The Beatle is nearly 70, planning to marry for the third time, and need never work again. How does he choose to relax? By staging a ballet, of course.
It’s a busy day, another one, at the offices of McCartney Productions Limited in Soho, central London. Two assistants come through the discretely impressive front door lugging galleys for The Meat-Free Monday Cookbook — the first publication from the initiative launched two years ago by Sir Paul McCartney and his daughters Mary and Stella. Suit bags from Harrods are hustled into the lift. A crew from Classic FM study a clipboard. McCartney’s long-standing assistant, a chatty, middle-aged chap who resembles a missing member of the Small Faces, emerges from the back with tales of a summer of endless flying backwards and forwards to New York. The boss played two big gigs at Yankee Stadium, near three-hour epics that had crowds and critics foaming their appreciation.
Up in the lift, into a drowsy outer office staffed by two chirpy young women, past the Peter Blake (his pop-art take on Landseer’s Monarch of the Glen), and here we are, in McCartney’s office. It’s a working space, nothing too flash. Letters of thanks from the Obamas on the desk, a vintage Wurlitzer jukebox, a couch bearing a signature musical note motif. What kind of groovy CEO occupies a space like this?
A 69-year-old ennobled cultural icon who has just written his first ballet and who, bouncing on the balls of his feet, is hoping to dash off to watch David Walliams emerge from the Thames at the end of his Sport Relief swimming marathon. And who is, if the whispers are true, about to get married, for the third time, to 51-year-old American businesswoman Nancy Shevell. The energy fairly crackles off the man.
Respect to Sir Paul McCartney, too, for swiftly undercutting any tension that might attend an audience with a living legend. Quick out of the traps, he asks where I’m from.
“A quality newspaper,” says Macca of The Sunday Telegraph as we sit down around a low coffee table. “Yeah, man. I’ve been in America y’see, the New York area, and as long as you don’t pick up the Daily Post or theNews, you get the New York Times – you get used to a bit of proper reporting.”
His PR – on hand to head off any questions about wedding bells – offers that, “everyone’s being very safe at the moment. It’s a very tame culture at the tabloids just now.” “After the hacking? I’m seeing someone,” says McCartney with a nod and evident satisfaction, “about it.” In August, McCartney’s ex-wife, Heather Mills, accused the Daily Mirror of hacking into her phone in 2001, while the couple were dating. The next day Sir Paul said that, after the completion of his summer run of shows in the United States, he was planning to talk to the police about his phone allegedly being hacked. Is this what he’s referring to now?
“That’s right.” Has he had the meeting yet? “It’s imminent. Imminent. Yeah.” What will happen – he’ll ask what evidence the police have that he was hacked? Or does he have his own evidence?
“Oh, I don’t know about that. I’ll talk to you some other time about that. I don’t know much about that. But they rang me.” They must have an awful long list of people to go through, I suggest. “I think they might,” he smiles.
One year shy of his 70th birthday, and five years after hitting the age at which he once predicted he’d be mending fuses and digging weeds, playful Sir Paul is still having fun. Now, 20 years since he created his first classical piece, the Liverpool Oratorio, he’s written his first ballet.
Ocean’s Kingdom, commissioned by the New York City Ballet, tells the story of the people of the sea and the land people, and how their cultures clash when Princess Honorata and Prince Stone fall in love. It’sRomeo and Juliet with fins. The costumes, meanwhile, have been designed by his daughter, the fashion designer Stella McCartney.
So, a ballet. Why? Has he long nurtured a secret passion for the form?
“No, not at all, no,” he shoots back in his freewheeling speaking style. “Tell you the truth, I’ve never really been interested in it. It’s been one of those branches of the arts that’s just never really appealed to me. I’ve kind of, you know, seen Nutcracker, as a sort of children’s thing, and thought, ‘yeah that might be something to take the kids to.’ And so I was with Nancy, my fiancée, and we happened to be going to an event for the New York City Ballet.”
At the School of American Ballet’s Winter Gala 2010, Sir Paul was introduced to Peter Martins, the NYCB’s Danish-born ballet master in chief.
“Peter danced with Nureyev, and danced for Balanchine,” says Sir Paul, “And he just seemed a very bright, upbeat guy. And we were just standing there chatting, and he said, [posh Julian Fellowes voice], ‘would you ever consider writing something for the ballet?’” “One conversation led to the next,” Martins has recalled, “it was all very spontaneous.”
As it happened, Sir Paul had been working on a score that he was “wondering what to do with”. It had originally been intended for a film by the nature documentary maker Jacques Perrin, and was “an ecological plea for the oceans”. Sir Paul’s passion for the sea goes back to Yellow Submarine and encompasses his stout vegetarianism— no fish-eating “flexitarianism” for him since a Damascene conversion during an angling trip to Tennessee in the Seventies.
“And then things started to play in. Even more recently there was a front-page report – it might have been The Telegraph even – [that said], ‘if we don’t watch it, [with] overfishing the oceans are gonna go.’ It was only in Britain – I checked to see if it was in America. It wasn’t front-page there. So yeah, I started to think. That had been my little subplot. The story that I was getting was there was, you know, like anything, goodies and baddies. And the purity of the ocean,” he says, “was the good side. And the Earth – land-dwellers – were gonna f--- it up, basically. So this gave me a rough story to hang it on.”
But still, a ballet. Even if you are one of the greatest songwriters who ever lived, you’re on a hiding to nothing if you “dabble” in rarefied art forms. And certainly some classical critics have been sniffy about Sir Paul’s non-rock’n’pop forays, which most recently found form in the oratorio Ecce Cor Meum. But Stella says her father is not the kind of man to sit on his hands: “The thing about my dad is, basically, he just likes a challenge. I think Dad’s not afraid of doing new things, and I think that’s part of his charm.
“I think it’s a very confident thing, which very few people have — to be able to go, ‘you know what, I haven’t done a ballet, sounds like fun.’ It would be that simple for him. He’s been working a lot on his classical music, and I think it’s something he really enjoys doing.” Or, in his own words, “I’m like an acceptor of jobs. I’m very enthusiastic.
“If you say to me, ‘would you like to go to the park this evening and put a tent up?’ I’ll go, ‘yeah!’ And for no reason other than ‘yeah, I’ll do that.’ It’s sheer enthusiasm.
“And,” he adds, “I’m playing it down, but it was a pretty cool offer – the New York City Ballet says, ‘would you consider doing something?’” He concedes that he was also heartened by Martins’ understanding and appreciation of the former Beatle’s orchestral work.
What would his 20-year-old self make of the idea of Beatle Paul doing a ballet? “I think I’d probably immediately take the p---,” he smiles. “Because of what my 20-year-old self would have thought about ballet. It wouldn’t be something I’d be interested in, to put it mildly. But you know, I went to see Giselle in England, which was very good, in Covent Garden. Then I saw it more for what it was. ‘What are they doing here?’ ’Cause if I’m gonna be involved in this, I need to know what goes on. So instead of just looking at it as a disinterested observer, I was now looking at it to kind of study it. ‘Oh, they’re telling a story here.’”
“Then,” he continues, almost without breath, “I just started to think, ‘could I jump that high? Could I go through the air and appear to stop like he just did?’ I mean, I do a bit of yoga and I know [that] one of the things is you stand on your tiptoes for a while, just for your balance and strengthening your ankles and stuff. And I thought, ‘can I do that?’ No way!” he gasps, wide-eyed.
There were, it seems, no signs of what we might call Black Swan-itis among the New York ballet corps. But Sir Paul, who spent long hours with Martins and his team working on every aspect of the ballet – from the libretto and the music, to the choreography and the staging – winces when he recalls the gruelling nature of the dancers’ profession. “Then of course, when you see the lead ballerina’s feet – it’s bandages and you know,” he says with a shake of the head. “Last time I saw her, I said, ‘oh, your poor feet ’ And they go, ‘everyone says that.’”
It’s an occupational hazard. “Yup. And it’s like somebody saying to me, ‘oh, your fingers have ruts in ’em from playing guitar’ I go, ‘yeah? What? What else is new?’ I don’t even think about that, and they don’t even think about their feet. So I started to realise wow, this is actually quite impressive, on a physical level. So I’ve got much more into it.”
I ask him about Living in the Material World, Martin Scorsese’s new, almost four-hour documentary about the life and times of George Harrison. Sir Paul is interviewed about the Beatles’ Quiet One, who succumbed to lung cancer in 2001. He hints at Harrison’s enthusiasm for the fairer sex and admits to being “dictating” in the studio, remembering how he’d instructed Harrison to keep his fancy guitar licks off a new song he’d just written, Hey Jude.
There was an almost equally epic John Lennon documentary released last year, LennoNYC. Would Sir Paul be comfortable with – is he ready for? – the in-depth documentary treatment? “I think you gotta die for that,” he replies with a grin. “I dunno. I’m not really that interested in me. I’m more interested in other people. I know about me. And I’m satisfied with what I know about me. And yeah, a lot of people have written about me. But what’s interesting about the Scorsese [documentary] is, when you get someone that good, it tends to be true. It’s not just speculation. A lot of what’s been written about me is quite heavy speculation. I read it and go [dismissive face], ‘forget it.’ But I was impressed – it actually really reminded me again what I already knew, which was how cool George was.
“Of course, it was very emotional for me too. But it was really good — it just lasered out. As for whether I’d want it on me? Dunno. I’d rather watch someone else. You know, I’m not good at watching me. My dad, when he was a kid, used to hate pictures of himself. And we’d say, ‘why?’ And he’d say, ‘God, I hate how I look.’ And we’d say, ‘well, that’s how you look Dad!’ Hah hah. I think he was used to seeing pictures of himself when he was 24. And that’s definitely me. I’m always seeing a 24 year-old.”
Next summer, Sir Paul McCartney is 70. Would an appearance at the Olympics’ opening ceremony be an appropriate celebration? “Yeah. Hah hah. Could be,” he twinkles. “Yeah, you know, the thing is, it’s funny, people have said to me, ‘oh, are you gonna be doing that?’ I say, ‘I don’t know actually.’ I’ve heard one or two little rumours and one or two people have half-approached me. So, I may get approached officially. And it would depend on what they were asking me to do. But if it was good. Yeah, I’d consider it.”
Ten days after seeing him in London, I meet Sir Paul again, at the David H Koch Theater in Manhattan, home venue of the New York City Ballet. Tonight is the world premiere of Ocean’s Kingdom. Outside, a scrum of media, fans and police line the red carpet. A teacher from Vermont has McCartney’s signature tattooed on her arm; on the nape of an ageing fashionista is a tattoo of the logo of Ecce Cor Meum. Even McCartney’s drummer is besieged by fans.
As showtime looms, elaborately garbed grandees and patrons of the NYCB float towards the door. Actors Alec Baldwin, Steve Buscemi and Steven Van Zandt saunter past the cameras. But on this New York gala evening, the shouting and the whistles are reserved for the women: Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell, her leading lady Sarah Jessica Parker, Naomi Watts, Liv Tyler and Stella McCartney — the actresses all wearing McCartney creations. Her father had admitted to me that he had some “trepidation” about working with his daughter – “’cause I’m used to getting me own way!” he had laughed. How was it for her?
“I know that my dad’s used to getting his own way,” she replies. “So that’s obviously something you go in knowing as well! I’m his daughter, I want to make him happy, I want to make him proud, I want to do right by him on this.
“So I guess you have all of those emotions. But at the same time I have to stay true to myself and I have to try and not do things that wouldn’t be part of what I’d do in my day job. So there’s a balance to be found, and hopefully I’ve done all right by him.”
Finally, seven minutes before showtime, Sir Paul and the ultra-glamorous Nancy Shevell arrive at the head of the red carpet. There is an explosion of shouting, screaming and flashing of cameras. I follow him in, and soak up the hyperventilating exclamations of middle-aged jewellery-rattlers who shake his hand or receive a nod or have their original vinyl pressing of Meet the Beatles autographed.
Finally we reach the doors to the auditorium. Shevell is somewhere behind us, talking to other members of Manhattan’s great and good. Chipper, cheerful, calm and well used to this kind of hysteria, Sir Paul stands amid the throng of security guards and well-wishers, intent on waiting for his fiancée to catch up.
The ballet, to my layman’s eyes and ears, is impressive. Reviews the next day are mixed (erring on the negative), but the general view is that McCartney’s stirring, robustly melodic music is let down by the choreography. Most agree that the costumes are gorgeous. At the end, the entire troupe take a bow, before the McCartneys themselves come on to a standing ovation. Stella looks bashful, but Sir Paul fairly skips onstage, before miming a little burst of guitar playing. It’s all over bar the vegetarian private dinner afterwards.
Back in London, I’d asked McCartney about his early ambitions. “In the Sixties, it was to get a car…” he replied. “And I got one. Yeah, we used to always say it when we were kids – get a guitar, a car and a house. That was the height of our ambition. So we got the guitar, which allowed us to become The Beatles. Got the car. Then eventually I got a house. Fairly straightforward ambitions I think. It wasn’t to rule the world.”
‘Ocean’s Kingdom’, the album, will be released on Monday by Decca
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