mccartneysteam

Linda McCartney, when she was Linda Eastman, came of age in the 1960s, as did most of us who were young enough to change and old enough to understand that it was still possible to do so. Those were very different times, with different values. Many of them, of course, were driven by rock and roll, especially the Beatles, the Stones, and Dylan. We genuinely believed we were radical when it came to politics, art, sex, and psychoactive chemicals. Today, if I were the guardian of someone who is now the age I was then, I would be extremely concerned if he or she came as close to the edge in some of those areas as we did, as I did, as Linda did. 'Experiment' wasn't just a noun or verb back then, it was a command. We were pretty wild, we were different people; 'That wasn't me.' Yes, it was, but well, it was a phase, albeit the most spectacular of our lives; Those who failed to control themselves when everything pointed to the end of this wonderful, prolonged adolescence and the return to reality didn't present a very talented picture, if they survived at all. I'd rather think Linda's picture, in particular, became more beautiful with the passing of the years. Some simply overcame the delirium; she triumphed, in a relationship that astonished the world with its intensity and duration, and also on her own. I think it's a story worth telling.