Linda's singing on RAM | Page 2 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Saltie said
@sir walter raleigh, I realise Paul was depressed after the breakup but it had taken its toll on the others too. Paul always had people singing along to his songs if they happened to be around, nothing unusual there. Linda supported Paul just by being there for him; however, I do find it somewhat ironic that it was Linda’s family that helped Paul get into his mess in the first place. Their misguided foray into the business affairs of the Beatles acted as a red flag to a bull to the others, kick starting decades of legal battles. If Paul and Linda’s songwriting partnership was done for monetary gain then I’m even less impressed. Paul’s acquisitiveness regarding money started around this time, not something many people felt comfortable with. Despite the debacle over Allen Klein, John, George and Ringo were hardly left poverty stricken.

Linda’s talents lay in photography. I find it strange that so many people give far more credence to her very slight musical efforts than to her considerable abilities in her specialised field. I see no reason why her particular talents should be considered less important than those of her husband, however brilliant he may be.  

I don’t think it affected the others like it did Paul, because it affected them all differently.  All the rest of them already had their “outside” things and George had really kind of been ready to move on for ages, he may not have liked how it ended but I don’t think he was that upset that it did end.  Paul didn’t, Paul had put all his energy into the Beatles.  And Paul was also a convenient target, because he was, as they liked to say “keen” and he was a workaholic and he was particular about how he wanted things done on his songs, so he was an easy to scapegoat.  

Funny some people still try to make him the bad guy when the court found for Paul’s side of the case – mainly because Paul’s side of the case was found to be mainly truthful whereas the other side was found to have on occasion misrepresented things as well as Klein well…not being straight in his business dealings.  (or tried to…like the debacle where John convinced George and Ringo to shall we say not quite be truthful in the depositions about their “unanimous vote in big band decisions” thing—which had been decided when Ringo joined because Ringo was worried his voice wouldn’t hold as much weight in band decisions being the last to join –which George and Ringo did and then when it came time for John to be deposed he totally caved and admitted that that whole unanimous decision thing had been the case and the thing about “3 against 1 so it’s Klein” really was against the normal operating procedure of the Beatles prior to that).  

As for the Eastman’s, what misguided foray?  They waded in in what seems to have been good faith and were treated like garbage by John and Klein.  And Paul didn’t actually push them at least not initially – he had given John other suggestions for possible managers which they could agree upon, John rejected all those suggestions as well because John only wanted Krooked Klein because Klein was Team John and Yoko.  Say what you want about the Eastmans but they had a long reputation as decent businessmen in how they treated their clients and they were offering a very fair, straightforward, easy to understand deal and most likely would have done for all the Beatles what they did for Paul, made them a lot of money, kept them from getting ripped off, but otherwise stayed out of the way.  I can understand why they wouldn’t have wanted them, being Paul’s in-laws(or soon to be in-laws) but let’s not pretend they were anything like Allen Klein.  

As for money, yes just because they have a lot of money they should let a crook rob them?  You don’t have to be starving to recognize a crook for a crook and you know, NOT sign a deal with him.  I mean “Well he’s crooked but I like him, so I’ll totally let him cheat me” is not usually much of a “thing” you know.  That’s not greedy or acquisitive, that’s smart.  As for some of others, I think sometimes some of it was less “greed” and more insecurity on Paul’s part.  He wasn’t sure, it wasn’t his area of expertise, he was still learning and so he was just over sensitive to being cheated or people trying to bilk more money out of him because he was Paul McCartney .  As the years went by I think he got a little more easy going about it, not because he let go of more money, but because he just learned to read people and situations better with regards to monetary matters and knew better how to not get into situations that might be problems.  

Actually George DID have money problems.  After finally managing to get finally disentangled himself from Klein(who for some reason seemed to screw George over worse than the rest of them), in the 80’s he had some bad deals involving producing films and lost a lot of money.  One of the reasons the Anthologies finally got done was due to George’s financial situation, kind of gave him the push to say yes to doing them.  Not really sure how Ringo’s finances are, I’ve never actually heard anything, but aside from when he had some serious addiction issues WAY back when, he doesn’t seem to get involved in anything too complicated so I wouldn’t be surprised if his finances were relatively stable.  And John, the reason John did well after Klein is because Yoko basically took over running the financials, and she was good at it. 

Now as for Linda, Paul McCartney , with and without Wings, was something like the second most successful chart act of the 1970’s after Elton John I believe(I can’t remember if that was in the US, the UK or both but I know he was at least top 4 in the US) – he had a massively successful, critically successful tour with Wings Over the World.  So lots of people liked Paul McCartney and considering Linda was right there on some of his biggest hits, while I don’t think she musically contributed to their success(though apparently she did make the helpful suggestions for the reggae part of Live And Let Die ), his success wasn’t “in spite” of her, and I don’t really think it was so much because “John and Yoko”, that was part of it but I think it was mainly just that Paul really had a severe depressive episode during that breakup time period(for example he gave the example of how once he was laying in bed with his face in the pillow and he had the hardest time convincing himself to move his head so he could finally breath, that’s sign of the sort of “paralysis” that often occurs with severe depression, what he went through during this period is really no joke for himself or Linda, everything he and Linda described suggests bouts of severe depression).  And this was greatly at odds with anything he experienced before, he was a doer, a goer, always moving, lots of energy and ideas and this just stopped everything.  It was probably traumatic particularly once he started to come out of it, being afraid of slipping down that hole again.

So I think as he came out of it, Linda gave him a sense of security and a feeling of protection and that is the main reason. I think another part of it may also have been he was also very serious about his marriage and making it work – and he knew himself and his sex drive, which was apparently pretty prodigious and figured it would be better if he kept his family around him to keep him honest as they say. 🙂  And I’m pretty sure Linda figured that was the best option too.  And before getting on Paul’s case, let’s just remember that rock musicians are known for sleeping around, it’s not like “horrible Paul everyone else can be faithful why couldn’t he”.  It’s because everyone else(well you know what I mean I’m not claiming 100% cheaters, I’m sure there are a few honest ones among them) could NOT do it either, and they wanted to avoid that trap.  Maybe you think George’s solution of cheating frequently on his wives and his wives putting up with it was a better solution, but this is what worked for Paul and Linda.  

But IMO it wasn’t so much to convince people she was a great musician(and he didn’t try to do that for the most part, usually it was that she was good enough really) as being in the band gave her a reason be there, and in an active way, rather than a passive way.  They can’t act like they didn’t know what they were getting with your wife being part of the proceedings and decision making, if your wife was a member of the band before they were.  Really they both said as much, she was in the band because they loved each other and he wanted her there, not because she was the world’s greatest musician, but on the other hand of course he was going to support her efforts to be supportive of him by NOT talking trash about her abilities.  Would we really expect him to insult her or rather that he would say nice things about her when it came up in the press and how does that equal “trying to convince everyone she’s a great musician”? 

I don’t think anyone gives more credence to her “slight” musical efforts, but those are the ones where she’s treated rudely by those who take personal affront to her presence so people want to defend her.  Whereas her talents as a photographer are obvious, she’s rarely insulted and so she doesn’t need much defending in that area.  The squeaky wheel gets the oil as they say.