(6 of 8)
McCartney's brother, Mike McGear, himself a Pop singer. Those qualities that many critics find cloying could also be melodic acts of self-persuasion. The songs may not work for the same reason that many of Lennon's from this period do not: they are written and sung more out of need than conviction.
Whatever the reasons, this period is mostly past, and McCartney has embraced the good life with a fine passion. "Paul's very worried about losing his fans because of being too Establishment," John Eastman observes, but McCartney has no hesitation in announcing: "It's nice waking up in the morning now. Instead of the dregs of the night, you have the refreshing faces of children and a cup of tea." There are three faces likely to pop up in front of him—Heather, 13, Linda's daughter from a previous marriage, Mary, 6, and Stella, 4—and a nice assortment of houses for the daily awakening.
Despite all the money he has lost, Paul is now worth £ 10 million. The McCartneys have adopted a pastoral variation on rock's royal style. They keep a home in London's tony St. John's Wood, but, says a member of the McCartney staff, "it is definitely not a show house."
The family also spends a great deal of time at a farm in the Scottish Highlands, a retreat that has the advantages of rugged beauty and almost total inaccessibility. To reach the unprepossessing stone farmhouse, a visitor must start down a tiny, unmarked country lane that leads to two footpaths, each passing through separate farms and yards. Impressively large and vocal dogs patrol the neighbors' property. If an intrepid fan tried the back way, he would be stopped by an impenetrable bog.
If anyone managed to surmount these natural obstacles, there would be little enough to spy on. Mum might be cooking up a batch of her special pea soup (secret ingredient: sea salt), Dad might be settled back with some favorite reading material—science-fiction novels and comics, mostly. The whole family could be gathered around the table, enjoying a favorite meal of eggs and chips and larking about, hitting Dad for "requests"—everything from That Doggy in the Window to songs composed on the spot, to order, for whatever child does the asking. Dad may be working on the score for a cartoon movie about a bear named Rupert who flies around in little glass balls, or sawing away on the kitchen table he is building for Mum ("I'm not very good at building—I wonder if it will stand up"). If the skies are fair, he may be in the fields, helping with the shearing. He loves to fall back on a pile of just-shorn wool, burrow down in it, enjoy the aroma, turn his face up and feel the tang of the air, the strength of the sun.
McCartney is proud to be a little bit of old England—even though the homeland taxes him up to 83% on earned income, up to 98% on investments. "I love the place," he says. "I see it as having one of the biggest potentials in the world." The McCartney politics are conservative. "Paul would be a sort of Republican," says John Eastman. His philosophy of child rearing is elemental. "We try to be very open with them, but not to the point of Dr. Spock, where they sort of run us."