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Macca Report current Paul News!!!
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April 2006

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April 28, 2006 - Press Release

Neiman Marcus Presents: Stella McCartney Exclusive U.S. Personal Appearance

Neiman Marcus is pleased to announce the personal appearance of designer Stella McCartney on Wednesday, May 3, in Dallas, Texas. Neiman Marcus NorthPark will host an exclusive cocktail party, in honor of Ms. McCartney, and presentation of her Fall 2006 collection. Stella McCartney is known for her witty and irreverent mix of sharp tailoring and sexy femininity.

Born and raised in London, Stella McCartney graduated from Central St. Martin's in 1995, with the rare accolade of having her final year collection bought by several influential retailers, including Neiman Marcus. Upon graduation, McCartney immediately launched her own line, which instantly garnered international media attention. In 1997, after only two seasons on her own, McCartney was appointed Creative Director for the venerable house of Chloe. During McCartney's tenure at Chloe, the collection achieved stratospheric commercial success, and received universal praise from both buyers and press. In April 2001, Stella McCartney launched her own eponymous fashion house in a joint venture with Gucci Group. A strict vegetarian, Stella McCartney does not use leather or fur in her designs, which include women's ready-to-wear, accessories, eyewear and the fragrance 'Stella', which launched on her birthday, September 13, 2003.

Information about the Company can be accessed at http://www.neimanmarcusgroup.com.

WEBMASTER'S NOTE: The event is by invitation only. The following day (Thursday May 4) the store will have a trunk show with Stella McCartney's fall collection (3rd floor ) that will be open to the public.

Hey Everybody,

Sorry I've been out of touch.. See, I got this phone call.. "Brian, are you available to do some private shows with Rod Stewart?" So, I've been practicing his material for 3 weeks now, and just finished 3 days of rehearsal.

I'm having an effin' great time playing with Rod the Mod. Hearing his great voice in my monitors while I was playing on "Hot Legs" was a real rush. I was raised on the first record I ever heard him on, Jeff Beck's "Truth".. and I've been a fan of his singing ever since. He's almost finished with a new rock record, too. He has a fantastic band and a hilarious crew around him as well. I'll let you know if we do some more shows out there, ok?

So, also... thanks a million for all the support and the cool reviews at iTunes and notlame.com! Also, shout out to Hideelee at Sugarbuzzmagazine.com... what a nice review!

Everyone in Europe and in the UK... I'm trying to get it over there on iTunes across the sea.. Hang tight, ok?

Watch this space!

Best,

Brian

http://www.brian-ray.com/

Paul snubs Paris

...So over at the recording studios, who rocks up last evening but Paris Hilton. Already here is Sir Paul [ed. McCartney, we're assuming], cheerfully running around and making merry.

Paris spent 5 minutes after parking her McLaren (of the wing doors) with the door up in the air going 'ohhh notice me in my cool car.'

After hiking up her butt-crack Juicy pants, she wandered over to the recording studios in her Backstreet Boy Wife-Beater tank. She paused before Sir Paul who took one look at the spectacle that is Paris, sniffed, and turned back to his conversation. Paris marched on, bowed and a bit wrinkled.

PAUL McCARTNEY TALKS ABOUT THE CANADIAN SEAL HUNT

As you might have heard, Heather and I recently went out to the east coast of Canada to make an appeal on behalf of the harp seals that live out there and who are so cruelly hunted at this time of the year. Here's what happened:

We arrived in Halifax on the afternoon of March 1st and then took a short flight on to Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. On the plane we met a representative from the Canadian Department of Fisheries & Oceans, who tried to persuade us about the arguments for retaining the seal hunt. He told us that it was an economic necessity for the people in the area and gave us a few other 'facts'. Fortunately we had read up on the situation and we had a long discussion with him and listened fully to all his points but finally had to tell him that we felt that none of these reasons added up to the retention of the brutal seal hunt. It was good however to at least hear the other side of the story.

On arrival, Heather and I were met by representatives from Respect for Animals and the Humane Society of the United States, who had organised this trip to visit the harp seals on the ice floes. The purpose of our trip was to raise awareness about the plight of the seals, as at this time of year hunters take part in a massive cull in which many baby seals are clubbed and shot to death for their fur.

Soon after our arrival, we had a briefing session with Respect for Animals and the Humane Society, who told us that this was the largest and most brutal marine mammal hunt on the planet, and that almost one million seals had been killed in the last three years. 97% of those seals were less than three months of age, and most of them just a few weeks old, still not old enough to have taken their first swim, or eaten their first solid meal.

The next day we took helicopters out to the ice floes. It was absolutely freezing, with a wind chill of minus 30 degrees, but we were wrapped up in special thermal suits to combat the cold. We also found some thermal hand warmers, which we managed to put inside our gloves and our boots. All around us were the beautiful harp seals and their baby seal pups, which we would defy anyone to be able to see up close and condone what is happening out there. It was heartbreaking to think that in a short time many of them will be clubbed to an untimely death. The good thing was that we had got the media out there and were surrounded by photographers & cameras, all wanting to get a piece of the action.

After spending three hours on the ice, talking to journalists, having our photographs taken, lying on the ice watching the pups with their mums, and taking in the breathtaking scenery, it was time to leave. As the helicopter took off, we looked out over the vast expanse of ice below. It was so very sad, and we sat in silence for a while, just thinking of what was to come, how the ice would soon be turned red with their blood.

Then it was back to Charlottetown for debriefing and dinner with our Respect for Animals and Humane Society colleagues, during which we all agreed that this barbaric practice must be stopped once and for all. The next morning we all met up for a further de-briefing session, during which we discussed what our strategy should be. That day Heather and I did an interview for the Larry King Show with Danny Williams, the Premier of Newfoundland, who came up with some comments that we found rather strange, including a reference to the FBI having a file on the animal awareness group PETA and the suggestion that they were considered to be terrorists, which having known them for many years we found ludicrous. He didn't deter us however.

One of the things that I most remember from the trip is that literally the first thing we saw on reaching that part of the world was a newspaper article, in which a 70 year-old fisherman said something like "We don't want these people coming here. All they will do is have their pictures taken with the seals and say that they are cute and then say that seal hunting is cruel. Well, it is cruel..but we have been doing it for 500 years so it is right". We couldn't believe that he was condemning it out of his own mouth!

In summary, our feelings are that a 500 year old tradition is absolutely no excuse for continuing to kill these beautiful animals. We were also struck by the fact that, despite arguments to the contrary, these seals don't deplete the cod resources ­ in fact they form a crucial part of a delicate eco-system and actually eat many of the cod predators. Many people agree that it's actually man's over-fishing that is the problem. Unfortunately, as we suspected, the seal hunt has gone ahead and around 91,000 of these beautiful creatures have been battered to death (with 235,000 more due to be killed this week) and the voices of the world have once again been raised against Canada and this brutal practice.

In general we have had some great feedback and feel that we have successfully raised awareness about this important issue. We would now like to set up an ongoing appeal and debate through this website to involve all of you and find out what you think. So let's talk! We want to hear your views. It doesn't matter if you agree or disagree with us ­ it's just important to keep talking about issues such as this. We feel that the more information we are able to give people, the more we believe our case will be proved. Please join us in speaking out about this terrible seal hunt and perhaps together we will be able to persuade the Canadian Government that the majority of Canadian people want this to stop.

We contacted Tony Blair's office about the seal hunt and received the following encouraging reply:

"The British Government is opposed to the current seal hunt in Canada. The Canadian Government is fully aware of the UK Government's position. We would prefer it if all seal hunting for commercial purposes were banned and we raise our opposition to the hunt with the Canadian Government as appropriate."

Respect for Animals and the Humane Society both have special sites dedicated to this issue as well as their normal sites; these are: www.boycott-canada.com (Respect) and www.protectseals.org (Humane Society).

Their main websites are www.respectforanimals.org and www.hsus.org

If having read all of this you're still not convinced please have a look at these horrific images of the seals being slaughtered, but be warned these pictures are extremely distressing

Click here for images of Seal Hunt

-- Paul McCartney

Limited edition prints of all 46 images are signed by both McCartney and Bernstein, and anyone purchasing one of these extraordinary photographs between now and May 12 will receive an invitation to return to SFAE for Juber's intimate private performance. "Each One Believing: The Tour," which comes down May 14, marks the Northern California debut of these images, and only the second time they've been exhibited in the United States. They premiered at London's Sony Ericsson Proud Central gallery in 2004 to coincide with the publication of Chronicle Books' "Each One Believing:Onstage, Off Stage and Backstage." The book and exhibition grew out of an ongoing collaboration between Paul McCartney and Bill Bernstein, who's been allowed unprecedented photographic access to the superstar over the last fifteen years.

L.A.-based Laurence Juber was a young musician living in London, England when Paul McCartney hand picked him to become Wings' lead guitarist. Juber spent three years recording and touring the world with the band, and during that time he also won a Best Rock Instrumental Grammy for the track"Rockestra" from the Wings album "Back To The Egg." Post-Wings, Juber has pursued an acclaimed solo career and is renowned internationally as a guitar virtuoso. While best known for his phenomenal acoustic work -- he's widely regarded as one of the top fingerstyle guitarists in the world -- he is also a master of electric, classical and 12-string techniques.

Juber's most recent album, 2005's "One Wing," features his elegant interpretations of many of Paul McCartney and Wings' most beloved songs, including "My Love," "Jet," "Band On The Run," "Silly Love Songs" and "Maybe I'm Amazed." His '00 album "LJ Plays The Beatles," featuring fourteen stellar acoustic renditions of Fab Four classics, is a particular favorite among Juber fans, Beatles lovers and aficionados of world class guitar music. LJ's May 12 date at SFAE is certain to heavily pay tribute to all eras of Paul McCartney's legendary career.

April 22, 2006 -- Press Release

Denny Laine Returns

At the height of the British invasion, Denny Laine was one of the most recognizable voices on the entire British music scene. As the lead singer on the Moody Blues' recording of "Go Now" -- a worldwide multi-million seller -- he stood out in a large pack, and did so splendidly. His soulful, agonized lead vocal performance, coupled with Mike Pinder's chiming piano, proved irresistible on the radio.

After leaving the Moody Blues Laine's next major gig was as a member of Ginger Baker's Air Force, a big-band rock outfit that was a partial offshoot of Blind Faith.

Following this musical excursion, Laine joined forces with Paul McCartney and Wings. The group was led by McCartney (joined by his wife Linda) on bass, guitar, piano, and vocals, with Laine at the core on guitar, bass, and vocals combined with his incredible talent for songwriting, solidified their place in rock history as one of the biggest selling acts of the 1970's.

When Wings disbanded, Laine took a step back from the spotlight to work on several solo albums.

Don't miss this chance to see this legendary performer come back to NYC for 2 nights of triumphant music.....

May 20, 2006 8:00 PM & May 21, 2006 7:30 PM

The Cutting Room
19 West 24th Street
New York, NY 10010
(Between 5th and 6th Avenue)

General Admission
$30.00
Tickets available through smarttix.com
or 212-868-4444

April 22, 2006 -- USA Today

Roses to the stars

A rose by any other name than a celebrity's just doesn't smell as sweet. The newest in the garden of stars honors the late Julia Child, whose appropriately butter-gold bloom is an All-America Rose Selections winner this year. USA TODAY stops and smells the famous flora with Ellen Trice of American Rose magazine.

Paul McCartney

The petal pitch:
The McCartney Rose, hybridized in 1996 by Meilland Star Roses, boasts "massive" blooms and a "mesmerizing," candy-like fragrance that "lures you deep into the garden," according to the company.

The star's floral philosophy:
TheSmokingGun.com got their hands on McCartney's 2002 concert rider, which indicated that the rocker is "very fond of flowers" backstage, but "no tree trunks!" Potted palms, bamboo and peace lilies - "plants that are just as full on the bottom as the top" - were the preferred arboreal accoutrements.

Added dirt:
Heather Mills carried 11 of the Pepto-pink blooms in her bouquet during her 2002 wedding to Sir Paul.

Link to buy McCartney roses for your garden. ($14.95 per shrub) CLICK

Paul takes second on rich list

The new data is part of the 18th annual The Sunday Times Rich List, which describes itself as "the definitive guide to wealth in Britain and Ireland".

It is based on identifiable wealth such as land, property and other assets including art, racehorses and shares but does not include bank accounts, which are confidential.

The top four overall music millionaires remain unchanged from last year with former record label boss Clive Calder's £1.3 billion ($2.3 billion) fortune putting him in the top slot.

His nearest rival for the position is Sir Paul McCartney with £825 million ($1.5 billion), pushing Lord Andrew Lloyd-Webber into third place with £700 million ($1.2 billion) and Sir Cameron Mackintosh into fourth with £400 million ($712 million).

The landmine charity champion and animal rights activist has joined London-based Zone, the fashion and VIP division of MOT models.

Zone director Mike Illes said: "We are delighted to be able to welcome Heather into the network of Zone models, and are very excited about the opportunity to represent her."

He added: "As well as being a well-known figure involved in headlining a number of impressive causes, Heather is an extremely talented model.

"She is likely to continue to make an impact on the fashion and beauty scene."

Mills McCartney is best known for her promotional work for a range of causes from the protection of baby seals in Canada to landmine charity Adopt-A-Minefield.

She took on the fur industry with her husband, Sir Paul, in a BBC1 documentary The McCartneys vs The Fur Trade on Wednesday night.

A BBC documentary found that as there is no legal requirement to label fur garments, some people may not know what they are buying.

In the programme, which will be broadcast tonight, the couple continue to fight to curb the market for fur products.

They have been outspoken in their criticism of high-profile celebrities who wear fur, and campaign vigorously against the trade in dog and cat fur.

Sir Paul admits he wore fur when a member of The Beatles, but says he did not realise what he was doing.

He says: "Like most people we didn't realise when you wore a fur jacket, as John did on the concert tour on the roof of Apple, or as I did in the film Help... you didn't realise what you were doing by wearing fur."

Protests

His wife, Heather Mills McCartney, is followed as she protests at fashion stores, including Jennifer Lopez's Sweetface label in New York.

Speaking about celebrity fur-wearers, she says: "If I ever bumped into Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista or Jennifer Lopez, you know, there is no way I would be gentle with them because they've been informed time and time again."

The programme looks at the £7 billion ($12.5 billion) global fur industry and talks with fur traders, clients and a stylist.

It follows Heather to a PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) gala in the United States, and to Brussels, where she appeals for a European ban on cat and dog fur.

Heather is the face of a Peta anti-fur advertisement campaign which carries the slogan: "If you wouldn't wear your dog, please don't wear any fur."

Last month the couple flew to Canada to protest ahead of the annual slaughter of young harp seal pups.

In 2005 Sir Paul vowed never to perform in China again after seeing secretly-shot footage of dogs and cats being killed for their fur.

Real Story: McCartneys versus fur, will be broadcast on BBC1 tonight at 9pm. Video

PADDY SHENNAN has a sneak preview of the TV programme which the McCartneys hope will aid their fight against the fur trade

Perhaps we ought to start trying to picture Sir Paul McCartney in a dress - after all, it now seems pretty clear who wears the trousers in his various houses.

This is not intended as a slight against the relatively retiring ex- Beatle, more a tribute to his second wife, the forceful, formidable, feisty and, sometimes, even frightening Lady Heather Mills-McCartney.

Both hubby and missus, we know, are passionate and powerful campaigners against animal cruelty, including that involved in keeping a thriving fur trade going - both here in Europe and across the Atlantic.

But while their aims are the same, their approaches couldn't be more different, as you'll find out in tonight's special edition of Real Story on BBC1: The McCartneys Versus The Fur Trade.

In Heather and Paul's case, it's Tough Versus Timid.

"I'm not very confrontational," says Sir Macca. "I do find it difficult going up to someone in the street about the fur they are wearing. It's just my personality. If it's someone I know it's easier."

Heather? Confrontation and In Your Face are probably her middle names. Which means she has a very unwieldly name, indeed: Lady Heather Confrontation In Your Face Mills-McCartney.

Viewers will see her badgering her better half to personalise her letters to A list celebs - some of which are known to him: "We will look at it later," he says,, looking a little uncomfortable.

"Don't bottle out!" Heather tells him.

And later, you will be able to eavesdrop on a 'phone conversation between the pair. She is in Brussels preparing for one of her impassioned, no-holds-barred performances at a press conference at the European Parliament, while Paul is reporting a brief 'phone chat he had with EU commissioner Peter Mandelson - and carefully explaining to Heather how he didn't want to harass him.

Heather replies: "I'll do the harassing, you can be the nice boy."

True to form, she harasses shoppers while stalking the streets of London, beseeching them - especially those wearing fur - to take a leaflet about the trade in dog and cat fur. And if they refuse to take one, she says sarcastically: "No? Don't you care about them?"

Although her tone soon softens when she confesses: "I can't say I haven't walked past a leaflet-deliverer in my time."

She makes much more of an impact on the streets of New York, where she gatecrashes the offices of Jennifer Lopez's Sweetface fashion company --and poses for Press pictures in front of a giant image of the fur-loving superstar.

The next day's headlines - including Heather v J-Lo: A Day In The Strife - proof that Mrs Macca's tactics do pay off.

Next up is a protest outside (and, until she's chucked out, inside, where she puts leaflets in fur coats) a J. Crew store, which she urges shoppers to boycott. And at the end of the programme, it is revealed that three months after this protest, J. Crew removed fur from its American stores.

But the relentless campaigning wasn't easy. At one point, Heather says: "It's so hot, my leg is starting to come off."

Many have found it easy to mock the Maccas (I can feel my own hands starting to go up here) and sometimes, to be fair, they do make it easy for their critics.

For his part, all Paul probably has to do to win more street cred is stop giving his much-ridiculed thumbs-up salute, while his Lady - who, like Yoko Ono, knows only too well the pitfalls in being with a former mop top - has been advised to tone down her alleged self- righteous shrillness and shrieking.

Her critics will probably believe she has given them more ammunition here but, given the disturbing subject matter and her obvious sincerity, determination and strength of purpose, it seems churlish to indulge in petty, personal attacks.

And even if people did, you'd just expect her to pull a face and ask: "Am I bovvered?"

Of the Press's possible reaction to her anti-fur trade campaign, she says: "They slate me all the time anyway for doing my charity work, so who cares?"

She undoubtedly does care, however - as will millions of viewers - about the trade in fur, not least cat and dog fur (you might wish to cover your eyes when undercover footage from Chinese fur farms is shown).

And yet I was left feeling uneasy regarding her boast about the ease with which she - or,, rather, Paul - can access the likes of Tony Blair: "Paul can ring up and get through and he will call back in 10 minutes if he's in the country - and within hours if he's not in the country.

"As Paul says, no one is Beatleproof."

But is this really the way democracy and the lobbying of our politicians and Prime Ministers should work? As in: "Ordinary do- gooders needn't bother calling, but don't hesitate if your name is Macca or Bono.

The PM will drop everything for pop stars."

And while we hear Heather's manifesto together with opposing views from supporters of the fur trade, what is missing from the film is a face-to-face debate between the two sides.

Perhaps no one was brave enough to sit in the same room as Lady Heather Confrontation In Your Face Mills-McCartney ...

For Apple Corps Ltd.:
Sir George Martin -- Music Director
Giles Martin -- Music Director
Neil Aspinall -- Executive Producer

Tickets to LOVE will be on sale at 9:00am April 19.

TICKET PRICES:
*$150, $125, $99, $69

All preview performances* will be discounted 25 percent.

*Preview performances for LOVE begin June 2 and run through June 29.

During these performances, the creative team is in the very final stages of production. The audience's reaction and participation is an important step in this process. The artistic direction of LOVE reserves the right to interrupt the performance to make adjustments as necessary.

SHOW SCHEDULE:
Preview performances will be presented nightly at 7:00pm. In addition, there will 10:30pm performances on limited dates. Please consult the most current show schedule at http://www.cirquedusoleil.com. Schedule is subject to change without notice.

Following the preview period, LOVE will be performed Thursday through Monday with no shows on Tuesdays or Wednesdays. Beginning July 1, there will be two shows nightly at 7:30pm & 10:30pm.

TO RESERVE TICKETS:
By phone: 702 792 7777 or 800 963 9634
Online: http://www.cirquedusoleil.com, http://www.thebeatles.com or http://www.mirage.com.

Click the graphic to order the limited edition collector postcards

Two limited edition sets of six commemorative photo postcards (12 in all) of Linda McCartney taken by Jorie Gracen to celebrate the anniversary of the Linda McCartney Centre in Liverpool.

Six photos in the collection are not in Gracen's book "I Saw Him Standing There" (Billboard Books) and some include Paul.

All proceeds go the Linda McCartney Centre to treat and find cures for cancer.

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Linda McCartney memorial pages on the net

Linda McCartney Mermorial page
http://www.photos.mccartney/linder.htm

Chrissie Hynde's Interview with Paul McCartney months after Linda's death (1998)

First he was one of the Fab Four. Then, for the next 30 years, Paul McCartney was always with his wife, Linda. Now Paul, 56, is alone for the first time, without his "mate," as he refers to Linda. People who know McCartney would add "soul" to that. Since Linda's death in April at 56, of breast cancer, a devastated McCartney has kept close to home and family in Sussex, England, saying little publicly. But a few weeks ago, he broke his silence to talk with Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders, a family friend, for USA WEEKEND. For the first time, McCartney discusses his relationship with his American wife, how they raised their children, the agonizing two years after Linda was diagnosed, and why they made Wide Prairie, a posthumous album of Linda's, out this week. In his London office, McCartney was upbeat for most of the conversation, until he started recalling Linda's last days. "He started to get cho ked up,'' Hynde says. "The legacy of Paul's music in the Beatles is one thing, but I think his real legacy is this love story he had with Linda."

Chrissie Hynde: You and Linda were married for 30 years but you never spent one night apart -- not counting the famous Japanese marijuana bust incident. Most couples, whatever their lifestyle, have to, or want to, have a little space on their own. Was that some kind of pact you made with her?

Paul McCartney: No, it just happened that way. I always think of Linda still as my girlfriend. That's how we started out in the '60s, just as friends. Whenever I was working late somewhere, I just never fancied it. I thought: Well, I could stay overnight in this posh hotel, or I could go home to Linda. And it was always the brighter of the two options: Yeah, go home to Linda. It was just I liked being with her, quite frankly. I think that's the most difficult thing about losing her, just how much I enjoyed being with her.

CH: With your money and prestige you could have sent your children to any school in the world. And yet you'd drop them off and pick them up every day at the same local school -- what the Americans would call the public school -- along with the local shopkeepers, farmers, and the other people in your village. Why?

PM: We'd seen a lot of people go through the expensive schooling route with their kids, and we understood why they did it, because they wanted the best for their children -- that's normally the reason people say. But we'd seen a lot of heartache happen, when the kids would be devastated to leave, for instance, Mummy at the age of eight. Whenever we saw anything like that, Linda and I instinctively would look at each other and register the fact that that wasn't how we were going to do it.

The other thing was nannies -- and [what] put us off that was when one of our friends' kids ran to the nanny and said, "Mummy!" The kid had forgotten who the mummy was, and it shocked us. So we decided not to go that route. The nice thing was that because Linda was from money, she knew that it wasn't the be-all and end-all. She used to talk to me about a lot of loneliness she'd seen in a lot of these big houses and a lot of unpleasantness in families, because they weren't close, they weren't truthful, they weren't honest, because they didn't spend much time together.

So even though people would say, "You've got to send your son to Eton," we just said, "No way, they'll end up being like a different race from us, and we won't just won't relate to them." We decided that even if we were going on tour we'd take them with us. People thought we were mad, they used to be after us about "dragging our children around the world." But we said, "Well, they are close to us and if ever they get the flu, then we're not in Australia and they're not in England, desperately worrying." Instead, Linda would be there, with the medicine. Or I would be there to tuck them into bed. We just decided that that was more important to us.

Neither of us had a brilliant education; I got into music and she got into photography. Even though we had good educations, we never really did the heavy university trip -- so it wasn't that important to us. We always said that as long as the kids have good hearts, that was our big emphasis.

So we didn't send them to the paying schools, we did send them to the little local school. We'd moved out of London because London was getting a bit too much the fast lane. If the kids were going to a club, it tended to be a big London night club and it was very much the fast lane; a lot of drugs and stuff knocking around. We worried for their safety, so we moved out to the country and our kids went to the local school, with just 75 kids in the school. They really enjoyed it and the local community accepted us just as if we were the same as them, which in our minds we were.

Little things would crop up, like the school would be fundraising for a new computer, let's say. They'd mention it to us and instead of saying, "Sure we'll buy you ten," which we had the capacity to do, we'd say, "Tell you what, take a collection amongst all the other parents and when you get up to about 50 pounds or something, give us a shout and we'll put the other 100 pounds or something, but we don't want to appear flash. We want to just be ordinary people to give our kids as near to a normal upbringing as we can do." I must say that is one of the things that Linda and I always said: Our greatest achievement is our kids. People say that they are really good people.

CH: Well you know, you've been a huge inspiration to the way I look after my kids?

PM: That's true. I remember you and Alan and you were kind of a Pretender, and moody. But then after meeting Linda a couple of weeks later you were like much more a mom, much more interesting. And that was the effect she had on people.

CH: Well you know how I met you, because Linda sent me a present for my first daughter and I opened the card and it said:'Paul and Linda and kids.' I was just beside myself. I said, "I don't even know the McCartneys." I saw you walking through the studio a couple of weeks later and I walked up and said, "Thanks for the baby clothes." You looked a little embarrassed and said, "Oh, my wife. She's always doing stuff like that."

Many people since have said that their introduction to her was some good will message or gift before they actually met. She first found people that she...

PM: Liked.

CH: Liked. That was very much how people seemed to get to know you both sometimes. Next, I was going to ask about the nannies.

PM: Well, we didn't like the idea of the children relating more importantly to someone else rather than us, we never did. Similarly, most people in our position have got a cook. Linda didn't like cleaning so we got cleaners. But cooking, she would do it all, looking after the kids. We were there every night to put them to bed, there in the mornings to wake them up. So you know, as far as they're concerned, even though we were some famous couple, to them we're just mom and dad. I think that's what's important. We made that important for us, that was our priority. And it worked.

CH: Even my kids didn't know you were a famous couple until one day, we were coming home from your house on the train. As you always seem to do behind my back, you slipped them both a 10-pound note and said, "Go buy something for yourself." They looked up and said, "Wouldn't that be great if he was our dad."

PM: I know Linda and I are both very proud of the effect she as a mother had on you because, hey that's a huge thing.

CH: And I am glad to say that I took the opportunity many times while she was around to tell her that. It's not something I'm just saying now.

PM: No, no, she knew that.

CH: Did you ever take a vacation together without the kids? Most couples, they want to get away and have a little second honeymoon. Did you ever go off on your own without them?

PM: No, we even took Heather [Linda's daughter from her first marriage] on our honeymoon. People are little surprised at that. We've met people who say, "Oh I like children, but I only like them when they get to be about three years old, when you can talk to them." Linda and I would look at each other and say, '"But don't you like them when they're little babies?" And they just gasp a little bit. I think it was just always such a mystery to us. I [come] from a very strong Liverpool family. And when Linda and I met, she was a single parent happening to get on with her life. So we just kind of pulled it together between us and just said, "Well you know, we'll just do it in a certain way." And we stuck to it. Just kept it very simple. We looked at issues and saw what seemed to be our instinctive reactions. Sometimes it can be against the grain. People will say, "No, you mustn't do that or no you can't do that." We sai d, "Well we're gonna do that and we hope we're right." And I think using our instincts like that, instead of what other people told us, was good because no one can tell you how to raise your kids. They are your kids. And this idea that babies are only good when they're three -- when James was really little I remember sitting on the sofa with him. He's just a baby and he was sitting with me like we were grown-ups and he was just sort of gaggling and going, "Ah goo, ah goo." So I just said, "Ah goo." Like agreeing with him in his language. He looked at me like, "You speak this language?" We're sitting there for hours just "ah goo." I just mimicked him because kids mimic their parents -- but its actually a lot of fun the other way around. Then I said, "Pa, Pa, Pa," and he'd just go, "Um, hum, Pa, Pa, Pa." They see you like using their words and it's oddly so exciting. From the second they were born to this day, I think you learn so much off kids -- if you're willing to be open and you don't close your mind and say, "Oh, I know how to be a parent." I always said to Lin that being a parent is the greatest ad-lib you're ever involved in. You make it up as you go along, you have no idea what the script is, you have no idea how these kids are going to turn out but if you're just with them a bit and listen to them a bit and let them talk to you instead of talking to them all the time, then natural things occur a bit more easily. We don't give them anything near the amount of credit they should have. They teach you in the end. This beautiful, innocent wisdom tends to erode as we get older, but they bring it back -- which is magic.

CH: I think they are going to try to elect you president of the United States after that.

PM: Yeah, this is what I'm running for.

CH: No one says this, nobody talks about this stuff.

PM: This is what Linda and I were; this is why we were so close and this is why this year has been so devastating for me -- because she was the only person I ever talked to like this in my whole life. I never talked like this to my mum and dad, even though I was very close to them. You don't talk about this stuff, people just get on with it and nobody actually ever stops and thinks about it. Linda and I always used to remind each other that that was sort of what The Beatles were about, that honesty. I remember when we first came to America and all the publicists said, '"Don't mention the Vietnam War." So of course, the first question we got, we mentioned it: "We don't think it's a good war, it's unfair, what are you doing over there?" Everyone was having fits about us saying that, but we couldn't not say it. That was the great strength that people recognized in The Beatles, that these guys were telling the truth. U ntil then, showbiz had been, "Oh, I'm so pleased to be working this room...." With us in The Beatles, it was, "We're so pleased to be in this life with you."

CH: Linda was a successful and respected photographer -- nothing to do with the Eastman-Kodak family, as was rumored at the time -- before she met you. Neil Young, at the memorial service in New York, praised her work as among the best of her generation. How did marrying you affect her career?

PM: I used to joke that I ruined her career when we got married, because she became perceived as Mrs. McCartney, "the Eastman-Kodak heiress" Paul had married. A lot of newspaper stories just get changed because they are better stories when you lie a little. Of course, it still has to sacrifice the truth. So I used to make that joke. But to some degree I think it was true, because if she had a book of her photography, for instance, instead of people thinking she was worthy of a book, the thought was, "Oh, Paul probably arranged for her to have a book."

CH: Oh, I'm sure. I don't think it was a joke.

PM: No, no it wasn't actually such a joke because in fact, in later years, I must admit, I was starting to talk to her about maybe she should use the Linda Eastman name for photography or at least Linda Eastman McCartney because some of these people would say, "Oh I didn't realize that she was Linda Eastman." But the great thing is that she kept taking photos and whether people understood it or not, the body of work is there.

CH: I never saw her without a camera.

PM: I did. In bed. But one of the many things I loved about her was the way she held a camera. To me, having been photographed so many times, you can tell by the way that the photographer holds a camera, the way they wield their instrument, you just know, "Wow, this one's good."

CH: You took a picture I've seen a few times of her, she's sort of looking at you from the side and holding her camera, and it's so delicate the way she has her hands, it's very beautiful.

PM: She had these long fingers, these beautiful long fingers, and it was one of the things that first struck me when I met her. Having had my photo taken by Life magazine, and by Avedon and all these people, I remember thinking: "God, she really holds that camera gracefully." And I think that probably is one of the signs of a great photographer, because you ought to hold the instrument of your profession well. And she certainly did that. And the other thing was that she knew when to click, which is the other essence of a great photographer. I was once talking to a good friend of mine about photography and saying it's about just a few little things -- you've got to be in the right place at the right time. All the great photos you can think of, had the person been next door while that was going on they'd have missed it. A great photographer always knows to be there -- and that was one of Linda's great skills. The other thing, the next thing is where to point the camera. Because they can point it at your feet, upon your face or your whole body or a close-up. So I think that's crucial. And then the final thing, in those three little steps, I think is when to click. Bringing you into a click, she'd wait and then you'd think, "I must be looking horrible." But you weren't. There was just nothing happening, that's all. And she'd just wait until you said the end of your joke and you're free to laugh and she'd go bang. She only ever got those moments. Sometimes it was a little scary because you'd think, "What is it? Is she looking at my hair falling?" But it wasn't, she was just waiting for that moment.

The other thing -- sometimes she'd take a photo of something, and most professional photographers would take the rest of the roll, just in case, and I would sometimes say to her as an amateur, "Maybe you ought to take a couple more, just to be sure." And she'd say, "Nope, I got it." That takes an awful lot of confidence. She just knew that the moment had happened, and she had clicked. And please God it came back from the chemist, as we say over here -- what we call the developer, the chemist. But she knew as long as it came back from the printer OK that she had that moment. Again, that took huge confidence and huge belief in your ability. I probably am heavily biased, well I am definitely heavily biased, but I seriously do believe that she is one of the best photographers that I've ever seen. I'd put her right up there with [Henri] Cartier-Bresson and Ansel Adams and some of our favorite photographers and I think t hat it will be discovered more and more as time goes on, because she'll be seen as a photographer and not just as some sort of appendage to me.

CH: Whose idea was it for Linda to sing and play keyboards in your band, Wings?

PM: It was kind of both of us. We used to do a lot of late-night planning in bed, we'd go to bed and sit around watching TV, take some food to bed. At that time, The Beatles had broken up, so I had to make a decision. To forget music and think, "Oh I've done it all with The Beatles after all, you can't get any higher and it would be very, very difficult to top an act like The Beatles" -- everyone in the world is always trying and no one really succeeds, to my mind. So suddenly, for me to be in that position of trying to follow The Beatles was, like, nerve-wracking, to say the least. The whole circumstances of life had changed. Now Linda and I were it -- I was on my own now, except for Linda and our babies.

So I was sitting up in bed one night, and we were chatting about whether we would do anything, whether I would do anything, and I thought that I could form a new group. It'd be really difficult, but I always wanted The Beatles to go back to square one and just play as a band; to forget all the highfalluting stuff and just learn to be a little band together, which is what we were always the best at. But because it couldn't happen with The Beatles, I started talking about this and then I said, "Imagine yourself behind a curtain. You're in the band and the curtain opens, and there's an audience there and you're playing in this band -- could you handle that? Do you think you could possibly enjoy that? Because I'd love to have you up on stage with me." Because of the same reason I always wanted to sleep with her. We're just friends and it seems that if that were an option all the time -- to be without her or to be with her -- I'd always choose to be with her. And so she said, "Yeah, I think I could get into that, that sounds quite fun." And that was it. We just decided to form a band.

She had just had our baby Stella, and it had been a very difficult birth. There had been a thing called a placenta previa, which in the old days was life threatening. Before modern medicine, it was life threatening for the mother and the baby -- both of them would have died giving birth. Anyway, so she had the operation, she had a Caesarean and it was a very difficult time. But during the recovery time from that we spent a lot of time together just sitting around chatting and stuff. And while she was in the hospital, this idea came to me for Wings. I just thought it was kind of slightly angelic and nice after The Beatles. It seemed right. It seemed like a good name for a band. So we started talking about how we might do it. Always at the beginning it was only ever going to be, "Who might join me and her on stage." It was never like it was a band and would she join it. It was going to be me and her, and then we'll g et some other people. That was kind of how it always was, really. She and I were always the regulars, and other people kind of came and went. And then keyboard: when she was a kid -- like a bunch of people -- she had taken a few piano lessons, and had liked it. She had been in a local glee club in high school, and she would tell me how she'd go to the bell towers with the local girls and sing harmony. She was like that. A deep love of it, but no training whatsoever. So I kind of started her on the piano and just showed her where middle C was. I said, "This is the chord, and this is how you make a chord of C." Showed her the three notes. And then I said, '"You mess around." That was all we ever said, and she picked the rest of it up herself. People used to joke that she was sort of a "one finger player." But that was because they were ignorant of the fact that the instrument she was playing was a Moog synthesizer, a mini Moog, which is monophonic. You cannot play more than on e note at a time. Actually, they didn't realize what they were seeing: they're seeing her play this Moog, which was an instrument she loved. It's on a lot of Wings records. And they'd see it and they'd go, "Oh look at her playing with one finger." If they only had the wisdom to realize that you can't play those instruments with more than one finger. Well, you can play with as many fingers as you like, but only one will register. So she was actually good. As time progressed, I don't think anyone realized that she became the keyboard player on pieces like Live And Let Die, which has got really difficult stuff in the middle. She was synthesizing a whole orchestra on the tour, and that's really difficult to do. But she learned it all, and she did it all and she took it kind of seriously. And, for me, there she was. If ever I looked around, there was a friend; it wasn't a new face, it was my mate.

CH: Most of my conversations over the years with Linda end up centering around animal issues and how we wanted to convert the whole world to vegetarians. Linda never sought public acclaim, and constantly avoided the media. She obviously disliked any intrusion into her privacy, but she was always ready to use her voice -- loudly in restaurants if I recall correctly -- if it meant saving animals. What were her involvements? Some Americans don't even know, right from the bottom up, her whole intention and what she wanted.

PM: From a very early age, Linda had been a serious nature-lover. One of the great things for us was that I was too when I was young. And, when we started talking -- and this was now after The Beatles when we got together -- the more in depth we'd get and talk about our past; she'd tell me about going to a little vacant lot where she lived in Scarsdale, near New York, and there was a little spot she always used to go to, with a little stream that no one ever went to because it wasn't on the social calendar. And, like, she'd go, and there's this little stream running through it. She'd spend hours there just sitting alone, watching nature. She was always very good at that, just sitting on her own. She was one of the most complete people for that. I'm too antsy. I can do it for a little while but then I want to do something else. But Linda could just sit forever -- and nature would come to her. Of course the quieter y ou are, the more it comes to you. So she used to tell me about lifting up rocks and finding salamanders and I'd say I used to lift up rocks and find newts, which is the British equivalent. And, I used to wander around in a little brook doing bird-spotting. Identifying birds: I loved it. So, when we compared notes later, it turned out that both of us were loners as kids, and both of us were going out into nature and that was one of our great joys. She'd always felt that way. So when we got together we'd talk about that. Then years later, we were on our farm watching some newborn lambs gambolling around outside while we were eating leg of lamb as a traditional Sunday dinner. Linda very gracefully credited me with saying -- and I can't remember actually, it could as easily have been Linda, she might have just been being nice -- anyway, Linda credited me with saying, "Look at that, beautiful lambs gambolling but we're eating one of the legs that's gambolling; maybe we should qui t eating meat and find a better way." This was now over 25 years ago. But at that moment, we thought we'd try it. It was very difficult at first, because there's always what you called "the hole in the plate" -- where the meat would have been. That's what you do when you eat meat, you build a meal around the meat.

I remember, my Dad would come to The Cavern in his lunch break when I was in The Beatles; he'd come with a pound of sausages and give them to me and I'd have to go home and cook them and think of something to put with them. Because that's traditionally the way you do it. You don't make potatoes and peas and then think of the meat. It always revolves around the meat. So it was difficult for about a year while Linda started to get ideas of what new to cook. And anyway, she did and she filled that hole in the plate amazingly, with pastas and beautiful sort of food. All sorts of stuff; as we went on through the years it just continued to develop. We ate lustily, it was never what people call rabbit food, we ate big steaming meals. That developed over the years and then she got into vegetarian food over here, which is the most successful vegetarian food line going, and ended up having her own special factory to produce it all. The animal rights thing came along with that because the more we realized that we were helping by not eating them, that brought into focus other issues of cruelty to animals. So it just came naturally. And Linda, being a mother, felt for all of that deeply. I think that the fact that women give birth gives them a better connection to the universe than men. God bless them, men are lovely and you can't make babies without them, I'm proud to be one -- but I admire women perhaps more. They've got a rough deal -- they go through the pain of birth.

I used to joke with Linda, I'd say, "I've had four babies and it didn't hurt a bit." I'd have to duck quickly before she'd throw something at me. But that's a bit of the male attitude: hey, we just give out cigars, it's great! Whereas women are going through all this pain and anguish. Anyway, I think being a mother gave Linda a deep connection with animals. She could relate to a mother sheep giving birth and a lamb, just getting used to the beautiful Spring sunshine and bingo -- it's off the slaughterhouse to be spring lamb. All of these things started to make a lot of sense. So we started supporting many, many animal rights groups, like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. We became patrons of the British Vegetarian Society, and helped animals where and when we could by giving donations, or, for instance, Linda taking photographic campaigns against fur. She did a great campaign against wearing fox fur. She took a picture of a woman wearing a fox coat, and the caption was "Rich Bitch." And then you'd see a dead female fox, and blood coming out of her, and the caption said, "Poor Bitch." She took the photos for those and she always loved doing that. One of the great things about Linda was that everything she did, to my mind anyhow -- I always say I probably exaggerate a little being the proud husband -- but it was meaningful. Everything she did had to have a meaning. She'd do things for a laugh but there was always some connection with something very meaningful. All of her animal activities, all her vegetarian stuff...often her photography would be to show you how beautiful a leaf is or how beautiful mist is or how beautiful a child is. I remember when we went to Knopf, which is a big New York publisher, with her first book. The guy was leafing through her stuff going, "Tots, horses, flowers, more tots," and I was getting angrier by the second. This guy diminishing my wife's fa ntastic work to tots. What you mean is, "That's a fine portrait of a beautiful child." Don't give me this "tot" nonsense. But anyway, that was it. We got very involved in the animal issues. I still am involved. When she died, I felt that many people around the world would feel that we have lost -- as we have -- a fantastic, strong voice for animals. But she and I were a partnership. She never did anything on her own because we were together so much. She and I would talk everything through. She did stuff on her own, of course, I'd go out to work and she'd chat to her friends, and she'd chat to you. But generally when I came home she'd tell me all about it, so I was always in on it all.

CH:I did feel when I talked to her that you were her confidante. Unlike other girlfriends who might take the opportunity while the old guy's out of the house to really lay in, I always felt like Linda never broke rank. She would never say anything to me that she would not have said to you if you weren't there. I had a very strong sense of that, very unique.

PM: I think that's true except I think she would a little.

CH: Well once in a while she'd say, "Oh, Northern Men." And that would be all.

PM: She'd never be a good traitor. But there would be a little bit of fun. She and I liked to take the "mickey" out of each other and I liked that she was strong enough to take the "mickey" out of me. I was telling someone the other day one of the greatest things for me, strangely enough -- it seems a bit perverse but it's true -- was being told off by Linda. And it didn't happen many times, but the first year we got together, somebody had said something about her that wasn't amazingly complementary. I can't remember what it was, but we were walking down Park Avenue in New York and it was late, late at night, early in the morning,. We'd been to see probably her dad or something. We were strolling arm-in-arm, and I mentioned this thing; I said, "Oh so-and-so said so-and-so." Well, she stopped in the middle of the street. Luckily, there was no traffic. She put her hands on her hips and she just colored-up, not a kind of beet root color, more a sort of light strawberry, and she just looked me right in the eye. She said:"If you ever say that again or even suggest it," and she just tore a strip off me. I never forgot it. But you know what, I loved it. I just thought, God, this is her. She's being herself. She's not frightened. She's not the intimidated woman. And I love to see her like that. Fondly enough, because I think many men would think, "Ooh, how dare you go on like that?" and we'd have a raging argument. But I just said, "OK, I know that what you just said is absolute, a thousand percent true." And, apologize. You knew about it when she tore a strip off you. It's actually one of my most fondest memories.

CH: Was Linda a good businesswoman?

PM: Yeah, but she was the least likely person to ever get into business. When we first married, she would avoid any business stuff like the plague -- and the only reason she ever got into business was the animals. I remember sitting chatting with her one day, in our early years of vegetarianism, and starting to realize as we did that animals are our fellow creatures, that's how we see them. Fellow creatures that we happen to be in the same time frame, on the same planet, as. Now I'm not going to down them, they're in my time frame.

The first move it seems might be to learn about them, then kill them if they're a predator. So we gained more and more sympathy for this idea. We were chatting about this one day, talking about ways to help animals, and wouldn't the world be a better place, dreaming about it. And it was if I saw a light bulb go off over her head. We were talking about vegetarian food, and how great it would be if you could get it ready-made in shops -- because you couldn't at that point -- and it was like seeing a light bulb going off above her head. Ding! Linda said, "Oh, I could do that." From that second she started thinking about it, and started to work out how to do it. She did that even though she hated business, because she hated having to do anything. She was such a free spirit -- she'd much rather say, "No, sorry, I can't be there for a meeting. I'm going to sit in the garden." Or ride on her horse, which is all she really ever wanted to do, actually. Anyway, this light bulb went off. The next thing was that this cousin of mine, cousin Kate, was coming down from Liverpool to live in London. We were talking to her about her going vegetarian and my cousin said, 'I wouldn't know how.' And another light bulb went off in Linda and she decided she should write a vegetarian cookbook, just to give it to my cousin so she could check it out how to go veggie. That was the single reason Linda wrote that book -- it wasn't for money; she certainly didn't need the money. And it wasn't for money why she started up her ready-made vegetarian meals. She said, "If I could save one animal then I'll be happy." Well, to date she must have saved millions of animals, after what she has done with her vegetarian food.

I think that single-handedly she has got to get the credit for the vegetarian revolution that has happened here in Britain. Because now, it's a mainstream thing. It's not a cranky thing. In America, it's still less popular, but I think in time America will realize it. I still have a lot of faith in the young people. That's who will change the world. Economically, I think the world has to change. Because if it's true -- as it is -- that you can feed 10 times the amount of people by eating vegetarian instead of processing it through an animal and then eating the animal, which is wasteful and not economic, and really bad for the environment because we've got too many animals around. The fresh water tables in America have gone down severely, and it's going to cause really severe problems. Just because of our insistence on eating meat all the time.

There's a very good book by Jeremy Rifkin called "Beyond Beef" for people who are interested to check out. Our obsession with beef is wild, there's no reason for us to have it. But we've been conned into it and it's wild. I finally realized that over here in England, we have a thing called the Milk Marketing Board, and you better believe they market this stuff the same as the meat people do. They're training us to want more and more. But it could cause serious problems for this planet in the future. It has already.

CH: Talking about Linda, that's all we talked about. We would always at the end of the discussion just [sigh], "But why am I telling you?"

PM: Well because, the thing is, you need reinforcement. It's tough to be any kind of activist. As a lot of people know. And you guys reinforced yourselves.

CH: In fact, I hadn't spoken to her for three years, and she called me out of the blue one day to say, "hello." ... She's the least pretentious person I've ever met, and I said, "You know, McCartney, when are you gonna get off your high horse and do something about this vegetarian business?" That took her by surprise; she said, "Well..." I said, "There's a whole thing going on here, there's a revolution." And she said, "But no one wants to hear what I have to say, they just want me to stand next to Paul accepting awards and stuff." I said, "Hey, you got a voice. You can use it for whatever you want." And that's when I saw the light bulb above her pop on.

PM: To take your point, the question was, what are you going to do and that is why she got into food. Because she said, "No use telling people to go vegetarian and there's nothing in the shops for them to eat." She said, "My role will be to provide something for them to eat." That became her main role.

CH: She was like the type of person who did it and didn't talk about it.

PM: Yeah, I always talked. She sang about it.

CH: The Americans of course probably don't know this: You were knighted by the Queen for your contributions to the culture and your services to music. You then became Sir Paul, and I technically should be addressing you as Sir Paul.

PM: I notice you're not, Chrissie. What is this familiarity?

CH: And as you became Sir Paul, Linda became Lady Linda. What did she feel about her new, and what most people would consider coveted, title?

PM: She was sweetly offhand about it. That kind of grandeur was nothing that she actually went for. She came from a strata of society which was really probably American aristocracy and she never really valued it. She thought it had a lot of false values, that there was a lot of social climbing and she never wanted that. She wanted honesty, she wanted reality. So she was much happier with me, just hanging out, just going to bed early with a meal, than going out to huge functions and social climbing. I think the truth of the matter is that Linda wanted the knighthood for me more than she wanted it for herself because, being British, it sort of mattered a bit more to me anyway. Once or twice we would sit around and I would joke and nudge her and say, "Eh, Lady McCartney..." and she would smile sweetly and kind of enjoy it -- just as long as it was low-key like that and just between the two of us she could kind of quietly enjoy it. But somebody said to her once, "Do people call you Lady McCartney?" and Linda said, "I think someone did, once." Now, you name me the women who can have that sort of attitude.

CH: Are you kidding? Most women would have their credit cards changed at once and get new letterheads.

PM: Actually Linda got me the new letterhead. She didn't want it for herself but she thought I might want it. In actual fact I've never used it. I've still got it at home but it kind of embarrasses me to do that stuff because we like to be down to earth. That's not because we want to slum it and look lower than we are in order to get some street credit, it's a genuine love of people. I've met Prime Ministers and lords and ladies but I always say that the people I'm from, the ordinary working class Liverpool people, are generally more intelligent, much more fun to be with and, for sure, much more honest than most of those highfaluting people I've met. Linda and I always looked at things straight on and if the truth was that the people lower down the ladder were more honest and more fun to be with than that's what we went with. In the '60s, I had a chauffeur for a while -- because, being young, you've got to try it - - but after a while I realized that I hated being driven around and I wanted to drive myself. And Linda loved me driving.

She hated anyone else driving, but it was fun for us just to take off in the car, just the two of us, and because she was this totally lovable nutcase she'd say, "Try and get lost." I'd say, "Darling, you know, when you're driving you don't try to get lost, that's the last thing you want to do. You have to navigate." She'd say, "No, no, try and get lost -- turn off here." I'd be saying, "But I've no idea where that leads to." She'd say, "Do it." OK, so I'd turn off and we'd be in magic land -- we'd be somewhere we'd never been before, a little shop we'd never seen before, we'd see all these wonderful little villages that we didn't know existed. So, sure enough, Linda was right -- you could get lost in all this magic and, as she knew, soon enough there would be a big sign saying "West End, London, This Way." She was right, you couldn't get lost. It was such a beautiful idea, this idea of wanting to get lost. I loved it; she changed my way of thinking forever on that. In The Beatles, we were always trying to find the gig, getting lost was the last thing you wanted to do. But the freedom of actually not minding, or even liking getting off the beaten track, was a blessing in my life. I see it now as a great offbeat wisdom. She was so right: the things we found by going off the motorway were amazing. We found her first horse, her Appaloosa. We were in America, travelling from Dallas to Fort Worth on the motorway. Linda spotted this beautiful little Appaloosa and said, "Turn off at the next exit." I said, "I can't! We're going to rehearsal." She said, "It doesn't matter. Fifteen minutes, what the hell, turn off." So I turned off and we found the father of all our horses which we brought back to England -- he sired all of our beautiful Appaloosas.

PM: Probably the only Appaloosa horses in England?

PM: Well, there were others. They're the only American bred foundation. They have them in England but they are derived from Dutch horses which are not as cool, I'm afraid. The American Indian-bred is the Appaloosa breed, and she was keen on what they call the foundation stock. She found him just by looking out on the motorway. Being a photographer, she was an incredible observer, she would see stuff that I wouldn't even be looking at. She'd say, "Look at that," and I'd say, "What are you looking at?" "That!" And I'd say, "Which bit of that are we supposed to be looking at?" and she would point out something that would make you go, "Oh my God, how did you spot that?" She was such an incredible observer.

CH: Linda never talked to me about religion but she did have a very deep connection to nature which I would describe as spiritual. She went to school in Arizona, she took you and the family to Arizona a lot and she died in Arizona. Was Arizona a kind of spiritual home to her?

PM: Arizona was her favorite state in America. She went to the University of Arizona and she didn't really get to know the place while she was at school, because she was mainly on campus and American campuses are very self-contained.

However, she stayed on there for a while and rode a lot, and she told me it was like being born again. She was able to throw off a lot of the shackles of her upbringing, the social etiquette that she never really liked. She was able to hang out with ordinary people, neighbors who would offer to babysit for Heather because she was a single parent by then.

She rode a lot. When I met her she'd come back from spending a year in Arizona and when I asked her what she'd done she said it was mainly riding; riding all day -- that was her dream. She just loved it, she loved the desert. She loved the animals. She was very at home with it. And that added to what we were talking about before of how she'd go to this vacant lot as a child and look for salamanders. It was the next big kick. So, when she took me there, I as this British guy -- and we had kids by then -- I would say, "I'm a little bit worried about the rattlesnakes, I hear they're deadly." She'd say, "Yeah, but you don't want to worry about them, you'll never see one, you're lucky if you see one and if you do they won't come to you." I'm a British bloke, and I am bringing children here. I've got to know what's going on. I'm the safety man, and I've got to run the safety thing here. And she says, "Don't worry about i t." We've seen millions of rattlers since. And I love them. I really love to see them, I've been honored. In fact, two days before she died we were really honored to have this huge big rattler come across our trail as we were riding. It was as a final vision of her riding. It was just waiting for us to cross the past. We were just so proud to be near what in the past would be in a Disney film or a David Attenborough movie or something. But here it was; we were seeing it live. We never got over the feel of that. Arizona really awakened something deep in her, and I used to love to see that peace it brought her.

Towards the end, when we knew it was getting serious, that was one of the things I said to her: "You know, we are in your favorite place on Earth." She was comforted by that. Talking about her observational skills, she would notice a horned toad in the desert. They're very hard to spot because they are very much like chameleons; they change to the color so they're the exact color of the sand. I wouldn't even see it. And she would pick it up. Something I would never do and many women would never do -- pick up a horned toad in the desert. But she knew they were harmless. She'd pick it up and it would pee on her like all of these reptiles do. She never minded. She would actually hold it away knowing it was going to pee. She was very skillful with animals. It was like she had been handling animals in a zoo all of her life. She hadn't. It was just this natural rapport.

Anytime you ever see pictures of her with animals, look at the animal. It's very comfortable. She'd pick up this horny toad, and I say, "Is is alright to pick that up?" The chicken British guy. And she would say, "It's fine, here." And she would encourage me to hold it, and I'd hold it and it would pee on me. I gradually learned to be honored to be this close to these animals instead of, like a girl, go "eek" and jump on a chair: "Ooh, it's an animal." She was very much the opposite. I have a photo at home of her holding a frog to her mouth. She's hamming it up and almost kissing the frog, like the prince in the story. But the frog, I swear to God, has got its hand on her lips. And she's not freaking. She's just continuing to look at the camera. She was just unbelievable in that respect. It just allowed her freedom. I think the one word would be freedom. And she loved freedom. In her songs, "Oppression won't win, t he light comes from within." She hated oppression. That's why she hated the slaughterhouse. That's why she hated the fate that many animals suffer. She thought, "It's not right. We should not be doing this to them. It's not natural, it's not right. There is a better way."

CH: So that's what you're describing basically as Linda's brand of spirituality?

PM: Her spirituality was nature. We used to talk about it and say, "Can you picture God?" She'd say no. I can't either. I've often said that to people who are religious. I'd say, "What's your vision?" And they'd sort of sheepishly say, "It's an old man with a beard." And then I'd say, "Do you really believe that?" And they'll say,"Well, 'I'm not sure." You know it's very difficult, and I sympathize with them.

But Linda was spiritual and we never called it religious, because over here in England there's been so much trouble with religion. My mom was Catholic and my dad was Protestant, which is the Irish problem. There are so many wars created -- Jew, Arab -- that are still going on. It's all still going on. It's in the name of God and it's still going on. We never liked that, that whole idea of "my God's better than yours." We thought, "Why don't they all come together and all worship God and not bother each other?" Because all religions are the same basically, and it's so strange that people would be warring. You know, the British go over to Beirut in crusades telling everyone, "You've got to be a Christian," when they've got a perfectly good religion of their own. But we impose it. Let's face it, all we're trying to do is steal the world. It's kind of clear now. And we did. At one point Britain owned two-thirds of the world. The word "religion" was the problem. Everything else was great. We loved what most religions say, particularly when they're talking about good values -- love, respect, peace -- which most of them are, but because they are political institutions they get messed up.

What we felt was more important was the message behind a religion, rather than the front man. Often I think what puts people off is they encounter the front man. You can encounter Jimmy Swaggert, and when you find out what he did you say, "Well, I can't have religion," and it ruins your faith. We never got into that. We just had and have some sort of mysterious deep faith in the sort of OK-ness of it all, we didn't really get much more specific than that. I always said that God is the word 'good' with the 'o' taken out, and that the Devil is the word 'evil' with a 'd' added. I think in history it got personified. In other words, Linda and I were interested more in the values and the ethics of religion; but because religion caused so many wars, we didn't ever subscribe to any particular one.

CH: This is what the Yanks want to know. They want to know all this stuff -- all the family values -- it's important to them.

PM: Another thing is, unlike some people in power -- we don't really need to name -- Linda and I got all of our wild oats out of the way before we met. We were very fortunate. I know a lot of girls.

CH: Linda less than you did?

PM: No. Well, maybe.

CH: You were in sort of an advantageous position.

PM: Yeah. Well, OK. I don't mind that, because that's probably true. But hey, look, we both played the field quite widely. The good thing is when we got married, we told each other. That was a big decision. I thought, "Should I just kind of not say anything, and she not say anything?" But, we thought, "No. We are going to really have a relationship here. We've got to clear this up." I said, "I've got to tell you all this stuff. I hope you really can handle this." It was good, because she told me all of her stuff. We really did tell all of the stuff. We were painfully open about it. But it got it out the way. And it's like, "Now we can maybe have a marriage. Maybe we now don't need to be unfaithful." And that was the case, which is beautiful. But I think that it was that we got it out the way. So many people marry young, and wonder what it's like the rest of their life. So they've almost got to have affairs just to see what it's like. Luckily we got all of that out of the way before we got married, which I think was another great blessing.

CH: Well, I have to ask you something now that you may not want to talk about.

PM: Try me.

CH: Your mother died of breast cancer. When Linda was diagnosed with breast cancer, how scared were you and how scared was Linda?

PM: We were totally scared. She'd had a lump under her arm, which she'd gone and seen our local doctor about, and he'd given her some antibiotics and told her, "Don't worry about it, it's nothing." But she talked to a couple of women friends and they said she should get it checked out. So she did and I was out of the house one day, and she rang me.

She said, "I've got the results of the tests back." And she said, "I've got breast cancer." Our lives just turned round at that second. She said, "You better come home." I said, "Don't worry, I'm on my way." So I just ran home. We immediately got into the car and drove up to London to try get some facts, because we were two hours away from any sort of medical help. And we then just embarked on a two-and-a-half year program of trying everything we possibly could to turn it round. As anyone who knows anything about breast cancer knows, if you're unlucky it will travel from the breast and go to your nodes, which are like your safety valves under your arm. Depending on how many nodes are infected that's generally the seriousness of your illness. So we didn't really want to know. But she'd met some friends who were good supporters and who had had it; they'd sort of say, "It had gone into three of my nodes," and stuff.

We sort of knew it was a little more than that -- but to tell you the truth we'd try to block it out, trying to keep positive. But I talked to the doctor later, after Linda died, and he was saying that the amount of nodes involved was scary. He said it wasn't just three, it was in tens. Luckily though, the medical evidence wasn't totally conclusive and you could read it two ways, so we always took the most optimistic reading. The word you were always scared to hear was "aggressive," that it was an aggressive cancer. But thank God we never heard that. I only heard that after she died. I was always waiting to hear that, as she was. But we thought, "Well, we haven't heard that word yet, so we're still OK." So we knew it was difficult and we knew we had a battle on and so we tried everything. You know, the biggest difficulty is miracle cures coming out of the woodwork.

Everyone's got a miracle cure. And some of them say what you really don't want to do is to go the traditional medical route. I hate to tell you, I still don't know the answer. For instance, when Stella was born we had to go the traditional medical route, as there were complications at the birth. If we hadn't, both Linda and the baby would have died. So we'd learned that there were times when you needed traditional modern medical science and we opted for that route. We found really good people, who were the best, who knew the most about her condition and who knew the very best treatments. And the truth of the matter is, she tried them all. She had her first bout of treatment, and she tried that. And the sad thing is, she coped with it so well because she was such an up person, I remember somebody ringing me up once and saying, "How's her appetite?" I said "Fine."

She hardly ever lost her appetite, and you're really supposed to lose your appetite on these things. But Linda was such a sort of lusty person, "Right, what are having for dinner?" She never went like an ill person. People around her would be dropping and she'd be saying, "No, don't worry, we're going to lick this thing." She really stayed so positive. But then she had a second bout of it. We were in New York, having tests; they took a routine mammogram of her other breast and something was discovered there. So, holy cow, we had it all over again to deal with. And she had to lose her hair, which was the kind of thing she hated. I think women are particularly vulnerable when that happens, because you can't ignore it. Men, OK, go bald and so it's maybe a little less scary. But for a woman -- and a beautiful woman, with the most beautiful hair, strawberry blonde; natural too, it wasn't out of a bottle -- it was terrible tragedy for her to lose that. But she was so courageous. She said, "Right, let's cut it off."

She had a Marine crew. It looked great actually, because she had a beautiful bone structure and a beautiful neck. She looked gorgeous. And eventually, when she realized that even her little crew cut was going to go, she shaved it all off. She looked like a Buddhist monk, very sort of holy. And then unfortunately this year, the worst news, the worst possible scenario, just when we thought we'd got it licked, actually. We'd come back off holiday and her hair was growing back -- each time they said it'll grow back dark and curly, and I must say she didn't really fancy that, having been straight and blonde -- but it grew back beautifully, it was slightly darker but still blonde. But she was so brave with all of that. And so it was almost going OK.

We got back off holiday and she didn't feel too well. We went to see a doctor and he said, "You've got an enlarged liver and unfortunately with your history it's most likely to be cancer." We were just dumbstruck. Horrified. But, again, we said, "Is there anything we can do? Do people ever come back from this?" Yes. Sure. There's statistics which show that people have licked this, which is true -- so we always went with that side of it. Linda never said, "Oh, I'm going to be a bad statistic." I think that's what sustained us. She'd say to us, "You're the best support group a girl could ever have," and we'd say, "We couldn't do it without you, babe." She had such courage. We just couldn't have done it. It's true. We would have fallen apart. But she was just so on the ball. We could be strong because she was. I don't even think that until the last week she even knew. I think the last week, you know, things were going so badly -- but we were riding horses. I said "Tell you what, babe, I'll get the horses ready, you don't have to even do anything. I'll tack them up, get them all ready, get a little bale of hay and you can hop off of it." That was always one of our horrors, of being eighty and you can't ride. We'd joke that we'd design a special crane and have you lifted up. Because that was the horror of her life, that she couldn't ride. Thank God that she was able to, two days before she died. And, as I said, the crowning moment was this big rattler stretched across the track. We just looked at it and felt awed. Like it was some sort of magic sign. I bet it is in Indian folklore.

So, thank the Lord, she went into a coma as they had predicted. Which wasn't the worst of all scenarios, as it happened. She just felt tired, and I said, "Would you like to sit by the pool?" She said, "No. I don't really fancy it today." I thought I'd try her in about an hour's time. I tried her in about an hour's time, she still felt tired. I joked, "Well you just fancy a lie-in, don't you?" She said, "Yeah." The next day she died. She was just in a coma for one day. It was as if she was so smart that something in her said, "We can't lick this one. Let's get the hell out of here, quick." And she didn't hang about. As I say, she'd spent that day in bed, the previous day she'd got up, she spent that one day in bed, I went to bed that night with her figuring, "God, things are getting desperate but we'll just keep hoping." I went to bed and she got restless in the middle of the night, as they'd warned me they might. So I called the nurse about 3 in the morning and at 5 she died. She didn't hang about. In her last sort of moments she got very peaceful. As she died something told me to just say something to her -- and I said what I'd say when she'd be going into anaesthetic when she'd had a couple of operations in previous years. I'd used this sort of trick of saying, "You're on the beach, it's a beautiful day, the water's laughing, we're walking along the beach hand in hand," or, "You're up on your beautiful horse," -- just to give her a beautiful peaceful moment and she'd drift off into the anaesthetic beautifully and peacefully. In fact the doctors used to say, "We've never had such a quiet patient." One of the doctors said that after her first operation she woke up, looked around at us all and said, "Hello." He said, "Boy, we've never had that before." So it suddenly came to me at the moment when she was just about to die. I have no idea why, I just thought, "I've just got to say this. " It was as if I was guided and I said, "You're up on your beautiful Appaloosa stallion; it's a fine spring day, we're riding through the woods. The bluebells are all out, and the sky is clear blue." And she just drifted off. So, a terrible tragedy. But I don't think it could have happened in a better way in a better place.

CH: Linda disliked high society types and any kind of social climbing and was the least pretentious person I'd ever met. But she had a great many close friends and indeed her memorial services were packed with them. She kept up regular correspondences, remembered birthdays and Christmas cards and was as thoughtful and generous a friend as I've ever had. Was Yoko Ono a friend of hers?

PM: No, not really.

CH: So would there have been any reason for Yoko to have attended Linda's memorial service?

PM: The thing we decided on the memorial services was instead of inviting people who we maybe ought to have invited out of duty, that we would stay true to Linda's spirit and only invite her nearest and dearest friends. Seeing as Yoko wasn't one of those, we didn't invite her.

CH: I only asked because there was a lot of publicity about the fact that she wasn't invited in America. Many people were curious about it.

PM: No that's true. As you know she had many friends who she was quite tuned into and whom she kept close contact with. In fact, there were quite a number of other people who weren't invited. People would say to me, "Oh this person knew Linda before you knew her." I'd say, "You mean from thirty years ago?" They'd say, "Yeah." I'd say, "Well, OK, but I'll tell you something -- that person hasn't sent us a postcard or phoned us in 30 years, so how well did they like each other?" So we kept it to real friends who we knew that Linda loved. And that meant that people who were maybe doing it out of duty weren't asked.

CH: So there was no intentional snub of Yoko Ono?

PM: No. It's funny, we had helicopter pilots who'd helped us in New York when Linda was travelling a lot for treatments. They became good friends and I said to one of them that I'd like them to come to the memorial, and he was shocked. He said, "Oh, I don't want to get in the way of all the various dignitaries." I said, "Don't worry, there won't be any, this isn't that kind of thing. This is for people who Linda genuinely loved and who genuinely loved Linda." Those were the only people invited. I'm really glad that we did do it like that because everyone who went remarked that there were so many friends there and it was such a warm atmosphere and everyone who spoke spoke from the heart, genuinely. Linda would have hated anything else. There were some very nice people. For instance, Senator Ted Kennedy sent a really nice condolence letter to me. It was very thoughtful of him. But I knew that she wasn't a friend of h is so he didn't get invited, either.

CH: How have you dealt with your bereavement?

PM: The main answer is my kids. I don't know what I would have done without them. Being such a close family, it hit us pretty much equally. They lost their best friend as well as their mum. It hit us all hard, but they have been very strong and very helpful. We've cried a lot together. None of us has held that back. We pretty much still cry, daily. Because Linda was so important, so much the center of everything in our lives. So it was mainly the kids. But I did get a counselor, realizing that I would need some sort of help. And although it's not much of a British tradition to do that, I was married to an American so I know quite a lot of people who have no problem with psychiatrists and counselors. Funnily enough, Linda used to know psychiatrists when when was young; she'd say, '"I used to sort out all their problems for them." And you know that's true. So I knew a particular one, who I talked to. He was a good help. It was mainly to get rid of some of my guilt. When anyone you love this much dies, one of the first things is that you wish you could have been perfect -- every minute of every day. But nobody's like that. I would say to Linda if we were arguing, "Look, I'm not Jesus Christ. I'm not a saint. I'm just some normal man. I'll try to do something about it but that's who I am, that's who you're married to." So I had quite a bit of guilt and probably still have. You remember arguments. When you're married you don't remember them so much, you just get on the next day and as long as you don't have too many and they're not too bad you figure it evens itself out. But when someone dies, you remember only the arguments in the first couple of weeks and the moments when I wasn't as nice as I would have wanted to be. So I need counseling with that. I found that really helpful.

Friends have been very supportive, we've got a lot of lovely sincere friends who, because of the nature of Linda and I, unless they're sincere they're not our friends anyway, and they've been very helpful. And funnily enough, and something that I didn't expect, the public at large have been a huge help. I thought that if you didn't know Linda, you might not get it. But I was wrong. So many of the thousands of letters that I got said, "Although we never met Linda, you could tell that she was a great woman." For some of them, it was because of her attitude to animals. A lot of others said it was because of the way that she brought up our kids. Yet they wouldn't even know that we had kids, you hardly ever saw their pictures in the paper, we guarded their privacy in case when they grew up they wanted it. We figured you couldn't rob them of that. The public said, a lot of them said, "It was just the way that she brought the family up," and I realized that so many people did get what Linda was about. From one little fragment, you could tell. It still shone through. The public sent very uplifting quotes and prayers. A lot of them had been through a similar grief. They'd write and say how they'd lost their wife and this little poem they'd enclose had sustained them. A lot of people sent me a lot of good stuff that helped me. But it was mainly the kids.

Now, when I get sad, I do pretty often; like if I go for a ride she's not with me -- I find myself going down, I let myself go down for a moment, just because I have to. And then I try to counterbalance it and think that Linda's life was very upbeat. She wasn't a downbeat kind of person, so she wouldn't like it now if I went downbeat. She was always the one for the joke. If you spat inadvertently while you were talking to her, she'd say, "Do you serve towels with your showers?" She just had a line for everything. If you looked a little inattentive while she's talking she'd say, "What, am I boring you?" She was a really funny lady, very witty. A delicious sense of humour. She was happy. So I use that now. I balance every sad moment with a happy moment. That kind of helps day to day. It helps me get through.

CH: How did this new solo album of Linda's, Wide Prairie, come about?

PM: A couple of years ago, Linda got a letter from a girl who said she had really liked hearing one of Linda's songs, "Seaside Woman," and she asked if she had any other songs. Well through the years, from the early '70s, Linda had been writing and recording her own songs. But because of being in the shadow of The Beatles or of me and being so much in the public eye, she always felt very nervous -- because it wasn't her main career she was reluctant; like she was on a hiding to nothing and people would be bound to criticize her. So she was shy to release it all. But this letter from this fan made her think that maybe she should put an album together. So the last couple of years we spent finding all the old tapes, looking at songs that didn't have lyrics and -- because we often had to make these two-hour trips up to London for her treatment -- we'd use that time. We'd get a cassette of one of the melodies she'd writ ten, and we'd write the words on these trips to London. On such journeys we wrote the words to "Appaloosa," "I Got Up" and "The Light Comes From Within" -- three of the 16 tracks on this album. And that was good, writing like that, we'd have a good laugh and forget that she was going up for treatment. It kept us both positive. Before we went out to Arizona, about a month before she died, we were putting the finishing touches to the album, making a couple of tracks and doing the backing vocals.

CH: I was there, I walked in.

PM: Yeah, that's right.

CH: She did my album cover.

PM: Which, of course, is a beautiful album cover.

CH: I kind of saw it as a going away present, to be honest. I didn't ask her initially, because I thought, "I don't know if I want to go with this idea." I called [your daughter] Mary and I said, "You live around the corner, you've been taking some snaps. I just want to see if this will look like anything." She said, "You ought to call my mom." And I said, "Well what if I change my mind, and then she's gone through the trouble." The next day my office called and said, "Did you set up a photo shoot with Linda McCartney?" I called Linda and she said, "I have turned down so much work, nothing excites me. But this is strong and I love strong." Because it was going to be "Viva L'Amour," you know, long live love. And she wanted to do it. Then of course, we were chasing the picture up and saying, "Where's our picture, where's our picture?" Then Yasmine walked downstairs and said, "Linda died." She had been watching tel evision. And the last thing I thought about was the picture, obviously.

PM: I am so glad she did. She loved doing it. She enjoyed it.

CH: And you know what? A few days later my office called and said, "You know Linda's photo agent called and said that they had a picture, they had a package to hand deliver to you."' That she wanted hand delivered. And there was the picture.

PM: She came through. She always did.

CH: So anyway, her record?

PM: Yeah, you were there for that. We put the finishing touches to the vocals. There was nothing left to be done. We were going to come back from Arizona, I was going to mix the album. We were going to work on promotion now, this time of the year, and instead of me doing this interview, she was going to be doing it and we were going to release the album for this Christmas. So when she died, I thought: I've just got to fulfill that plan.

I thought that some people might think that it's a tribute album that we'd rushed out -- but I wanted to make it clear that it is something we were planning anyway. Releasing this album was something that very much Linda wanted. She was very proud of it. We decided the title would be "Wide Prairie." Anyway, after a couple of months after she died I managed to get into the studio. We called those studio sessions Tears & Laughter because the engineer -- my old friend Geoff Emerick, who I've known since Beatle days, he did "Sgt. Pepper," "Band On The Run" and a lot of good work with me -- he lost his wife to cancer, too. So the pair of us were just crying on the console.

But then we'd listen to Linda's spirit and we'd laugh and remember her. So it was The Tears & Laughter sessions. It was very moving to do it, but it was very uplifting to do it and when we finally got the whole album together we thought she'd be damn proud of this. And she should be too, because her personality comes over. You see that she's a very strong singer, a strong writer. And she got a lot of flack over the years: "Oh, she only plays keyboard with one finger," or, "She can't sing." And people would isolate microphones very cruelly, which devastated her, she hated that stuff as anyone would. I used to say, "If I ever catch up with those DJ's I'll give them a word." And, believe me, that is really difficult.

Many people were cruel to Linda. But you know, after time you forgive. She didn't hold grudges. She'd just say, "No, let it go. Don't dwell on it." So anyway, we finished up the album and I am really proud of it. There are some really cool songs. A fact that she was delighted about. She said, "If we do an album there are three videos already" -- which were like animated pieces that she'd done to three other tracks -- which is good. So that means that that's all there. And a friend of ours was always going to make a trilogy of the third animation piece, so he's currently making "The Light Comes from Within," where Linda rather shockingly swears on it.

It's quite funny because some people view of Linda as the sort of dutiful wife. But she really wasn't. I mean she was plenty dutiful but she was something else besides. But there were these words, and it was basically this song, The Light Comes from Within, which is basically her getting back at her critics and the people who had been cruel to her. And even though she didn't hold a grudge, she figured it's a pretty good subject for a song where she could vent her emotions -- you know get it out and let it go. So I looked at the second verse and there's swearing, and I said, "Well, I don't know about this." And she said, "What's wrong with it?" And I said, "Well, it's pretty forthright. You're singing this?" And, she said, "Watch me." She grabbed on the microphone and bang, one take. She sang it beautifully. You know she just had guts, nerves. She just had the nerve to carry that kind of thing off completely. So she did it. It's a beautiful vocal take, very strong. She got all of the work done, got the whole thing done. And she said, "Now I've put the whole thing together, with some sleeve notes giving my recollections of each song." We're releasing it at the end of October. I think it will surprise a lot of people. I think it's a really good album to have. That was her concern: that if you went into a record shop 20 years from now and said could you have a Linda McCartney record they'd have to guide you one of my records, or a Wings record. We thought it would be a bit sad that there wouldn't be a Linda McCartney record -- well now there is. And I'm very proud of it and I know she would have been. I think it shows that there's a lot more to this lady than a lot of people knew.

CH: In your day-to-day life, you've adopted a very modest lifestyle. You have a large farm [in Sussex, England], horses, and lot of land but your house can hardly be called opulent. Threadbare sofas, put your feet up, which is the first thing Linda said when I told my kids to put their feet down. She said, "No, no, put your feet up it's fine." And, even I was a bit taken aback. When Linda first took me around your room, you weren't there, and I thought that the two of you shared less closet space than the average working girl would insist on having. You designed and built that house. Why is it like that?

PM: The closet space is probably the design fault of the house. Being British, we don't really have closets. We don't have anything; you're lucky if you've got a wardrobe and a couple of coat hangers. But obviously Americans are used to good closet space. I think that's probably the biggest design flaw. When I started off designing the house, I would quiz Linda all the time over what sort of place she wanted. I started off drawing a pyramid and thought, "Would we want to live in that?" No. Then I did a dome. Would we want to live in that? No. Pencil and paper are cheap so I just went through millions of options to get them out the way. Eventually we went for quite a traditional house for the area we live in, with some additions because the house we'd moved from was a round house and we liked the curves. So I added a few sort of curves that weren't entirely traditional. One of the key questions was, are we talking a big house or a stately home or just a comfortable family house?

CH: And your room was right next to the kid's room, as opposed to down the hall or on another floor?

PM: It's a very comfortable house that has five bedrooms; one bedroom each for each of the kids [Heather, 35, Mary, 29, Stella, 27 and James, 21] and one for us, Linda and I. It has limited space but that's how she wanted it and that's how I wanted it too. Because we always hated these stories of people living in these huge stately homes with the children rattling around in the East Wing, and you never see them. You wouldn't believe it but the house we moved from, where we brought the kids up for about seven years, had two bedrooms -- one for four children and one for us -- so we couldn't stay there. That was even more modest. It meant that we were a close family, literally. It meant that there was no getting away from each other, except that I had a little den and Linda had a den, too. They weren't big, none of the rooms in the house are big or opulent, as you say. We didn't like the high-living lifestyle. We are much more comfortable. When friends came around, we'd have tea in the kitchen, mainly sit in the kitchen all the time. We designed something for our lifestyle and for our reasonably simple tastes compared to some other people in our position. It was specially designed to be comfortable -- and it is, people come into our house and say, "Ooh, this house feels lovely," or "This is comfortable." That, to us, was what was important. We'd have some nice things, but there was no point in having them if the kids can't play on them. We really tried to be comfortable, and brought the kids up and tried to give them a comfortable living space -- for us and them.

CH: How do you sleep at night?

PM: I was really worried after Linda died that I would not be able to sleep at all. I have had the feeling ever since that she's seen to it that I'm sleeping. That's my theory. I don't know how correct it is. But somehow I manage to sleep OK, and it's really a blessing because I need to. The rest of the day can be pretty traumatic with the memorials and all the stuff you have to do, and just missing her. It's great, I feel like she's blessed me with the ability to get some sleep. It's a blessing.

CH: You're not taking pills or anything?

PM: No. Nothing. So, I was very surprised to find that I am sleeping. I expected sort of sleepless nights on top of all my other problems. But it's a blessing that it didn't happen that way. She has seen to it.

CH: Did Linda smoke pot to alleviate what she was going through?

PM: Being '60s people we had smoked pot for a long time, and certain of the medical people did suggest that it was a good thing to combat the effects of chemotherapy. And she did for a little while. But then she just gave up completely, just in case it wasn't helping.

CH: She was actually advised at one point to smoke pot?

PM: She was advised by the doctors, and they said it kind of sheepishly, "If you've got any of that stuff left over from the '60s, you might smoke a bit." You can get it officially in America for things like glaucoma and things like this. And there are a lot of lobbies here to legalize it for medical treatment. And the doctors certainly thought that it would help. She tried it for a little while, but she decided to give it up in case it was going to be a bad thing generally for her.

CH: She won't be there when you're 64. How do you see your future?

PM: Without her...it won't be as much fun as it would have been, that's for sure. I don't need to say anything more than that.

Nestlé to buy Linda McCartney

Swiss food giant Nestlé is preparing to buy Linda McCartney, the vegetarian frozen foods business from Heinz.

Nestlé owns 50.1per ceent of Israel's Osem, whose subsidiary Tivall is understood to be readying an offer for Linda McCartney. Tivall already sells similar products as Linda McCartney, like vegetarian sausages and burgers, to British supermarkets Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury, and Tesco.

A Heinz spokesperson would not comment on any specific approach being made for Linda McCartney, but said: "We continue to explore options to maximise the value of the [frozen food] business."

A source, however, stated that a month ago Heinz had stopped the £200m (E289m, $350m) sale of its frozen food business, which also includes Weight Watchers, because private equity and trade bids came in too low. The source added that some of the periphery frozen food brands, including Linda McCartney, would be sold regardless.

The late Linda McCartney, who was married to Beatle Sir Paul McCartney, created her own choice of vegetarian frozen meals in 1991. Heinz acquired the brand in 1999 when it bought the frozen food and chilled business of United Biscuits, which makes Jaffa Cakes and McVitie's biscuits.

Heinz wants to continue to add value to the frozen food assets it intends to keep, by growing them to a position for an eventual sale, sources told The Business.

But because consumers have been buying more chilled, ready-prepared microwave meals ­ in the belief that they are healthier than frozen ­ the frozen food businesses has suffered declining revenues.

I wasn't entirely convinced. The back of the man's head looked like it belonged to a 35-year-old. It isn't as if I'm always flying back from London, mind you, always spotting celebrities. This was my second London flight in my life. And the biggest celebrity I'd ever flown with before was probably Ronny Turiaf.

But I kept an eye on the man. And soon McCartney was out of his brown suit jacket, roaming all over the cabin, smiling, chatting with the flight crew, carrying his daughter in and out of the restrooms. And my seatmate was exactly right. I'd recognize his face anywhere.

Soon the lyrics to "Love Me Do" started playing through my brain. I remembered the first time I ever laid eyes on Paul McCartney. I was 8 years old, perched in my pajamas in front of the Ed Sullivan show on a Sunday evening.

Paul was the one I liked best. The other third-grade girls and I compared notes later.

The captain came on and announced there was a problem with the plane. We'd need to stay on the ground while it was being fixed.

I kept a close eye on my favorite Beatle. An airline attendant seemed to be briefing him separately. He appeared relaxed, but airline repairs ­ especially when I'm about to head over the Atlantic ­ make me nervous. They trigger my imagination. I mused about how British Airways certainly wouldn't take any chances with him on board. If they tried to sneak him off the flight, I plotted, I was out of there.

McCartney hopped up and rounded a corner talking into his cell phone. He wore a plum-colored vest, a matching shirt and a familiar expression of British glee. As I watched him, he grinned at me and winked.

I was instantly 8 years old all over again.

It crossed my mind to ask to interview him. But I couldn't think of a plausible reason to bother him. We were flying to Los Angeles, not Spokane. And if I so much as passed a note to him, I knew the curtains would likely fall, air marshals might descend, and I'd lose my chance to gaze into his life.

His daughter ­ Beatrice Milly, who is 2 and a half, I later learned ­ was full of energy. And she wound up frequently in her father's arms. Her mother wasn't on the flight, and her dad had only a couple of traveling companions.

The minutes ticked on. I fretted again about the plane repairs.

But McCartney didn't seem to have any qualms. And after an hour and a half, the cabin doors began locking. I looked for Sir Paul. As I heard the jet begin to roll toward the runway, I glimpsed McCartney's plum-colored shoulder in a seat beyond me. No one had whisked him off the plane. Suddenly I felt better. I was flying with a national treasure.

As our plane roared into the sky, the flight attendants drew the curtain between our two cabins. And I thought about what it meant to be a Paul girl. At one time, we were mocked for being superficial. Fluffy. Sentimental. Paul was the one singing silly love songs. The John girls somehow seemed smarter, more worldly. They understood tortured artists; I didn't.

After dinner, we all bedded down to watch movies and drift off as the flight soared over the Atlantic. Little Beatrice escaped her father's arms a couple of times and darted through the velvety curtains into our cabin. Each time, a gray-haired man, one of McCartney's traveling companions, ambled down the aisle to rescue her.
The cabin grew dark and quiet. My movie wound down, and I pulled a blanket under my chin.

Just then a little blond head shot past my seat and down into the next compartment. A moment or two passed. Finally, the gray-haired man appeared, his eyes wild. I pointed my thumb toward the rear of the plane. He grinned, nodded and zipped through the passengers. It was a scene out of the movie "Help!"

And then the curtains parted.

There stood Paul McCartney, wearing navy blue pajamas.

He strode right into our compartment. His traveling companion brought his daughter up between our seats, and McCartney scooped up the little girl, holding her close for a few moments. He spoke to her softly before they disappeared.

And we all fell asleep for that short night.

I awoke later in the darkness. I checked the in-flight map. We were somewhere over Kearney, Neb. I considered the selection I'd made as a third-grader again, and I felt entirely justified.

Paul McCartney turned out to be as adorable at 63 as he was when I was 8. There's something appealing about sanity. About lyrics like "I'll always be true" and "Let it be." About a man whose mere presence has the power to scare away the blue meanies and soothe little girls of all ages.

Now when I tell my friends about the night I saw Paul McCartney in his jammies, I'm tempted to swipe one of his lyrics.

Here's the thing about being a Paul girl after all these years:

It's getting better all the time.

"Your parents did a really good thing," Paul McCartney told Huntsville's Emma Jenkins when they met in Las Vegas last November.

Not a bad thing to hear about your parental units from the world's greatest living rock star. Still, you might expect mixed feelings when McCartney is praising Mom and Dad for giving a signed Beatles "White Album" worth $85,000 to McCartney's favorite charity.

But it's fine with Emma, 16, who's getting used to her parents giving away rare things. After all, they're donating an autographed book of McCartney's poetry and lyrics to this weekend's Huntsville Symphony Orchestra Crescen-dough fundraising auction.

Will "Blackbird Singing" raise another $85,000 here? Probably not, although its simple "Greetings, Paul McCartney" signature makes the book more valuable than one personally inscribed to Emma or her parents, Alan and Debra Jenkins.

But more about the symphony later. Let's get back to that "White Album." How did the Jenkinses have a rare 38-year-old album cover signed by all of the Fab Four?

And why would they give away such a piece of rock history?

And where did they get a second signed "White Album" to replace it?

Alan Jenkins is a commercial real estate developer. That pays pretty well, judging from the family's gated acreage and large white house on the edge of the city.

It certainly allows Jenkins to indulge in collecting, one of his favorite things since he was a drummer in local rock bands such as Nuke the Whales.

"I started rock 'n' roll collecting about a year ago," he said last week, and now he's plugged into a network of sellers and auctioneers who find the things he likes.

The Jenkinses don't brag or flash their collection. It's an investment and a passion. But they are having fun with it, especially Alan and his guitarist son, Austin, 14.

"It's cool," Austin said last week. "My dad and I do it together."

Ask and Jenkins will show his gems - drumheads signed by Ringo Starr and Pete Best, the original Beatles drummer; a vintage Hofner bass such as the one McCartney played on Ed Sullivan's TV show and still plays; signed Richard Avedon prints from a famous '60s Look magazine cover and more signed albums.

Fascinating to Beatles fans is Jenkins' rare "Butcher Cover." That's the original cover of the 1966 "Yesterday and Today" album featuring the Beatles in butcher coats and draped in bloody meat and dismembered dolls. Recalled by Capitol Records after protests, the cover is a major collectible today.

How did the McCartney gift happen?

"I had seen him and wanted to meet him," Jenkins said.

"I told Alan, 'I'd give up one of those albums to meet him,' " Debra Jenkins said.

Debra Jenkins is tenacious. She found on the Internet that McCartney's favorite charity is Adopt-A-Minefield. The international organization clears old land mines and helps mine victims, and its primary fundraiser is an annual celebrity-packed auction in Beverly Hills.

Six weeks of unreturned e-mails and phone calls later, Debra Jenkins made contact. Amazingly, the auction had never, in six years, put a piece of Beatles memorabilia on the block.

One link led to another, and the Jenkinses shipped their "White Album," signed by all four Beatles, to the West Coast.

"I did have second thoughts the day he shipped it," Debra Jenkins admitted.

What's a signed Beatles album worth? The Jenkinses won't say what they paid, and prices vary. Debra Jenkins thought the "White Album" might raise $20,000 at auction. Alan guessed $25,000.

"They asked me if I was sitting down," Debra Jenkins said of her conversation with charity officials the day after the Nov. 15 auction.

The "White Album" had created a frenzy, and auctioneer Jay Leno juggled a barrage of bids. The president of Capitol Records dropped out at $60,000. He wanted the album for Capitol's lobby. A rich California fan, who told friends he wouldn't leave without it, won the "White Album" for $85,000.

It's the highest price ever paid for a signed Beatles album, the Jenkinses say.

Debra Jenkins said she's learned a lot. She started with an idea of leveraging their gift to meet McCartney, but she seriously thought about changing course last fall and donating the album to Hurricane Katrina relief. But she couldn't shake the idea that putting the album in McCartney's hands was the right thing to do.

"It was the best use of the resource - through him," she said.

Was she right?

"We've been told that it raised enough to clear three minefields and to give 100 victims of land mines new limbs," Debra Jenkins said.

Now, the Jenkinses and McCartney have a connection. They've met backstage in Las Vegas, and everywhere Debra Jenkins went that weekend, she was "the White Album Lady."

Oddly, her gift is one even McCartney couldn't have made. He told her that he has very little Beatles memorabilia.

"Wouldn't it have been a bit daft of me to go to the boys and ask them to sign an album we'd just made?" Debra Jenkins said McCartney told her.

Now, the Jenkinses want more. They are donating another signed album to this year's Adopt-A-Minefield auction, which they hope to attend. Next year, they hope McCartney reciprocates to raise more money for the symphony here.

Backstage in Las Vegas, Emma said there were four people in the room when the family arrived. One was the president of Capitol Records.

"We're the Jenkinses from Alabama," Emma told them.

No need for introductions now. Everyone knows "the White Album Lady."

The former Beatle said animal testing was "a holdover from the dark age of medical science", adding that more modern methods are available but many scientists are too unenlightened to use them.

Sir Paul has joined forces with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) to spearhead an anti-vivisection campaign. And he urged the public to donate their money to health charities which did not test on animals. PETA has blacklisted charities including the British Heart Foundation, the Cancer Research Campaign and the Royal National Institute for the Blind.

"Sometimes people place too much faith in people in white lab coats and assume that there's a need for animal testing just because it has been going on for so long.

"I believe this to be a holdover from the dark age of medical science, and more enlightened scientists nowadays believe they can get more reliable results with more modern methods," Sir Paul said.

"Vivisection has long been presented as a solution to health problems, but trying to mimic human diseases in animals is a costly, cruel diversion. If the amount of money poured into animal experimentation was spent instead on prevention, we'd have much better results to show."

In the interview, which appears on the PETA website, Sir Paul urged the Government to explore alternative means of testing.

Sir Paul has been a long-time opponent of animal testing. In 2000, he donated £625,000 ($1 million) to the Arizona Cancer Centre, the US clinic where his late wife Linda was treated, on the proviso that none of the money be used for animal testing.

He has continued to campaign for animals with second wife Heather. Last month they travelled to Canada to protest against the country's annual seal cull.

Next month Heather will give a speech to the Vegetarian and Vegan Foundation to back claims that drinking cow's milk may cause breast cancer.

Chrissie Hynde's Interview with Paul McCartney months after Linda's death (1998)

First he was one of the Fab Four. Then, for the next 30 years, Paul McCartney was always with his wife, Linda. Now Paul, 56, is alone for the first time, without his "mate," as he refers to Linda. People who know McCartney would add "soul" to that. Since Linda's death in April at 56, of breast cancer, a devastated McCartney has kept close to home and family in Sussex, England, saying little publicly. But a few weeks ago, he broke his silence to talk with Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders, a family friend, for USA WEEKEND. For the first time, McCartney discusses his relationship with his American wife, how they raised their children, the agonizing two years after Linda was diagnosed, and why they made Wide Prairie, a posthumous album of Linda's, out this week. In his London office, McCartney was upbeat for most of the conversation, until he started recalling Linda's last days. "He started to get cho ked up,'' Hynde says. "The legacy of Paul's music in the Beatles is one thing, but I think his real legacy is this love story he had with Linda."

Chrissie Hynde: You and Linda were married for 30 years but you never spent one night apart -- not counting the famous Japanese marijuana bust incident. Most couples, whatever their lifestyle, have to, or want to, have a little space on their own. Was that some kind of pact you made with her?

Paul McCartney: No, it just happened that way. I always think of Linda still as my girlfriend. That's how we started out in the '60s, just as friends. Whenever I was working late somewhere, I just never fancied it. I thought: Well, I could stay overnight in this posh hotel, or I could go home to Linda. And it was always the brighter of the two options: Yeah, go home to Linda. It was just I liked being with her, quite frankly. I think that's the most difficult thing about losing her, just how much I enjoyed being with her.

CH: With your money and prestige you could have sent your children to any school in the world. And yet you'd drop them off and pick them up every day at the same local school -- what the Americans would call the public school -- along with the local shopkeepers, farmers, and the other people in your village. Why?

PM: We'd seen a lot of people go through the expensive schooling route with their kids, and we understood why they did it, because they wanted the best for their children -- that's normally the reason people say. But we'd seen a lot of heartache happen, when the kids would be devastated to leave, for instance, Mummy at the age of eight. Whenever we saw anything like that, Linda and I instinctively would look at each other and register the fact that that wasn't how we were going to do it.

The other thing was nannies -- and [what] put us off that was when one of our friends' kids ran to the nanny and said, "Mummy!" The kid had forgotten who the mummy was, and it shocked us. So we decided not to go that route. The nice thing was that because Linda was from money, she knew that it wasn't the be-all and end-all. She used to talk to me about a lot of loneliness she'd seen in a lot of these big houses and a lot of unpleasantness in families, because they weren't close, they weren't truthful, they weren't honest, because they didn't spend much time together.

So even though people would say, "You've got to send your son to Eton," we just said, "No way, they'll end up being like a different race from us, and we won't just won't relate to them." We decided that even if we were going on tour we'd take them with us. People thought we were mad, they used to be after us about "dragging our children around the world." But we said, "Well, they are close to us and if ever they get the flu, then we're not in Australia and they're not in England, desperately worrying." Instead, Linda would be there, with the medicine. Or I would be there to tuck them into bed. We just decided that that was more important to us.

Neither of us had a brilliant education; I got into music and she got into photography. Even though we had good educations, we never really did the heavy university trip -- so it wasn't that important to us. We always said that as long as the kids have good hearts, that was our big emphasis.

So we didn't send them to the paying schools, we did send them to the little local school. We'd moved out of London because London was getting a bit too much the fast lane. If the kids were going to a club, it tended to be a big London night club and it was very much the fast lane; a lot of drugs and stuff knocking around. We worried for their safety, so we moved out to the country and our kids went to the local school, with just 75 kids in the school. They really enjoyed it and the local community accepted us just as if we were the same as them, which in our minds we were.

Little things would crop up, like the school would be fundraising for a new computer, let's say. They'd mention it to us and instead of saying, "Sure we'll buy you ten," which we had the capacity to do, we'd say, "Tell you what, take a collection amongst all the other parents and when you get up to about 50 pounds or something, give us a shout and we'll put the other 100 pounds or something, but we don't want to appear flash. We want to just be ordinary people to give our kids as near to a normal upbringing as we can do." I must say that is one of the things that Linda and I always said: Our greatest achievement is our kids. People say that they are really good people.

CH: Well you know, you've been a huge inspiration to the way I look after my kids?

PM: That's true. I remember you and Alan and you were kind of a Pretender, and moody. But then after meeting Linda a couple of weeks later you were like much more a mom, much more interesting. And that was the effect she had on people.

CH: Well you know how I met you, because Linda sent me a present for my first daughter and I opened the card and it said:'Paul and Linda and kids.' I was just beside myself. I said, "I don't even know the McCartneys." I saw you walking through the studio a couple of weeks later and I walked up and said, "Thanks for the baby clothes." You looked a little embarrassed and said, "Oh, my wife. She's always doing stuff like that."

Many people since have said that their introduction to her was some good will message or gift before they actually met. She first found people that she...

PM: Liked.

CH: Liked. That was very much how people seemed to get to know you both sometimes. Next, I was going to ask about the nannies.

PM: Well, we didn't like the idea of the children relating more importantly to someone else rather than us, we never did. Similarly, most people in our position have got a cook. Linda didn't like cleaning so we got cleaners. But cooking, she would do it all, looking after the kids. We were there every night to put them to bed, there in the mornings to wake them up. So you know, as far as they're concerned, even though we were some famous couple, to them we're just mom and dad. I think that's what's important. We made that important for us, that was our priority. And it worked.

CH: Even my kids didn't know you were a famous couple until one day, we were coming home from your house on the train. As you always seem to do behind my back, you slipped them both a 10-pound note and said, "Go buy something for yourself." They looked up and said, "Wouldn't that be great if he was our dad."

PM: I know Linda and I are both very proud of the effect she as a mother had on you because, hey that's a huge thing.

CH: And I am glad to say that I took the opportunity many times while she was around to tell her that. It's not something I'm just saying now.

PM: No, no, she knew that.

CH: Did you ever take a vacation together without the kids? Most couples, they want to get away and have a little second honeymoon. Did you ever go off on your own without them?

PM: No, we even took Heather [Linda's daughter from her first marriage] on our honeymoon. People are little surprised at that. We've met people who say, "Oh I like children, but I only like them when they get to be about three years old, when you can talk to them." Linda and I would look at each other and say, '"But don't you like them when they're little babies?" And they just gasp a little bit. I think it was just always such a mystery to us. I [come] from a very strong Liverpool family. And when Linda and I met, she was a single parent happening to get on with her life. So we just kind of pulled it together between us and just said, "Well you know, we'll just do it in a certain way." And we stuck to it. Just kept it very simple. We looked at issues and saw what seemed to be our instinctive reactions. Sometimes it can be against the grain. People will say, "No, you mustn't do that or no you can't do that." We sai d, "Well we're gonna do that and we hope we're right." And I think using our instincts like that, instead of what other people told us, was good because no one can tell you how to raise your kids. They are your kids. And this idea that babies are only good when they're three -- when James was really little I remember sitting on the sofa with him. He's just a baby and he was sitting with me like we were grown-ups and he was just sort of gaggling and going, "Ah goo, ah goo." So I just said, "Ah goo." Like agreeing with him in his language. He looked at me like, "You speak this language?" We're sitting there for hours just "ah goo." I just mimicked him because kids mimic their parents -- but its actually a lot of fun the other way around. Then I said, "Pa, Pa, Pa," and he'd just go, "Um, hum, Pa, Pa, Pa." They see you like using their words and it's oddly so exciting. From the second they were born to this day, I think you learn so much off kids -- if you're willing to be open and you don't close your mind and say, "Oh, I know how to be a parent." I always said to Lin that being a parent is the greatest ad-lib you're ever involved in. You make it up as you go along, you have no idea what the script is, you have no idea how these kids are going to turn out but if you're just with them a bit and listen to them a bit and let them talk to you instead of talking to them all the time, then natural things occur a bit more easily. We don't give them anything near the amount of credit they should have. They teach you in the end. This beautiful, innocent wisdom tends to erode as we get older, but they bring it back -- which is magic.

CH: I think they are going to try to elect you president of the United States after that.

PM: Yeah, this is what I'm running for.

CH: No one says this, nobody talks about this stuff.

PM: This is what Linda and I were; this is why we were so close and this is why this year has been so devastating for me -- because she was the only person I ever talked to like this in my whole life. I never talked like this to my mum and dad, even though I was very close to them. You don't talk about this stuff, people just get on with it and nobody actually ever stops and thinks about it. Linda and I always used to remind each other that that was sort of what The Beatles were about, that honesty. I remember when we first came to America and all the publicists said, '"Don't mention the Vietnam War." So of course, the first question we got, we mentioned it: "We don't think it's a good war, it's unfair, what are you doing over there?" Everyone was having fits about us saying that, but we couldn't not say it. That was the great strength that people recognized in The Beatles, that these guys were telling the truth. U ntil then, showbiz had been, "Oh, I'm so pleased to be working this room...." With us in The Beatles, it was, "We're so pleased to be in this life with you."

CH: Linda was a successful and respected photographer -- nothing to do with the Eastman-Kodak family, as was rumored at the time -- before she met you. Neil Young, at the memorial service in New York, praised her work as among the best of her generation. How did marrying you affect her career?

PM: I used to joke that I ruined her career when we got married, because she became perceived as Mrs. McCartney, "the Eastman-Kodak heiress" Paul had married. A lot of newspaper stories just get changed because they are better stories when you lie a little. Of course, it still has to sacrifice the truth. So I used to make that joke. But to some degree I think it was true, because if she had a book of her photography, for instance, instead of people thinking she was worthy of a book, the thought was, "Oh, Paul probably arranged for her to have a book."

CH: Oh, I'm sure. I don't think it was a joke.

PM: No, no it wasn't actually such a joke because in fact, in later years, I must admit, I was starting to talk to her about maybe she should use the Linda Eastman name for photography or at least Linda Eastman McCartney because some of these people would say, "Oh I didn't realize that she was Linda Eastman." But the great thing is that she kept taking photos and whether people understood it or not, the body of work is there.

CH: I never saw her without a camera.

PM: I did. In bed. But one of the many things I loved about her was the way she held a camera. To me, having been photographed so many times, you can tell by the way that the photographer holds a camera, the way they wield their instrument, you just know, "Wow, this one's good."

CH: You took a picture I've seen a few times of her, she's sort of looking at you from the side and holding her camera, and it's so delicate the way she has her hands, it's very beautiful.

PM: She had these long fingers, these beautiful long fingers, and it was one of the things that first struck me when I met her. Having had my photo taken by Life magazine, and by Avedon and all these people, I remember thinking: "God, she really holds that camera gracefully." And I think that probably is one of the signs of a great photographer, because you ought to hold the instrument of your profession well. And she certainly did that. And the other thing was that she knew when to click, which is the other essence of a great photographer. I was once talking to a good friend of mine about photography and saying it's about just a few little things -- you've got to be in the right place at the right time. All the great photos you can think of, had the person been next door while that was going on they'd have missed it. A great photographer always knows to be there -- and that was one of Linda's great skills. The other thing, the next thing is where to point the camera. Because they can point it at your feet, upon your face or your whole body or a close-up. So I think that's crucial. And then the final thing, in those three little steps, I think is when to click. Bringing you into a click, she'd wait and then you'd think, "I must be looking horrible." But you weren't. There was just nothing happening, that's all. And she'd just wait until you said the end of your joke and you're free to laugh and she'd go bang. She only ever got those moments. Sometimes it was a little scary because you'd think, "What is it? Is she looking at my hair falling?" But it wasn't, she was just waiting for that moment.

The other thing -- sometimes she'd take a photo of something, and most professional photographers would take the rest of the roll, just in case, and I would sometimes say to her as an amateur, "Maybe you ought to take a couple more, just to be sure." And she'd say, "Nope, I got it." That takes an awful lot of confidence. She just knew that the moment had happened, and she had clicked. And please God it came back from the chemist, as we say over here -- what we call the developer, the chemist. But she knew as long as it came back from the printer OK that she had that moment. Again, that took huge confidence and huge belief in your ability. I probably am heavily biased, well I am definitely heavily biased, but I seriously do believe that she is one of the best photographers that I've ever seen. I'd put her right up there with [Henri] Cartier-Bresson and Ansel Adams and some of our favorite photographers and I think t hat it will be discovered more and more as time goes on, because she'll be seen as a photographer and not just as some sort of appendage to me.

CH: Whose idea was it for Linda to sing and play keyboards in your band, Wings?

PM: It was kind of both of us. We used to do a lot of late-night planning in bed, we'd go to bed and sit around watching TV, take some food to bed. At that time, The Beatles had broken up, so I had to make a decision. To forget music and think, "Oh I've done it all with The Beatles after all, you can't get any higher and it would be very, very difficult to top an act like The Beatles" -- everyone in the world is always trying and no one really succeeds, to my mind. So suddenly, for me to be in that position of trying to follow The Beatles was, like, nerve-wracking, to say the least. The whole circumstances of life had changed. Now Linda and I were it -- I was on my own now, except for Linda and our babies.

So I was sitting up in bed one night, and we were chatting about whether we would do anything, whether I would do anything, and I thought that I could form a new group. It'd be really difficult, but I always wanted The Beatles to go back to square one and just play as a band; to forget all the highfalluting stuff and just learn to be a little band together, which is what we were always the best at. But because it couldn't happen with The Beatles, I started talking about this and then I said, "Imagine yourself behind a curtain. You're in the band and the curtain opens, and there's an audience there and you're playing in this band -- could you handle that? Do you think you could possibly enjoy that? Because I'd love to have you up on stage with me." Because of the same reason I always wanted to sleep with her. We're just friends and it seems that if that were an option all the time -- to be without her or to be with her -- I'd always choose to be with her. And so she said, "Yeah, I think I could get into that, that sounds quite fun." And that was it. We just decided to form a band.

She had just had our baby Stella, and it had been a very difficult birth. There had been a thing called a placenta previa, which in the old days was life threatening. Before modern medicine, it was life threatening for the mother and the baby -- both of them would have died giving birth. Anyway, so she had the operation, she had a Caesarean and it was a very difficult time. But during the recovery time from that we spent a lot of time together just sitting around chatting and stuff. And while she was in the hospital, this idea came to me for Wings. I just thought it was kind of slightly angelic and nice after The Beatles. It seemed right. It seemed like a good name for a band. So we started talking about how we might do it. Always at the beginning it was only ever going to be, "Who might join me and her on stage." It was never like it was a band and would she join it. It was going to be me and her, and then we'll g et some other people. That was kind of how it always was, really. She and I were always the regulars, and other people kind of came and went. And then keyboard: when she was a kid -- like a bunch of people -- she had taken a few piano lessons, and had liked it. She had been in a local glee club in high school, and she would tell me how she'd go to the bell towers with the local girls and sing harmony. She was like that. A deep love of it, but no training whatsoever. So I kind of started her on the piano and just showed her where middle C was. I said, "This is the chord, and this is how you make a chord of C." Showed her the three notes. And then I said, '"You mess around." That was all we ever said, and she picked the rest of it up herself. People used to joke that she was sort of a "one finger player." But that was because they were ignorant of the fact that the instrument she was playing was a Moog synthesizer, a mini Moog, which is monophonic. You cannot play more than on e note at a time. Actually, they didn't realize what they were seeing: they're seeing her play this Moog, which was an instrument she loved. It's on a lot of Wings records. And they'd see it and they'd go, "Oh look at her playing with one finger." If they only had the wisdom to realize that you can't play those instruments with more than one finger. Well, you can play with as many fingers as you like, but only one will register. So she was actually good. As time progressed, I don't think anyone realized that she became the keyboard player on pieces like Live And Let Die, which has got really difficult stuff in the middle. She was synthesizing a whole orchestra on the tour, and that's really difficult to do. But she learned it all, and she did it all and she took it kind of seriously. And, for me, there she was. If ever I looked around, there was a friend; it wasn't a new face, it was my mate.

CH: Most of my conversations over the years with Linda end up centering around animal issues and how we wanted to convert the whole world to vegetarians. Linda never sought public acclaim, and constantly avoided the media. She obviously disliked any intrusion into her privacy, but she was always ready to use her voice -- loudly in restaurants if I recall correctly -- if it meant saving animals. What were her involvements? Some Americans don't even know, right from the bottom up, her whole intention and what she wanted.

PM: From a very early age, Linda had been a serious nature-lover. One of the great things for us was that I was too when I was young. And, when we started talking -- and this was now after The Beatles when we got together -- the more in depth we'd get and talk about our past; she'd tell me about going to a little vacant lot where she lived in Scarsdale, near New York, and there was a little spot she always used to go to, with a little stream that no one ever went to because it wasn't on the social calendar. And, like, she'd go, and there's this little stream running through it. She'd spend hours there just sitting alone, watching nature. She was always very good at that, just sitting on her own. She was one of the most complete people for that. I'm too antsy. I can do it for a little while but then I want to do something else. But Linda could just sit forever -- and nature would come to her. Of course the quieter y ou are, the more it comes to you. So she used to tell me about lifting up rocks and finding salamanders and I'd say I used to lift up rocks and find newts, which is the British equivalent. And, I used to wander around in a little brook doing bird-spotting. Identifying birds: I loved it. So, when we compared notes later, it turned out that both of us were loners as kids, and both of us were going out into nature and that was one of our great joys. She'd always felt that way. So when we got together we'd talk about that. Then years later, we were on our farm watching some newborn lambs gambolling around outside while we were eating leg of lamb as a traditional Sunday dinner. Linda very gracefully credited me with saying -- and I can't remember actually, it could as easily have been Linda, she might have just been being nice -- anyway, Linda credited me with saying, "Look at that, beautiful lambs gambolling but we're eating one of the legs that's gambolling; maybe we should qui t eating meat and find a better way." This was now over 25 years ago. But at that moment, we thought we'd try it. It was very difficult at first, because there's always what you called "the hole in the plate" -- where the meat would have been. That's what you do when you eat meat, you build a meal around the meat.

I remember, my Dad would come to The Cavern in his lunch break when I was in The Beatles; he'd come with a pound of sausages and give them to me and I'd have to go home and cook them and think of something to put with them. Because that's traditionally the way you do it. You don't make potatoes and peas and then think of the meat. It always revolves around the meat. So it was difficult for about a year while Linda started to get ideas of what new to cook. And anyway, she did and she filled that hole in the plate amazingly, with pastas and beautiful sort of food. All sorts of stuff; as we went on through the years it just continued to develop. We ate lustily, it was never what people call rabbit food, we ate big steaming meals. That developed over the years and then she got into vegetarian food over here, which is the most successful vegetarian food line going, and ended up having her own special factory to produce it all. The animal rights thing came along with that because the more we realized that we were helping by not eating them, that brought into focus other issues of cruelty to animals. So it just came naturally. And Linda, being a mother, felt for all of that deeply. I think that the fact that women give birth gives them a better connection to the universe than men. God bless them, men are lovely and you can't make babies without them, I'm proud to be one -- but I admire women perhaps more. They've got a rough deal -- they go through the pain of birth.

I used to joke with Linda, I'd say, "I've had four babies and it didn't hurt a bit." I'd have to duck quickly before she'd throw something at me. But that's a bit of the male attitude: hey, we just give out cigars, it's great! Whereas women are going through all this pain and anguish. Anyway, I think being a mother gave Linda a deep connection with animals. She could relate to a mother sheep giving birth and a lamb, just getting used to the beautiful Spring sunshine and bingo -- it's off the slaughterhouse to be spring lamb. All of these things started to make a lot of sense. So we started supporting many, many animal rights groups, like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. We became patrons of the British Vegetarian Society, and helped animals where and when we could by giving donations, or, for instance, Linda taking photographic campaigns against fur. She did a great campaign against wearing fox fur. She took a picture of a woman wearing a fox coat, and the caption was "Rich Bitch." And then you'd see a dead female fox, and blood coming out of her, and the caption said, "Poor Bitch." She took the photos for those and she always loved doing that. One of the great things about Linda was that everything she did, to my mind anyhow -- I always say I probably exaggerate a little being the proud husband -- but it was meaningful. Everything she did had to have a meaning. She'd do things for a laugh but there was always some connection with something very meaningful. All of her animal activities, all her vegetarian stuff...often her photography would be to show you how beautiful a leaf is or how beautiful mist is or how beautiful a child is. I remember when we went to Knopf, which is a big New York publisher, with her first book. The guy was leafing through her stuff going, "Tots, horses, flowers, more tots," and I was getting angrier by the second. This guy diminishing my wife's fa ntastic work to tots. What you mean is, "That's a fine portrait of a beautiful child." Don't give me this "tot" nonsense. But anyway, that was it. We got very involved in the animal issues. I still am involved. When she died, I felt that many people around the world would feel that we have lost -- as we have -- a fantastic, strong voice for animals. But she and I were a partnership. She never did anything on her own because we were together so much. She and I would talk everything through. She did stuff on her own, of course, I'd go out to work and she'd chat to her friends, and she'd chat to you. But generally when I came home she'd tell me all about it, so I was always in on it all.

CH:I did feel when I talked to her that you were her confidante. Unlike other girlfriends who might take the opportunity while the old guy's out of the house to really lay in, I always felt like Linda never broke rank. She would never say anything to me that she would not have said to you if you weren't there. I had a very strong sense of that, very unique.

PM: I think that's true except I think she would a little.

CH: Well once in a while she'd say, "Oh, Northern Men." And that would be all.

PM: She'd never be a good traitor. But there would be a little bit of fun. She and I liked to take the "mickey" out of each other and I liked that she was strong enough to take the "mickey" out of me. I was telling someone the other day one of the greatest things for me, strangely enough -- it seems a bit perverse but it's true -- was being told off by Linda. And it didn't happen many times, but the first year we got together, somebody had said something about her that wasn't amazingly complementary. I can't remember what it was, but we were walking down Park Avenue in New York and it was late, late at night, early in the morning,. We'd been to see probably her dad or something. We were strolling arm-in-arm, and I mentioned this thing; I said, "Oh so-and-so said so-and-so." Well, she stopped in the middle of the street. Luckily, there was no traffic. She put her hands on her hips and she just colored-up, not a kind of beet root color, more a sort of light strawberry, and she just looked me right in the eye. She said:"If you ever say that again or even suggest it," and she just tore a strip off me. I never forgot it. But you know what, I loved it. I just thought, God, this is her. She's being herself. She's not frightened. She's not the intimidated woman. And I love to see her like that. Fondly enough, because I think many men would think, "Ooh, how dare you go on like that?" and we'd have a raging argument. But I just said, "OK, I know that what you just said is absolute, a thousand percent true." And, apologize. You knew about it when she tore a strip off you. It's actually one of my most fondest memories.

CH: Was Linda a good businesswoman?

PM: Yeah, but she was the least likely person to ever get into business. When we first married, she would avoid any business stuff like the plague -- and the only reason she ever got into business was the animals. I remember sitting chatting with her one day, in our early years of vegetarianism, and starting to realize as we did that animals are our fellow creatures, that's how we see them. Fellow creatures that we happen to be in the same time frame, on the same planet, as. Now I'm not going to down them, they're in my time frame.

The first move it seems might be to learn about them, then kill them if they're a predator. So we gained more and more sympathy for this idea. We were chatting about this one day, talking about ways to help animals, and wouldn't the world be a better place, dreaming about it. And it was if I saw a light bulb go off over her head. We were talking about vegetarian food, and how great it would be if you could get it ready-made in shops -- because you couldn't at that point -- and it was like seeing a light bulb going off above her head. Ding! Linda said, "Oh, I could do that." From that second she started thinking about it, and started to work out how to do it. She did that even though she hated business, because she hated having to do anything. She was such a free spirit -- she'd much rather say, "No, sorry, I can't be there for a meeting. I'm going to sit in the garden." Or ride on her horse, which is all she really ever wanted to do, actually. Anyway, this light bulb went off. The next thing was that this cousin of mine, cousin Kate, was coming down from Liverpool to live in London. We were talking to her about her going vegetarian and my cousin said, 'I wouldn't know how.' And another light bulb went off in Linda and she decided she should write a vegetarian cookbook, just to give it to my cousin so she could check it out how to go veggie. That was the single reason Linda wrote that book -- it wasn't for money; she certainly didn't need the money. And it wasn't for money why she started up her ready-made vegetarian meals. She said, "If I could save one animal then I'll be happy." Well, to date she must have saved millions of animals, after what she has done with her vegetarian food.

I think that single-handedly she has got to get the credit for the vegetarian revolution that has happened here in Britain. Because now, it's a mainstream thing. It's not a cranky thing. In America, it's still less popular, but I think in time America will realize it. I still have a lot of faith in the young people. That's who will change the world. Economically, I think the world has to change. Because if it's true -- as it is -- that you can feed 10 times the amount of people by eating vegetarian instead of processing it through an animal and then eating the animal, which is wasteful and not economic, and really bad for the environment because we've got too many animals around. The fresh water tables in America have gone down severely, and it's going to cause really severe problems. Just because of our insistence on eating meat all the time.

There's a very good book by Jeremy Rifkin called "Beyond Beef" for people who are interested to check out. Our obsession with beef is wild, there's no reason for us to have it. But we've been conned into it and it's wild. I finally realized that over here in England, we have a thing called the Milk Marketing Board, and you better believe they market this stuff the same as the meat people do. They're training us to want more and more. But it could cause serious problems for this planet in the future. It has already.

CH: Talking about Linda, that's all we talked about. We would always at the end of the discussion just [sigh], "But why am I telling you?"

PM: Well because, the thing is, you need reinforcement. It's tough to be any kind of activist. As a lot of people know. And you guys reinforced yourselves.

CH: In fact, I hadn't spoken to her for three years, and she called me out of the blue one day to say, "hello." ... She's the least pretentious person I've ever met, and I said, "You know, McCartney, when are you gonna get off your high horse and do something about this vegetarian business?" That took her by surprise; she said, "Well..." I said, "There's a whole thing going on here, there's a revolution." And she said, "But no one wants to hear what I have to say, they just want me to stand next to Paul accepting awards and stuff." I said, "Hey, you got a voice. You can use it for whatever you want." And that's when I saw the light bulb above her pop on.

PM: To take your point, the question was, what are you going to do and that is why she got into food. Because she said, "No use telling people to go vegetarian and there's nothing in the shops for them to eat." She said, "My role will be to provide something for them to eat." That became her main role.

CH: She was like the type of person who did it and didn't talk about it.

PM: Yeah, I always talked. She sang about it.

CH: The Americans of course probably don't know this: You were knighted by the Queen for your contributions to the culture and your services to music. You then became Sir Paul, and I technically should be addressing you as Sir Paul.

PM: I notice you're not, Chrissie. What is this familiarity?

CH: And as you became Sir Paul, Linda became Lady Linda. What did she feel about her new, and what most people would consider coveted, title?

PM: She was sweetly offhand about it. That kind of grandeur was nothing that she actually went for. She came from a strata of society which was really probably American aristocracy and she never really valued it. She thought it had a lot of false values, that there was a lot of social climbing and she never wanted that. She wanted honesty, she wanted reality. So she was much happier with me, just hanging out, just going to bed early with a meal, than going out to huge functions and social climbing. I think the truth of the matter is that Linda wanted the knighthood for me more than she wanted it for herself because, being British, it sort of mattered a bit more to me anyway. Once or twice we would sit around and I would joke and nudge her and say, "Eh, Lady McCartney..." and she would smile sweetly and kind of enjoy it -- just as long as it was low-key like that and just between the two of us she could kind of quietly enjoy it. But somebody said to her once, "Do people call you Lady McCartney?" and Linda said, "I think someone did, once." Now, you name me the women who can have that sort of attitude.

CH: Are you kidding? Most women would have their credit cards changed at once and get new letterheads.

PM: Actually Linda got me the new letterhead. She didn't want it for herself but she thought I might want it. In actual fact I've never used it. I've still got it at home but it kind of embarrasses me to do that stuff because we like to be down to earth. That's not because we want to slum it and look lower than we are in order to get some street credit, it's a genuine love of people. I've met Prime Ministers and lords and ladies but I always say that the people I'm from, the ordinary working class Liverpool people, are generally more intelligent, much more fun to be with and, for sure, much more honest than most of those highfaluting people I've met. Linda and I always looked at things straight on and if the truth was that the people lower down the ladder were more honest and more fun to be with than that's what we went with. In the '60s, I had a chauffeur for a while -- because, being young, you've got to try it - - but after a while I realized that I hated being driven around and I wanted to drive myself. And Linda loved me driving.

She hated anyone else driving, but it was fun for us just to take off in the car, just the two of us, and because she was this totally lovable nutcase she'd say, "Try and get lost." I'd say, "Darling, you know, when you're driving you don't try to get lost, that's the last thing you want to do. You have to navigate." She'd say, "No, no, try and get lost -- turn off here." I'd be saying, "But I've no idea where that leads to." She'd say, "Do it." OK, so I'd turn off and we'd be in magic land -- we'd be somewhere we'd never been before, a little shop we'd never seen before, we'd see all these wonderful little villages that we didn't know existed. So, sure enough, Linda was right -- you could get lost in all this magic and, as she knew, soon enough there would be a big sign saying "West End, London, This Way." She was right, you couldn't get lost. It was such a beautiful idea, this idea of wanting to get lost. I loved it; she changed my way of thinking forever on that. In The Beatles, we were always trying to find the gig, getting lost was the last thing you wanted to do. But the freedom of actually not minding, or even liking getting off the beaten track, was a blessing in my life. I see it now as a great offbeat wisdom. She was so right: the things we found by going off the motorway were amazing. We found her first horse, her Appaloosa. We were in America, travelling from Dallas to Fort Worth on the motorway. Linda spotted this beautiful little Appaloosa and said, "Turn off at the next exit." I said, "I can't! We're going to rehearsal." She said, "It doesn't matter. Fifteen minutes, what the hell, turn off." So I turned off and we found the father of all our horses which we brought back to England -- he sired all of our beautiful Appaloosas.

PM: Probably the only Appaloosa horses in England?

PM: Well, there were others. They're the only American bred foundation. They have them in England but they are derived from Dutch horses which are not as cool, I'm afraid. The American Indian-bred is the Appaloosa breed, and she was keen on what they call the foundation stock. She found him just by looking out on the motorway. Being a photographer, she was an incredible observer, she would see stuff that I wouldn't even be looking at. She'd say, "Look at that," and I'd say, "What are you looking at?" "That!" And I'd say, "Which bit of that are we supposed to be looking at?" and she would point out something that would make you go, "Oh my God, how did you spot that?" She was such an incredible observer.

CH: Linda never talked to me about religion but she did have a very deep connection to nature which I would describe as spiritual. She went to school in Arizona, she took you and the family to Arizona a lot and she died in Arizona. Was Arizona a kind of spiritual home to her?

PM: Arizona was her favorite state in America. She went to the University of Arizona and she didn't really get to know the place while she was at school, because she was mainly on campus and American campuses are very self-contained.

However, she stayed on there for a while and rode a lot, and she told me it was like being born again. She was able to throw off a lot of the shackles of her upbringing, the social etiquette that she never really liked. She was able to hang out with ordinary people, neighbors who would offer to babysit for Heather because she was a single parent by then.

She rode a lot. When I met her she'd come back from spending a year in Arizona and when I asked her what she'd done she said it was mainly riding; riding all day -- that was her dream. She just loved it, she loved the desert. She loved the animals. She was very at home with it. And that added to what we were talking about before of how she'd go to this vacant lot as a child and look for salamanders. It was the next big kick. So, when she took me there, I as this British guy -- and we had kids by then -- I would say, "I'm a little bit worried about the rattlesnakes, I hear they're deadly." She'd say, "Yeah, but you don't want to worry about them, you'll never see one, you're lucky if you see one and if you do they won't come to you." I'm a British bloke, and I am bringing children here. I've got to know what's going on. I'm the safety man, and I've got to run the safety thing here. And she says, "Don't worry about i t." We've seen millions of rattlers since. And I love them. I really love to see them, I've been honored. In fact, two days before she died we were really honored to have this huge big rattler come across our trail as we were riding. It was as a final vision of her riding. It was just waiting for us to cross the past. We were just so proud to be near what in the past would be in a Disney film or a David Attenborough movie or something. But here it was; we were seeing it live. We never got over the feel of that. Arizona really awakened something deep in her, and I used to love to see that peace it brought her.

Towards the end, when we knew it was getting serious, that was one of the things I said to her: "You know, we are in your favorite place on Earth." She was comforted by that. Talking about her observational skills, she would notice a horned toad in the desert. They're very hard to spot because they are very much like chameleons; they change to the color so they're the exact color of the sand. I wouldn't even see it. And she would pick it up. Something I would never do and many women would never do -- pick up a horned toad in the desert. But she knew they were harmless. She'd pick it up and it would pee on her like all of these reptiles do. She never minded. She would actually hold it away knowing it was going to pee. She was very skillful with animals. It was like she had been handling animals in a zoo all of her life. She hadn't. It was just this natural rapport.

Anytime you ever see pictures of her with animals, look at the animal. It's very comfortable. She'd pick up this horny toad, and I say, "Is is alright to pick that up?" The chicken British guy. And she would say, "It's fine, here." And she would encourage me to hold it, and I'd hold it and it would pee on me. I gradually learned to be honored to be this close to these animals instead of, like a girl, go "eek" and jump on a chair: "Ooh, it's an animal." She was very much the opposite. I have a photo at home of her holding a frog to her mouth. She's hamming it up and almost kissing the frog, like the prince in the story. But the frog, I swear to God, has got its hand on her lips. And she's not freaking. She's just continuing to look at the camera. She was just unbelievable in that respect. It just allowed her freedom. I think the one word would be freedom. And she loved freedom. In her songs, "Oppression won't win, t he light comes from within." She hated oppression. That's why she hated the slaughterhouse. That's why she hated the fate that many animals suffer. She thought, "It's not right. We should not be doing this to them. It's not natural, it's not right. There is a better way."

CH: So that's what you're describing basically as Linda's brand of spirituality?

PM: Her spirituality was nature. We used to talk about it and say, "Can you picture God?" She'd say no. I can't either. I've often said that to people who are religious. I'd say, "What's your vision?" And they'd sort of sheepishly say, "It's an old man with a beard." And then I'd say, "Do you really believe that?" And they'll say,"Well, 'I'm not sure." You know it's very difficult, and I sympathize with them.

But Linda was spiritual and we never called it religious, because over here in England there's been so much trouble with religion. My mom was Catholic and my dad was Protestant, which is the Irish problem. There are so many wars created -- Jew, Arab -- that are still going on. It's all still going on. It's in the name of God and it's still going on. We never liked that, that whole idea of "my God's better than yours." We thought, "Why don't they all come together and all worship God and not bother each other?" Because all religions are the same basically, and it's so strange that people would be warring. You know, the British go over to Beirut in crusades telling everyone, "You've got to be a Christian," when they've got a perfectly good religion of their own. But we impose it. Let's face it, all we're trying to do is steal the world. It's kind of clear now. And we did. At one point Britain owned two-thirds of the world. The word "religion" was the problem. Everything else was great. We loved what most religions say, particularly when they're talking about good values -- love, respect, peace -- which most of them are, but because they are political institutions they get messed up.

What we felt was more important was the message behind a religion, rather than the front man. Often I think what puts people off is they encounter the front man. You can encounter Jimmy Swaggert, and when you find out what he did you say, "Well, I can't have religion," and it ruins your faith. We never got into that. We just had and have some sort of mysterious deep faith in the sort of OK-ness of it all, we didn't really get much more specific than that. I always said that God is the word 'good' with the 'o' taken out, and that the Devil is the word 'evil' with a 'd' added. I think in history it got personified. In other words, Linda and I were interested more in the values and the ethics of religion; but because religion caused so many wars, we didn't ever subscribe to any particular one.

CH: This is what the Yanks want to know. They want to know all this stuff -- all the family values -- it's important to them.

PM: Another thing is, unlike some people in power -- we don't really need to name -- Linda and I got all of our wild oats out of the way before we met. We were very fortunate. I know a lot of girls.

CH: Linda less than you did?

PM: No. Well, maybe.

CH: You were in sort of an advantageous position.

PM: Yeah. Well, OK. I don't mind that, because that's probably true. But hey, look, we both played the field quite widely. The good thing is when we got married, we told each other. That was a big decision. I thought, "Should I just kind of not say anything, and she not say anything?" But, we thought, "No. We are going to really have a relationship here. We've got to clear this up." I said, "I've got to tell you all this stuff. I hope you really can handle this." It was good, because she told me all of her stuff. We really did tell all of the stuff. We were painfully open about it. But it got it out the way. And it's like, "Now we can maybe have a marriage. Maybe we now don't need to be unfaithful." And that was the case, which is beautiful. But I think that it was that we got it out the way. So many people marry young, and wonder what it's like the rest of their life. So they've almost got to have affairs just to see what it's like. Luckily we got all of that out of the way before we got married, which I think was another great blessing.

CH: Well, I have to ask you something now that you may not want to talk about.

PM: Try me.

CH: Your mother died of breast cancer. When Linda was diagnosed with breast cancer, how scared were you and how scared was Linda?

PM: We were totally scared. She'd had a lump under her arm, which she'd gone and seen our local doctor about, and he'd given her some antibiotics and told her, "Don't worry about it, it's nothing." But she talked to a couple of women friends and they said she should get it checked out. So she did and I was out of the house one day, and she rang me.

She said, "I've got the results of the tests back." And she said, "I've got breast cancer." Our lives just turned round at that second. She said, "You better come home." I said, "Don't worry, I'm on my way." So I just ran home. We immediately got into the car and drove up to London to try get some facts, because we were two hours away from any sort of medical help. And we then just embarked on a two-and-a-half year program of trying everything we possibly could to turn it round. As anyone who knows anything about breast cancer knows, if you're unlucky it will travel from the breast and go to your nodes, which are like your safety valves under your arm. Depending on how many nodes are infected that's generally the seriousness of your illness. So we didn't really want to know. But she'd met some friends who were good supporters and who had had it; they'd sort of say, "It had gone into three of my nodes," and stuff.

We sort of knew it was a little more than that -- but to tell you the truth we'd try to block it out, trying to keep positive. But I talked to the doctor later, after Linda died, and he was saying that the amount of nodes involved was scary. He said it wasn't just three, it was in tens. Luckily though, the medical evidence wasn't totally conclusive and you could read it two ways, so we always took the most optimistic reading. The word you were always scared to hear was "aggressive," that it was an aggressive cancer. But thank God we never heard that. I only heard that after she died. I was always waiting to hear that, as she was. But we thought, "Well, we haven't heard that word yet, so we're still OK." So we knew it was difficult and we knew we had a battle on and so we tried everything. You know, the biggest difficulty is miracle cures coming out of the woodwork.

Everyone's got a miracle cure. And some of them say what you really don't want to do is to go the traditional medical route. I hate to tell you, I still don't know the answer. For instance, when Stella was born we had to go the traditional medical route, as there were complications at the birth. If we hadn't, both Linda and the baby would have died. So we'd learned that there were times when you needed traditional modern medical science and we opted for that route. We found really good people, who were the best, who knew the most about her condition and who knew the very best treatments. And the truth of the matter is, she tried them all. She had her first bout of treatment, and she tried that. And the sad thing is, she coped with it so well because she was such an up person, I remember somebody ringing me up once and saying, "How's her appetite?" I said "Fine."

She hardly ever lost her appetite, and you're really supposed to lose your appetite on these things. But Linda was such a sort of lusty person, "Right, what are having for dinner?" She never went like an ill person. People around her would be dropping and she'd be saying, "No, don't worry, we're going to lick this thing." She really stayed so positive. But then she had a second bout of it. We were in New York, having tests; they took a routine mammogram of her other breast and something was discovered there. So, holy cow, we had it all over again to deal with. And she had to lose her hair, which was the kind of thing she hated. I think women are particularly vulnerable when that happens, because you can't ignore it. Men, OK, go bald and so it's maybe a little less scary. But for a woman -- and a beautiful woman, with the most beautiful hair, strawberry blonde; natural too, it wasn't out of a bottle -- it was terrible tragedy for her to lose that. But she was so courageous. She said, "Right, let's cut it off."

She had a Marine crew. It looked great actually, because she had a beautiful bone structure and a beautiful neck. She looked gorgeous. And eventually, when she realized that even her little crew cut was going to go, she shaved it all off. She looked like a Buddhist monk, very sort of holy. And then unfortunately this year, the worst news, the worst possible scenario, just when we thought we'd got it licked, actually. We'd come back off holiday and her hair was growing back -- each time they said it'll grow back dark and curly, and I must say she didn't really fancy that, having been straight and blonde -- but it grew back beautifully, it was slightly darker but still blonde. But she was so brave with all of that. And so it was almost going OK.

We got back off holiday and she didn't feel too well. We went to see a doctor and he said, "You've got an enlarged liver and unfortunately with your history it's most likely to be cancer." We were just dumbstruck. Horrified. But, again, we said, "Is there anything we can do? Do people ever come back from this?" Yes. Sure. There's statistics which show that people have licked this, which is true -- so we always went with that side of it. Linda never said, "Oh, I'm going to be a bad statistic." I think that's what sustained us. She'd say to us, "You're the best support group a girl could ever have," and we'd say, "We couldn't do it without you, babe." She had such courage. We just couldn't have done it. It's true. We would have fallen apart. But she was just so on the ball. We could be strong because she was. I don't even think that until the last week she even knew. I think the last week, you know, things were going so badly -- but we were riding horses. I said "Tell you what, babe, I'll get the horses ready, you don't have to even do anything. I'll tack them up, get them all ready, get a little bale of hay and you can hop off of it." That was always one of our horrors, of being eighty and you can't ride. We'd joke that we'd design a special crane and have you lifted up. Because that was the horror of her life, that she couldn't ride. Thank God that she was able to, two days before she died. And, as I said, the crowning moment was this big rattler stretched across the track. We just looked at it and felt awed. Like it was some sort of magic sign. I bet it is in Indian folklore.

So, thank the Lord, she went into a coma as they had predicted. Which wasn't the worst of all scenarios, as it happened. She just felt tired, and I said, "Would you like to sit by the pool?" She said, "No. I don't really fancy it today." I thought I'd try her in about an hour's time. I tried her in about an hour's time, she still felt tired. I joked, "Well you just fancy a lie-in, don't you?" She said, "Yeah." The next day she died. She was just in a coma for one day. It was as if she was so smart that something in her said, "We can't lick this one. Let's get the hell out of here, quick." And she didn't hang about. As I say, she'd spent that day in bed, the previous day she'd got up, she spent that one day in bed, I went to bed that night with her figuring, "God, things are getting desperate but we'll just keep hoping." I went to bed and she got restless in the middle of the night, as they'd warned me they might. So I called the nurse about 3 in the morning and at 5 she died. She didn't hang about. In her last sort of moments she got very peaceful. As she died something told me to just say something to her -- and I said what I'd say when she'd be going into anaesthetic when she'd had a couple of operations in previous years. I'd used this sort of trick of saying, "You're on the beach, it's a beautiful day, the water's laughing, we're walking along the beach hand in hand," or, "You're up on your beautiful horse," -- just to give her a beautiful peaceful moment and she'd drift off into the anaesthetic beautifully and peacefully. In fact the doctors used to say, "We've never had such a quiet patient." One of the doctors said that after her first operation she woke up, looked around at us all and said, "Hello." He said, "Boy, we've never had that before." So it suddenly came to me at the moment when she was just about to die. I have no idea why, I just thought, "I've just got to say this. " It was as if I was guided and I said, "You're up on your beautiful Appaloosa stallion; it's a fine spring day, we're riding through the woods. The bluebells are all out, and the sky is clear blue." And she just drifted off. So, a terrible tragedy. But I don't think it could have happened in a better way in a better place.

CH: Linda disliked high society types and any kind of social climbing and was the least pretentious person I'd ever met. But she had a great many close friends and indeed her memorial services were packed with them. She kept up regular correspondences, remembered birthdays and Christmas cards and was as thoughtful and generous a friend as I've ever had. Was Yoko Ono a friend of hers?

PM: No, not really.

CH: So would there have been any reason for Yoko to have attended Linda's memorial service?

PM: The thing we decided on the memorial services was instead of inviting people who we maybe ought to have invited out of duty, that we would stay true to Linda's spirit and only invite her nearest and dearest friends. Seeing as Yoko wasn't one of those, we didn't invite her.

CH: I only asked because there was a lot of publicity about the fact that she wasn't invited in America. Many people were curious about it.

PM: No that's true. As you know she had many friends who she was quite tuned into and whom she kept close contact with. In fact, there were quite a number of other people who weren't invited. People would say to me, "Oh this person knew Linda before you knew her." I'd say, "You mean from thirty years ago?" They'd say, "Yeah." I'd say, "Well, OK, but I'll tell you something -- that person hasn't sent us a postcard or phoned us in 30 years, so how well did they like each other?" So we kept it to real friends who we knew that Linda loved. And that meant that people who were maybe doing it out of duty weren't asked.

CH: So there was no intentional snub of Yoko Ono?

PM: No. It's funny, we had helicopter pilots who'd helped us in New York when Linda was travelling a lot for treatments. They became good friends and I said to one of them that I'd like them to come to the memorial, and he was shocked. He said, "Oh, I don't want to get in the way of all the various dignitaries." I said, "Don't worry, there won't be any, this isn't that kind of thing. This is for people who Linda genuinely loved and who genuinely loved Linda." Those were the only people invited. I'm really glad that we did do it like that because everyone who went remarked that there were so many friends there and it was such a warm atmosphere and everyone who spoke spoke from the heart, genuinely. Linda would have hated anything else. There were some very nice people. For instance, Senator Ted Kennedy sent a really nice condolence letter to me. It was very thoughtful of him. But I knew that she wasn't a friend of h is so he didn't get invited, either.

CH: How have you dealt with your bereavement?

PM: The main answer is my kids. I don't know what I would have done without them. Being such a close family, it hit us pretty much equally. They lost their best friend as well as their mum. It hit us all hard, but they have been very strong and very helpful. We've cried a lot together. None of us has held that back. We pretty much still cry, daily. Because Linda was so important, so much the center of everything in our lives. So it was mainly the kids. But I did get a counselor, realizing that I would need some sort of help. And although it's not much of a British tradition to do that, I was married to an American so I know quite a lot of people who have no problem with psychiatrists and counselors. Funnily enough, Linda used to know psychiatrists when when was young; she'd say, '"I used to sort out all their problems for them." And you know that's true. So I knew a particular one, who I talked to. He was a good help. It was mainly to get rid of some of my guilt. When anyone you love this much dies, one of the first things is that you wish you could have been perfect -- every minute of every day. But nobody's like that. I would say to Linda if we were arguing, "Look, I'm not Jesus Christ. I'm not a saint. I'm just some normal man. I'll try to do something about it but that's who I am, that's who you're married to." So I had quite a bit of guilt and probably still have. You remember arguments. When you're married you don't remember them so much, you just get on the next day and as long as you don't have too many and they're not too bad you figure it evens itself out. But when someone dies, you remember only the arguments in the first couple of weeks and the moments when I wasn't as nice as I would have wanted to be. So I need counseling with that. I found that really helpful.

Friends have been very supportive, we've got a lot of lovely sincere friends who, because of the nature of Linda and I, unless they're sincere they're not our friends anyway, and they've been very helpful. And funnily enough, and something that I didn't expect, the public at large have been a huge help. I thought that if you didn't know Linda, you might not get it. But I was wrong. So many of the thousands of letters that I got said, "Although we never met Linda, you could tell that she was a great woman." For some of them, it was because of her attitude to animals. A lot of others said it was because of the way that she brought up our kids. Yet they wouldn't even know that we had kids, you hardly ever saw their pictures in the paper, we guarded their privacy in case when they grew up they wanted it. We figured you couldn't rob them of that. The public said, a lot of them said, "It was just the way that she brought the family up," and I realized that so many people did get what Linda was about. From one little fragment, you could tell. It still shone through. The public sent very uplifting quotes and prayers. A lot of them had been through a similar grief. They'd write and say how they'd lost their wife and this little poem they'd enclose had sustained them. A lot of people sent me a lot of good stuff that helped me. But it was mainly the kids.

Now, when I get sad, I do pretty often; like if I go for a ride she's not with me -- I find myself going down, I let myself go down for a moment, just because I have to. And then I try to counterbalance it and think that Linda's life was very upbeat. She wasn't a downbeat kind of person, so she wouldn't like it now if I went downbeat. She was always the one for the joke. If you spat inadvertently while you were talking to her, she'd say, "Do you serve towels with your showers?" She just had a line for everything. If you looked a little inattentive while she's talking she'd say, "What, am I boring you?" She was a really funny lady, very witty. A delicious sense of humour. She was happy. So I use that now. I balance every sad moment with a happy moment. That kind of helps day to day. It helps me get through.

CH: How did this new solo album of Linda's, Wide Prairie, come about?

PM: A couple of years ago, Linda got a letter from a girl who said she had really liked hearing one of Linda's songs, "Seaside Woman," and she asked if she had any other songs. Well through the years, from the early '70s, Linda had been writing and recording her own songs. But because of being in the shadow of The Beatles or of me and being so much in the public eye, she always felt very nervous -- because it wasn't her main career she was reluctant; like she was on a hiding to nothing and people would be bound to criticize her. So she was shy to release it all. But this letter from this fan made her think that maybe she should put an album together. So the last couple of years we spent finding all the old tapes, looking at songs that didn't have lyrics and -- because we often had to make these two-hour trips up to London for her treatment -- we'd use that time. We'd get a cassette of one of the melodies she'd writ ten, and we'd write the words on these trips to London. On such journeys we wrote the words to "Appaloosa," "I Got Up" and "The Light Comes From Within" -- three of the 16 tracks on this album. And that was good, writing like that, we'd have a good laugh and forget that she was going up for treatment. It kept us both positive. Before we went out to Arizona, about a month before she died, we were putting the finishing touches to the album, making a couple of tracks and doing the backing vocals.

CH: I was there, I walked in.

PM: Yeah, that's right.

CH: She did my album cover.

PM: Which, of course, is a beautiful album cover.

CH: I kind of saw it as a going away present, to be honest. I didn't ask her initially, because I thought, "I don't know if I want to go with this idea." I called [your daughter] Mary and I said, "You live around the corner, you've been taking some snaps. I just want to see if this will look like anything." She said, "You ought to call my mom." And I said, "Well what if I change my mind, and then she's gone through the trouble." The next day my office called and said, "Did you set up a photo shoot with Linda McCartney?" I called Linda and she said, "I have turned down so much work, nothing excites me. But this is strong and I love strong." Because it was going to be "Viva L'Amour," you know, long live love. And she wanted to do it. Then of course, we were chasing the picture up and saying, "Where's our picture, where's our picture?" Then Yasmine walked downstairs and said, "Linda died." She had been watching tel evision. And the last thing I thought about was the picture, obviously.

PM: I am so glad she did. She loved doing it. She enjoyed it.

CH: And you know what? A few days later my office called and said, "You know Linda's photo agent called and said that they had a picture, they had a package to hand deliver to you."' That she wanted hand delivered. And there was the picture.

PM: She came through. She always did.

CH: So anyway, her record?

PM: Yeah, you were there for that. We put the finishing touches to the vocals. There was nothing left to be done. We were going to come back from Arizona, I was going to mix the album. We were going to work on promotion now, this time of the year, and instead of me doing this interview, she was going to be doing it and we were going to release the album for this Christmas. So when she died, I thought: I've just got to fulfill that plan.

I thought that some people might think that it's a tribute album that we'd rushed out -- but I wanted to make it clear that it is something we were planning anyway. Releasing this album was something that very much Linda wanted. She was very proud of it. We decided the title would be "Wide Prairie." Anyway, after a couple of months after she died I managed to get into the studio. We called those studio sessions Tears & Laughter because the engineer -- my old friend Geoff Emerick, who I've known since Beatle days, he did "Sgt. Pepper," "Band On The Run" and a lot of good work with me -- he lost his wife to cancer, too. So the pair of us were just crying on the console.

But then we'd listen to Linda's spirit and we'd laugh and remember her. So it was The Tears & Laughter sessions. It was very moving to do it, but it was very uplifting to do it and when we finally got the whole album together we thought she'd be damn proud of this. And she should be too, because her personality comes over. You see that she's a very strong singer, a strong writer. And she got a lot of flack over the years: "Oh, she only plays keyboard with one finger," or, "She can't sing." And people would isolate microphones very cruelly, which devastated her, she hated that stuff as anyone would. I used to say, "If I ever catch up with those DJ's I'll give them a word." And, believe me, that is really difficult.

Many people were cruel to Linda. But you know, after time you forgive. She didn't hold grudges. She'd just say, "No, let it go. Don't dwell on it." So anyway, we finished up the album and I am really proud of it. There are some really cool songs. A fact that she was delighted about. She said, "If we do an album there are three videos already" -- which were like animated pieces that she'd done to three other tracks -- which is good. So that means that that's all there. And a friend of ours was always going to make a trilogy of the third animation piece, so he's currently making "The Light Comes from Within," where Linda rather shockingly swears on it.

It's quite funny because some people view of Linda as the sort of dutiful wife. But she really wasn't. I mean she was plenty dutiful but she was something else besides. But there were these words, and it was basically this song, The Light Comes from Within, which is basically her getting back at her critics and the people who had been cruel to her. And even though she didn't hold a grudge, she figured it's a pretty good subject for a song where she could vent her emotions -- you know get it out and let it go. So I looked at the second verse and there's swearing, and I said, "Well, I don't know about this." And she said, "What's wrong with it?" And I said, "Well, it's pretty forthright. You're singing this?" And, she said, "Watch me." She grabbed on the microphone and bang, one take. She sang it beautifully. You know she just had guts, nerves. She just had the nerve to carry that kind of thing off completely. So she did it. It's a beautiful vocal take, very strong. She got all of the work done, got the whole thing done. And she said, "Now I've put the whole thing together, with some sleeve notes giving my recollections of each song." We're releasing it at the end of October. I think it will surprise a lot of people. I think it's a really good album to have. That was her concern: that if you went into a record shop 20 years from now and said could you have a Linda McCartney record they'd have to guide you one of my records, or a Wings record. We thought it would be a bit sad that there wouldn't be a Linda McCartney record -- well now there is. And I'm very proud of it and I know she would have been. I think it shows that there's a lot more to this lady than a lot of people knew.

CH: In your day-to-day life, you've adopted a very modest lifestyle. You have a large farm [in Sussex, England], horses, and lot of land but your house can hardly be called opulent. Threadbare sofas, put your feet up, which is the first thing Linda said when I told my kids to put their feet down. She said, "No, no, put your feet up it's fine." And, even I was a bit taken aback. When Linda first took me around your room, you weren't there, and I thought that the two of you shared less closet space than the average working girl would insist on having. You designed and built that house. Why is it like that?

PM: The closet space is probably the design fault of the house. Being British, we don't really have closets. We don't have anything; you're lucky if you've got a wardrobe and a couple of coat hangers. But obviously Americans are used to good closet space. I think that's probably the biggest design flaw. When I started off designing the house, I would quiz Linda all the time over what sort of place she wanted. I started off drawing a pyramid and thought, "Would we want to live in that?" No. Then I did a dome. Would we want to live in that? No. Pencil and paper are cheap so I just went through millions of options to get them out the way. Eventually we went for quite a traditional house for the area we live in, with some additions because the house we'd moved from was a round house and we liked the curves. So I added a few sort of curves that weren't entirely traditional. One of the key questions was, are we talking a big house or a stately home or just a comfortable family house?

CH: And your room was right next to the kid's room, as opposed to down the hall or on another floor?

PM: It's a very comfortable house that has five bedrooms; one bedroom each for each of the kids [Heather, 35, Mary, 29, Stella, 27 and James, 21] and one for us, Linda and I. It has limited space but that's how she wanted it and that's how I wanted it too. Because we always hated these stories of people living in these huge stately homes with the children rattling around in the East Wing, and you never see them. You wouldn't believe it but the house we moved from, where we brought the kids up for about seven years, had two bedrooms -- one for four children and one for us -- so we couldn't stay there. That was even more modest. It meant that we were a close family, literally. It meant that there was no getting away from each other, except that I had a little den and Linda had a den, too. They weren't big, none of the rooms in the house are big or opulent, as you say. We didn't like the high-living lifestyle. We are much more comfortable. When friends came around, we'd have tea in the kitchen, mainly sit in the kitchen all the time. We designed something for our lifestyle and for our reasonably simple tastes compared to some other people in our position. It was specially designed to be comfortable -- and it is, people come into our house and say, "Ooh, this house feels lovely," or "This is comfortable." That, to us, was what was important. We'd have some nice things, but there was no point in having them if the kids can't play on them. We really tried to be comfortable, and brought the kids up and tried to give them a comfortable living space -- for us and them.

CH: How do you sleep at night?

PM: I was really worried after Linda died that I would not be able to sleep at all. I have had the feeling ever since that she's seen to it that I'm sleeping. That's my theory. I don't know how correct it is. But somehow I manage to sleep OK, and it's really a blessing because I need to. The rest of the day can be pretty traumatic with the memorials and all the stuff you have to do, and just missing her. It's great, I feel like she's blessed me with the ability to get some sleep. It's a blessing.

CH: You're not taking pills or anything?

PM: No. Nothing. So, I was very surprised to find that I am sleeping. I expected sort of sleepless nights on top of all my other problems. But it's a blessing that it didn't happen that way. She has seen to it.

CH: Did Linda smoke pot to alleviate what she was going through?

PM: Being '60s people we had smoked pot for a long time, and certain of the medical people did suggest that it was a good thing to combat the effects of chemotherapy. And she did for a little while. But then she just gave up completely, just in case it wasn't helping.

CH: She was actually advised at one point to smoke pot?

PM: She was advised by the doctors, and they said it kind of sheepishly, "If you've got any of that stuff left over from the '60s, you might smoke a bit." You can get it officially in America for things like glaucoma and things like this. And there are a lot of lobbies here to legalize it for medical treatment. And the doctors certainly thought that it would help. She tried it for a little while, but she decided to give it up in case it was going to be a bad thing generally for her.

CH: She won't be there when you're 64. How do you see your future?

PM: Without her...it won't be as much fun as it would have been, that's for sure. I don't need to say anything more than that.

Nestlé to buy Linda McCartney

Swiss food giant Nestlé is preparing to buy Linda McCartney, the vegetarian frozen foods business from Heinz.

Nestlé owns 50.1per ceent of Israel's Osem, whose subsidiary Tivall is understood to be readying an offer for Linda McCartney. Tivall already sells similar products as Linda McCartney, like vegetarian sausages and burgers, to British supermarkets Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury, and Tesco.

A Heinz spokesperson would not comment on any specific approach being made for Linda McCartney, but said: "We continue to explore options to maximise the value of the [frozen food] business."

A source, however, stated that a month ago Heinz had stopped the £200m (E289m, $350m) sale of its frozen food business, which also includes Weight Watchers, because private equity and trade bids came in too low. The source added that some of the periphery frozen food brands, including Linda McCartney, would be sold regardless.

The late Linda McCartney, who was married to Beatle Sir Paul McCartney, created her own choice of vegetarian frozen meals in 1991. Heinz acquired the brand in 1999 when it bought the frozen food and chilled business of United Biscuits, which makes Jaffa Cakes and McVitie's biscuits.

Heinz wants to continue to add value to the frozen food assets it intends to keep, by growing them to a position for an eventual sale, sources told The Business.

But because consumers have been buying more chilled, ready-prepared microwave meals ­ in the belief that they are healthier than frozen ­ the frozen food businesses has suffered declining revenues.

I wasn't entirely convinced. The back of the man's head looked like it belonged to a 35-year-old. It isn't as if I'm always flying back from London, mind you, always spotting celebrities. This was my second London flight in my life. And the biggest celebrity I'd ever flown with before was probably Ronny Turiaf.

But I kept an eye on the man. And soon McCartney was out of his brown suit jacket, roaming all over the cabin, smiling, chatting with the flight crew, carrying his daughter in and out of the restrooms. And my seatmate was exactly right. I'd recognize his face anywhere.

Soon the lyrics to "Love Me Do" started playing through my brain. I remembered the first time I ever laid eyes on Paul McCartney. I was 8 years old, perched in my pajamas in front of the Ed Sullivan show on a Sunday evening.

Paul was the one I liked best. The other third-grade girls and I compared notes later.

The captain came on and announced there was a problem with the plane. We'd need to stay on the ground while it was being fixed.

I kept a close eye on my favorite Beatle. An airline attendant seemed to be briefing him separately. He appeared relaxed, but airline repairs ­ especially when I'm about to head over the Atlantic ­ make me nervous. They trigger my imagination. I mused about how British Airways certainly wouldn't take any chances with him on board. If they tried to sneak him off the flight, I plotted, I was out of there.

McCartney hopped up and rounded a corner talking into his cell phone. He wore a plum-colored vest, a matching shirt and a familiar expression of British glee. As I watched him, he grinned at me and winked.

I was instantly 8 years old all over again.

It crossed my mind to ask to interview him. But I couldn't think of a plausible reason to bother him. We were flying to Los Angeles, not Spokane. And if I so much as passed a note to him, I knew the curtains would likely fall, air marshals might descend, and I'd lose my chance to gaze into his life.

His daughter ­ Beatrice Milly, who is 2 and a half, I later learned ­ was full of energy. And she wound up frequently in her father's arms. Her mother wasn't on the flight, and her dad had only a couple of traveling companions.

The minutes ticked on. I fretted again about the plane repairs.

But McCartney didn't seem to have any qualms. And after an hour and a half, the cabin doors began locking. I looked for Sir Paul. As I heard the jet begin to roll toward the runway, I glimpsed McCartney's plum-colored shoulder in a seat beyond me. No one had whisked him off the plane. Suddenly I felt better. I was flying with a national treasure.

As our plane roared into the sky, the flight attendants drew the curtain between our two cabins. And I thought about what it meant to be a Paul girl. At one time, we were mocked for being superficial. Fluffy. Sentimental. Paul was the one singing silly love songs. The John girls somehow seemed smarter, more worldly. They understood tortured artists; I didn't.

After dinner, we all bedded down to watch movies and drift off as the flight soared over the Atlantic. Little Beatrice escaped her father's arms a couple of times and darted through the velvety curtains into our cabin. Each time, a gray-haired man, one of McCartney's traveling companions, ambled down the aisle to rescue her.
The cabin grew dark and quiet. My movie wound down, and I pulled a blanket under my chin.

Just then a little blond head shot past my seat and down into the next compartment. A moment or two passed. Finally, the gray-haired man appeared, his eyes wild. I pointed my thumb toward the rear of the plane. He grinned, nodded and zipped through the passengers. It was a scene out of the movie "Help!"

And then the curtains parted.

There stood Paul McCartney, wearing navy blue pajamas.

He strode right into our compartment. His traveling companion brought his daughter up between our seats, and McCartney scooped up the little girl, holding her close for a few moments. He spoke to her softly before they disappeared.

And we all fell asleep for that short night.

I awoke later in the darkness. I checked the in-flight map. We were somewhere over Kearney, Neb. I considered the selection I'd made as a third-grader again, and I felt entirely justified.

Paul McCartney turned out to be as adorable at 63 as he was when I was 8. There's something appealing about sanity. About lyrics like "I'll always be true" and "Let it be." About a man whose mere presence has the power to scare away the blue meanies and soothe little girls of all ages.

Now when I tell my friends about the night I saw Paul McCartney in his jammies, I'm tempted to swipe one of his lyrics.

Here's the thing about being a Paul girl after all these years:

It's getting better all the time.

"Your parents did a really good thing," Paul McCartney told Huntsville's Emma Jenkins when they met in Las Vegas last November.

Not a bad thing to hear about your parental units from the world's greatest living rock star. Still, you might expect mixed feelings when McCartney is praising Mom and Dad for giving a signed Beatles "White Album" worth $85,000 to McCartney's favorite charity.

But it's fine with Emma, 16, who's getting used to her parents giving away rare things. After all, they're donating an autographed book of McCartney's poetry and lyrics to this weekend's Huntsville Symphony Orchestra Crescen-dough fundraising auction.

Will "Blackbird Singing" raise another $85,000 here? Probably not, although its simple "Greetings, Paul McCartney" signature makes the book more valuable than one personally inscribed to Emma or her parents, Alan and Debra Jenkins.

But more about the symphony later. Let's get back to that "White Album." How did the Jenkinses have a rare 38-year-old album cover signed by all of the Fab Four?

And why would they give away such a piece of rock history?

And where did they get a second signed "White Album" to replace it?

Alan Jenkins is a commercial real estate developer. That pays pretty well, judging from the family's gated acreage and large white house on the edge of the city.

It certainly allows Jenkins to indulge in collecting, one of his favorite things since he was a drummer in local rock bands such as Nuke the Whales.

"I started rock 'n' roll collecting about a year ago," he said last week, and now he's plugged into a network of sellers and auctioneers who find the things he likes.

The Jenkinses don't brag or flash their collection. It's an investment and a passion. But they are having fun with it, especially Alan and his guitarist son, Austin, 14.

"It's cool," Austin said last week. "My dad and I do it together."

Ask and Jenkins will show his gems - drumheads signed by Ringo Starr and Pete Best, the original Beatles drummer; a vintage Hofner bass such as the one McCartney played on Ed Sullivan's TV show and still plays; signed Richard Avedon prints from a famous '60s Look magazine cover and more signed albums.

Fascinating to Beatles fans is Jenkins' rare "Butcher Cover." That's the original cover of the 1966 "Yesterday and Today" album featuring the Beatles in butcher coats and draped in bloody meat and dismembered dolls. Recalled by Capitol Records after protests, the cover is a major collectible today.

How did the McCartney gift happen?

"I had seen him and wanted to meet him," Jenkins said.

"I told Alan, 'I'd give up one of those albums to meet him,' " Debra Jenkins said.

Debra Jenkins is tenacious. She found on the Internet that McCartney's favorite charity is Adopt-A-Minefield. The international organization clears old land mines and helps mine victims, and its primary fundraiser is an annual celebrity-packed auction in Beverly Hills.

Six weeks of unreturned e-mails and phone calls later, Debra Jenkins made contact. Amazingly, the auction had never, in six years, put a piece of Beatles memorabilia on the block.

One link led to another, and the Jenkinses shipped their "White Album," signed by all four Beatles, to the West Coast.

"I did have second thoughts the day he shipped it," Debra Jenkins admitted.

What's a signed Beatles album worth? The Jenkinses won't say what they paid, and prices vary. Debra Jenkins thought the "White Album" might raise $20,000 at auction. Alan guessed $25,000.

"They asked me if I was sitting down," Debra Jenkins said of her conversation with charity officials the day after the Nov. 15 auction.

The "White Album" had created a frenzy, and auctioneer Jay Leno juggled a barrage of bids. The president of Capitol Records dropped out at $60,000. He wanted the album for Capitol's lobby. A rich California fan, who told friends he wouldn't leave without it, won the "White Album" for $85,000.

It's the highest price ever paid for a signed Beatles album, the Jenkinses say.

Debra Jenkins said she's learned a lot. She started with an idea of leveraging their gift to meet McCartney, but she seriously thought about changing course last fall and donating the album to Hurricane Katrina relief. But she couldn't shake the idea that putting the album in McCartney's hands was the right thing to do.

"It was the best use of the resource - through him," she said.

Was she right?

"We've been told that it raised enough to clear three minefields and to give 100 victims of land mines new limbs," Debra Jenkins said.

Now, the Jenkinses and McCartney have a connection. They've met backstage in Las Vegas, and everywhere Debra Jenkins went that weekend, she was "the White Album Lady."

Oddly, her gift is one even McCartney couldn't have made. He told her that he has very little Beatles memorabilia.

"Wouldn't it have been a bit daft of me to go to the boys and ask them to sign an album we'd just made?" Debra Jenkins said McCartney told her.

Now, the Jenkinses want more. They are donating another signed album to this year's Adopt-A-Minefield auction, which they hope to attend. Next year, they hope McCartney reciprocates to raise more money for the symphony here.

Backstage in Las Vegas, Emma said there were four people in the room when the family arrived. One was the president of Capitol Records.

"We're the Jenkinses from Alabama," Emma told them.

No need for introductions now. Everyone knows "the White Album Lady."

The former Beatle said animal testing was "a holdover from the dark age of medical science", adding that more modern methods are available but many scientists are too unenlightened to use them.

Sir Paul has joined forces with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) to spearhead an anti-vivisection campaign. And he urged the public to donate their money to health charities which did not test on animals. PETA has blacklisted charities including the British Heart Foundation, the Cancer Research Campaign and the Royal National Institute for the Blind.

"Sometimes people place too much faith in people in white lab coats and assume that there's a need for animal testing just because it has been going on for so long.

"I believe this to be a holdover from the dark age of medical science, and more enlightened scientists nowadays believe they can get more reliable results with more modern methods," Sir Paul said.

"Vivisection has long been presented as a solution to health problems, but trying to mimic human diseases in animals is a costly, cruel diversion. If the amount of money poured into animal experimentation was spent instead on prevention, we'd have much better results to show."

In the interview, which appears on the PETA website, Sir Paul urged the Government to explore alternative means of testing.

Sir Paul has been a long-time opponent of animal testing. In 2000, he donated £625,000 ($1 million) to the Arizona Cancer Centre, the US clinic where his late wife Linda was treated, on the proviso that none of the money be used for animal testing.

He has continued to campaign for animals with second wife Heather. Last month they travelled to Canada to protest against the country's annual seal cull.

Next month Heather will give a speech to the Vegetarian and Vegan Foundation to back claims that drinking cow's milk may cause breast cancer.

The Millennium Dome will reopen next year as a giant entertainment complex after a £600 million ($1 billion) revamp, it was revealed yesterday.

Madonna, the Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney are all being lined up to play at the venue.

It is the first time the dome will be used since it was closed five years after flopping as a tourist attraction.

AEG Europe, part of America's giant Anschutz Corporation, is turning the Dome into a 23,000-capacity entertainment arena.

April 12, 2006 -- 99.5 The Mountain

Paul McCartney's lead guitarist is coming to Boulder to help kick off Earth Day Weekend.

Rusty Anderson will appear at a free concert event in Boulder on the eve of Earth Day, Friday, April 21st, 2006.

Archer from 99.5 The Mountain's morning show and Breakfast With The Beatles will emcee. Earlier that day, Rusty Anderson will appear at a Q&A session at CU Boulder's math building, with Archer helping moderate. That session takes place from 1 to 3 PM.

The concert-movie event, which starts at 6:30 PM at the Boulder Theater, will open with a performance from the Potcheen Folk Band and a preview of the HBO documentary on global warming, Too Hot Not To Handle, followed immediately by Rusty Anderson's performance.

Professor Darin Toohey says the free concert is sponsored by the City of Boulder's Office of Environmental Affairs and the Baker Residential Academic Program at CU Boulder.

"It is highly recommended that people get there early," says Professor Toohey, "as the transitions between movie and band will be quick and we expect a full house."

Listen to Archer's "Breakfast with the Beatles" online from 9am - 12 noon MT (11am - 2pm ET) every Sunday.

The tragic flaw: Canada's claim to fame, Pamela Anderson.

When it was announced Anderson would host the Junos, I thought, why would anyone in their right mind choose her? From the minute she came on stage to open the show, I sensed an atmosphere that forecast impending doom. She went on to joke that songwriter Seal wouldn't come because he was afraid of being clubbed to death and elaborated on her PETA and anti-sealing opinions. Met with a chorus of boos from the audience, she gave a perky smile and said, "Sorry, guys.

Pamela, Pamela, Pamela. They say you're intelligent. Haven't you been paying attention to recent events or are you just jumping on to a convenient bandwagon?

Paul McCartney and Heather Mills just pulled this stunt on the ice floes and allowed themselves to be humiliated by Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams on CNN while millions watched.

Letters to the editor : letters@wpgsun.com

SIGN ANDERSON'S PETITION TO STOP THE SEAL HUNT!

By Paul Jackson

An avalanche of appeals from American friends, both Republicans and Democrats, are asking how they can help fight the Canadian seal hunt.

Well, frankly, I find the hunt abhorrent, just as I found the bear hunting season in Alberta abhorrent.

I'm not sure whether there are actually six-million seals and they will destroy entire cod fish swarm unless we cull 325,000 of them this year and a similar number every year.

Yet, it's a horrific scenario, especially for an animal lover, which I surely am, but there is a another side to the story.

Newfoundland's Tory Premier Danny Williams insists the seal hunt is economically essential -- as does former federal finance minister and Newfoundlander John Crosbie -- a Conservative.

Another fellow I greatly respect is Senator Colin Kenny, who is a Liberal, and crusading chairman of the Senate committee on national security and defence.

Kenny, as I recall, once pointed out to the Sun editorial board Newfoundlanders get involved in the hunt out of desperation.

I paraphrase him here, but believe this is the gist of what he told us: "Why would someone go out in small boats, on treacherous waters, clamour over slippery ice flows, often in bitterly cold temperatures, and kill seals, unless they were absolutely no other means to make a living?"

Which sounds pretty rational.

But I still find the hunt sickening.

That said, there's a lot of hypocrisy by many of its opponents.

Take Sir Paul McCartney -- a billionaire -- and his sanctimonious wife Heather Mills.

They're high-profile protesters of the hunt -- but why doesn't McCartney pour some of his staggering fortune into Newfoundland and build a new industry there to create safe and decent-paying jobs?

You can manufacture anything in Newfoundland -- clothes, furniture, electronic products or whatever -- just as you can manufacture anything anywhere else.

If McCartney and other publicity seeking celebrity hounds such as Brigitte Bardot and Pamela Anderson -- put their fortunes where their mouths are and created jobs for jobless Newfies, you wouldn't be able to drag them onto the ice flows.

In his column "Origins of hunt forgotten," (April 3) Crosbie pointed out the likes of cattle, sheep and pigs -- calves, lambs and piglets -- are slaughtered everyday in much the same manner as seals.

They are given blows to their heads -- or their throats slit.

The difference is they are brutalized behind doors in abattoirs, not in full public view.

Ponder the terror of hundreds of thousands of chickens having their throats slit every single day.

Yet I'll bet the vast majority of seal hunt opponents have no qualms about eating a hefty steak, pork or lamb chops, or fried chicken.

Or gobbling down a hamburger or eating bacon and eggs for breakfast.

Hence, there really is hypocrisy in this scenario.

Those opposed to the seal hunt should at least refuse to eat any meat produced from animals that suckle and wean their young.

Personally, I've been increasingly avoiding any meat from mammals, and turning to sea food.

I even find it unappetizing to eat duck -- for I find ducks to be beautiful little creatures.

Hunting for sport -- whether bears, moose or deer -- also increasingly disturbs me.

These animals don't stand a chance.

If the bear hunt in Alberta is ever opened up again, then the hunters should be put on a level playing field with the bears -- no guns -- the hunter gets a knife and the bear its claws.

How many hunters would then have the bravado they do now?

On bear hunting, a ridiculous argument is to say they are invading our land or threatening us.

In actuality, we are invading their land -- and always have.

To kill a bear simply because it attacked someone who wandered into its territory is also shameful.

Anyway, the anti-seal hunt people should add strength to their arguments by ensuring no one can accuse them of hypocrisy.

They should oppose the killing of all species.

And kiss their spare ribs and chicken nuggets goodbye.

WEBMASTERS NOTE: Evidently writer Paul Jackson missed the memo -- $16 million was offered by Cathy Kangas, CEO and Founder of PRAI Beauty in March to stop the hunt. That was the amount of money the sealers/fisherman would earn from the hunt. The hunt went on as planned. It's clear the sealers enjoy the kill more than the money. Sir Paul shouldn't have to pay these people to stop killing innocent animals. The Canadian government is to blame for letting the hunt go on when there have been alternative sources of income offered and economic solutions to subsidize the fisherman.

The lives of Sir Paul McCartney and former Rolling Stones star Bill Wyman are to be presented in photo form for two new shows in a San Francisco, California art gallery.

The two bass players will feature in successive exhibitions at the San Francisco Art Exchange.

McCartney's 2002-2003 world tour will be the subject of the first show, "Each One Believing", which features Bill Bernstein's candid portraits of the former Beatle on the road.

And then "Wyman Shoots" will be the ex-Stones star's first exhibition of photographs, which date back to the 1960s.

Wyman's work includes portraits of his ex-bandmates, as well as candid shots of John Lee Hooker, Eric Clapton and Ringo Starr.

The McCartney exhibition is previewed this Friday April 16 and officially begins on April 22. The Wyman show opens in June.

In the Q&A -- which was written entirely by McCartney -- he asked himself several pointed questions about the future of the group. Macca explained his reasons for going solo, citing "business and musical differences, but most of all because I have a better time with my family." McCartney went on to say that, "I do not foresee a time when the Lennon & McCartney partnership will be active again in songwriting."

In truth, the group had been dormant since John Lennon privately announced his split to Macca and Starr during a business meeting the previous September. By all accounts, George Harrison was not present for the announcement. Lennon ended the meeting by revealing to the pair that he wanted "a divorce" from the group.

Tensions had been building between the Beatles since their return from India in the spring of 1968. A year later, when Lennon, Harrison and Starr out-voted McCartney into hiring manager Allen Klein to run their company Apple Corps, the rift began to deepen.

True to his decision, Lennon didn't attend what turned out to be the group's final recording session on January 3rd, 1970, when the Beatles taped Harrison's song "I Me Mine."

In the months that followed Lennon's private announcement, the Beatles gave interviews in which they all deliberately refrained from announcing the split. That February -- nearly five months after quitting the group -- Lennon told Rolling Stone that, "We still might make Beatles product. We just need more room. The Beatles are just too limited." That next month, both Starr and Harrison spoke to Britain's New Musical Express, with Starr stating that, "I've got things to do, George has things to do, and Paul has his solo album to come, and John has his peace thing. We can't do everything at once. Time will tell." Harrison added that, "Say we've got unity through diversity... We had to find ourselves individually, one day."

Later that year, Lennon spoke about Macca's announcement, telling Rolling Stone that "We were all hurt that he didn't tell us what he was going to do... A lot of people knew I left. I was a fool not to do what Paul did, which was use it to sell a record. I wasn't angry. He's a good PR man, I mean he's about the best in the word... he really knows how to do a job."

Paul McCartney said that the split from the group sent him into a huge depression for several months: "I was quite broken up by the end of the Beatles. I'd been trying to hold them together, but it was something that wasn't to be. So, you know, I went into a bit of a depression after that. And I'm normally quite optimistic, but, you know, I'd just lost the best job in the world, and anyone who's just even ever lost a job knows how that feels."

Although the split cemented the fact that the Beatles would no longer record as a single unified group, in December 1970 McCartney sued Lennon, Harrison and Starr to formally dissolve their business partnership. His suit ultimately put all the monies earned by the group in escrow for the next five years. The Beatles formal partnership stretched on until early 1975.

Their business problems carried on through the next 20 years before all their interpersonal lawsuits were settled. Today, the group's company, Apple Corps, is jointly owned by McCartney, Starr and the estates of Lennon and Harrison, and handles all past and future Beatles business.

In 2001 Macca recalled the split for his Wingspan project, saying that, "It doesn't matter who broke the Beatles up -- the Beatles were ready to break up. We'd come full circle and now we had to get on with something new, all of us."

EXCLUSIVE: LEG OP AGONY OF MACCA'S HEATHER

Paul McCartney's wife Heather is in a wheelchair after an operation on her part-amputated left leg.

The 38-year-old model was said to be in intense pain when she went into hospital for a "revision amputation" on Monday.

The complicated and rare op involved re-attaching muscle tissue to her bone and cleaning up complications with the leg.

Heather is now recovering at home with Beatles legend Sir Paul, 63.

Last night Heather's spokeswoman said: "It is a major operation - but she is fine. It has been a success. She's in a wheelchair - but out of hospital."

She added: "Heather has been putting off having the operation. But she couldn't put it off any longer.

"Paul has been very supportive. She will spend the next few weeks recuperating."

Heather - who married Sir Paul in June 2002 and gave birth to their daughter Beatrice Milly in October 2003 - will be in a wheelchair for up to four weeks.

She is likely to need crutches for several weeks after that.

Animal rights campaigner Heather lost her left leg below the knee after a police motorbike hit her in August 1993.

She was told earlier this year that further surgery was needed after suffering considerable pain.

She said at the time: "I can't imagine being eight minutes on crutches, what with carrying my baby on planes and trains."

About 5,000 amputations are carried out in England and Wales a year, and up to half need further surgery.

A friend said last night: "Heather had been in pain for some time and she knew it was a matter of when and not if she had the operation."

The legendary musician says he worries new fans will only remember him for his later work - and not what he brought to the Fab Four.

He confessed to US publication Association of Retired Persons Magazine (AARP): "They say John was the Mozart, Paul was the Saileri.

"Like John was the real genius, and I was just the guy who sang 'Yesterday'."

"People say, 'Paul, people know'. But what about in the future? If this revisionism gets around, a lot of kids will say, 'Did he have a group before Wings?'"

Meanwhile, Sir Paul believes John Lennon haunted the recording of the 1995 Beatles single 'Free As A Bird' - in the form of a white peacock.

McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison posed for a photograph outside the studio where the track was recorded - when the bird wandered in shot at the last minute.

He said: "It was like John was hanging around. Spooky, eh? We felt that all through the recording."

McCartney also believes Lennon made his presence felt on the single's B-side.

He revealed: "We put one of those spoof backwards recordings on the end for a laugh.

"Then we were listening it in the studio and it goes, 'zzzwrk nggggwaaahhh jooohn lennnnnon qwwwrk' I swear to God."

After setting the foundation with an authoritative low F at bar 1, McCartney wastes no time injecting his line with expressive techniques, especially slides. As you're reading through the transcription, note how some slides connect two adjacent notes, like in beat four of bar 3, while others are used as an approach, like the one leading into the beautiful run at bar 8. Still others fall off, like on beats three and four of the turnarounds at bars 1, 10, and 19.

While McCartney plays most of the song on the upper strings, there's a point at the end of the bridge (bar 28) where he hits a low D, which is why the transcription is tabbed for drop-D tuning. Except for that one note, the rest of the line can be played on a 4-string in standard tuning. For the tablature haters out there, consider lifting your tab ban to take note where to play these notes. There's nary an open string pluck in this tune, as Paul mainly thumped around the 5th and 7th positions for a tubbier sound and less position shifting.

The song's structure is rather simple, but McCartney constantly repackages his lines for maximum freshness: Compare the different ways he arpeggiates the D and D7 chords in bars 6, 15, 33, and 42. After the first two verses (A and B), Paul establishes the key change to A before the song's bridge by outlining an A triad in bar 20 and using chromatic movement on beat four to set up the bridge's call-and-response line. In bars 35 and 44, Paul stuffs even more feeling into the signature lick from bar 8 by greasing his approach to the high F with an up-and-back slide from E. In the final verse (E), check out the new variation he introduces against the Cmaj7/G chord in the third verse at bar 39, and how at the tune's final buildup, Paul pedals on A as he begins to walk up chromatically to F before the ritardando turnaround to C.

He's Got A Friend

While Sir Paul's fantastically creative harmonic interpretation is sublime on "Something," propers need to be handed to the late George Harrison, whose gorgeous ("Georgeous?") progression inspired McCartney in the first place. George wrote "Something" during sessions for 1968's The Beatles ("The White Album"), but he finished the tune after the band had finalized that LP's track list. This song's first line, "Something in the way she moves," comes from a song of that name by James Taylor, who had just begun recording his debut album on the Beatles' Apple Records label.

Something Something

After "Yesterday," "Something" is the most covered song in the Beatles catalog. In fact, the band was not the first to record the tune, which was first tracked by Joe Cocker for his 1969 self-titled debut. On that record, bassist Alan Spenner expertly matches Cocker's gritty delivery and R&B inflection, giving the song a completely different feel from the Beatles' version. (Cocker's rendition is a minor 3rd lower, in the key of A.) A year later, Spenner laid down some absolutely crucifyin' bass work on the original Andrew Lloyd Webber Jesus Christ Superstar album.

Ms. Kangas also proposed working with the Canadian government to institute a program to buy back existing fishing licenses and launch a program of eco-tourism in Northeastern Canada to replace the seal hunt. "Canadian fishermen could earn more money serving as park rangers for high end tours to Canada to see the beautiful spectacle of seals giving birth on the ice floes," she noted. She said that whale-watching tours in Canada have been very successful attracting visitors.

"We are providing you with an alternative to what Paul McCartney called 'a stain on the character of the Canadian people.' If this is really simply an economic problem, then take our offer," Mrs. Kangas stated in her letter. The money, she pointed out, will be raised from private citizens and animal protection groups worldwide which oppose the seal hunt including The Humane Society of the United States, which has more than nine million members.

Mrs. Kangas added: "With the worldwide boycott of Canadian seafood, the television coverage of baby seals being clubbed to death for their pelts, and the involvement of high-profile celebrities such as Heather and Paul McCartney and Bridget Bardot, one would think that Stephen Harper would welcome an economic solution to the seal hunt. We are willing to negotiate in good faith. However, should he choose to ignore my letter and continue with the hunt, we need to ask the world what will it take for Canada to end this barbaric practice?"

Cathy Kangas has championed animal welfare issues for more than twenty years. She presently serves on the Regional Council of IFAW (International Fund for Animal Welfare) and as an advisor to HSUS (Humane Society of the United States).

As CEO and Founder of PRAI Beauty, a global skin and beauty care company sold through the Internet and home shopping networks, she created "Beauty With A Cause." Under this program, her company contributes a portion of its proceeds every month to a different animal protection organization.

Among the many animal protection organizations supported by Ms. Kangas through PRAI Beauty are: Animals Asia, which seeks to end the slaughter of cats and dogs in China for food; IFAW for the campaign to save the whales; Save the Chimps, which provides a sanctuary for chimps formerly used by the US Air Force; The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee; the United Pegasus Foundation for retired racehorses; the Wolf Conservation Center, Best Friends in Utah, the largest animal sanctuary in the world; and SPANA, which cares for working animals worldwide.

Webmaster's Note: The Prime Minister of Canada ignored Kangas' offer and seal hunt went on as planned with 1,000 more baby seals slaughtered 'over' the 2006 seal kill quota of 325,000. It appears the hunt is more about the "joy of killing" defenseless animals, than for monetary reasons.

Opening at San Francisco Art Exchange With a Special Reception on April 22, the Show is an Extraordinary and Intimate Window Into Sir Paul's Most Successful Post-Beatles Tour.

Exhibition and Sale Prints Signed by Both McCartney and Bernstein

"Each One Believing: The Tour," an exhibition of color and black & white photographs shot by Bill Bernstein throughout Paul McCartney's record-breaking 2002-2003 world tour, will officially open at San Francisco Art Exchange (SFAE) with a special event on Saturday, April 22. The show marks the Northern California debut of these extraordinary and revealing images, and only the second time they have been exhibited in the United States. Limited edition exhibition and sale prints will be signed by both McCartney and Bernstein. The public can preview the show at SFAE beginning April 14.

"It is an absolute honor to welcome 'Each One Believing' to our gallery," said SFAE co-founder and director Theron Kabrich. "Paul McCartney is an all-time music legend, and Bill Bernstein has created an incredible photographic narrative around this historic and acclaimed tour. I think that Paul's countless fans will really connect to these images." The show will be on display at SFAE through May 14.

This unique exhibition grew out of an ongoing collaboration between Paul McCartney and Bill Bernstein, who has been allowed unprecedented access to the superstar over the last fifteen years, far more than any photographer over the entire course of Paul's legendary career. The New York City-based Bernstein is a famed photographer and photojournalist whose work has appeared in the "Village Voice," the "New York Times," "Time Magazine," "Fortune" and "Elle," among other publications. Charming, elegant, dynamic and insightful, the 46 photos to be displayed at SFAE had their world premiere in the U.K. in late 2004 at London's Sony Ericsson Proud Central gallery (www.proud.co.uk) to coincide with the publication of Chronicle Books' "Each One Believing: Onstage, Off Stage and Backstage." A handsome volume featuring hundreds of Bernstein's images plus an overview of the tour including text and personal reminiscences from McCartney, the book will be available for sale at SFAE for the duration of the exhibition.

When McCartney embarked on a two-year World Tour in 2002, it was his first solo outing in almost a decade. The first show that was put on sale -- a U.S. date -- sold out 15,000 tickets in fifteen minutes, and the tour ultimately proved to be the most successful and celebrated of McCartney's post-Beatles career, seen by more than two million people globally. McCartney and his ace band pulled favorites from an astonishing body of work encompassing Beatles, Wings and solo material, spotlighting Paul on both his "Magic Piano" and his cherished Hofner guitar, the very same one he played onstage with the Beatles. The excitement of this landmark concert tour is potently distilled in Bernstein's vivid images, which are both records of a particular and rarified moment in time, and altogether timeless in their rendering of a legendary artist in top form.

Triumphant tour moments include McCartney's coast-to-coast re-invasion of the U.S., historic "back in the USSR" dates in Russia -- including an event in Red Square -- and an emotional homecoming in Liverpool. These milestones, along with tour stops in Rome (at the Coliseum), Dublin, Paris and other locales are faithfully captured by Bernstein's insightful lens, offering rare glimpses into a life on the road that has few parallels. From shots of McCartney's dramatically lit performances and vibrant public appearances to quieter, behind-the-scenes candid moments -- as well as some frankly funny tour episodes -- Bernstein keenly observes his subject in a way that makes "Each One Believing: The Tour's" extraordinary images read as both boldly iconic and deeply personal portraits of a true great.

Co-founded in 1983 by Theron Kabrich and James Hartley, San Francisco Art Exchange, LLC is a leader in international fine art sales and publishing, with a global reputation as premiere purveyors of world-class pop culture imagery including paintings, illustrations, photography and more. SFAE has long represented the art of Alberto Vargas, album cover artist Roger Dean, fantasy-genre master Boris Vallejo and many noted rock/celebrity photographers including Ethan Russell, Terry O'Neill, Pattie Boyd, Mick Rock, Jerrold Schatzberg, Joel Brodsky and many others. They are located at 458 Geary Street in San Francisco.

£2,550 for Paul shoes

A pair of Sir Paul McCartney's old shoes fetched £2,550 ($4,435.22) for charity at auction. (CONGRATS to "Macca Reporter "Dottie Spathis for the winning bid.)

The black slip-ons were among footwear donated by a host of celebrities put under the hammer on internet site eBay.

All the money raised will go to MAG (Mines Advisory Group), one of the world's leading landmine clearance organizations.

Paul congratulates Peter and Gordon on their reunion concert

Martin Lewis MC of "The Fest For Beatles Fans" in New Jersey this weekend, read a congratulatory letter from Paul McCartney Saturday night before the performance of the '60s pop duo Peter and Gordon.

"What the world needs now is Peter and Gordon to sing their songs to remind us of all the fab years they are from. I'm very glad to hear they've gotten together after these many moons and are going to help make a world without love into a love-filled planet. Love to you all, Paul."

The duo performed their first full length US concert in 37 years at the fest. Songs performed included; "Woman," Lady Godiva," "Nobody I Know," "I Go To Pieces," "World Without Love," "I Don't Want To See You Again."

There was a tribute to Mike Smith of the Dave Clark Five who is now paralyzed from an accident. The duo reunited for the first time last year at a fund raising event for the injured singer.

Martin requested people to videotape the concert hinting that "someone in England" was interested in seeing the historic performance.

Rice Faces Cancellations and Catcalls on British Visit

Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, invited his friend Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, home for the weekend to see a soccer match, in return for his visit last fall to Birmingham, Ala., where he watched a college football game. But just before Ms. Rice arrived, the Blackburn Rovers rescheduled their match for Monday night, to maximize the television audience.

So instead Mr. Straw showed her around the Rovers' empty stadium. While it seemed a metaphor for her visit to Britain, it was also a moment of welcome calm in a trip plagued by sometimes raucous demonstrations against the war in Iraq. Ms. Rice had wanted to meet Paul McCartney while she was here. But he declined the invitation, and so Ms. Rice visited the Liverpool Institute for the Performing Arts, where the former Beatle, and now Sir Paul, was once a student. She listened to a brief choral presentation in the Paul McCartney theater.

Half-a-dozen students, with the school director's permission, lined up just inside the school's front door and stood with arms crossed over black T-shirts that read: "No torture. No compromise."

Ms. Rice attended a performance by the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra tonight, but one prominent performer refused to show up, in protest of the Iraq war.

McCartney reveals "Hey Jude" stolen by the Beatles

In this exclusive phone interview broadcast on Big Oldies 93 Radio in Peoria, IL., former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney reveals - to the horror of millions - that the Beatles in fact were NOT the original composers of one of their biggest hits, "Hey Jude".  But if not The Beatles, then who?  

Listen in to this exclusive taped interview by Peoria morning man John Riley, for the full story of how the Beatles scammed millions in royalties from an unknown ( and unsuspecting) group.

Warning: If you're a huge Beatles fan, it's UPSETTING.

Webmasters Note: Happy April Fool's joke from Eric Howell.

Click for report

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