,’
What the hell gives you the right to tell me what to do with my life?
… And we’ve got ‘Angry’ started.

Eric and Paul swiftly completed eight songs in this way, then went into Hog Hill Mill to record them.

Although Eric had gained the impression Paul wanted him to produce the new album, McCartney had also hired the fashionable young producer Hugh Padgham, who’d enjoyed recent success with Phil Collins and the Police. Tensions soon developed between Padgham and Stewart, who seemed to be competing for the same job, with both men finding they had an even greater problem with McCartney himself.

At first, Eric had been delighted with the songs he and Paul had written at Waterfall, songs which came easily and sounded fresh to his ears. Then he started to have misgivings about the quality of the tunes. ‘I thought, Are they really good enough. Are they finished? I always thought when we get them in the studio we’ll finish them, but as we got in the studio and we started to record, I said, “This is not good.”’ One day Eric clicked the talk-back button and said: ‘Paul, that vocal’s not right.’