Paul McCartney's Greatest Love Song of All Time Was Written During One of the Hardest ...
1969 was a year full of change for Paul McCartney. In January, he recorded the Let It Be album and movie with The Beatles, and did his last live performance with them. In March of that year, he married his first wife, Linda Eastman, and adopted her daughter, Heather. Months later, the couple had their first child together, Mary McCartney. By all means, McCartney lived in domestic bliss. And then, his world turned upside down when John Lennon announced he was leaving The Beatles.
In his new documentary, Man on the Run, McCartney opened up about how hard the breakup hit him. It pulled him into a depression and left him doubting if he could ever write music again. He'd only ever written songs with Lennon and had been in The Beatles since he was 15. But thankfully, he wasn't alone in going through that. He had his wife, Linda, by his side, and she was the one to pull him out of the darkness. In return, McCartney wrote her one of the most beautiful love songs in history.
When John Lennon told his bandmates that he was leaving The Beatles, McCartney felt his entire world collapse. At Linda McCartney's suggestion, he moved his new family to a run-down farm he owned in Scotland to run away from the chaos of London. After the release of Abbey Road in September 1969, fans came up with an outrageous theory that Paul McCartney was actually dead and had been replaced by a double, finding alleged clues in Beatles songs and artwork. After McCartney ran away to Scotland, the press fueled the rumors, since it was the first time in years that the Beatle had disappeared from the public eye. While the rumors were, of course, ridiculous, McCartney couldn't help but find some irony in them. "In so many ways, I was dead," McCartney wrote in the foreword to the book accompanying the documentary, Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run. At age 27, newly married and unsure about the future, McCartney was "in need of a complete life makeover."
In the documentary, McCartney shared that Lennon was actually excited about the breakup, saying that it was "like a divorce," and it opened so many new opportunities. McCartney wasn't excited in the slightest, and he had trouble finding a way forward. After the breakup, McCartney revealed, he sank into a depression and developed a drinking problem. He admitted that he would be drinking whiskey from the moment he woke up, since he "didn't have anywhere to go." The Beatles had taken over his entire adult life, and without them, he wasn't sure he would ever write another note of music again.
Source: Val Barone/collider.com
