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DrBeatle, you mentioned somewhere in this thread that you consider Steven Gaines and Peter Brown’s book ‘The Love You Make’ to be awful. (I thought it was good but perhaps was biased, having been interviewed by Steve G in the past.) 

This post might interest you.

https://www.facebook.com/gaine…..9222074841

Let us know what you think.

DrBeatle, here it is (this story would make you think he was very pro-Paul; as for the gay issue, I wasn’t struck by it, but S Gaines is gay after all, so some focus on the topic wouldn’t be surprising [note how he calls Paul ‘adorable’]):

In fall of 1980 I was sitting in the living room of Waterfall, Paul McCartney ’s simple, two-bedroom country cottage in Sussex, England, when he asked me if I wanted to smoke a joint with him. 

I met Paul McCartney a few weeks before, in his office in London, when I interviewed him for a book I had been asked to write with Peter Brown, the former COO of Apple Corp, the Beatles’ financial empire, and a trusted Liverpool associate of “the boys,” as he would call them. Peter Brown introduced Paul to Linda Eastman, he was best man at John and Yoko’s wedding, and the least, but perhaps the most charming of his credentials, is that he’s the only real person ever mentioned in a Beatles song, “Peter Brown called to say, you can make it okay, you can marry in Gibraltar near Spain,” from the “Ballad of John and Yoko.” 

Peter Brown introduced me to the Beatles inner circle—family, friends, wives and ex-wives, business associates, and finally the Beatles themselves. I was thrilled most of all to meet John Lennon , who was living in New York. Unfortunately he was uncommunicative, prickly, and justifiably bored of answering the questions of venerating journalists. No matter what I said he sneered at me, and I left the interview feeling a fool. 

Likeable Ringo, whom I interviewed in Los Angeles, seemed to remember little about his life with the Beatles, only the caboose in some sort of smoky, inebriated dream. George Harrison made us a pot of tea in the drafty, vast kitchen of his 120 room estate, Friar Park, in Henley-on-Thames, but he was disappointingly pompous. When I told him I had grown my moustache when I was 19 years old because he had grown a moustache, he shrugged, unimpressed. He spent two hours lecturing me about transcendental meditation and the details of publishing a limited edition of his autobiography, “I, Me Mine,” which is how he certainly must have felt getting out of the shadows cast by McCartney and Lennon. 

Lastly I met Paul at his business office in London’s Soho. He was open, kind, occasionally adorable, and wily. He gave me a candid interview that we both enjoyed, and when it was over he invited Peter Brown and me to Waterfall the following week to spend the day.

Paul and Linda’s house was a lived-in mess, warm and dumpy, with no trappings of money or fame or gold records in sight. There were toys and books and stacks of stuff everywhere, and I was in the cluttered house for a couple of hours before I realized there was a grand piano in the living room. The house was circular, the walls didn’t go all the way to the ceiling in places, and you could hear the toilet flush. When I had the cheek to ask Paul if the lack of privacy was inhibiting to him and Linda, he said that if it was they wouldn’t have made so many babies. They had two children at home, Stella, who was then 9 years old, and her brother James, who was 3, and whom Paul clearly adored. 

Paul told me that he and Linda didn’t smoke grass in the house because of the children. He had already been arrested for marijuana possession in Scotland (for growing plants), in Los Angeles (for which Linda took the rap), and Sweden (for possession), and had just months before spent nine hellish days in prison in Narita, Japan where they caught him trying to bring a half-a-pound of marijuana into the country on tour with his group Wings. 

That day at Waterfall, Peter Brown stayed behind in the house to catch up with Linda while I took a ride with Paul in his brand new Mini. We smoked while he showed me around Peasmarsh, the local village, and his 160 acre farm, on which he raised horses, sheep, and chickens. It was a glorious early autumn day, the English countryside was lush, and I suddenly had this overwhelming epiphany that I was with Paul McCartney sharing a joint. 

So I told him, “It’s really unbelievable to me that I’m being driven around the English countryside by Paul McCartney .”

He thought for a second and said, “Some days it’s really unbelievable to me that I’m Paul McCartney .”

I’ve told the rest of this story in print before, with Peter Brown as the narrator. When Paul and I returned from our car ride all toasty, Paul had to deal with the matter of his daughter Heather, 18, and her new boyfriend. Heather was living in rooming house a nearby town while she finished school, and her landlady had forbid her to have young men in her room unless her bedroom door was open a few feet. Paul asked to meet the young man Heather was dating, and they were waiting for us when we returned. 

Heather’s wide-eyed boyfriend, maybe 20 years old, shuffled his feet and looked at the floor, working hard to remain cool and composed. Imagine how hard it is to meet your girlfriend’s dad for the first time, let alone that he’s Paul McCartney .

Paul, sensing this, dove right in. “What’s your name, son?”

The young man told him his name.

“And what do you do, mate?” Paul asked.

The young man said hesitantly, “I’m in a band, sir.”

“I am too!” Paul said excitedly. “Mine’s called Wings. What instrument do you play?”
After that, the two were off in their own world talking about music. I could see how relieved and happy Heather was. Paul was quite a smoothie and loving dad.

Fifty years later, Paul McCartney and I live in the same town, East Hampton, and once in a blue moon I run into him at a local pub, where he’ll go for a pint and dinner with his wife. I sometimes think about going over and introducing myself to him, and see if he remembers that cruise around his property that I so treasure, but the guy deserves to be left alone and enjoy himself.