Favourite quotes about Linda used in Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run
& some thoughts from me in green :)
On her life before Paul:
MARY MCCARTNEY: She used to sneak out of her back window to go to the Apollo [the famous theatre in Harlem] to watch concerts.
LAURA EASTMAN: Linda went to the University of Arizona. She took a photography course. And then eventually she came back to New York and she got a job as the receptionist at the Town and Country magazine. And across her desk one day comes this invitation to go to a reception for The Rolling Stones, and it was on a boat on the river beside Manhattan. So she nicks it. She takes her camera, she goes, she takes photos and she sells them to the magazine, and that started her photography career with these rock and roll people. She liked to do photo sessions with these rockers in Central Park. One day, my father was walking down. She's walking with this rocker with all this hair and a cape. He freaked out.
I love that she was such a rebellious person from a young age, and I especially love that she fully believed in herself and her photography enough to just take an invitation and decide 'that's mine now'.
On getting mugged in Lagos:
PAUL MCCARTNEY: ...Next time, they'd discussed this thoroughly - all the doors went, six people jumped out. The little one had a knife, he was shaking, he was shitting himself, and so was I at this point. I'd suddenly realised what this was.
And Linda is a ballsy chick, she's screaming, 'Don't touch him! He's a musician. He's just like you. He's a soul brother, leave him alone!' She's screaming at the top of her voice. 'Come on. What do you want, man? Money? Here. You can have it. The tape? Sure! Take it. Camera? Yeah, go on, you can have it all. Go on!"
okay !!!???
On her love of nature:
PAUL MCCARTNEY: ...Linda cared so much for the natural world around us. I remember once, we were around some formal ladies, in a formal garden, and there was a frog. They all saw the frog. She picked it up. The ladies scream, ‘Oh no, you're touching a frog!' And of course, the frog pees. Probably because of all the screaming. It's an immediate reaction. And she would always say, 'His mommy loves him’.
This one just really made me laugh, and I also think it speaks to her instinct to take care of things and see the beauty in them even if other people can't (and maybe sometimes that thing is a person who's crashing out hard because his band is breaking up and he doesn't know what to do and feels like he doesn't have purpose without them).
On Paul's time in jail:
MARY MCCARTNEY: She'd come back with reports of how he was, and saying that he was doing well. But there was definitely this feeling of, like, 'What is going to happen? How long are we going to be here?' I feel like Mum would have just moved the family to Japan.
JOHN HAMMEL: Linda would say, 'We're going to have to get the horses over. We're going to have to buy a house. We're going to have to do this. All this was going on. And there's Paul in jail, you know, sleeping on a rush mat on the floor.
Again this just made me laugh, because the dedication? Planning to move the horses? She was literally going to move everything and everyone out to Japan.
On sharing a wardrobe with Paul:
STELLA MCCARTNEY: It's weird, I don't associate one fashion more with Mum or Dad because they shared a wardrobe. At home in Cavendish when I was a child, it was just one continuous wardrobe space. Mum had one side and Dad had the other, and they just met in the middle. It's a perfect example of how I looked at them and how they wore and shared clothes and how it really reflected who they were through what they wore.
Dad had a lot of tailoring from the sixties - his Tommy Nutter suits, and then less suits going into the seventies. And Mum had the same Tommy Nutter suits, but she continued to wear tailoring into the seventies. I was obsessed with all of that.
There's an old red-and-white-striped silk blouse that I always thought was Mum's, but I see pictures of Dad in it. All those patchwork seventies little bomber jackets - I thought they were Mum's, but then Dad's in them in the images. Then you'll see a picture of Mum in them.
Okay this ones more a Linda and Paul thing but I just love the idea of this big jumble of clothes that both of them feel comfortable wearing. Gender conformity who!? He needs to remember this was the coolest thing ever and start sharing a wardrobe with Nancy.
