My Paul McCartney Story

It's Paul McCartney's 80th birthday—HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SIR PAUL!—and although I've never done a one-on-one with him, I did get to ask him a question via satellite during the summer 2011 TCA tour, when he was promoting his Showtime documentary The Love We Make.

When I wrote about it on social media at the time, I summarized the experience like this:

Although he and I were not in the same room or even in the same state—he was in Ohio at the time, I was in Beverly Hills—I asked Paul McCartney a question, and Paul McCartney heard that question and answered it, which means that, technically speaking, I interviewed a fucking Beatle…and if someone wants to put those five italicized words on my tombstone, you won’t hear me complaining. (Oh, shut up. You know what I mean.)

Anyway, I’ve told this elsewhere, but since it *is* Paul's birthday, I figured it was a good excuse to share my question and Paul's answer here…and needless to say, I'm quite certain he remembers the exchange just as fondly as I do.

Me: "Hi, Paul. I know that George visited America in 1963 and got to see some of the country at kind of a less frantic pace than you did when you toured with the Beatles. When was the first time that you came to America and actually got to enjoy the trip?"

Paul: "I did that a few times, actually. I came once…I had a girlfriend, Jane Asher, in the ’60s, who was an actress, and she was touring with a Shakespeare company. And I got to come out to Denver and spent some time in Colorado, just hanging out, which was very nice. Used to just kind of go up in the mountains and hike. That was a very gentle pace. And then later, I would come to New York a lot with Linda, who was from there and whose relatives were there. So we would just go and hang out. And it was funny, really, because around that time, I’d grown this big, black beard. And the fashion was kind of…we were dressed in kind of, like, old army stuff from thrift shops and stuff. So I had complete anonymity. I could be on the streets of New York and people would say, 'Aren’t you worried about someone mugging you?' I said, 'No, I look like the guy who’s going to mug you.' But I had a lot of fun. I would go up to Harlem, whereas with The Beatles we’d been warned, 'You mustn’t go up there, you know, it’s dangerous.' So I was able to go up there and go into record shops and talk to the guys, talk to the people there, and just generally hang out in New York. So that was another very sort of good restful time to just see America for what it was rather than the hysteria."