Paul and Linda McCartney Only Spent 10 Days Apart in Their 29-Year Marriage Because He Was in Jail
Paul McCartney married his first wife, Linda, in 1969. They remained together for nearly 30 years until her death in 1998. McCartney and Linda had a famously close marriage, particularly for someone whose job required him to be on the road so frequently. In their lengthy marriage, the couple only spent 10 nights away from each other. The only reason they weren’t together every night was that McCartney was in jail.
Paul McCartney married Linda McCartney in 1969
In 1967, McCartney met American photographer Linda Eastman at London’s Bag O’Nails nightclub. He felt an immediate attraction to her, and they soon began dating.
“She stayed with me when she first came to London,” Linda’s friend Miki Antony told The Guardian. “[She said] ‘Guess who I dated last night? … It was Paul McCartney, and we had this lovely evening.’ She said Paul really liked white rabbits, and the next day she … bought a white rabbit and sent it to him. That night, she told me, he rang her up and said, ‘Thank you so much for the white rabbit, would you like to come out for dinner again?’ That’s how I knew they’d started dating. The rest is history.”
The pair married in 1969 and had three children together. McCartney also adopted Linda’s daughter from a previous marriage.
They hardly spent any time apart during their marriage
Linda was a photographer, but she joined McCartney’s post-Beatles band, Wings, as a keyboardist. At the time of her death in 1998, they had been together for nearly 30 years. In that period, the only time they spent a night away from each other was when McCartney was in a Tokyo jail.
He’d traveled into the country with half a pound of marijuana, which was quickly discovered by a customs agent. Per the book Paul McCartney: A Life by Peter Ames Carlin, he spent 10 days in “near-solitary confinement.” This period was the only time the McCartneys spent apart.
“I am privileged to have been her lover for thirty years, and in all that time, except for one enforced absence, we never spent a single night apart,” McCartney said, per the book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now by Barry Miles. “When people asked why, we would say, ‘What for?'”
Paul McCartney wrote one of his more famous songs for Linda McCartney
While McCartney did some of his best-known work in The Beatles, he’s also had many successful songs in the years after the band’s breakup. One of these is the song “Maybe I’m Amazed,” which he wrote for Linda. He explained that over the years, it has become an important song for others.
“It was for Linda, but as time goes on and people say they like it, I always like to give up ownership and say, ‘Great, well, I hope this fits with your life,'” he told NPR. “And you know, it’s very nice when people say, ‘We used this song in our wedding.’ That’s a huge compliment. Once you’ve written [songs] and once you release them, they’re like birds: They fly away, and you have no control over them. And I’m happy for them to land in other people’s lives.”
