How Paul McCartney Reacted When He Felt Fans Took Their Hatred of Linda McCartney Too Far
When Paul McCartney began a relationship with Linda McCartney, all three other Beatles were married. Once people learned about their relationship, Linda began dealing with Beatles fans just as the other Beatles’ wives had. Fans gathered outside of McCartney’s London home every day and shouted at Linda when she walked past. Once, McCartney felt fans had gone too far. When he scolded them, though, they were completely unapologetic.
Paul McCartney was not happy to hear of how fans treated Linda McCartney
When McCartney began dating Linda, his most dedicated fans turned their ire on her. Fans waited outside his home and shouted at her. They left hateful graffiti on the fence and, on one occasion, threw dessert at her.
Linda returned to the house, and when she walked past the fans, someone threw a frozen chocolate dessert at her. Shortly afterward, McCartney came out of the house.
“Who just threw a choc-ice at Linda?” he asked the group angrily, per the book Paul McCartney: The Life by Philip Norman. The fans were anything but apologetic, though.
“Actually, it was a chocolate mousse,” the offending fan said.
The other Beatle wives faced aggression from fans
Cynthia Lennon, Maureen Starkey, and Pattie Boyd all also faced aggression from fans. Their respective partners tried to keep their relationships secret, but the news inevitably got out. Fans angrily confronted them when they went out in public.
“I got to see the Beatles play at a theater in London, and George told me that I should leave with my friends before the last number,” Boyd said in a conversation with Taylor Swift for Harper’s Bazaar. “So before the last song, we got up from our seats and walked toward the nearest exit door, and there were these girls behind me. They followed us out, and they were kicking me and pulling my hair and pushing us all the way down this long passageway.”
Cynthia Lennon reported something similar happening to Starkey.
“When Ringo started dating Maureen, she had to pretend she wasn’t seeing him,” she wrote in her book John. “One night she was waiting for him in the car outside a gig when a girl came up, put her hand through the window, and scratched her face.”
Paul McCartney liked that Linda McCartney helped free him from habits he picked up in The Beatles
While McCartney pulled Linda into the Beatles’ world, she helped pull him out of it. With Linda, McCartney broke some of the habits he built in The Beatles.
“I remember very early on apologising because I was so tired, I said, ‘I’m really tired, I’m sorry.’ She said, ‘It’s allowed,'” McCartney said in the book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now by Barry Miles. “I remember thinking, F***ing hell! That was a mind-blower. I’d never been with anyone who’d thought like that: ‘It’s allowed.’ And it was quite patently clear that it was allowed to be tired.”
