Speaking with Sir Paul’s official biographer Barry Miles, it turns out the music legend has always been desperate to be a regular guy – I wish which led to one incident where he was denied entry to a night club.
Miles, who is working on The People’s Beatles Project, which aims to crowdsource an archive of Beatles’ fan pictures, said: “He desperately wanted to be a normal person..
Wherever possible he would take a bus somewhere…and was very anxious to stay in touch with what he regarded as ordinary people.”
“There was one incident at the height of Beatlemania in 1965 when he actually drove right down through France to the south coast in disguise.
One week after beginning his road trip across France, Paul McCartney had a rendezvous with The Beatles’ roadie Mal Evans in Bordeaux.
Prior to meeting Evans, McCartney spent the night in a Bordeaux club. Wearing the moustache and glasses disguise he had prepared to allow him to travel incognito, the club staff wouldn’t let him in.
I looked like old jerko. ‘No, no, monsieur, non’ – you schmuck, we can’t let you in! So I thought, Sod this, I might as well go back to the hotel and come as him! So I came back as a normal Beatle, and was welcomed in with open arms. I thought, Well, it doesn’t matter if I’ve blown my cover because I’m going to meet Mal anyway, I don’t have to keep the disguise any longer. Actually, by the time of the club I’d sort of had enough of it. Which was good. It was kind of therapeutic but I’d had enough. It was nice because I remembered what it was like to not be famous and it wasn’t necessarily any better than being famous.
It made me remember why we all wanted to get famous; to get that thing. Of course, those of us in the Beatles have often thought that, because we wished for this great fame, and then it comes true but it brings with it all these great business pressures or the problems of fame, the problems of money, et cetera. And I just had to check whether I wanted to go back, and I ended up thinking, No, all in all, I’m quite happy with this lot.
The writer and friend of the Beatle even recounted an incident just few years ago when Paul thought you could still buy a bottle of whisky for two quid.
Miles added: “I remember just a few years ago when I was at his studio, he asked one of the roadies to go out and buy him a bottle of whisky, because he had people coming over, and he gave him £2. And the roadie said, ‘Well it’s gone up since then Paul.’
Defending Sir Paul, he said: “In the end, you can’t be normal. You can’t be that famous for that many years and still be in touch with ordinary people. “All the people surrounding him are essentially yes men, even though they don’t intend to be and he doesn’t intend them to be. But no one’s going to argue with him obviously because that’s not what you do.”
To get On The People’s Beatles Photobox project, and to submit your images via Photobox, click here.“There must be tens of thousands of pictures taken by fans out there. So this is an archival project really. The people who took them must be in their seventies by now.