<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cI hit the bottle,\u201d he admits. \u00a0\u201cI hit the substances.\u201d \u00a0He was eaten up with anger – at himself, at the outside world. \u00a0He could describe it only as a barrelling, empty feeling rolling across his soul.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The excerpt above could be applied to any number of people down on their luck. \u00a0Paul McCartney probably wouldn\u2019t be the first name to come to mind. \u00a0This doesn\u2019t describe the Sir Paul McCartney of today but is his honest assessment of the late 1960s, soon to be ex-Beatle Paul McCartney. \u00a0I haven\u2019t laid hands on the newest McCartney biography that came out in 2016, but Tom Doyle\u2019s <\/span>Man on the Run <\/span><\/i>(2013 – Ballantine Books) all but jumped off the book rack, demanding my attention.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0We all know the story of The Beatles. \u00a0We can click on YouTube and see the impossibly dark haired McCartney surrounded by his crack post Wings solo band. \u00a0What we don\u2019t hear more about is the rocky road McCartney traversed to get from then to now. \u00a0Cue <\/span>Maybe I\u2019m Amazed<\/span><\/i>, because I had no idea how far down McCartney fell before he climbed back to the pinnacle of success. \u00a0Doyle certainly left no stone unturned trying to explain McCartney\u2019s \u201cstruggle to escape the shadow of The Beatles,\u201d and as Sir Paul told Doyle, \u201cYou have to be honest about your past. I was such a daring young thing. We were on this wacky adventure.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Doyle\u2019s book opens with Paul and Linda McCartney hiding out at High Park Farm in Scotland. \u00a0McCartney had purchased the run down farm set on 183 acres overlooking Skeroblin Loch in 1966. \u00a0Linda had encouraged him to fix the place up a bit, but the lack of hot water and the remoteness left them living, \u201clike a couple of hippies. . . it wasn\u2019t sort of dirty, but it wasn\u2019t clean.\u201d \u00a0Paul added a generator to power his back to basics four-track studio set up in the barn. \u00a0He dubbed it Rude Studio. \u00a0It was here that Linda further encouraged her depressed husband to write music again. \u00a0Linda was worried and as Paul began working on a song about their, \u201cless than idyllic self-imposed exile,\u201d his backslide into self doubt at least began to slow. \u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Man we was Lonely<\/span><\/i> was the musical therapy that, coupled with their relatively normal domestic situation began to lift McCartney\u2019s spirits. \u00a0They frequently drove into Campletown for supplies and as Linda pointed out, \u201cwe were not cut off from the world. \u00a0We were never hermits.\u201d \u00a0Music and family began to reverse McCartney\u2019s downward slump and he began to feel that he had reached beyond the nadir of his depression. \u00a0He stopped hiding out in a bottle and self medicating. \u00a0His rising mood, however, did not raise him from the dead.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The whole \u201cPaul is dead\u201d thing began at Iowa\u2019s Drake University and in the days before the internet, it went viral before anyone know what that meant. \u00a0This perfect storm of conspiracy theory and fantasy blew up around the same time the McCartney\u2019s settled in at High Park Farm. \u00a0While Paul initially found it an amusing shot in the arm to the sales of the recently released <\/span>Abbey Road<\/span><\/i> album, increased press incursions into their life on the Kintyre Peninsula (to gather proof that he was indeed still among the living) became too much to bear.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As the legal wranglings of 1969 gave way to 1970, the McCartney clan were back in London trying to adjust to life in the city. \u00a0Linda was the focus of vicious physical and mental attacks from McCartney\u2019s more rabid female fans (including packages mailed to her containing excrement and foul graffiti painted on their outer walls). \u00a0The attempts by producer Glyn Johns to distill a workable album out of The Beatles\u2019 <\/span>Get Back<\/span><\/i> sessions were not going well. \u00a0Nobody brought it to Paul\u2019s attention that Phil Spector had been brought into saturate <\/span>The Long and Winding Road<\/span><\/i> with strings and schmaltzy effects to the detriment of a great song.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0With a four-track recording desk borrowed from the Abbey Road studio, Paul began to put together his first solo album at home and on his own. \u00a0The unrestrained freedom of his DIY recording sessions continued the musical therapy sessions he had begun at High Park Farm. \u00a0When it became necessary to deploy the project to an actual studio, Paul and Linda booked Morgan Studios and treated the sessions there more like a holiday than a working session. \u00a0The end result wasn\u2019t nearly as polished as <\/span>Abbey Road<\/span><\/i>, but it was pure McCartney and for the first time in a long time, he was enjoying himself and making new music.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>McCartney<\/span><\/i> was set to be released in April of 1970 and it put a much needed positive spin on his broken confidence. \u00a0The other Beatles were incensed that Paul\u2019s solo effort was scheduled to be released a week before <\/span>Let it Be <\/span><\/i>(the renamed <\/span>Get Back <\/span><\/i>album), so they sent Ringo over with a handwritten note from George and John requesting that he delay so Apple Records would not have competing releases out at the same time. \u00a0The visit did not go well. \u00a0Contractual negotiations with Allen Klein were not going well either as the other three Beatles wanted to sign a management agreement with him and Paul did not. \u00a0Ringo beat a hasty retreat in the face of a furious McCartney\u2019s response to the delay request and in the end, <\/span>McCartney <\/span><\/i>came out and <\/span>Let it Be<\/span><\/i> was delayed. \u00a0It wasn\u2019t the first or last shot fired in the war that would kill off \u00a0The Beatles for good, but it certainly pushed the band closer to the inevitable showdown that would do just that.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As the viciousness of the business dealings with the other Beatles and Allen Klein escalated, the McCartney\u2019s retreated back to Scotland. \u00a0Paul\u2019s insecurities flared and he again hit the bottle until Linda\u2019s father helped him realize the sober reality of the situation: \u00a0to put The Beatles behind him, he would have to sue his bandmates. \u00a0The Beatles as a group would have to be laid to rest for Paul to escape the insufferable thought of working with them or Allen Klein\u2019s ABKCO label. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0By then end of 1970, the suit would be filed and the McCartney\u2019s would be on a ship headed for America. \u00a0The legal fight would bring him back to London in February of 1971, but the plan for January was for Paul to start recruiting musicians to record McCartney\u2019s next album. \u00a0Living in New York in a sort of musical and legal limbo, Paul began to lay the foundation of the band that would become Wings. \u00a0This is where we will pick up the story in Part 2. \u00a0In the meantime, we will spin music from both The Beatles and McCartney on WOAS-FM \u00a088.5, Your Sound Choice<\/span><\/p>\n Top Piece Video – McCartney giving the low down on working in his studio circa 1997.<\/p>\n