Why did Paul McCartney see himself as the public face of The Beatles?
At the start of 1968, Paul McCartney was the only Beatle living in London. George Harrison, John Lennon and Ringo Starr had all decamped to leafy Surrey at the height of Beatlemania, leaving McCartney at his home in St John’s Wood, just a couple of minutes away from Abbey Road studios. So why did Macca stay put in London while the others fled in search of more peaceful surroundings?
His home in London was anything but peaceful. By 1968, Beatlemania had been and gone – but The Beatles were still some of the most famous people on the planet. And McCartney had to take out incredible measures at his London home to keep even a sliver of privacy. He erected a ten-foot high wall outside and could control the entry gate from inside. He also had two separate phone lines whose numbers changed frequently – not that it prevented crazed calls from fans. “It’s like Casey’s Court at Paul’s house,” McCartney’s father once complained. “The phone never stops, and half of the calls are from fans. I can’t get any rest.” His father soon headed back to Liverpool in search of that elusive rest.
Yet McCartney felt a strange need to be present in London. Speaking to the Evening Standard in February 1968, he says that as the so-called “sociable” Beatle, he “had” to live in the capital. He had to turn up to the latest film premieres, be seen on the first night of a theatre run, and accept the most invitations to the most events. He saw it as an extension of his role as the band spokesperson. “I’ve always been the spokesman for the group to a certain extent,” he said. “That’s my job…chatting up the press and all that.” It’s a position which McCartney felt he had to step up to after the untimely death of manager Brian Epstein the previous year.
While the other Beatles enjoyed the quiet life in their huge Surrey mansions, McCartney was busy soaking up the cultural riches of sixties-swinging London (“But don’t call me a cultural Pied Piper – because I’m not,” he told the Evening Standard’s Ray Connolly). He was regularly seen at concerts across the city, notably being present the night Jimi Hendrix performed a cover of ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ just a day after the album’s release. He also attended the Million Volt Sound and Light Rave a few months prior, which is said to be the only time that the legendary lost Beatles song ‘Carnival of Light’ got a public airing.
If McCartney saw himself as the spokesperson of the band, then he also saw himself as a kind of gatekeeper of Beatles culture: a visual representation of everything they stood for. While Harrison immersed himself in Indian culture, Lennon became closer to Yoko Ono, and Starr dabbled in acting; McCartney was the one who felt a need to stay grounded, stay in London, and show people that they weren’t that different to before. “If the other three were to go freaky looking and wear ridiculous things, I’d be the one to stay un-freaky just to reassure everyone,” he said. But The Beatles were gradually starting to go their own ways, and McCartney seemed acutely aware of this.
His interview with the Evening Standard took place shortly before the release of ‘Lady Madonna’, and just days before he jetted off to Rishikesh, India with the rest of The Beatles. There, the growing cracks within The Beatles started to show. Starr and his wife Maureen left after just a couple of weeks. McCartney flew back a few weeks after that, while Lennon and Harrison stayed on for another three weeks.
McCartney spent a little over a month in India, but his time there was incredibly fruitful in terms of songwriting. He returned to London the following month armed with a truckload of new Beatles tunes, most of which would appear on 1968’s The White Album. However, recording sessions for the album were fraught, with each songwriter increasingly pursuing different creative directions – a situation which led to Starr temporarily leaving the band in August 1968.
The Beatles would go on to record two more albums together – Let It Be and Abbey Road – but the group’s break-up had long seemed inevitable by the end. Naturally, as someone who saw himself as the public face and spokesperson of The Beatles, McCartney was the one who tried the hardest to keep the group together. Soon after the breakup, he left London and decamped to Scotland, where, no longer the public face of the band, he would finally get the peace and quiet that had long eluded him in the capital.
