John Walsh: 'No wonder Sir Paul feels he can hector the Dalai Lama for eating meat...'

Tales of the City

Tuesday, 16 December 2008

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I'm getting a little worried about Sir Paul McCartney. He seems determined to reinvent himself, or at least to edit the picture of him that's held in the public consciousness.

It was five years ago that Sir Paul informed the readers of Uncut magazine that it was he, the supposedly clean-cut, chirpy one of The Beatles, who had first tried heroin in the 1960s, although "it didn't do anything for me". Meaning, "I'm dead wicked, me, but I'm also too tough to be a casualty." He was also the first Beatle to admit to dropping LSD, an admission that always irritated John Lennon, who preferred to keep the outlaw role for himself. He used to call McCartney "Engelbert Humperdinck" to slag off his status as housewives' pin-up.

Now McCartney has been polishing the self-portrait again in a bid to establish intellectual-political bona fides. In an interview in January's Prospect magazine, out tomorrow, he reveals that it was he who radicalised The Beatles in the mid-1960s by bringing Vietnam to their attention, after he'd met Bertrand Russell at his house in London. Russell, a leading pacifist for decades, told the clueless musician "about the Vietnam war – most of us didn't know about it, it wasn't yet in the papers – and also that it was a very bad war". Whereupon McCartney went back to Abbey Road to tell "the guys, particularly John, about this meeting, and saying what a bad war this was". A bad war, rather than one of those thoroughly decent wars of which most people approve.

From this, we are invited to infer, the Beatles' later anti-war protests about love, peace, war and revolution must have sprang. Yes, it was Lennon and Yoko Ono who brought out "Give Peace a Chance" and "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)", and, yes, McCartney's only political song was "Give Ireland Back to the Irish", but it was he who, you know, had the political conscience first.

It's the detail about Bertrand Russell that makes one sceptical about Sir Paul's retrospective conversion. It wasn't any ordinary bloke who alerted him to the Vietnam conflict, but one of the world's great philosophers. Of course, McCartney is himself so eminent now, he would expect to be briefed on world events only by the global A-team. He exists in a heady stratosphere of Olympian fawning.

According to the journalist Mark Edmonds, there was trouble in Washington a few years ago when McCartney visited the White House and autographed a book for Colin Powell, but not for the President, George Bush senior. An aide had to be sent to buy a second copy, to be signed. And when Sir Paul played a concert in Red Square, Vladimir Putin invited him to stay as long as he fancied at the Kremlin (he accepted a cup of tea and a guided tour). No wonder he feels he can write hectoring letters to the Dalai Lama, complaining that the Lama eats meat, thus contradicting his Buddhist belief in not causing suffering to animals. He is empowered by fame, by destiny, by history itself.

Later in the Prospect interview, McCartney says that "Eleanor Rigby" owes a debt to his English teacher, Alan Durband, who introduced him to Chaucerian bawdy and gave him a passion and a feeling for structure. Durband had been tutored at Cambridge by F R Leavis, and his bracing, Leavisite views on literature enthused the young Paul. "So there is me," McCartney muses, "getting this Leavis-Durband lineage..."

So Paul McCartney not only wrote songs in the 1960s, he energised a whole generation to protest against Vietnam, because he learnt about it at the knee of Bertrand Russell, the most famous anti-war protester in England; you'd think that, in a way, a torch was being passed from one generation to the next. Moreover, some of his melodies were influenced by F R Leavis, the leading Oxbridge academic of his generation; you'd think that, in a way, a torch was being passed on... And far from being a clean-cut goody-goody, he was in fact a crazy, drugged-up rebel-outlaw-tearaway, despite morphing, more recently, into the ultimate Man of Virtue and Piety, who casually ticks off leading Buddhists for their cruelty to animals...

What an extraordinary cat's cradle of self-invention. If we learn in the future that McCartney also invented the Pill and the sky-ray lolly, or that T S Eliot begged him, in 1962, to collaborate on Four More Quartets, I won't be surprised.

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40 Comments

Oh Puhlease! Could the anti-McCartney brigade just let us all breathe for minute? A clean-cut goody-goody, was he? You sad people who can't recognise genius unless it is self-dramatising and fashionable forget that McCartney pursued political activism quietly and effectively, as when he and Linda gave food and support to the Greenham Common Women's protest back there in the 80s when it was actually quite dangerous to oppose Thatcher. What comes out of the whole McCartney story is the way that he has simply gone about his business as a musician and taken principled political standpoints without looking for publicity.
And BTW, it says very little for Lennon's genius if the only way his memory and legacy can shine is by attempting to tarnish his colleague in every way. Lennon's mean-spirited attacks on McCartney flaw his memory. Paul McCartney is a national treasure: get over it. Those writing hatefully about him are puny and obscure.

Posted by Stybba | 17.12.08, 02:06 GMT

Some of the commenters here are really daft. Typical mindless Lennon worship and disrespect of McCartney that has no basis in fact. Nowhere in his quotes did he say "I was the political Beatle." He simply said he had a conversation with Bertrand Russell on the war and then told Lennon about it. Period. The media is predictably manipulating his words to change their meaning. And Sullivan, give me a break. McCartney was Lennon's equal in every way with the Beatles. John needed Paul just as much as Paul needed John in order to be successful.

P.S. To those of you who say McCartney hasn't done anything good since Band on the Run, I suggest you give a listen to his latest album, Electric Arguments. I doubt you will, though, since your hatred of him prevents you from giving him a chance.

Posted by Brett | 17.12.08, 01:17 GMT

Paul now wears a miner`s helmet, he is so far up that dark back passage.

Posted by Scouse | 16.12.08, 22:57 GMT

Truth is truth. He's not put himself out there as a great intellectual rebel or a world movement-coordinator, but he comes very close to both and he's certainly done his share - more than most - promoting LOVE and EMPATHY. Why say he's not a very talented, motivated, well-connected, future-aware humanitarian? The world would be better if we were all more like him. It's not like he's in desperate need of believers. Let Paul McCartney reinvent himself all he wants - he deserves it...I just wish he would make more movies...and love songs.

Give Paul a chance.

Posted by Real Creature | 16.12.08, 22:44 GMT

Well the only thing worth mentioning about this (as with most media personnel's pulpitations on Macca) is that we havent read what he said yet annd when we do, it'll be far from obvious that any such intention is on his mind, as ever.

Macca's main 'problem' is his friendliness. Asked a quation , he gives an answer. It was thus with the 'Have you taken LSD?' question in 1967 and since then the questions are authored by our 'fiends' in the media to reflect what they want to print in the first place about McCartney.

It is to Macca's credit and pain that he will give plain and even insecure answers to a question even one such as 'Don't you think it's John Lennon who is the real Beatle and you're just his sideman?'

When the real answer, based upon track record, longevity and general genius is that he is ALL THINGS AND NONE TO WHOEVER WANTS HIM TO BE

Posted by Michael K | 16.12.08, 22:19 GMT

Not so much an argument more a slightly protracted whinge. The main point is significantly undermined by the fact that the Dalai Lama is a hypocrite for eating meat and the authority one needs to point this out is Buddhism; being Paul McCartney is entirely irrelevant.

Posted by pal | 16.12.08, 22:03 GMT

How refreshing to read an article and comments that are not slavish in their adulation of Paul McCartney. I was concerned that I was one of the few who wonder what all the fuss is about. I know he was part (but only one quarter) of the biggest group ever. BUT it was 40 years ago - so get over it Paul. I also think it is hilarious that he sees fit to continue to re-write history painting himself in the most flattering of lights. Easy to do now that two of his bandmates are dead (the cleverest, more amusing and radical two) and the third is not quite with us. I think it is sad and petty the way he wishes to lessen the very real contribution that John Lennon and George Harrison made. Can he not find it in his heart to be generous? As time goes on I find myself more sympathetic to Heather Mills.
Whilst he may be an accomplished musician I cannot think of anything he has done recently that is of any note and wish that music journalists would have the courage to say so!

Posted by Susan B | 16.12.08, 19:51 GMT

Well put Sullivan.

Posted by Shiner | 16.12.08, 19:46 GMT

And the key point which is fit for another article is that their music won't even be played in another thirty years. Just a passing bit of fluff.

Posted by J Lee | 16.12.08, 19:18 GMT

Another first I accomplished was directing,writing and starring in my own movie 'Give my Regards' which Spielburg loved.Also I practically invented the paperback novel,with my song(not John's)'Paperback Writer' which Dave Crosby loved.
Now I want to write with Dylan as only he approaches my level of artistry.-Paul

Posted by winston | 16.12.08, 17:47 GMT