Paul McCartney on life after the Beatles: "I was depressed"
Paul McCartney hasn't been too forthcoming in the past about how he felt in the wake of the Beatles breaking up -- until now.
During a session for Radio 4's "Mastertapes" series, McCartney revealed exactly how hard the split hit him. And how hard are we talking? Hard enough to cause him to drink heavily and consider quitting the music business all together.
"It was difficult to know what to do after the Beatles. How do you follow that?" he told host John Wilson. "I was depressed. You would be. You were breaking from your lifelong friends. So I took to the bevvies. I took to a wee dram. It was great at first, then suddenly I wasn't having a good time ... I wanted to get back to square one, so I ended up forming Wings."
Speaking of Wings, McCartney admitted that his critics might have been more than a little right in their assessment of his follow-up project featuring late wife Linda McCartney -- not that he's forgiven them for their poor reviews. "We were terrible. We knew Linda couldn't play, but she learned, and looking back on it, I'm really glad we did it," McCartney said. "But you still remember the names of the people who gave you really bad, vicious reviews. Charles Shaar Murray shall ever be hated."