“THEY say it’s your birthday!” hollered The Beatles on one of The White Album’s cacophonous jams.
Tomorrow, rock royalty Sir Paul McCartney — loving husband, father and grandad — celebrates 80 birthdays.
A week later, he will have the biggest party of his life when he walks out on to the Pyramid Stage as a Glastonbury headliner.
Not only will he lead an epic chorus of, “Na, na, na, na-na-na, na, na-na-na, na, hey Jude,” but the 100,000-plus crowd is sure to sing him a rousing rendition of Happy Birthday.
Over the past 15 or so years, I’ve been fortunate enough to talk to Britain’s greatest living songwriter several times.
Each time, I’ve been bowled over by both his friendly, down-to-earth manner and his boundless enthusiasm for his craft.
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By trawling through transcripts of those conversations, I’ve discovered little details, many unreported until now, that reveal so much about the person behind the iconic image.
Like how he’s “a bit of a fan of Charles Dickens” and how he has loved reading the definitive biography of his hero Elvis Presley, Last Train To Memphis.
So here, with a little help from the man himself, is a personal portrait of Macca, a towering figure in our popular culture for more than 60 years.
First, I want to take you back to 2008 when McCartney was sitting opposite me in his upstairs office, dressed down in jeans and a dark shirt, at his business HQ in London’s Soho Square.
He was busy explaining how he writes his more improvised music for the albums he makes with Youth (producer and Killing Joke bassist) under the name The Fireman.
To demonstrate the spontaneity, he leapt up, grabbed a travel book about East Africa from a shelf above me and started feverishly thumbing through it.
For a few moments, Macca stared at a picture of an imposing snow-capped peak before reading the accompanying text.
“Majestic mountains, all right!” he exclaimed while putting the book down.
Then he picked up an acoustic guitar, conveniently to hand in another corner of the room, and began to strum and sing.
“I climb majestic mountains, I’m travelling to your heart,” he crooned in that instantly recognisable voice.
I was left thinking, “Did that really happen? Did a Beatle actually start composing a song right there in front of me?”
He maintained that he was “lucky when writing songs” but I’d say he made his own luck.
“I get an idea and I just think, ‘Well, where does this lead to?’ It might be to another chord or another line in the lyric so I just follow and follow.”
At that same interview, we got on to a subject dear to McCartney’s heart . . . birds of the feathered variety.
“I’ve always liked them,” he said. “It’s a theme of mine. There’s Blackbird (on The White Album), Bluebird (on Wings’ album Band On The Run) and Jenny Wren (on solo album Chaos And Creation In The Backyard.) “They’re symbolic of freedom, of flying away,” he continued. “As a kid, I was a keen ornithologist and had a little pocket book, the Observer’s Book Of Birds.
“I lived on the outskirts of Liverpool and, by walking just a mile, I could be in quite deep countryside.”
A pared-down track on that Fireman album was called Two Magpies, continuing the theme, and, one day in the future, we would talk about Long-Tailed Winter Bird, the opening song on his Covid lockdown album, McCartney III.
“I’m not generally a superstitious person,” he revealed. “Probably the only thing I’m superstitious about is magpies.
“Living in the country (at Peasmarch in East Sussex), I see a lot of them. If you see one for sorrow, you’re supposed to salute him or you spit. I happen to spit.
“And I just love it if you see two for joy,” he added, hence the name of the acoustic song that comes across as a close cousin of Blackbird.
Back then, McCartney had just turned 66, two years beyond the age he once imagined in a Beatles song, When I’m 64, from the ever-magnificent Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
I asked him what motivated him to keep making music.
“People say to me, ‘Why do you do it?’ They think once you pass 64 or 65, you’re thinking of retiring,” he replied.
“It’s not like that for me and I have a very boring answer. I say, ‘I really love what I do. It’s a pleasure.’
“At any minute, I expect to be fed up and jaded and hate the whole thing but I never am.
“I always say that if the record company isn’t interested, I’ll do it for a hobby.”
Five years later, I spoke to McCartney, then into his Seventies, about his vibrant solo album New, which, at the time felt like something of a creative rebirth, made with four in-demand producers.
He was being driven somewhere during a hectic promotional schedule but the journey gave us an opportunity for a peaceful trip down memory lane.
Macca explained why his song Queenie Eye came from a childhood street game he used to play in “God knows when, 1940s Britain”.
“We would all stand behind a person who would throw a ball over his head. One of us would catch it and then hide it so the person couldn’t see who had it.
“Then we would all shout, ‘Queenie Eye, Queenie Eye, who’s got the ball? I haven’t got it, it isn’t in my pocket . . . out!”
“Then he was allowed to turn around and guess which one of us had it.”
Next McCartney recalled his days as a fresh-faced teenager with few expectations.
I get an idea for a song and I just think: Where does this lead to? It might be another chord or a line in the lyric so I just follow and follow
He said his jaunty ditty On My Way To Work was about “me going to my first job, before The Beatles, which was working on a lorry for Speedy Prompt Deliveries, SPD.
“I would go (to the depot) on the bus at some unearthly hour of the morning and might buy a magazine,” he added. The twice-daily ride provided him with an opportunity to indulge in his hobby of collecting cigarette packets discarded by other passengers. “Instead of football cards, me and my mates ripped the front off the packets and we all carried a wad of them.
“We’d say things like, ‘I’ll swap you two Craven As for a Woodbine.’ And because the bus route came from the centre of Liverpool to the outskirts, there were some very posh people who’d get off halfway.
“They might be smoking Passing Clouds or Russian Sobranies and those were our very sought-after brands.”
Another song on New, Early Days, gave McCartney the chance to discuss the myths and reality of The Beatles.
He said: “People tell me, ‘John punched you out. I remember it in the film Nowhere Boy.’ In the 2009 movie about the duo’s early years, Lennon is said to have decked Paul at the wake for John’s mum Julia because he saw him plucking a banjo that belonged to the dead woman.
“And I say, ‘No, he didn’t.’ This song is me trying to reclaim my personal history.”
He remembered Lennon being called the “witty one” and George Harrison the “quiet one”.
“I got pigeonholed as the ‘cute one’. “These were not the greatest of pigeonholes,” he said with a wry smile.
“We used to joke about it. Someone would say, ‘You don’t look very cute today’ or ‘I’m not sure John’s at his absolute razor-sharp wit’ when he was falling over after a heavy night.
“The truth was much more believable because it was four very similar guys but a specific edge to our personalities tended to take over in people’s minds.
“On Early Days, I’m trying to say, ‘Hey listen guys, I was there. It was me sitting in that room, it was me walking along the street so you’re going to have to listen to me, even if your different story seems more attractive.”
These thoughts led Macca to consider the abiding love for The Beatles, in the UK and across the globe.
“I feel very grateful,” he said. “We may be long gone but we’re continuing to influence people, including me!
“The Beatles was something phenomenally special. People still remember this strange little group from Liverpool.
“For me, it is pretty amazing to still be here now, making new music alongside that legendary reputation.”
One of McCartney’s most fascinating insights came when we talked in late 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, about what he called his “lockdown” album, McCartney III.
His song When Winter Comes harked back to what might have happened when The Beatles went their separate ways in 1970, when he was still only 28, married to first wife Linda and dad to Heather (Linda’s daughter, who he adopted) and Mary.
“We were having all sorts of business troubles so we ran away and lived on the farm in Scotland,” he said.
“I was a young parent, we were just starting to bring up our family and the idea of fixing a fence or digging a ditch or planting a tree felt nice.
“It was romantic and practical. I still love the idea of getting your hands dirty.
“If when The Beatles finished I had decided to not keep going in music, I would probably have led a more domestic life,” he said. But he was never going to turn his back on a lifelong passion for music.
We think of Macca as the singer and bassist in The Beatles who formed the most formidable songwriting partnership in popular music with Lennon.
We know him for sitting at the piano singing Let It Be, a song based on words of wisdom he heard growing up — from his beloved mother Mary.
Maybe we forget the extent of his musical abilities, though. “I haven’t counted all the instruments I play,” he told me. “But there’s always drums, bass, piano, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, organ, harpsichord, mandolin, mouth organ, ukulele.
“They’re all very related because if you play guitar, you can sort of play the others,” he continued while drawing my attention to Beatles song The Fool On The Hill, on which he plays recorder and penny whistle.
“I’ve got a nice little collection of recorders which I enjoy being able to goof around on,” he said.
Probably the only thing I’m superstitious about is magpies. If I see one, I spit. And I love it if I see two for joy
Macca’s career is noted for his prolific output all the way through The Beatles, Wings, his solo career and his classical projects. But sometimes he has to search for his muse.
He confessed: “It’s funny, I hadn’t been writing for a while and the other day I got a little voice in my head saying, ‘Are you sure you can do it?’ and I had an argument with it and said, ‘Yes I can! I’ll show you!’”
During the pandemic, hunkered down in Sussex, the creative juices did start flowing.
He was able to make the freewheeling late career highlight McCartney III, natural successor to his debut solo album McCartney (1970) and McCartney II (1980).
But it was also a chance for him to spend more precious time with third wife Nancy and the rest of the clan.
He, like us mere mortals, is only too aware of the passage of time.
In accepting how tough it was for people, he said: “I became a little worried about telling anyone I was having a good time. I spent time with my daughter Mary and her family, so that meant I had four of my grandkids together.
“They are great — very loving — and we are in the countryside so we could get a breath of fresh air on nice walks.”
It was typical of Macca to accentuate the positives. “There are enough troubles in the world,” he said.
“You’ve got to stay strong and that’s all you can do or you go under.
“I’m a grandad and you don’t want Grandad to collapse.”
That was the last time I spoke to McCartney. It was December 2020, just as his Christmas lights were going up and six months after his headline slot at Glastonbury had been cancelled, along with the rest of the festival, due to Covid.
Now he’s finally set to play, exactly a week after turning 80.
He said he wanted to be standing on the Pyramid Stage “whenever I can.
“I was talking to a musician mate of mine — and he’s not a downer, this guy — who said it would take two years to get back.”
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His mate proved correct. Next Saturday, Sir Paul McCartney will get back to Glasto, where he still belongs.
Happy birthday, Macca!
