On 18th June, Paul McCartney turns 80. Beatles biographer Hunter Davies, a friend for 55 years, shares his memories
Macca’s long and winding road
I
first went to see Paul McCartney on 14th September 1966, in the house he’d recently moved into, a Georgian gem in St John’s Wood. That was a surprise in itself. John and Ringo – young lads, new to London, new to untold wealth – had moved to the suburbs into mock-Tudor mansions on an estate in Weybridge, Surrey. They thought, ‘This is posh. This is what you do, as lads from the North.’ George got it even more wrong – he had moved into a horrible modern bungalow in Esher, also in Surrey. But Paul was ahead of the game, realising inner London was the place to live, in a period house, among the affluent and upmarket, arty, intellectual folk. In his house, I noticed a Magritte above the mantelpiece. Goodness, how did a lad of 24 get to know about such artists, growing up on a northern council estate – as I had done, too. Paul still has that same house today as his London home. A sign that, deep down, he is a conservative sort of fella… I had gone to see him to ask him where the words of Eleanor Rigby came from. I thought they were amazing: so literary, clever and evocative. I was sure it would be the best poetry of 1966 (as if I knew anything about poetry). * Later that year, in December 1966, I went to see him again in his house. This time I was there as a screenplay-writer, not a newspaper hack. I was working on the script for the movie of my first book (Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush). The director wanted Paul to write the theme tune. Paul thought about it, but later said no. While I was with him, I suggested a biography of the Beatles – a proper hardback. There had so far been only two thin paperbacks about the Beatles. I said to Paul, ‘If I do it properly, for the rest of your life, when people ask you the same boring questions – “Why is Beatles spelled that strange way?” or 14 The Oldie June 2022
We love you, yeah, yeah, yeah: at a New York press conference, 1968
“Where did your funny hair come from?” – you can say, “It’s all in the book.” ’ There and then, he helped me write an arse-licking letter to Brian Epstein, their manager. I had to tell him how upmarket the book would be and how upmarket I was – har har. Well, I did have a column in the Sunday Times, and had two books published – stuff that would impress Brian. And Brian said yes. It struck me at the time that Paul was
the charmer of the Beatles: the PR man; the fixer. * During the writing and research of the biography, each of the Beatles came to my house for a meal. Paul brought Jane Asher, his fiancée. They were a lovely couple. I discovered that Paul had previously been living for some time in a flat in Jane’s parents’ house in Wimpole Street. They were a middle-class, artistic,
