Paul McCartney Admits He Found Women Wanting to Sleep With The Beatles ‘Comforting’
Paul McCartney is a happily married man. While still a member of The Beatles, McCartney married Linda McCartney and they stayed together until her death. Now, McCartney is married to Nancy Shevell since 2011. There was a time, though, when the hordes of screaming Beatles fans were exciting to the young singer/songwriter.
McCartney spoke with Terry Gross on the Fresh Air podcast on Nov. 3. Gross asked McCartney directly about women throwing themselves at the Beatles, and he did not demure. McCartney’s new book, The Lyrics, is out now.
The Beatles groupies were a relief to Paul McCartney and his bandmates
Gross quoted a passage from The Lyrics. “Eroticism was a driving force behind everything I did,” McCartney wrote. “That’s what lay behind a lot of these love songs.” The Lyrics covers McCartney’s Beatles songs, songs with Wings and solo songs. But, when Gross asked him how it felt to have young women trying to sleep with all four members of The Beatles, McCartney didn’t mince words.
“It was very comforting, Terry,” McCartney told the Fresh Air host with a laugh. “It was very wonderful and it was like wow, look at this. Finally, we’re attracting attention and all these girls seem to really like us. We never experienced that. If you’re lucky, there’ll be a girl down the street who might vaguely like you or something, but suddenly it went wild. I must say, we loved it.”
Before The Beatles, neither Paul McCartney nor John Lennon were ladies men
McCartney met John Lennon while they were teenagers in Liverpool. They added George Harrison and Ringo Starr to the band in the early years. They paid their dues before becoming a sensation in the U.K. and then the U.S. McCartney described their social life before Beatlemania, and it was pretty dire.
“The truth was you’ve got four young men in Liverpool and pretty much you were looking for a girlfriend,” McCartney told Gross. “And you were looking for sex, in your private life. The truth was you weren’t very successful. And you’ve got to remember also the period. This was sort of post World War II in Liverpool so it wasn’t swinging London yet. We were just like most young guys. We just wanted to have a girlfriend, because as kids, we were apparently not very attractive. It was kind of the opposite for us.”
‘A Hard Day’s Night’ made things a little easier for The Beatles
You can see Beatlemania in action in the film A Hard Day’s Night. By 1964, throngs of women chasing the Fab Four was common enough for them to satirize it in the film. In the ‘70s, the film I Wanna Hold Your Hand portrayed Beatlemania from the fans’ perspective. But, you need only look at the audience at The Beatles’ live performance on The Ed Sullivan Show to know none of those filmmakers were making it up. McCartney said the adulation was a relief after years of struggling as each other’s wingmen.
“I suppose as we got more and more popular, and the girls started screaming and stuff, to tell you the truth, we just enjoyed it,” McCartney told Gross. “It was the fulfillment of all our dreams. This idea that eroticism lay at the back of a lot we would write, it sounds more important when you actually quote it. It really was just young guys trying to get laid as Americans would say.”
