Q: You’re not a dictator in the public eye, but ‘Paul, the nice guy’ all the time. Even John called you ‘honest little Paulie’ and ‘the walking, glossy PR guy.’ How do you feel about that?
McCartney: I never realized I was reflecting that image. As a kid, I watched the telly to see how they did it, and watched films to see how the world went. You pick up on all these things. If they smoked in the films, then you smoked. You just see what was the cool thing to be.
To me, that PR thing I just automatically thought we needed in the Beatles, to get on and to meet people and the Press. So, I would do a lot of that because no else would. It’s the truth. John would never do it and George wasn’t into it and Ringo would if he liked you, but I’d do it even if I didn’t like you. All the Press people we’d see I would bring in and say, ‘Come on!’
I knew they were nervous. I don’t like nervous people around. Who does? I mean, nervous people hate to be nervous but it’s something they can’t help. So I try and cool the situation out and say, ‘Let’s have a cup of tea, OK? Come on now, sit down.’
A lot of Liverpool people are very good at that. Maybe it’s not always genuine, but my Auntie Jenna always called me polished. She said, ‘You are really polished, you are,’ but in a way she kind of liked it.
Over years and particularly with John coming out against me like that, it was no good for me at all. He really slagged me off, a lot of which he really didn’t mean. He said it in interviews, and I’ve talked a lot to Yoko since, and she tells me that lots of it was just John. A lot of it was his own…he just wanted to put me down. He said, ‘Everyone is on the McCartney bandwagon.’ You know, you get jealous.
Q: But he was laughing as well when he was doing it, even when he said, ‘The only thing you done was Yesterday.’ He said in interviews that he was shitting himself with laughter doing it.
McCartney: That’s right. (laughs) It’s all jokes, taking the piss out of me. That was John. That’s his particular thing and that’s what I liked him for. But I think it has probably made my image worse than it is. As I say, the truth is he didn’t really think that was all my character. He knew there were all sorts of other bits. But I think it’s true. I sometimes do catch myself and think, ‘God do I look like that?’ Or, ‘Is that how I come over people.’
And the funny thing is, I’m just struggling, trying to get through life okay, and trying to do well, like lots of other people I know. I just try to earn a living. Basically, I’ve never had a different philosophy than that. You get up in the morning and do your gig.
-Interview for Music Express • April/May 1982
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