[The day he learned of John’s death] Paul arrived at AIR at the same time as his record plugger Joe Reddington. As the men walked through the lobby to the lift, a journalist tried to follow them in and had to be ejected before they could ascend to the fifth-floor recording studio. Paul then attempted to do a day’s work. ‘He was just very, very quiet, and upset, as we all were,’ recalls Denny Laine. ‘He said to me, “I’m never going to fall out with anybody again in my life,” which is impossible to do, but that’s the way he felt. I knew he felt that maybe they didn’t make up like they should have done, so therefore he felt a bit guilty…’ As the musicians stood looking out of the window, they saw a furniture van below on Oxford Street with the name Lennon’s on the side, a type of van neither man had seen in London before. ‘We looked at each other and went, “Uh-ho! That was an omen.”’ The phone rang. Joe Reddington picked up. ‘Can I speak to Paul McCartney?’ asked a woman. ‘He’s busy at the moment. Who’s calling?’ ‘It’s Yoko.’ Joe knew instinctively it really was John’s widow, rather than a hoax. He told everybody to clear the room. ‘And [Paul] took the call. I just closed the door and he was crying—he’d lost his best friend.’

[—from Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney, Howard Sounes]

The man who was there the day the Beatles broke up

Mal Evans was the Fab Four’s roadie, fixer and friend. Paul McCartney confided in him when the band split, while John Lennon relied on him to guard his life. A new book tells his story

The Beatles’ lingering tensions finally caught up to them during a meeting among John, Paul and George at 3 Savile Row on September 10 1969. As Mal and Neil [Aspinall, who ran the Beatles’ company Apple Corps] observed, John took particular issue with what he perceived as Paul’s megalomania, saying that, “If you look back on the Beatles albums, good or bad or whatever you think of ’em, you’ll find that most times if anybody has got extra time it’s you! For no other reason than you worked it like that.” For Mal, the conversation must have been pure agony. He idolised Paul, who bore the brunt of the meeting’s vitriol.

In his own defence, Paul protested that he had “tried to allow space on albums for John’s songs, only to find that John hadn’t written any”.

With the idea of recording a new album seemingly off the table, John suggested that they produce a Christmas single instead. After all, he reasoned, their annual holiday fan club record would be due before long. When this idea was met with silence and indifference, John soberly concluded, “I guess that’s the end of the Beatles.”

As horrible as the experience must have been for Mal, panic hadn’t set in just yet. During the past 15 months, Ringo and George had quit the band at various times, only to be coaxed back. But ten days later it all spilled out again at a meeting at Apple. Mal and Allen Klein (their manager after the death of Brian Epstein) were there, along with Yoko, Neil and the boys. For his part, George was on speakerphone from Cheshire, where he was visiting his ailing mother. The topic at hand was a new agreement with Capitol, which Klein was understandably eager to ink.

As Mal observed, Paul began to enumerate the group’s upcoming opportunities, including a series of intimate gigs and a possible television special. In each instance, John said, “No, no, no,” before telling Paul, “Well, I think you’re daft.” Eventually, he blurted out that he wanted a “divorce”. “What do you mean?” a stunned Paul asked. “The group’s over,” John replied. “I’m leaving.”

At this point, Paul recalled, “Everyone blanched except John, who coloured a little, and said, ‘It’s rather exciting. It’s like I remember telling Cynthia I wanted a divorce.’ ”

Afterwards, Mal and Paul returned to McCartney’s home, where they retreated to the garden, still trying to process what had transpired. Paul remained hopeful that John might change his mind, that the Beatles would continue unabated. But Mal knew better. As with George, Mal had reasoned that “all of them had left the group at one time or another, starting with Ringo’’. But when “John came into the office and said, ‘The marriage is over! I want a divorce,’ that was the final thing. That’s what really got to Paul, you know, because I took Paul home and I ended up in the garden crying my eyes out.”

That night with Lennon and Phil Spector in 1973, when happiness was not a warm gun

Mal took great pleasure in spending long hours in John’s company, enjoying the Beatle’s undivided attention, as opposed to sharing him with Paul, George and Ringo. “It was fascinating,” said Mal, who by this point was living in LA and writing his own songs, “because John was talking to me like I was a songwriter, and that was incredible. For the first time, John and I really communicated, whereas, when it was the four of them, John was always the hardest to talk to. I always thought that when John stopped insulting me, we had fallen out as friends.” But, he added, referring to John’s teasing, “The more he likes you, the more he takes the mickey out of you.”

Yet, as Mal soon discovered, working with John during this period would prove to be a chore — incomparable, in fact, to their touring years together, when the Beatles were often confined to the relative safety of a hotel suite. When he was in LA, John could often be found at the Sunset Strip’s Rainbow Bar and Grill, which had emerged as his de facto headquarters [during a period of heavy drinking which Lennon ironically referred to as the Lost Weekend but actually lasted 18 months.] With musicians like John, Harry (Nilsson), Ringo, Keith Moon, Alice Cooper and Micky Dolenz adopting the Rainbow as their regular watering hole, they had taken to calling themselves the Hollywood Vampires, a nickname that evoked the night hours they spent guzzling hooch in the bar’s loft space.

On one of his most harrowing evenings in Los Angeles, Mal had accompanied John and Phil Spector to the Rainbow. At one point, John walked Phil to his car, assuring Mal that he would return shortly. “About a half hour goes by, and I start worrying and go outside looking for John — no sign,” Mal later wrote. “I’d lost track of a Beatle for a day. What had happened, I found out the following evening, was that when he’d seen Phil off, a few hippie fans of his took him in tow, and John, who had just moved into a flat, couldn’t remember the address, nor his or my phone numbers. [John] eventually turn[ed] up, but not before I’d had a few irate words from Yoko, who phoned me from New York shouting, ‘I thought you were John’s bodyguard — why don’t you guard his body?’ ”

At a loss for words, Mal admitted that “I never really thought of myself as a bodyguard to anybody, but I suppose over the years that had been part of the gig. Anyway, they were all grown up, with very strong minds of their own as to what they wanted to do, and I certainly didn’t expect them to hold themselves accountable to me.”

That December, as work on Back to Mono proceeded, John and Phil shifted their project to the Record Plant West. The change of recording studios had everything to do with John’s and Phil’s antics having gotten them evicted from their previous studio, A&M. At one point, Nilsson and Moon, in a drunken stupor, had urinated onto the recording console, leaving the electronics in an ungodly mess.

Things began innocently enough after John and Phil completed their December 11 session at the Record Plant West, where they took a pass at Chuck Berry’s You Can’t Catch Me. As Mal looked on, the two men, drunk to the gills, were horsing around the Las Vegas Room. In a nod to the early days of Beatlemania when the Beatles would climb on Mal when they heard they were at the top of the charts, John decided to hop onto Mal’s back for a piggyback ride. Unfortunately, Phil opted to get in on the act, too. Mal’s physical dexterity in late 1973 was a far cry from that of the early 1960s, and he had difficulty sustaining the weight of two men atop his aching back. As always, Mal observed, “Phil goes a little too far,” and in the ensuing ruckus, “he karate-chopped me on the nose, my spectacles went flying, and I got tears in my eyes I can tell you. I turned around with a real temper and told Phil, ‘Don’t ever lay another finger on me, man.’ ”

And that’s when Phil, “maybe to re-establish himself in his own eyes”, Mal thought, pulled out a handgun. To the roadie’s surprise, the producer “fired it off under our noses, deafening us both, the bullet ricocheting around the room and landing between my feet”.

John was understandably incensed, exclaiming to Phil, “If you’re gonna kill me, kill me, but don’t take away my hearing — it’s me living!”

Until that moment, Mal and John had believed that Spector’s handgun was a toy. At one point earlier in the evening, Phil had cocked the trigger and aimed the weapon at John’s head. As a result of the incident in the Las Vegas Room, “John’s fear of guns generally was doubled.” For his part, Mal vowed to stay clear of Phil. He would attend the recording sessions in deference to John, but that was it.

In nearly the same instant that Mal decided to banish Phil from his world forever, he and John were hustled off to [co-founder of the Record Plant] Gary Kellgren’s house for a lavish going-away party in honour of Mal, who was preparing to make his return to Sunbury. For the occasion, Phil had arranged for Mal to receive “a beautiful large cake, which must have measured four feet by three feet, so nicely decorated with a large bottle of Napoleon brandy, [and] a lot of comic figures like Superman and Batman,” Mal wrote. The sumptuous dessert was inscribed, “To Mal, my pal, love, Philip.”

As it turned out, the madcap producer’s greatest gift to Mal that night came in the form of his absence. “Phil, to show the most understanding side of his nature, did not come to the party,” said Mal. “He knew if he had, he’d be outrageous and spoil it for me. But he set it up and didn’t come — a true mark of affection from a friend.”

The party came to a sudden close, though, when John, having grown blind drunk, planted a telephone into the sticky remains of the cake.

Meet the Beatles: four days in Mal’s life with the moptops

Paul (1962) In July 1962, Mal and his family attended the celebration of the “Wavertree Mystery”, an annual event held to commemorate the anonymous donation of a local playground back in 1895. Mal later recalled that, “Lil and I were proudly pushing Gary in his pram when she turned to me and said, ‘There’s a weird guy over there — keeps staring at us. Now he looks like a real Cavernite to me.’ On turning, I was to see Paul standing there, unshaven, with a denim jacket thrown over his shoulder and chewing on a toffee apple.” After engaging in the niceties of introducing his wife to the scruffy musician, Mal took Paul for a jaunt. “We spent the rest of the day together,” Mal wrote, “Paul and I daring each other to go on things like the parachute drop and other displays that took nerve, neither of us accepting the challenge.” At one point, they stopped in front of an automobile exhibition. Paul announced to Mal that “one of these days I’m going to own one of those cars’’, pointing to one very humble saloon-type car.

George (1962) After shows at the Cavern, Mal would introduce his wife Lily to the rest of the band. “On one occasion,” Mal recalled, “Lil and I bought the fish and chips for the group and ourselves, as they could only muster enough money between them to pay for the teas.” Although she had her misgivings about Mal’s involvement in their lives, she enjoyed getting to know the bandmates. “After gigs,” she later recalled, “George would come back to our house for bacon and eggs. He sometimes came back before Mal to keep me company. I’d be washing baby clothes and nappies or ironing. I liked him the best.” Lily fondly remembered the time she pushed the bangs from Harrison’s face, saying, “Let’s see what it looks like with your hair back. I like that better.” But George wasn’t having it. He combed his hair forward, telling her, “That’s the way I have to wear it; it’s the Beatle cut.”

Ringo (1965) Driving up the M1, Mal and Ringo stopped at a roadside café for lunch. “We were sitting at the counter,” Mal recalled, “and the chap next to me had obviously been trying to make up his mind whether it really was Ringo with me. Suddenly, he turned to me and said, ‘I don’t care if it is him or not.’ Ringo nearly choked with laughter as I teased the fellow, saying, ‘No, it’s not him. But it gets terribly embarrassing taking him anywhere because everybody mistakes him for Ringo!’”

John (1964) John held no illusions about the Beatles’ behaviour, later admitting that, “We were bastards. You can’t be anything else in such a pressurised situation, and we took it out on Neil and Mal. They took a lot of shit from us because we were in such a shitty position. It was hard work and somebody had to take it. Those things are left out, about what bastards we were. F***ing big bastards, that’s what the Beatles were. You have to be a bastard to make it, and that’s a fact. And the Beatles were the biggest bastards on earth. We were the Caesars. Who’s going to knock us when there’s a million pounds to be made, all the handouts, the bribery, the police, and the hype?”

During a flight to Massachusetts for the September 12 show at the Boston Garden, Mal’s long-standing feelings of intimidation around John came to a head. Sitting at the rear of the plane, he broke down in tears, telling a reporter that “John got kind of cross with me — just said I should go f*** off. No reason, ya know. But I love the man. John is a powerful force. Sometimes he’s rough, if you know what I mean, man. But there’s no greater person that I know.” In many ways, it was as if Mal’s lack of self-confidence, a key aspect of his persona for the balance of his life, had returned with a vengeance. Later John approached Mal and embraced him.

Extracted from Living the Beatles Legend by Kenneth Womack (Mudlark £25), published on November 14.

(source)

Is "Arrow Through Me" about John?

There is an interesting quote from Wings' drummer at the time (1979), Steve Holley, about Paul being depressed while recoding this song:

"It was the morning that we recorded 'Arrow Through Me'. The night before had been a particularly long one, it was the only time he ever spoke about it, nothing about his relationship, it was just more of a feeling that I had than anything, that he just missed that closeness... just a perception. My God, he misses John - that it was a huge hole in his life". -Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney, by Howard Sounes

So let's take a look at some of the lyrics:

Some people think that the line it's actually "It could have been a finer thing", but in Paul's The Lyrics, it's written as "finer fling", and also if you listen to the song, that's also what you hear.

Paul included it on his book The Lyrics. The section where he discussed this song is very odd because he just goes on talking about how difficult it was to for him to form a band that could live up to the Beatles, and how it was challenging at first to have Linda in Wings because she was an amateur. This is weird because this has nothing to do with the song itself. It's almost like he is avoiding discussing the song. But then on the last paragraph, he cryptically says:

It's interesting that he begins saying "the character in the song..", in a rather detached way, but then says at the end, "there was nobody more down than me at that moment", which may imply that person in the song was actually him (or partly based on him).

This song was written in 1979, so John was still alive.

What past relationship or "fling" could he be talking about at this time?

Whatever "fling" he was refering to must have been very significant, because the fact that Paul decided to include this relatively minor song in his book (and remembering how down he felt at that moment) is pretty interesting.

Source: Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney by Howard Sounes

(Source: Fab an Intimate Life of Paul McCartney by Howard Sounes Page 61)

The Beatles (excluding Ringo) SHAT ON THE FLOOR in 1962.

During a set break, Klaus introduced himself and his friends shyly in broken English. The musicians admired their clothes. Jurgen said he bought all his clothes at the Paris flea markets. Detecting pomposity, John plucked an imaginary flea off Jurgen’s coat and pretended to flick it at Paul, who flinched.

John noted Jurgen’s floppy haircut, asking if he had it done in Paris. ‘No, I cut it myself.’

‘Funny looking, ain’t it, George?’

‘It is.’

‘Would look good on Paul, though,’ said John, putting a comb under Paul’s nose to make a Hitler face.

Source: Fab: an intimate life of Paul Mccartney

A collection of quotes in which Eric Stewart describes Paul McCartney reacting to the death of John Lennon, approximately three months later.

McCartney and Wonder continued their collaboration in England, going into Eric Stewart’s Strawberry South Studios to work on a co-written song, ‘What’s That You’re Doing?’ During the session Paul fell into a lugubrious mood. Recalls Stewart: "He said, ‘I’ve just realised that John has gone. John’s gone. He’s dead and he’s not coming back.’ And he looked completely dismayed, like shocked at something that had just suddenly hit [him]. I said, 'Well, it’s been a few weeks now.’ He said, ‘I know, Eric, but I’ve just realised.’ It was one of those things maybe he wanted to say something to him, but it was too late to say it then."

Source: Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney by Howard Sounes

Then one afternoon, probably a few months into 1981, he looked up at Eric Stewart, the 10cc cofounder he’d called in to help with backing vocals, and was suddenly stricken with horror. “You know, John’s dead,” Paul said. “John’s dead. It’s just hit me. He’s not around anymore.” Stewart gazed back into Paul’s eyes and tried to think of something reasonable to say in response. “I just nodded,” he recalls. “He looked quite sad and shocked. I think it just came home to him that this guy he had done so much with just wasn’t around anymore.”

Source: Paul McCartney: A Life by Peter Ames Carlin

Q: Another thing that must have been quite difficult, I guess – correct me if I’m wrong – but the timeline suggests you would have been in the studio in early ’81 when John had just died?

STEWART: Yeah. It was interesting, it was very, very sad, and I was working with Paul actually down at Strawberry South at the time, we were doing Stevie Wonder and he’d written a song with Paul, I think it was the Tug of War album, yeah, What’s That You’re Doing. And we had his girl backing group there, Wonderlove, who were doing the most wonderful vocals. Paul’s sitting there, just looking very, very strangely, just looking into the distance, and I said ‘Are you okay?’, and he said ‘Yeah’, he said ‘Do you know, I’ve just realised that John is really gone and I’m never going to see him again’, and I said ‘Bloody hell, you’re right, wow. You must be feeling it a hell of a lot more than I will'.  He said ‘Yeah, it’s so sad’, but I don’t know what was going on between them at that point in time, but obviously there were big fallings out with the Beatles anyway, as you’re probably well aware.

Source: “Eric Stewart on 10cc, Paul McCartney and his new two-disc Anthology” by Paul Sinclair, Super Deluxe Edition, October 19th, 2017

During these sessions [for What’s That You’re Doing?] Paul and I were in the control room one morning, just the two of us, and he looked a bit distant and withdrawn. I asked him if he was OK, and he suddenly said, ‘Yeah, I’m fine Eric, I was just thinking that John’s really gone, and I won’t ever be seeing him again!’

Source: Things I Do for Love by Eric Stewart

Pearl Jam. Not many bands have achieved a status needing no adjective or description. Pearl Jam has. And fewer still have had an insider, much less a member, obsessively capture onstage and offhand pics of the experience-the friends, family, and fans...and one very famous plastic toy. Luckily for uslead guitaristMike McCreadydid-trusty Polaroid camera in hand.

Documenting years of touring and travels, McCready snaps meetings with heroes and inspirations from all walks of life; time spent with crazy friends and family; and momentsfeaturing wildly artistic takes on art, nature, and architecture. Also: he once rocked a fab grey shift. And true to form for one not taking things too seriously, Mike sometimes had his pal, Mr. Potato Head, pop in and share in the fun.

As wonderfully intimate as group "selfies" with the likes of Neil Young, Questlove, Jimmy Page, Ann and Nancy Wilson, Joey Ramone, Johnny Ramone, The Edge, Ben Harper, Peter Buck, Paul McCartney, Mike Mills, Sting, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, Carrie Brownstein, Robert Plant, Peter Frampton, Dave Grohl, Gene Simmons, Bono, Jack White, Danny Clinch, Lady Gaga, Laura Dern, Dustin Hoffman, Judd Apatow, Will Ferrell, Leslie Mann, Jimmy Fallon, Mira Sorvino, Tim Robbins, Hugh Jackman, Venus Williams, and Kate Hudson are, it's the massive homage to the band's fans taken from stage view, in places from the Pacific Northwest to Peru, from Brussels to Bolivia, that brings McCready's manic intimacy come roaring to life.

Of Potato Heads and Polaroidsis the scrapbook for our rockstar world-friends, family, and fans. With some wattage. And a great deal of fun and good times.

‘Pam’ was paired as another song suite with Paul’s ‘She Came in Through the Bathroom Window’, inspired by a recent break-in at Cavendish Avenue. Having scaled Paul’s garden wall, Chris the Apple Scruff had opened Paul’s gate and ushered in Little Sue, Big Sue, Emma, Di and Carol Bedford. The girls then put a ladder up against the back of Paul’s house, sending Di up first, because she was smallest.

‘I’m in the bathroom!’ she called down.

Carol went up the ladder next and made it through the bathroom window just before the ladder fell over, as she describes in Waiting for the Beatles. The two girls then ran downstairs and opened the front door to let the others in. They rootled through Paul and Linda’s things, marvelling at Ringo’s stage drums, seizing armfuls of Paul’s clothes, Di swiping a framed photo, another girl scooping up photographic slides.

The following day Margo called at Cavendish with Bam Bam, having prearranged to take Martha for a walk. Some of the other girls were with her. Rose ‘Rosie’ Martin, a Cockney cleaner who’d recently started working for Paul, and would remain in his employ for the rest of her working life, told the girls that Paul wanted a word with them. He came outside with Linda, both looking serious. ‘It seems someone broke into my house on Sunday afternoon,’ Paul told the Scruffs. ‘I hate to say it, but I think it was some of the girls.’

‘What makes you think that?’ asked Margo.

‘By what they took. Pictures mostly. Anyone else - a real burglar - would have taken more expensive things.’ Paul said the slides were Linda’s, pictures she’d shot of the band, while the framed photo was of sentimental value to Paul, being a picture of him and his dad. He asked the girls to put the word around that he’d like the pictures back. They could keep the clothes. The girls returned the framed photo, and some slides, but many pictures were never recovered. This was just one of a number of burglaries Paul suffered at Cavendish over the years, in the course of which he lost a lot of memorabilia, including his home movies. ‘Everything was stolen by fans, this is the sad thing,’ says Barry Miles. ‘He owns hardly anything. This is why he occasionally buys stuff from Sotheby’s.’

Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney by Howard Sounes

Don't worry, I've been warned off Crosleys! I live in a place where it should be easy to get a decent player second hand, and I've already set up the tuner and speakers.

The book sounds great. I know very little about The Who beyond the obvious, though a good friend is a big fan. And I know nothing about Entwistle! Thanks for the rec.

Ram is such a good choice! I almost bought McCartney II for my first official purchase, because I thought it would be really funny to get the 7" of "Temporary Secretary" as part of my collection seed, but the shop I was in had an original White Album for sale and while it was more than I wanted to spend, it was still reasonable for what it is, so I bought it. I don't generally care about that side of collecting, the condition and numbering and whatnot, but that felt special. Plus the photos inside have the pin pricks in the corners. Someone loved this record. And now I get to. I am part of this history now!

What's your favorite song on Ram? If you have one.

(i apologize for the late response as i’ve been busy with work!)

that’s great to hear! i genuinely apologize for my initial recommendation, as i had no idea people weren’t so fond of crosleys. i’m glad i was corrected because otherwise i would’ve never realized my error.

it really is a wonderful read! if i may ask, has your friend read the book? if they have, i wonder if they’ve read tony fletcher’s biography about keith moon because that’s also a good one. (plus, i know you’re more into the beatles so, i also recommend the book ‘fab : an intimate life of paul mccartney’ by howard sounes!!)

mccartney II is such an adorably random record, haha. just imagine paul fiddling about with his synthesizer while producing ‘temporary secretary’! adding onto that, i don’t blame you for snagging an original copy of the white album instead, as you said it was being sold for a reasonable price. while reproductions of classic albums may be more audibly refined, the authenticity and sentimentality of original records feel more intimate. like you said, judging by its physical condition, someone had loved this record. and now that torch has been passed on to you! (i also loved that you mentioned the detail about the pin pricks in the photos! little features like that really are a testament to how much the records’ previous owner loved it. so cool <3 )

ooh—that’s a good question! it would probably have to be ‘monkberry moon delight’ (of course, haha) i mostly love it for the lyrics because it’s just an amalgamation of good ol’ mccartney silliness. i also really love ‘uncle albert/admiral halsey’ because of its rhythmic transition from somber to cheerful. and who doesn’t love paul and linda’s addition of the ‘butter pie’ bit?

what are your favorite songs off of ram and why? by extension, what’s your favorite production from macca’s discography (this includes wings, too!) i’d love to know!

I read that Iris's mom used to comb Paul's leg hair

Hi anon :)

Yes she did, according to the following account:

“Paul got on well with Mrs Caldwell, as he tended to with his friends’ mothers. ‘He used to come in from the Cavern absolutely shattered [and] he used to sit on the chair, put his feet up on the pouffe, roll his trouser legs up, and my mother used to comb the hairs on his legs for him, because he used to like that.’”

Fab: An Intimate Life Of Paul McCartney, Howard Sounes

The affair [between Paul and Iris Caldwell] was tempestuous. ‘I was madly in love with him while I was going out with him, and then you’re in love with the next person.’ Paul could be an annoying, controlling boyfriend, as young men of his class and background typically were. He expected Iris to behave and dress to please him—‘in straight skirts below the knee, and your hair up in a bun’—and could be jealous and immature, especially when egged on by Lennon. […] shortly after Paul got his first car, a green Ford Classic, they drove through the Mersey Tunnel to the Cube Coffee Bar in Birkenhead, where they had a tiff. ‘I picked up this great big bowl of sugar, a big square bowl—because it was called the Cube Coffee Bar, everything was square in there—and I emptied it over his head.’ Iris then ran towards the Mersey Tunnel, ‘with him driving along after me in the car trying to catch me …’ Deciding she was finished with McCartney, Iris phoned George Harrison. ‘I’m not going out with Paul any more,’ she told him. ‘Oh great!’ exclaimed George, seeing a chance to get the advantage over Paul for once. ‘Can I take you out tomorrow night?’ ‘Of course you can.’ As Iris was getting ready for her date, Paul turned up with tickets for the King Brothers. ‘He said, “Well, I’ve paid for the tickets. It’s a stupid waste of money, so we may as well go.” I’m thinking, what am I going to do? George is going to be here in a minute.’ Good as gold, Mrs Caldwell picked up the telephone and dialled George. ‘Hello, is that you, Margaret?’ she said, when George Harrison answered the phone, pretending she was speaking to a girlfriend of her daughter’s. ‘Oh listen, Margaret, Iris’s boyfriend’s come round and she’s going out with him tonight.’ George asked Mrs Caldwell what she was talking about, telling her he was George, not Margaret. (‘He was a bit slow, you know,’ notes Iris. ‘God love him.’) So Paul took Iris out. The evening ended awkwardly again when Iris attracted the attention of one of the King Brothers, who came back to Stormsville with her and Paul, the rival boys staring daggers at each other until Iris went to bed, leaving her mother to deal with the Romeos. [...]

[—from Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney, Howard Sounes]

“At 22, Paul found himself an exceedingly rich young man in a family who’d never had much. Though careful with his money, Paul felt compelled to share his good fortune around. He handed out gifts, notably Dad’s racehorse, and helped family members financially. Brother Mike told Paul he couldn’t support himself on the bits of money he was earning as a member of Scaffold; at least he couldn’t live the way Paul was. ‘Sometimes my brother is rather slow in catching on but when eventually he does, he soon makes up for it,’ Mike would write in his memoirs....Several other family members became financially dependent on Paul, who helped them buy houses, and in some cases put them on what became known as the McCartney Pension so they never had to work again” (100-101). Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney by Howard Sounes

"Paul was seen to slip into St John's Wood Church in December 2005 and sit alone in quiet contemplation. This church had special memories for him, as the place he and Linda had their 1969 wedding blessed. Church workers who were putting up the Christmas decorations when Paul came in also noted that it was around the time of the 25th anniversary of John Lennon's murder. What a lot had happened to Paul since that awful day, and what a mess he now found himself in."

Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney, by Howard Sounes

Context: Paul was depressed during this time because of the ongoing problems between him and Heather. They got separated just five months later.

I just bought “fab an intimate life of Paul McCartney” but do you thing that it's a good source to learn more things about Paul? or is it kind of still secretive and private? (like it doesn’t go into the deeper detail of his life)

I have to be honest, I have no idea about this one. I’m only slowly going through these books, especially now that I’m in my final year of master’s. If anyone has any feedback on this one, please reply to this!

“He likes to stay positive, because if he gets negative he gets really negative, and he knows it, so he tries to rise above these things, and not have other people reminding him of too many negative things, or hurtful things, because of who he is. He has to be out there looking like he’s Paul McCartney, happy-go-lucky, and not bothering the world with his problems.”

— Denny Laine, Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney