January 2009, Paul McCartney Interview: a preview.

(tomado de: http://blog. prospectblogs. com/author/ jonathan- power/)

Prospect's interview between Paul McCartney and his old school-friend Jonathan Power has made headlines around the world. Read the first 1,000 words for free here.

Whatever Paul McCartney says or does is news. In September, when he went to give a concert in Israel—making up for the Beatles concert that the Israeli government forbade at the last moment, 43 years ago—he was attacked by some pro-Palestinian critics for ”singing to the enemy.” No matter the ”enemy” audience was perhaps 20 per cent Arab, or that he also used his trip to visit Edward Said’s music school on the West Bank.

When he sang, he also—in his trademark low-key, non-preachy way—pointed his audience in the direction of compromise and healing. One of the prices of Paul’s fame is to see his honest words and thoughts twisted almost out of recognition. I saw this happen close up last week when my long conversation with him was published (http://www.prospect -magazine. co.uk/article_ details.php? id=10568) in Prospect. It seems that the press has a mindset about the McCartney-John Lennon relationship that demands anything that Paul says be squeezed into a mould—even if the words don’t really fit at all.

The story was spun a certain way in the British newspapers, led by the "Sunday Times" (http://entertainmen t.timesonline. co.uk/tol/ arts_and_ entertainment/ music/article533 8153.ece) . Then the wire service, "Associated Press" (http://www.google. com/hostednews/ ap/article/ ALeqM5gNDeRtudnU -j1hgz-6CQ57eHTC iAD9536ASO0) , carried the story around the world, where it was printed in literally hundreds of papers. One report, and the world is given misleading information by editors too uncaring or unmotivated or just plain lazy to make a call to Prospect to ask for the original wording.

Not one journalist called me. The fact is that the interview carries not a word of rivalry with John Lennon. Nor does it say anything about which Beatle discovered the Vietnam war first, (the main themes of the Sunday Times/AP story). There is no foundation for the allusions the story made to McCartney’s (mythical) claim, at Lennon’s expense, to have written the best of the Beatles’ tunes. The interview runs to about 5,000 words. The discussion on the Vietnam war is perhaps a dozen lines of that. There is one mention of Lennon—when Paul describes how he returned from a conversation with Bertrand Russell to tell the other three what he had heard from the old philosopher about the evils of the war in Vietnam.

I met Paul at the Liverpool Institute High School for Boys over 50 years ago. We were classmates. We played cricket together and I witnessed the first Beatles’ concert when he and George Harrison (in the year behind us) played for our class on the the last day of school. We yelled like groupies! We have stayed in touch. In May, I sent Paul the column that I wrote on the newspaper hype about the 40th anniversary of the student rebellion in Paris. We decided to meet and discuss our lives and what had made us want to fight racism and war. We met twice and talked—about school, the Vietnam war, the civil rights movement, right through to the Russian invasion of Georgia.

On the way we discussed literature and the impact of FR Leavis on the writing of “Eleanor Rigby” and Paul’s feelings on the likelihood that his songs will still be sung in 500 years’ time. Paul is a self-effacing, intelligent man. He may grab the spotlight on the stage. But he has no need to twist history. And neither should the press when reporting on him.

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Discuss this preview at First Drafts, Prospect 's blog I went to school with Paul McCartney in Liverpool nearly 50 years ago, and we have remained friends, albeit distant, ever since. I joined the school a few months after most of the boys in my class. Alan Durband, our form master, asked Paul to make me feel at home. And he did just that. It was an act of kindness I remembered long after. I knew how boys could be. The Liverpool Institute High School for Boys was then the city's top state grammar school, drawing some middle class but, in the main, the brightest of the working class and lower middle class—one of our old boys, Charles Glover Barkla, won the Nobel prize for physics.

The Institute was the choir school of Liverpool cathedral. Paul auditioned for the choir but didn't get in—apparently the music teacher didn't think he was good enough. Another Beatle, George Harrison, was in the year below Paul. (John Lennon and Ringo Starr were educated elsewhere in the city—at Quarry Bank grammar school and Dingles secondary modern respectively.)

The Liverpool Institute closed in 1985. Eleven years later, Paul opened the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, a fame academy for aspiring artists, on the site. Paul is not known for his political views—John was always thought of as the political Beatle. But having been a political journalist for most of my life I wanted to talk to Paul about, among other things, the great political events of our lifetimes. I wanted it to be a casual conversation, like two old men sitting on a bench reminiscing about school days and some of the things that have happened since.

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JONATHAN POWER: In different ways, me as a journalist you as a rock star, we have both had a ringside seat on the last 50 years—the 1960s, Vietnam, Nixon, Thatcher, Blair, the end of the cold war, Iraq and so on. But let's start with the second world war. In your classical work of 17 years ago, the Liverpool Oratorio, you included a lot of wartime memories.

PAUL McCARTNEY: Yes. My dad had a hearing defect and couldn't join the army, so he was in the fire service which was pretty hazardous because Liverpool was bombed heavily. He was quite a jovial guy and didn't talk about it much himself. But I did know about incendiary bombs and so on. And I remember sirens; I was born in 1942. I remember there being a kind of gung-ho spirit about the war. Later on during our teenage years, my first reaction was to say I'm a pacifist. But then I also knew that if we had been invaded I would have defended my country, my family—the animal instinct in me would have taken over. I have experienced it in minor ways on my farm when, for example, a ram butted one of the kids and I attacked him back. The animal in me said, "How bloody dare you! Right, mate!" and I had a go at him.

POWER: The second world war is seen by most people as a good war. But the first world war is generally regarded as a stupid mistake—and one that led to most of the horrors of the 20th century. Most wars, with good sense, can be avoided. We all know Iraq could have been avoided…

McCARTNEY: There was a very strong feeling after 9/11 that America had to do something. But I always felt that Bush struck out at the wrong boy in the playground… It could have been avoided, yes.

POWER: I remember reading that your blood was up after 9/11 and that—because of your father—you identified with the firemen who risked their lives at the World Trade Centre, but looking back, do you think you allowed your passion to overrun?

McCARTNEY: Definitely, yes. I think everyone did. I was in New York at the time. I was just taking off at exactly 8.50am and it was one of those memorable announcements from the captain: "Those of you on the right-hand side of the aircraft will notice there has been an accident and this has delayed our takeoff." I assumed it had been a runaway plane, as happened once before when someone had a heart attack at the controls. I just thought, "Oh God, it's gone into the Twin Towers and they are both on fire." Being there, the worry then was "When is the next attack coming?" It was not just fear, it was more "How organised are these people? Are they going to poison the water?" There was a mood to be exploited. I have become quite cynical about how some of these recent wars have been started. Georgia is another example: I had been due to play a concert there in September. I had done a concert in Ukraine and afterwards I met the President of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, at a little lunch party in Kiev given by the promoter. He invited us to go to Georgia to play and I was happy to do that. I like reaching out, particularly to the eastern bloc. They love these concerts; it symbolises freedom for them. I had done Moscow, St Petersburg and, as I say, Kiev. But then I was on holiday in early August and I picked up a New York Times, looked at it and went "my God, what's going on here?" I rang my promoters and they said, "No, the Georgia concert is off." Then a bit later I was talking to people and I suddenly go click in my mind—I am not normally one for conspiracy theories, but we were in the middle of the presidential election. It was McCain, and Obama, Hillary was out of the running, and I did think "conspiracy theory"—you know the Skull and Bones club that Bush was part of at Yale. What do those guys do in a secret society? What do they cook up? I thought, faced with a situation in which McCain looks as if he is losing they might just say to Saakashvili, "Look you have a couple of regions up there that are playing up, why not do something about this? Why not tick them off and if you need military help we are right behind you, we will help you out."

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