MY INTERVIEW WITH

PAUL McCARTNEY

BY COREY LEVITAN

    Like many other Beatle fans, I watched VH1's Town Hall Meeting with Paul McCartney last week, waiting for the question I sent in to be posed.

      "Over the years you've expressed a fear of growing old in songs such as 'When I'm 64' and 'Lonely Old People,'" I began my query, figuring the reference to an obscure "Venus and Mars" tune would impress Sir Paul.

       "If you could somehow reach back and contact the young Paul -- the guy you see in those black and white news reels -- what would you tell him growing older was really like? And, while you had his attention, would you warn him what was going to happen to John?"

      It was a pretty good question, I thought, and stood a decent chance.

      I mean, I could have asked "Is that 32-year-old man in Britain really your illegitimate child?" or "Did Linda have a mastectomy?" But I'm guessing those questions would not have been selected.

       And this was my only chance, since McCartney's publicist at Rogers & Cowan did not even extend the courtesy of a return call when I requested an interview.

      As the VH1 special began, host John Fugelsang (German for no hosting ability) announced with a dazzled smile that 3 million questions had arrived for McCartney. Was I supposed to be happy about the fact that mine would probably not even be looked at, much less asked?

      "What do you mean by 'Flaming Pie?'" one fan's question was read, referencing the name of McCartney's new album. "'Flaming Pie' sounds like a mix of heartfelt ballads, blues and the kick-ass stuff. Which do you prefer to play?" another was read.

      Sham! These were questions answered in the press kit! Not only did they seem specially selected for insipidness by Paul's publicist, they might have even been written by him. (No wonder he had no time to return calls!)

      You know what, I don't care. In 1984 I conducted my own interview with Paul, during which I asked everything I needed to know for a lifetime. And I didn't need VH1 or Rogers & Cowan to set it up.

      I was 19 years old and, shall we say, not exactly a winner in the game of life. (Observe the bi-level hockey haircut and the Just Shirts outfit from the mall.)

      It was my first trip to England and I had my sightseeing priorities straight. Stonehenge, shmonehenge. I needed to cross Abbey Road like the album cover.

      I convinced my not-exactly-winner friends, including Eric, who's now a religious devotee (I guess the only way you can top meeting Paul McCartney is by meeting God), to dress as George and Ringo to my John. And I swear it had to be fate because sitting on a curb at Abbey Road when we arrived was a guy dressed like Paul, wearing a suit and no shoes, waiting for a John, George and Ringo to complete his own Beatle fantasy.

       Paul's name was Mark, he was from Toronto, and he brought his girlfriend to take pictures.

      Creating a Kodak moment on Abbey Road is not as easy as it sounds. You have to make sure you stay exactly in step, stare straight ahead and, most importantly, do not get run over. This is a major intersection gridlocked for nearly 30 years by idiotic tourists such as us. The lines painted on the streets indicate a crosswalk, but some drivers are so fed up they use them as a bull's eye, speeding up to mow down the regular processions of inconvenience.

      After we accomplished what I thought would be the Beatle highlight of the trip, Mark (the fake Paul) asked if we wanted to see the real Paul's old house, the one he owned before moving to Scotland in the late '60s. It was only two blocks away at a street called Cavendish.

      It was a pretty plain-looking two-story affair on less than half an acre. Nothing special, except for the high wall that needed to be climbed in order to take a photograph.

       This was an important thing to me, to have a picture of a house Paul McCartney didn't even live in anymore. Meanwhile, earlier that day the Rosetta stone -- probably the most significant rock in history, translating hieroglyphics into Greek and unlocking the mysteries of ancient Egypt -- held my attention for exactly 30 seconds before I bolted out of the British Museum, bored.

       Soon as my hands grabbed hold of the wall, they were thwacked by a broomstick. An elderly lady was shooing me off.

      She opened the front gate to see we were just harmless American college students, and she felt bad for tenderizing my knuckles.  She said Paul would be back at 7 p.m., if we wanted to meet him, but not to say she clued us in.

      This was a crazy person, we thought, or someone playing a joke on us. Paul hasn't lived here in years!

      Naturally, none of us trusted our own Beatle knowledge strongly enough to take the chance. Whatever we had to do that night, we blew it off and staked out on Cavendish.

      At 7:15, Paul poked his head out the front gate to grab his afternoon paper.

       Calling this moment a dream does not do justice to its surrealism. When I planned this tour of Beatle landmarks, I had no idea one of them would be a Beatle himself.

      "You looking for me?" asked the lilt I had heard hundreds of times on TV.

      I lied earlier. Our interview wasn't one I conducted with Paul, but one he conducted with me.

      "Where are you from?" Paul asked.

      "Hummina-hummina, Long Island," I said in my best Ralph Kramden.

      "Oh, me and Linda spend the summers out there, you know."

      "Hummina-hummina, I know," I responded.

      I had waited all my life to meet a Beatle but couldn't think of anything to say while it was happening. ("We're not worthy" had not been invented yet.)

      "This your first time in England?" Paul queried. I had no idea why he was talking to us.

      This continued for eight or nine minutes, Paul discovering everything the world wanted to know about Corey Levitan and his friends.

      Of course I learned nothing about Paul, except that all the stereotypes rang true for that brief moment in time. He smelled like marijuana residue, seemed so friendly it bordered on flakiness, and like a pushover dad allowed his seven-year-old kid James to crawl all over his back.

      "You wanna take some photos?" he asked. We started snapping before the question entirely left his lips.

      After making sure everyone got a picture with him, Paul turned around to speak to someone in the house.

      "Gotta run!" he told us. "Enjoy the rest of your holiday!"

      The gate closed.

      After that we drove around London shouting "We met Paul McCartney!" from our rental car, and what a thrill it was to elicit from supposedly reserved Britons the response of an upraised middle finger.

      On the flight home my plane hit turbulence, and I was convinced that meeting a Beatle was God's way of throwing me a bone before taking me out in an airline disaster.

      I survived the flight. But the sad thing is that even though I went on to make rock journalism my career, to this day I have to admit that my most significant musical encounter had nothing to do with my job. 

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