PAUL TALKS JIMMY SAVILE

 

Paul McCartney is rubbing his eyes, literally and metaphorically. Literally, because when we meet this week he has just flown back from playing a private gig in Las Vegas. Metaphorically, because I put it to him that he should be rubbing his eyes over the fact that he still has a hectic touring schedule, is on TV tonight showcasing his latest album, has gigs and an album planned for next year and will be headlining a benefit gig for Hurricane Sandy shortly. And, his peers The Rolling Stones play in London next week, with other big names from his era also prominently in action.

With McCartney, the enthusiasm and passion for his day job is undimmed. “Yeah, I do rub my eyes at this,” he admits. “We all do. I didn't foresee it. The Beatles were on record as saying we didn't think it would last 10 years. But it kept on and kept on and it kept being good and we seemed to be the people who could do it. Now there is a great young generation of people who can also do it, but it tends to be that the people packing them in are the people who have the material, have hits and – I think that's important – songs that people know. I think they have stagecraft, they have an ability with an audience.

“I'm still cautious. I say, 'just put one show on sale'. I don't want to ever get too blasé. I don't want tickets not selling but then they ring me up and say Chicago's 40,000 seats sold out in six minutes, it's a record, and I didn't know it was even possible to sell out in six minutes, then you think of Madonna and Gaga and U2 and Coldplay and all the people who have played there and I just broke the record.

“What it does for me is that it's not that I'm being kind of cute about it, it's more the fact that when a big show like that sells out in six minutes, I then know when I go on to that stage that those people were that keen to buy a ticket that I know they are my friends and we can have a good time. It's a feeling that's not to be bettered. And I realise that in the early days half the reason for your nerves was you go on stage and think will they like me, will they like our songs?”

I'm talking to McCartney in his Soho Square office. He's excited about the TV special tonight, Live Kisses, in which he performs songs from his last album of standards Kisses on the Bottom, a mischievous title which is actually about signing kisses on a letter, a line from the opening number, “I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter.” In a stylish black-and-white film, he performs as vocalist with no guitar, alongside Diana Krall on piano, a top jazz band and guest stars Eric Clapton and Stevie Wonder. But we talk also (unusually for him) about his family, about John Lennon and The Beatles in the early days, about his happiness with his new(ish) wife Nancy, but also about the darker side to that era of innocence, the current clamour over Jimmy Savile, child abuse and inappropriate sexual relationships with adolescent girls in the Sixties and Seventies.

 "Jimmy Savile was a little bit suspect"

Few rock stars have made any comment at all, though some must be more than a little worried. The biggest star of them all has said nothing until now. And, of course, he knew Jimmy Savile well, as Savile used to compere The Beatles' Christmas shows, and, well before their worldwide fame, travelled with them.

“It's very difficult to talk about it,” McCartney says. “The thing is we knew Jimmy and we worked with him, he was a DJ, an MC on some of the shows. We were working in Yorkshire and we were still living in Liverpool. And we were coming back from a gig and he came in our van over the Pennines. We gave him a lift. He told us all these stories about his wartime exploits how he had been buying chewing gum and nylons and all that, and selling them. He had all sorts of stuff going on. He was the older hustler guy, and we were very amused by these stories because he was a great entertainer, but we dropped him off at his place outside his house and we said, 'can we come in for a coffee?' and he said, 'oh, no, not tonight lads'.

“When he'd gone we thought, 'why doesn't he let us in, what is it, because most people would have let us in that we gave a lift to?'. So we always thought there was something a little bit suspect.”

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That Hippie Penny Lane