“Let’s remember that, or rather, let’s listen to it, for the thousandth time, The Long and Winding Roadthe temporary swan song of a beetle who couldn’t get used to the Beatles splitting up. “The long and winding road/That leads to your door/Will never disappear…“This poignantly melancholy voice takes you on a strange loop where memories of adolescence surface, curiously mixed with a myriad of intriguing déjà vu…

“Discover F, Art de vivre in full

Popular music is superior to classical music in that it links us to moments we thought were buried in the grave of oblivion. First flings, first heartbreaks, but also first parties, first whisky-cocas… Paul McCartneythe author of the aforementioned song, has retained, though he denies it, a happy nostalgia for an extraordinary adventure which, in his eyes, was as much about the musical revolution as it was about a group of buddies, long united like the fingers of a hand, before the lowered thumbs of John Lennon and George Harrison blew the whistle on the endgame. To the great misfortune of the man who was, in his own way – amiable, amusing and authoritarian without seeming to be – the glue that held together the greatest band of all time. A miracle that lasts, however: at 82, the billionaire gentleman with the less assured vocal chords continues to fill stadiums with his well-oiled but unsurprising performances, mixing hits from his solo career and, of course, those of The Beatles, most of whose songs he wrote with his partner. John Lennon.

Nicknamed “The Cute Beatle” in the band’s golden age, when girls dreamed of getting him into bed, unaware that he had a girlfriend, then a succession of girlfriends, an ignorance maintained by the record company, anxious to maintain a phony virginity as the most effective fuel for maintaining the prodigious financial vein. Sometimes scorned by some of the company’s thunderingBeatlesPaul McCartney, who considered the left-handed bassist too nice to be a real rocker, had to endure a number of setbacks, from his childhood (the early death of his mother when the Liverpool boy was just 10) to his mature years: the break-up of the band, which he did everything to avoid, swindling by the crooked manager Alan Klein, syrupy remixing without his knowledge by Phil Spector, of Let It Bethe band’s last commercially released album, purchased behind its back from the Apple catalog by its “friend”. Michael Jacksonassassination of John Lennon, death of his beloved wife Linda, then of George Harrisonuntil his calamitous divorce from a one-legged fury, which cost him tens of millions in the process.

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The sunny existence of the enchanting McCartney has also been, under an appearance of doll-like joviality, a long and winding road full of ruts and potholes. Everything has been said about the extraordinary trajectory of the son of a factory worker and a nurse, with Irish roots – like Lennon. ad nauseam. Let’s just recount the broad outlines in the elliptical manner of a song: meeting the young George Harrison on a bus, then John Lennon two years later at a church fair, erratic musical beginnings under various names, two years spent in Hamburg in a club in the red-light district, then increasingly regular engagements at Liverpool’s Cavern, where they were spotted by Brian Epstein, their first manager. Signature band with drummer Ringo Starrby George Martin, artistic director of the Parlophone label, who was initially hostile, then hesitant, then convinced.

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What’s next? A fantastic ride of hits, an insolent succession of triumphs crowned by record sales of six hundred million records, the first eternal indestructibles on the podium, followed by Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley. Yesterdaya 100% McCartney track, remains the most covered song of all time (2,500!). Sir Paul’s signature has become a flourishing business with the output of a multinational. I remember a concert at Bercy, some thirty years ago. Invited into the dressing room by a friend, who was having an on-again, off-again romance with one of the band’s musicians, I thought I’d stumbled upon a lightly lit atmosphere such as rock mythology distills. Instead, I saw bankers with their noses on their calculators. Oh, cruel sight! On stage, however, McCartney kept the flame alive. Hey Jude, he urged the delighted crowd to resume a cappella, was one of his well-honed routines that always made an impact. Watching him, and above all hearing him, was like stepping back in time, with a string of gold trophies hanging from the thread. Let It Be and other addictive sweets, to Wings-era hits such as Bluebird, are enchantments for the ears, right up to the recent little gems thrown in at regular intervals, such as the sublime Jenny Wren or the poignant The Kiss of Venus.

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Paul McCartney believed that the Beatles together were stronger than their four individualities. Not just as songwriters, but as a “force”. The four of them had changed attitudes and influenced the private and social behavior of so many people that it’s safe to say they played a significant role in this civilizational earthquake. What Paul and the others believed in was responsible freedom, be it in the length of your hair if you were a boy, the use of drugs, but also in your conceptions of love and sex, which became your business. This was far from being the prevailing opinion in the 1960s. A quiet octogenarian who, like any self-respecting Englishman, cherishes his countryside and rides his trusty Appaloosa for hours on end, the vegetarian activist remarried to an American businesswoman has stopped dyeing his hair, giving way to a graying maturity that suits him better. Paul and the Beatles? A thwarted love story.

In a key sequence at the end of the documentary Let It BePaul explains to John how he thinks the Beatles should proceed as a “band”, to a not-so-convinced John Lennon. As Michael Lindsay-Hogg quite rightly confided to me, “Paul didn’t break up the Beatles. Time alone has broken the Beatles.“. If he hadn’t succeeded in music, Sir Paul would have wanted to be a sheep farmer. Sheep raised by a beetle – anything’s possible, since the Beatles first appeared on earth.

MICHAEL LINDSAY-HOGG – FILMMAKER AND PAINTER: “Paul was always more involved in the band than anyone else”

“My first contact with Paul was in 1966 when the band asked me to make their first videos. They’d stopped doing TV shows because there were too many safety issues. It stressed them out completely. They appreciated Ready Steady Go, the weekly rock show I produced for TV. The Beatles liked the original way I staged the bands. They asked me to come and visit them at Abbey Road Studios. I was nervous, because they were the four most famous people in the world at the time. Paul invited me to join them for lunch between recording sessions. They were all intelligent and committed to the project, but Paul was more so. The “Boys”, as they were then known, quickly accepted my ideas. Paperback Writer and Rain were shot classically in the studio to please their manager Brian Epstein, and the next day at Chiswick House, an 18th-century mansion surrounded by extensive parkland, this time in 35 mm, with a whole lot of staging. These were the Beatles’ first video clips. Two years later, in 1968, Paul asked me to film Hey Jude and Revolution. At the preparatory meeting, I launched:

“We have a big problem with Hey Jude.

– Which one, Mike? (When Paul called me “Mike” and not “Michael”, it didn’t bode well).

– The four-minute chorus at the end…

– So what? What’s the problem, Mike?

– What am I going to shoot for four minutes? No matter how talented, beautiful and famous you are, the video is going to be deadly boring.

– Any ideas?

– Yes, one. A crowd of anonymous people join the chorus. Not the usual fan-club girls, but different people: housewives, workers, the village letter carrier, people of color…

– A guy in a turban,” suggested Paul, “why not also a young guy in a hotel bellman’s uniform? Go for it!”

Hey Jude is probably the Beatles’ most famous video.”

JEAN-MARIE PÉRIER – PHOTOGRAPHER: “I remember an afternoon spent driving around in his Rolls.”

“I met Paul in 1963. At the time, I was working on Salut les copains, a weekly music magazine for young people launched by Daniel Filipacchi. At the time, it had a circulation of over a million copies a week. Unique in Europe. When he heard about this, Brian Epstein, their artistic agent, phoned me to ask me to come and photograph them in London. Paul seemed the friendliest, John could be scathing. I photographed them on the spot, and we went down to the street, to the neighborhood where I took the famous photo in front of a red door. I came back regularly to Salut les copains. One day I call Paul and he says: “Come to Abbey Road, we’re recording Sergeant Pepperyou’ll shoot us between sessions.” I stayed a week. Paul had been impressed when I had turned up once with Françoise Hardymy girlfriend at the time. That day, I won points. I also started working for them, because Brian Epstein had asked me to do covers of 45s. I made eight of them, including Penny Lane. I remember an afternoon in Paul’s Rolls driving in and around Hyde Park.

It was magical. We became quite close around that time. The last time I saw him was in 2014 at the Pavillon Populaire in Montpellier, during the first retrospective devoted to the photos of Linda, the mother of his three children, who died of cancer. I’d never seen anything like it: cops were on patrol, guys had combed the exhibition grounds as if the President of the United States had just landed! Paul arrived by jet with Nancy, his third wife, and members of his family. During the pincer movement, he recognized me and waved to join him. I’d obviously changed, but Paul has an incredible visual memory. Tapping me on the shoulder, he said to his entourage: “What fun we had with that guy!” We chatted a bit about the past, like two old Swinging London veterans, and then he took off as fast as he’d come, back on his jet, surrounded by his bodyguards. A royal highness. Another world!”

LAURENT VOULZY – CHANTEUR-AUTEUR-COMPOSITEUR: “He’s the only star who makes me experience something unreal”

“My passion for McCartney is inseparable from my discovery of the Beatles when I was in high school. What a slap in the face! But of the four, Paul fascinated me the most, because for me he’s the genius of the band, even if John Lennon and, towards the end, George Harrison composed marvels. I loved his friendly face, his gentle side that meant he never brought it on, even though he’s a monster of melodies and unstoppable hits. The first time I met him was in 1976 on a TV set at the Maison de la Radio, for the Telethon. Drucker introduced us just as Paul was stepping out of his dressing room onto the stage. Shaking his hand was like falling off the poster. I remember saying to him, “If I make music, it’s because you exist.” He replied: “Thank you! For my part, I keep trying to make the perfect song, but I can’t.” It was wonderful, but very modest of him, because Penny Lane and many of his musical jewels are perfect songs. From that day on, I made it a habit to go and greet him in his dressing room when he played in Paris. One evening, while he was performing at the Olympia, I was in the balcony with Cathy, my manager, when, at one point, I saw him wink at me. Cathy burst out laughing and thought I was crazy!

Finally, when he sang I Want to Hold Your HandI started clapping my hands, as did the whole room. He winked at me again as he left the stage. When I got to his dressing room, he said to me: “I saw you on the balcony! I loved the way you clapped your hands because you did it exactly the way we did it for the record.” He took me by the shoulder and went back to singing a bit of the song, clapping his hands in that particular way that’s imperceptible to those who aren’t into music. Deep down, McCartney never got over the Beatles’ split. He was a kind of judge of the peace in the band, a kind man who took it in his stride when Lennon and Harrison began to lose interest in the group. Paul still takes great pride in having been part of this adventure. I’ve known a lot of stars, but he’s the only one who always gives me that effect when I see him again: experiencing something unreal.”

In concert at Paris La Défense Arena, December 4 and 5.