Read Online Paul McCartney by Philip Norman - Free Book Online Page A

particularly loved the vast chestnut police horses whose duties, in those riot-free days in Liverpool, were purely ceremonial. Watching them go through their dignified paces, he little dreamed of the thoroughbreds he himself would one day own and ride.
    Jim McCartney might be a humble cotton salesman who’d left school aged 14, but he had a capacious mind and memory and a thirst for knowledge he’d always striven to pass on to his sons. He prided himself on his vocabulary and religiously filled in the crossword puzzles in his morning Daily Express and evening Liverpool Echo. When an unfamiliar word cropped up, he’d send the boys to check its spelling in the multivolume Newnes Family Encyclopaedia, which for him represented the fount of all knowledge. Paul, as a result, was the one in his class at the Inny who knew how to spell ‘phlegm’. His cousin, Bert Danher, caught the crossword bug from Jim sufficiently to become a puzzle-compiler in later life.
    Jim was a treasury of proverbs and sayings, which in Liverpool can verge on the surreal: ‘There’s no hair on a seagull’s chest…’; ‘It’s imposausigable…’; ‘Put it there if it weighs a ton’ (shake hands); ‘You’re about as useful as a one-legged man in an arse-kicking contest’. If ever Paul or Mike wanted to postpone a boring task, their father’s response was always ‘D.I.N.’, for ‘Do it now’; if they were quarrelling, he’d tell them to ‘let it be’, or forget it. Another oft-repeated maxim summed up Jim’s whole civilised approach to life: ‘The two most important “-ations” in life are “toler-” and “moder-”.’
    ‘Dad was always encouraging us to make something of ourselves,’ Mike McCartney says. ‘That was his mantra–giving us the confidence to go out there and be something in that big old world.’
    But even for a singular boy like Paul, the world of his boyhood seemed to hold little promise or excitement. Mid-Fifties Britain may have had a stability later generations would envy, but its downside was stifling dullness and predictability. The British had had quite enough excitement with the Second World War, and now wished only for everlasting peace to enjoy all the commodities that had lately come off the ration, like eggs, butter and sugar.
    Youth had none of the power it would later enjoy–in fact, was barely recognised at all. Around the age of 16, boys turned into men and girls into women, dressing and talking like their parents, adopting the same values, seeking the same amusements, soon marrying and ‘settling down’ in their turn. Only university and college students, a tiny minority, were permitted any drawn-out transition from adolescence to maturity, albeit still in the same tweed jackets and frumpy frocks as their elders.
    The war had made popular music a vital part of everyday life, but as yet it had no specific appeal to the young. The BBC’s Light Programme gave employment to dozens of dance orchestras and bands, all of whom performed live on-air, in programmes still with a wartime flavour: Calling All Forces, Workers’ Playtime, Music While You Work. Record-sales were already big business: the New Musical Express had started a ‘Top 12’ chart in 1952 and extended it to a Top 20 in 1954. Every new song was also issued as sheet music so that it could be reproduced, Victorian-style, on parlour pianos at home.
    The biggest hits were by American artistes like Guy Mitchell, Frankie Laine and Doris Day, though Sinatra-esque British crooners like Dennis Lotis and Dickie Valentine inspired large female followings. The songs–written by those mysterious ‘professionals’ for whom Jim McCartney had such respect–tended to be faux-Italian or -Irish ballads, themes from the newest Disney film or novelty numbers like ‘How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?’
    A few successful vocalists came from Liverpool, notably Frankie Vaughan, Michael Holliday and Lita Roza. But, like the comedians for which