Paul McCartney replays his past

Press, 15 November 1984, Page 33

Paul McCartney replays his past

By

BOB THOMAS

of Associated Press through NZPA Beverley Hills

After 20 years of trying to avoid probes and prying by the press, Paul McCartney is willingly sitting down with reporters. He was in Beverly Hills recently for a preview of his movie, “Give My Regards to Broad Street,” and submitted to a flurry of interviews. The movie, his first in 14 years, is a journey through McCartney music, old and new, tied together with a slender plott about missing tapes. He was willing to do the hype, he said, because having put so much effort into the movie, “I wanted to see it through to the end.”

"The other alternative is to let the film talk for itself,” he said. “But having written the script as well as the music, I have a special interest in it. If the critics don’t like it, I can speak up and say that I do.” The movie began as a television project and was to have a budget of less than JI million.

“But then I realised, this is being made in 35mm, not 16mm; why are we thinking small? Why not build a little, upgrade everything, and make a feature? The final budget was under $lO million.”

McCartney said he enjoyed making the movie.

“At the outset I told Peter Webb, who was directing his first feature, ‘No matter what happens, we are going to enjoy it.’ We almost succeeded,” he said. "Our only real difference of opinion was over the musical numbers. I believe in the philosophy of Fred Astaire, who would take six months to rehearse a dance. I always wanted more rehearsal, but I had to fight for it.”

McCartney, with fellow Beatles, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, and the late John Lennon, made his film debut in 1965 in “A Hard Day’s Night.” “We were four green kids who wanted to be in the movies, just as we had wanted to get a recording contract,” he said.

All four came from Liver-

pool, England, and McCartney retains pleasant memories of growing up in a close, musical family. "Nobody in my family was famous in show business, so I cannot blame them for anything,” he said. "But my grandfather, whom I never knew, had played in a brass band. My father was a musician who played trumpet until he lost his teeth, then turned to the piano.” McCartney assumed everyone else had equally happy childhoods until one night in New York when he and his wife of 15 years, Linda Eastman, talked to Lennon and Yoko Ono.

“John’s father left home when he was three, and his mother went to live with another man,” McCartney said. “John was brought up by an aunt and uncle, then the uncle died. When his mother was visiting John when he was 16, she walked out the door and was killed by a police car. If people wondered why John was a little kookie, that might help explain it.” The Beatles split in 1970

amid much acrimony between McCartney and Lennon. Both mellowed over the years, and McCartney said the pair had a warm relationship before Lennon’s death in 1980. McCartney, still boyish at 42, was the first Beatle to emerge as a solo performer. In most of his post-Beatle music, he has been associated with his wife, who also makes a brief appearance in “Give My Regards to Broad Street.” Linda McCartney, aged 40, a photographer, is the daugher of a New York lawyer and art collector, Lee Eastman. The McCartneys live with their four children on a Scottish farm. “I could lose my music, my money, everything except my family," McCartney said. Ringo Starr also appears in “Give My Regards to Broad Street,” but not George Harrison, who was out of the country. Harrison was the one Beatle who disliked making “A Hard Day’s Night’” and “Help.” The Beatles also provided music for the animated film, “The Yellow Submarine,” and made a concert film, “Let It Be,” in 1970. It was their last. McCartney re-recorded “Yesterday,” "Eleanor Rigby,” and other Beatle classics for the movie, but traditionalists need not worry. “They are not madly different,” he said. As for the future, McCartney has no plans for additional music collaborations, such as the pop hits he made with Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson. But he is considering another feature film. He wants to expand an animated short he produced, “Rupert.” It is a children’s fairy tale about a bear.