Paul McCartney just turned 59, and he's running circles around most people half his age. Sure, he's got five more years before he hits 64, but he doesn't look anything like the character in that 1967 Beatles song. Right now he's crackling with creative energy across every medium you can name.
His abstract paintings got compiled into a catalog called "Paul McCartney Paintings." His poetry collection "Blackbird Singing: Lyrics and Poems 1965-1999" drew fans to signings. Last year's "The Beatles Anthology" became a bestseller, followed by "1," the CD of Beatles No. 1 singles, which McCartney points out proudly "went to No. 1 in 34 countries." Now, riding that Beatles momentum, he's releasing "Wingspan" on May 8: a greatest-hits CD from Wings, the band he ran in the '70s with his wife Linda on keyboards and their kids helping out on tour. Wings charted 13 Top 10 singles in the U.S. This week ABC airs the documentary "Wingspan," an intimate account of those years, co-produced by his daughter Mary, 31, and her husband Alistair Donald. (His other children are Heather, 37, a houseware designer; Stella, 29, a top fashion designer; and James, 23, a musician.)
When you sit down with him in his London office (which has a Willem de Kooning painting and a Wurlitzer jukebox), McCartney talks openly about professional wins and personal loss. Linda died from breast cancer in 1998. Last year he found new love with Heather Mills, 33, a former model and passionate campaigner for the rights of handicapped people. She lost a leg in a motorcycle accident in 1993 and now works with McCartney to abolish landmines worldwide.
On doing it all
Most people slow down as they get older. McCartney shrugs at the suggestion. "I just think I'm an enthusiast," he says. "I just like to do a lot of things. Suddenly, I had a lot of poetry sitting in a pile. So it made me think, 'Maybe you should do a book.' I had 600 paintings in my studio. Someone happens to come round and say, 'I think you should do an exhibition.' I can see how it would be quite cool to be focused and just do one thing and make it simple for everyone, including myself. I am a Gemini; this might be a clue. If I've got a spare moment, it's my thing to just go up to a piano and start noodling around. And then, unfortunately, a song comes out. It's a problem a lot of people wish they had."
He's talked before about his sense of wonder toward the world. "I do, yeah. I've always been a bit like, 'Wow, isn't that amazing?' I'm constantly getting updated with facts. I saw one of those Stephen Hawking shows, and I think I heard him say that when you get down to DNA and molecular structure, that we're made of the same stuff that stars are made of. Now to me that is like, 'Aaaah!' That's the kind of thing that gives me a sense of wonderment. I'm a lover, and I really do love the things I love. Everyone's got that, but I think maybe I've just got a bit more of that than other people."
The Wings special
The concept for "Wingspan" came from something personal. "What happened originally was that Linda and I were sitting around, and, like every couple, we have millions of home movies and photographs of when the kids were little. I said to her, 'When are we planning to look at this?' We said, 'On our anniversary. That'd be a good day.' And we were going to be out in Arizona at our place there." This was a couple of years before Linda died. "I had arrived and secretly had brought the old snapshot albums. But she secretly had had new ones made up and a video that had been done by my son-in-law Alistair of all the home movies. He'd actually put it together, being a film man, put music on it. We were like, 'Ooh, ooh' — we got very emotional, had a couple of drinks, had a great anniversary. Then at the end of it we said, 'That almost could have been a TV thing. Why don't we think of doing this with Wings?'" Wings largely covered that same period.
Beatles versus Wings
Looking back at the Beatles era through "Anthology" and the CDs feels different from reminiscing about Wings. "It's a family thing; it's more personal," McCartney explains. "In a way the story is a little more dramatic because it was this daunting thing of following the Beatles. In the Beatles, we used to be quite pleased when anyone tried to follow us. We were like, 'Take your best shot! You want to do better, be my guest!' So when the Beatles broke up it was like, 'Uh-oh, my God! If I want to continue in music I'm now in that position of these wannabes.' Plus the loss of these guys as my friends. But it was all offset by Linda and I getting married and having the babies and starting to go that route. Whereas the Beatles were like a phenomenal success story with four guys, Wings were, like, follow that and raise a family at the same time."
Listening to "1" carries real weight. "Yeah. I love it, actually. Some of the songs are emotional. Depends upon what stage of the evening it is. Often with these records that are compilations, you don't really listen to them much, because it's your old work. But I thought, 'I'll check it out,' and I was really pleased with it. I'd been involved in setting it up, seeing it in a business way, but I'd not really got into it in an artistic way until I actually listened to it. The main thing I thought as a craftsman was how well-structured the songs were — that there was nothing that shouldn't have been on them, and you couldn't have put one extra thing on. And then, emotionally, it just brought back really great memories of these lovely friends of mine and all the great times we had recording. And obviously with John being dead, there were certain things where it was really sad to hear him singing. But I think the overall feel of the album is so optimistic and so clean that I really enjoyed it."
His favorite Wings songs include "My Love," "Maybe I'm Amazed," and "Daytime Nighttime Suffering."
Family and music
His daughter Mary worked on the Wings special. His son James played guitar on McCartney's 1997 album "Flaming Pie." Would he produce an album for James? "I don't think he'd want me to. I know he would want to strike out on his own. I don't think he'd like people to think his old man did it, and I understand that. And I actually admire him a lot for that. He knows the offer's there."
McCartney's own father was a musician too. "Yeah. In my case my dad couldn't really have helped. He was very cute, my dad, but he didn't know anything about London or rock and roll. He actually did help me a lot, because a lot of my musicality is through his genes. His dad was also musical." Stella is a very good singer. "She's amazing, but she's busy at the moment."
His father did write a song once, and as a fun thing McCartney recorded it with Chet Atkins and Floyd Cramer when he was in Nashville. He played bass, Chet played guitar, Floyd played piano. The record was called "Walking in the Park with Eloise." He took it back to his dad and said, "Remember that song you wrote?" His dad said, "No." He said, "What do you mean?"