Jane Asher and Paul McCartney (English Version)

SUMMER OF LOVE

After the party, Linda Eastman flew back to New York, but not before trying to contact Paul.

Peter Brown: She tried to contact Paul by phone to learn that his unlisted number was billed to Harry Pinsker. Pinsker worked for Bryce-Hamner, and all the Beatles' unlisted phone numbers were billed to him for security reasons. Later that night Linda phoned and asked for Paul. Pinsker explained to Linda that she had the wrong number, but Linda wouldnt believe him. She kept calling back, insisting that it was Paul trying to trick her. Pinsker finally had to unplug all his telephones to get some sleep.

But Linda did not give up and managed to get Paul's number.

Howard Sounes: That weekend Paul went home to Liverpool. Linda phoned Cavendish while he was away and spoke to Paul's houseguest Prince Stash. "I said, 'Paul's in Liverpool.' She said, 'But what are you doing?' I said, 'I'm watching a movie,' and she said, 'I want to come over.'" So Linda came to Cavendish Avenue and fell into bed with Stash, who didn't think he was betraying Paul, because he didn't see Paul and Linda as serious. "He didn't take her to Liverpool, for instance." Still, there was a strange vibe at the house that weekend. While Prince Stash and Linda were rolling around together, Paul telephoned and asked Stash to move out until he got back, not because of Linda, says Stash, but because Paul had heard people were coming over and helping themselves to his drugs. In particular, Stash's friend Brian Jones, nowa hopeless junkie, was dipping into Paul's supply of legal pharmaceutical cocaine, which, according to Prince Stash, the Beatle kept at the time in a jar on the mantelpiece, as several of their friends did. Brian had promised but failed to replace what he had taken from the coke jar, and now Paul wanted everybody out. So Stash and Linda went to stay with the musician Graham Nash. Stash's affair with Linda became common knowledge in London's rock community. "I was teased extensively by Roger Daltrey and Hendrix and so on, because, you know, Linda had gone around," says Stash, ungallantly.

"She was not a groupie, she was somebody who loved love ... In modern days, people say, 'Oh, what an ungrateful bastard, he sleeps with his friend's girlfriend!' But that's not at all the way it was. You've got to put these things in context - everybody had very open relationships, and it wasn't cool to be jealous."

(Everyone seems to have forgotten that at the time Paul was in a relationship with Jane Asher, not Linda).

Geoffrey Giuliano: A few days later, Linda Eastman packed up her gear and reluctantly caught an early morning tlight back to Manhattan.

Howard Sounes: Yet when Linda flew back to New York her conversation was not about Prince Stash, but Paul McCartney.

Danny Fields: Flying back to New York the next week, after Linda had spent some time photographing Stevie Winwood and his band, Traffic, she found herself sitting next to Nat Weiss, who knew Linda (and her family). "She told me then that she was in love with Paul," Nat recalls. "She said, 'I've got to meet him again, I want to marry him.' Well, lots of girls wanted to marry Paul; get in line. But I sensed this as a defining moment for her, she was in love, no doubt about it."