Paul McCartney has opened up about how his wife helped him cope with the Beatles’ breakup.
In the documentary Paul McCartney: A Man on the Run, director Morgan Neville talks to the 83-year-old musician about life after the Beatles, and how a mantra he learned from his late wife Linda McCartney helped him cope and taught him “not to be too formal.”
“It’s easy to get nervous in situations like losing your job,” he says. “One of my favorite expressions of hers is when you say, ‘Oh, I don’t know. I want to do this and that, but I can’t do that. I can’t,’ and she says, ‘That’s allowed.’ It’s like a whole weight has been lifted. It’s allowed. Yes, of course it is. So that kind of really struck me and I think it probably made me think that I was allowed to do a lot more than I actually was.”
Linda and Paul met in 1967 while she was working as a photographer and married two years later in March 1969. Throughout their marriage, they had three children: Mary, Stella, and James.
In the documentary, Paul calls Linda a “free influence” and says that Linda grew up in an “upscale” part of New York and was “on track to become something of a social animal,” but that wasn’t what she wanted.
“She loved rock and roll and would do things like sneak out of the house late at night and drive to New York with her boyfriend,” he said. “I think that was really good for me because she had a lot of freedom in her thinking.”
A few years after the Beatles broke up, Paul formed a band called Wings, with Linda participating full-time as keyboardist and vocalist.
Wings went on to become one of the biggest bands of the 1970s, producing hits such as “Band on the Run,” “Live and Let Die,” and “My Love,” winning two Grammy Awards.
Reminiscing about those days, Paul says he is still in awe of Linda’s talent when he listens to music and hears the “beautiful harmonies coming out of Linda.”
“Wait a minute, I don’t think there was any auto-tuning. We didn’t have any…that’s true,” he said. “She didn’t take any lessons. She just loved to sing. I liked her voice. Her style wasn’t operatic. It wasn’t blues.”
Paul and Linda were married for nearly 30 years until Linda passed away in 1998 at the age of 58 after a battle with breast cancer.
In an interview with BBC Radio Scotland’s Ricky Ross Meets, Paul said: “I think I cried off and on for about a year” after her death.
“You expect to see someone you love coming in because you’re used to them,” he said. “I cried a lot. I was almost embarrassed, but it seemed like the only thing.”
The couple’s eldest daughter Mary grew up to follow in her mother’s footsteps and become a photographer. Their middle child, Stella, went on to become a fashion designer and famously called herself “one of the first Nepobabies” in a 2023 interview with Time magazine.
Son James, now a musician, teamed up with his father’s former bandmate John Lennon’s son Sean Lennon to write the 2024 song “Primrose Hill.”
Paul had a daughter, Beatrice, with his second wife, Heather Mills, and was stepfather to Linda’s daughter, Heather, from a previous marriage.
