On 6 March, Paul and Jane went skiing in Klosters, Switzerland.
Steve Turner: [...] Two days later Paul and Jane crossed the English Channel and drove to the small Swiss ski resort of Klosters, near Davos, for a two-week vacation. The Beatles had spent three days in Obertauern, Austria, the previous year filming skiing sequences for Help!, and this introduction to the sport had given Paul the appetite to learn to ski properly. The couple rented La Casa Rosemarie, a chalet on the road to Davos overlooking the town and the Alps beyond and built by local restaurant owner Tino Meisser for his daughter.
Every day in Klosters Paul and Jane started at 9:00 a.m. with their twenty-two-year-old ski instructor, John Christoffel, and were taught until 4:00 p.m. Their visit wasn’t announced, and so no journalists or photographers trailed them. Even Christoffel wasn’t told the identity of his new students and didn’t discover it until he casually asked Paul what he did for a living. At the time Paul was driving his Aston Martin to the ski lift, and he just put on a record and said, “This is what I do.” The record was “Michelle.” Christoffel wasn't aware of any problems between Paul and Jane. As far as he could detect, they were a happy couple, both keen to learn as much as they could in the short time available. On some evenings the three of them remained together after the lessons to eat or drink. On one night Christoffel took them to a town hall dance in Saas where bands played traditional Swiss folk music on accordions, clarinets, and upright basses.
Steve Turner: In the bathroom of the chalet Paul began writing his song “For No One,” at first with the title “Why Did It Die?”
PAUL: I suspect it was about another argument. I don't have easy relationships with women, I never have. I talk too much truth.
[...]
It’s a song about rejection. The breakup, or marking the end of a relationship that didn’t work, has always been quite a rich area to explore in a song. Having been through it a few times – as I suppose a lot of people have – it was an emotion I could relate to, and it seemed like a good idea to put into a song because probably a lot of other people could relate to it too. In the song, I’m talking about two people who’ve broken up, but obviously, as with any writer, it all comes from your own experience, and inevitably you’re talking about yourself.
There are two short lines: ‘She wakes up / She makes up’. Then you have long lines after the two short ones. ‘She takes her time and doesn’t feel she has to hurry / She no longer needs you’. Then this: ‘And in her eyes you see nothing / No sign of love…’ It’s a horrible moment when you’ve broken up with someone, and you look at them – this person you used to be in love with, or thought you were in love with – and none of that old feeling is there. It’s like it just switched off too, and it’s not great to be on the receiving end of that.
[...]
Jane Asher and I were together for around five years, so at the back of my mind I expected to marry her, but as the time got closer, I think I also realised it wasn’t right. You can’t ever put your finger on it, but when Linda came along, shortly after Jane and I broke up, I just thought, ‘Oh, I dunno, maybe this is more right.’ And then when Linda and I got to know each other, I felt, ‘This is more me; I’m more her.’ And there were little things with Jane where we just didn’t quite match up. I loved a lot of things about her, and I will always admire a lot of things about her. She’s a wonderful woman, but little bits of the jigsaw weren’t quite fitting.
One of the verses of the song reads as follows:
«she says that long ago she knew someone, but now he's gone, she doesn't need him».
Jane had started working for the Bristol Old Vic theatre company, and rumour has it that she had a parallel relationship with a colleague in the company, the actor David Weston. She had previously worked with him in "A Masque Of The Read Death" and "Romeo and Juliet", in 1966 they starred in the play "A Winter's Tame" and in 1967 they travelled to the United States with the rest of the company for a four-month tour of Romeo and Juliet. In 1997, it was the first and last time Paul said anything on the subject.
PAUL: I don't remember the breakup as being traumatic, really. I remember more one time when she was working at the Bristol Old Vic and she'd got a boyfriend in Bristol and was going to leave me for him. That was wildly traumatic, that was "Uhhhh!" Total rejection! We got back together again but I had already gone through that when we eventually split up. It seemed it had to happen. It felt right. I liked her a lot and we got on very well. She was a very intelligent and very interesting person, but I just never clicked. One of those indefinable things about love is some people you click withand some people who you should maybe click with, you don't. Whatever.
Although Paul did not mention the name of the alleged boyfriend, according to some (unreliable) sources it would be Weston, but so far these are just rumours... Despite the infidelities they continued the relationship for almost three more years.
"For No One" was one of two Jane-inspired songs that appeared on the Beatles' "Revolver" album.
The other track was "Here, There and Everywhere". Although there are no statements from Paul stating that the track was written with Jane in mind.
PAUL: My favourite line is ‘Changing my life with a wave of her hand’. I look at that line now and wonder where it came from. What was it? Was I thinking of the queen waving from the royal carriage? Or just the power of the little thing. The power of doing hardly anything. She waves her hand and she’s changed my life. It summons up a lot.
...
On 20 March, Paul and Jane returned from their holiday in Klosters. On 24 March they attended (along with the rest of the Beatles and their wives) the premiere of the film 'Alfie', in which Jane starred alongside Michael Caine and Eleanor Brown.
The actor Michael Caine many years later told a very interesting story that happened during the filming of this movie.
Michael Caine: Jane Asher, the young actress who was playing one of my many girlfriends, had a bedroom scene with me in which she appeared to be clad in one of my shirts and nothing else. As this shirt was not transparent and was about the same length as the mini skirts that were all the rage at the time, we thought that modesty was being upheld and that there was nothing prurient or salacious about the scene. However, Jane happened to be the girlfriend or maybe even the fiancée of Paul McCartney of the Beatles at the time, and we were discreetly informed that Mr McCartney did not approve of the length of my shirt, nor the amount of Miss Asher’s leg that it exposed, so before we shot the scene our wardrobe department had to cut up one of my spare shirts of the same design and add about a foot to the length of the original one. With the shirt now reaching well below Jane’s knees, Victorian standards of modesty were restored, except that with a shirt of that length, I should have been seven feet tall… but it was a comedy, so what the hell.
...
A year after making his purchase, Paul finally moved into his new home on Cavendish Avenue.
Barry Miles: In late March 1966, Paul was able to move in. His possessions were brought over from Wimpole Street and as a thank-you present for having him live there for two and a half years, Paul had the outside of Wimpole Street decorated. Wimpole Street remained very much the model, and the beginning, Cavendish Avenue had a similar feel to the Ashers'.
John Dunbar: "There was a kind of salon round at the Ashers, there were three kids, and they had a lot of people around all the time. Cavendish Avenue was kind of like Wimpole Street. Obviously with a lot more room and it was Paul's own place.
At Wimpole Street he had never been able to entertain his friends in privacy, or reciprocate when people invited them to dinner except by taking them to a restaurant. Paul began life in Cavendish Avenue with a series of dinner parties and people round for lunch or afternoon tea.
Philip Norman: Their domestic life at Cavendish, amid the Magrittes and James Bond gadgets and 'working-class posh, was unpretentious in the extreme. Jane was an excellent cook and, in that pre-feminist era, accepted her role was to prepare meals and otherwise care for the man of the house. Several years before Paul's much-publicised renunciation of meat, the cuisine was largely if not entirely vegetarian. She was likewise a gracious hostess when his relations came down from Merseyside to stay. Jim McCartney was a frequent visitor, with his new wife Angie and his newly-adopted small daughter Ruth. Jane was especially kind and attentive to Ruth, teaching her to cook, sew and crochet. "The two of them were always taking me on outings, like to Hamleys toyshop, Ruth says. 'However relieved they may have been when it came time to give me back to my mum, they never showed it.' Despite Jim's enormous pride in his son's new home, Ruth recalls, he could seem a little out of his depth there.
'One Christmas when we were visiting, Jane had commissioned family trees for Paul and her- self. The Ashers dated back to the reign of King James, but the McCartneys only did to some late nineteenth century, dirt-poor farmer in Ireland.'
Jane was no Stepford wife, however, and there could be tensions when her independent-mindedness and plain-spokenness ran up against the reality of who her boyfriend really was.
All of Paul's family adored Jane, Jim McCartney especially. After some initial unease, Jim now regularly played host at 'Rembrandt to Dr Richard Asher, in whom he discovered a fellow dictionary addict. "They' d sit in the garden together, doing crosswords, Paul's stepsister, Ruth McCartney, remembers.
Geoffrey Giuliano: The couple's life in St. John's Wood soon settled into a hypnotic domesticity centered around their need for privacy and space. Jane generally did most of the cooking, and was said to be quite a culinary whiz although Paul tended to prefer a good hearty Liverpool fry-up to anything too fancy. After Linda Eastman moved in following McCartney's stormy split with Asher in 1968, Wings insider Jo Jo Laine reports that the once-elegant townhome was soon reduced to a smelly, dog-hair-covered "shit hole," completely taken over by the sexy American photographer's uninhibited love of all things free and natural. But for the moment, anyway, Asher's eminent good sense and taste reigned supreme.
Tony Barrow: Jane spent a huge amount of time decorating Paul's new home to her personal taste, selecting fresh wallpaper throughout and choosing beautiful carpets to match. Everything pointed towards a wedding. Paul and Jane soon started to entertain visitors and throw small but lavish dinner parties just like an old married couple.
Geoffrey Giuliano: Unfortunately, despite their finely tuned domesticity, living virtually in the heart of London tended to attract the fans. Completely surrounded by a high brick wall, the London hideaway also sported a menacing-looking front gate covered in thick iron sheeting. The gate opened mechanically from the inside after prospective visitors had been cleared via an intercom. More evenings than not the intrusive buzzer would sound every few minutes, poked at by fans and all manner of wandering loonies and brazen opportunists. True to his public, however, McCartney would generally drop what he was doing and trot out to sign autographs or pose for a quick snap from a blinding sea of clattering cameras.
To those closest to the couple it now seemed a certainty that they would soon marry, a sentiment publicly encouraged by Asher herself in several interviews granted to the media at the time. "I am not Paul's wife– but yes, we are going to get married," she told the Sunday Mirror.
"We won't be married for a while yet, but when it happens we've got a family planned. First we want a boy and then come what may. There's no particular reason why we are not getting married right away, except that we're both pretty young... I shan't give up my career unless it interferes with our being together."
In a 1967 Interview in the Daily Express, she had this to say about her future plans with McCartney:
"I love Paul. I love him very deeply, and he feels the same. I don't think either of us has looked at anyone else since we first met... I want to get married probably this year and have lots and lots of babies. I certainly would be surprised indeed if l married anyone but Paul."
Philip Norman: And Paul himself, caught outside his electronic gates, looked up from his Aston Martin with the geniality that never seemed to falter, listened to the question, considered and replied: “Just say that when you asked me that, I smiled.”
Geoffrey Giuliano: But all was not roses. For Asher an especially irksome facet of McCartney's Beatle business was his perhaps overly attentive catering to the fans. She was more embarrassed than jealous of the hordes of screaming girls who gathered whenever Paul was around. Being from the theater, Asher didn't particularly have to worry about her professional life overflowing into her private world. When the curtain fell it was time to switch off and be herself. The same could not be said though for a Beatle. As such, McCartney was hounded from dawn to dusk, pursued and put upon by willing females from six to sixty, and he quite frankly loved it.
Tony Barrow: Jane refused to accept that the Beatles' fans were of any long-term importance. She objected to Paul depending so much on the adoration of 'Beatle People.' On one occasion she lost her temper in my hearing and asked why Paul did not see for himself that the affection of the fans was trivial and shortlived while her true love for him was deep and permanent. I only saw glimpses of angry moments between them but I heard about many stormy exchanges that ended with one or other partner walking out in a huff. This sort of stuff was particularly embarrassing to both while Paul was living under the same roof as his "in-laws" at the Asher family house in Wimpole Street.
Geoffrey Giuliano: An example of how this kind of devotion to the fans can carry with it potential for trouble at home is a little encounter remembered in Beatle historian Bill King's superlative Beatle-fan magazine, by aficionada Marianne Goldsmith:
My sister and I lived with our parents in St. John's Wood, which was close to Paul McCartney's house and the Abbey Road studios. One evening a party was going on next door and an Aston Martin was parked in our driveway. I had to go and ask if the car could be moved. Guess who it belonged to? Yes, Paul. So he came out with Jane Asher and said he was just going. I managed to say, "Please can I have your autograph?" And he turned to Jane and said, "Have you got a thingy?" And she gave him a pen. I produced an envelope for him to sign. His hand glided across it. He put, "To Marianne, Love Paul McCartney xxx." As he handed it to me my hand touched his and I stuttered, "Thank you very much. I don't know how I can thank you." He said, "What about a kiss?" I think he had been drinking. So I leaned into the car, forgetting about Jane, and kissed him. My head swooned, and before I knew it, he had driven off into the night.
(April 1966)
Philip Norman: Paul felt the need of a hideaway more private than Cavendish or even the house in Cheshire he'd bought for his father. As powerful a consideration as intrusive fans was the taxman, so bitterly invoked by George, with help from John, on Revolver. Under Harold Wilson's Labour government, top earners paid income tax as high as 98 per cent. If Paul didn't wish to become a tax exile - which he emphatically didn't- one of the few ways to reduce his liabilities was to acquire yet further property. This time, obeying the call of the 'Mac in his name, he decided it should be in Scotland. Jane, that born-and-bred Londoner, was all for his acquiring somewhere they could spend time together, away from nosey photographers and fans, and set about researching suitable properties. One quickly materialised in Kintyre in the remote western Highlands, a narrow peninsula whose south- westerly tip is a savagely beautiful headland known as a 'Mull. Seemingly beyond range of the hardiest Beatlemaniac, it also had a peculiar appropriateness for someone of Paul's mixed Scots and Irish ancestry. Many of the earliest migrants from Ulster to Britain had settled in and around Kintyre; and on a clear day at the Mull, the coast of County Donegal in the Irish Republic was distinctly visible. In the spring of 1966, Kintyre residents Mr and Mrs J.S. Brown decided to sell their High Park Farm, having run a small dairy herd there for the past 19 years. The farm was situated five miles from the peninsula's only substantial sertlement, Campbeltown, and 14 from the Mull. The price, for the three-bed- room farmhouse, outbuildings and 183 acres, was £35,000. The Browns had already shown two prospective buyers the property when the Campbeltown solicitor handling the sale told them Paul McCartney would be flying up from London by charter plane to view it. He duly arrived in the Campbeltown taxi, accompanied by Jane; farmer's wife Janet Brown took them round and before they left cooked them a meal of ham and eggs. Mrs Brown later commented, with true Highland terseness, that 'You Couldn't meet nicer.'
Howard Sounes: Paul introduced himself to the neighbours. 'He wanted to meet his neighbours, and he came to see us [with] Jane Asher,' recalls Katie Black, who welcomed the Beatle ito her cosy kitchen at Tangy Farm. The Blacks were musical, Archie Black loving nothing better than a singsong around the piano, and Paul joined in, though Mrs Black's elderly mother was unimpressed when the music went past her bedtime. One night when they were all having a session downstairs, the old lady stomped on the floor. "What is that noise?' she asked her daughter when she came upstairs to ask what she wanted. "Mother, it's Paul McCartney." "l don't care if it's Winston Churchill, I'm not having it!"
Philip Norman: On 23 June, Kintyre's weekly paper, the Campbel town Courier, confirmed the rumour that a Beatle had bought High Park Farm and gave a detailed reconstruction of Paul's visit 'in sunglasses, with Jane in pyjama' (i.e. trouser) suit. Next to the story was a picture of Janet Brown at her stove, holding the same frying pan she had used to cook their ham and eggs. It was, so Paul told the Courier, 'the most peaceful spot I've ever come across in the world'. The farm stood on a slope down to a gentle valley, with spectacular views over both land and water. In the foreground was a small loch; further away, a fringe of white dunes marked Machrihanish Bay, one of many vast, deserted, empty beaches in the vicinity.
(June 1967)
Of the five miles separating the property from Campbeltown, two consisted of a rutted, boulder-strewn track impassable to all but the ruggedest vehicles. There was no sign of other human habitation on any side; the nearest, another all farm, was three-quarters of a mile away. As usual in the Highlands, the remote past remained very much part of everyday life. Above High Park Farm stretched a massive upland named Ranachan Hill, containing the remnants of an Iron Age fort. Paul's domain encompassed the Puball Burn, a natural spring that had given mountain-fresh water for thousands of years, and a 'standing stone, a Pictish monument predating the Roman conquest of Britain. This, too, was shown in the Campbeltown Courier, under the headline "Something Old... Something Very New." The arrival of a Beatle, the paper said, "provides just about the biggest imaginable contrast of ancient and modern." That arrival was by no means universally welcomed. Kintyre people were staunchly traditional churchgoers and Sabbath-observers, protected from the outside world by their peninsula and deeply suspicious of strangers. Even fellow Highland Scots who attempred to join the tight-knit community were known as 'white settlers. We had no Swinging Sixties here, recalls Campbeltown taxi-driver Reggie McManus, who was to become familiar with the rock-strewn road to High Park Farm in years to come. 'And a lot of people thought we were going to be invaded by hippies with all their drug-taking and free love. You might almost have said an alien had landed on the Mull.' Fears of rock stars getting high at High Park Farm and stoned figures slumped under the standing stone were soon assuaged. The Browns didn't move out until the following November and it was several months more before Paul returned with Jane to spend their first night on the property. Thereafter, they often came for weekends, sometimes with friends but more usually by themselves. 'Everyone realised he was just looking for a place to escape to, where he could be himself Reggie McManus says, 'and that he only wanted to be left alone.'
...
Despite his apparent happiness with Jane, Paul began a parallel relationship with model Maggie McGivern.
The Daily Mail, April 12, 1997:
It took six months before their association, as Maggie puts it, turned from friendship to love. The Beatles had been recording their Revolver album, released at the end of summer 1966. One evening McCartney, John Dunbar and some friends returned from Paris with some demo tapes of the album and played them for Maggie.
‘There was something in the air that night and that’s how it all started,’ she says. ‘He ended up staying the night and we went to bed. It was wonderful. The next morning was one of the most previous moments of my life. We didn’t say much but it was such a tranquil, pleasant feeling — made all the more so because we left things unsaid. He stayed with me until lunchtime and we chatted and larked about. Everything with Paul was so natural. From that moment on he used to come around regularly.’
By this stage The Beatles had stopped doing live performances and tours but McCartney was putting just as much effort into recording. Maggie was frequently abroad on modelling assignments.
‘When we were having our love affair, I hardly phoned him,’ she says. ‘He used to find me wherever I was, and that was fine as far as I was concerned. He did tell me that Jane Asher had moved in with him at his house in St John’s Wood and I remember saying that it meant nothing to me. Throughout the relationship I never pursued him — I just didn’t think about him having other women. My view on relationships has always been that if something works, it works. If it’s meant to be, let it be. Besides which, I had a busy life, and I was very busy living it. Our relationship was a secret from day one, at first because we didn’t want Jane to find out, and later because we preferred it like that. We hardly ever went to parties. We would occasionally go to restaurants but normally we’d walk his dogs in Regent’s Park or go for drives in the country. We craved isolation and I for one did not want to become an overnight superstar — I certainly wasn’t ready for that emotionally.’
Secrecy, of course, was vital for the continued success of their relationship. Maggie, who now lives in Brighton and works as a rollerblade instructor, says:
‘I don’t believe celebrities when they say they can’t keep affairs secret. We managed it quite well for more than three years.’
(Paul and Maggie at Paul's house, 1967)
John Dunbar: She was a very earthy, working class girl. Unlike Jane.
Maggie: In those days everyone was quite loyal. More to Paul rather than to me because I was an unknown entity. It wasn’t like today where news of such a liaison would be everywhere within three minutes.
Howard Sounes: When Jane was away from home, Maggie further says that she and Paul slipped over to Europe for illicit holidays. 'They saw each other on and off for quite a few years,' says Miles, noting that Maggie was 'only one of many.'
Peter Ames Carlin: They went out in public when Jane was out of town; they vacationed together; she came to Beatles recording sessions. The appeal seemed obvious: McGivern was beautiful, warm, and intelligent, but didn’t challenge Paul or rival his authority in the way his independently wealthy and famous girlfriend did. Jane’s dedication to her career, which kept her out of town and thus unavailable to his whims, was another problem. Worse, Jane was rumored to have had her own extracurricular romances and almost left Paul for an actor with whom she had supposedly been having an affair during her season with the Old Vic theater company in Bristol. The celebrity couple nevertheless held their relationship together, albeit tentatively, and with a cast of seconds in perpetual orbit around them.
Maggie was not the only woman Paul saw in Cavendish while Jane was away.
Christopher Sandford: An air of sexual possibility charged McCartney's pad, too. Apart from three weeks or so on the road, he spent much of the summer at his new London home. Activities included strumming a guitar, making cut-ups, rolling joints, tinkering with his free-form sculptures in the basement and squiring around a prodigious number of actresses and models. In fairness, however, it should be noted that, for Paul, a lack of conventional beauty wasn't necessarily a handicap. It was enough that his companion be 'arty', or enjoyed a concomitant morality. Such women fairly threvw themselves at him whenever Jane wasn't around, and once or twice even when she was. A businessman calling by appointment at Cavendish Avenue was struck by his meeting a young brunette dressed in what appeared to be a swimsuit, 'sitting demurely on a chair in the hallway [like] a job applicant.' Mal Evans, it's said, always recalled arranging a shift system on Paul's behalf, as well as the inevitable moment when, owing to sheer weight of numbers, one girl on her way in met another one on her way out. McCartney tolerated the administrative lapse with composure. 'He laughed and told them both to leg it upstairs and wait for him. They did.'
...
Before going on tour for the last time, Paul adopted his first pets.
Barry Miles: One of the first things Paul did on moving in was buy an Old English sheepdog puppy. He called her Martha, and she became the inspiration for one of Paul's best-loved songs. She grew huge, with tangled hair.
Paul tried to call her Knickers, but Jane was unwilling to walk around London with a dog called Knickers, so Knickers became Martha.
(Paul, Jane, Martha and one of their cats, 1968)
...
The Beatles went on tour again (and for the last time) in August 1966. During the trip, there were rumours about Paul and Jane.
Tony Barrow: In Seattle, Paul was questioned by journalists over a rumour that he was about to get married. Gossip had spread through the city suggesting that Jane was due to fly in to join Paul. The word was that a wedding cake had been ordered and a bridal suite reserved at a local hotel. A reporter said: "Mr McCartney, would you please confirm or deny reports that you plan to mnarry Jane Asher here in Seattle this evening." Playing along at first, Paul grinned broadly and said: "Its tonight, yeah!" Then he added more seriously: "No, she's not coming in tonight, as far as I know. I do hope it's not true. I'm going back to Los Angeles tonight so if Jane flies in I'm not even going to see her, let alone marry her!"
At another conference Paul stated: "I'm probably going to married to Jane Asher." When asked by reporters, Jane declined to comment, "hurried to her dressing room and slammed the door shut".
The Beatles returned home shortly afterwards.
Howard Sounes: After their last grueling concert tour, the Beatles took time off to pursue independent projects. John went to Spain to act in Richard Lester's film Howl Won the War, Ringo kept him company. George travelled to India to study the sitar with his new friend, Ravi Shankar.
Paul remained in London, in mid-September he travelled with Maggie McGivern to Paris.
The Daily Mail, April 12, 1997:
She described a trip to Paris in 1966 with John Lennon and The Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein. All of them flew into France separately — Lennon had been filming abroad and Epstein had been away on business. Maggie and Paul, she says, traveled apart ‘as part of keeping the relationship secret’. During the five-day trip the foursome stayed at the same Paris hotel where she and Paul shared a luxury suite.
‘It was a marvelous holiday,’ she says. ‘… just walking around the streets of Paris. My abiding memory is of me, John and Paul lying under the Eiffel Tower, gazing up at it. We couldn’t go up because we would have been recognised, and we were masters at the art of avoiding people. Throughout the relationship we never met in obvious places. We would go to places like auction rooms in South Kensington, and say “whoops — fancy meeting you here”.’
...
Thanks to Jane, Paul met Leslie Cavendish, who would become the Beatles' hairdresser.
Leslie Cavendish: [...] Suddenly, a slim young woman walked in through those glass doors into the reception area. I recognized her at once: Jane Asher. Who wouldn't, at that time? Her photographs were all over the press, on billboards and buses. Not only had she co- starred in one of the summer's hit comedies, Alfe, with the dashing man of the moment, Michael Caine-but for three years she'd been the girlfriend of the one and only Paul McCartney. Jane was what we used to call an English rose", delicately featured, clear-skinned, sensuous but not overtly sexy She was wearing a fashionably short dress, but it was her hair that caught the eye. It was thick, luxuriant, and a warm strawberry blonde. As an apprentice to Roger, I had occasionally washed and blow-dried that luscious hair.
But now that I was a junior stylist myself, she was out of my domain. As she spoke with Joanna, the receptionist, I noticed how her hair fell over her shoulders and then divided, half resting in front, the rest down her back. She wore a heavy fringe, cut just above the eyebrows. I wasn't the only one to notice. As if drawn by her aura, all of the staff looked up from their work. To my surprise, Joanna began to lead her towards me. "Roger says he's too busy to take care of her today" the receptionist whispered. "I know you've done her hair before. Can you step in?" "Sure, no problem," I said, as nonchalantly as I could. In truth, I was more than a little apprehensive. It was a privilege, of course, to work on that magnificent mane, belonging to such a famous client. But, at the same time, it was no small responsibility. Before leaving, Joanna only added to my nerves: "She's a bit frustrated that Roger isn't available, OK?" I nodded confidently with the tight-lipped smile of that qualified hairdresser I had now become, as if to say, "Leave it in my hands, I'll take care of it." Before I had time to think out my strategy, Jane was taking a seat in the black leather chair. "Good morning," she said. "How are you today, Leslie?" She sounded cordial enough, though her disappointment was obvious. I suppose she remembered me as Roger's apprentice, which I had been only a year earlier. "I'm doing fine, thanks, Jane. What can I do for you this morning?" I guess she must have noticed the effort I was putting in to make her feel comfortable. She smiled and even seemed to relax a little into the chair, resigning herself to how things seemed to be going. [...] I asked her about her current projects, and she began to tell me about her latest play, a production of A Winter's Tale that had premiered at the Edinburgh Festival. As she spoke about her role as Perdita, a peasant who turns out to be a princess, I got the feeling that her frustration was beginning to recede. She was a charming girl, not much older than myself, and I remember thinking that she did exhibit both the simplicity of a peasant and the elegance of a princess. I had to give it to McCartney. He had great taste in women.
As I held up the mirror for her to see the back of her head, she admired herself and smiled with childlike surprise. "Leslie, that's just the way I like it," she said. I was mightily relieved - and proud that I had resisted my temptation to rush the job. "By the way," she then added, "do you ever make house calls? My boyfriend needs a haircut. Would you be free this afternoon? He would prefer it if you came to our place. It's in St John's Wood." My boyfriend, she had said. Paul McCartney. The Beatle. The Mop-Top. One of the four most famous heads of hair in the world. The very hair that swishes around before millions of screaming fans. And she wants me to cut it, at the Macca's own home, in St John's Wood. [...] "How about six p.m.?" I said to Jane. "Fine," Jane said, fishing inside her handbag. "I'll give you the address." She pulled a notepad out of her bag and scribbled on one of its pages. When she passed it over and I saw the address, 7Cavendish Avenue, I said: What a coincidence. My surname is Cavendish." "It must be fate, then, Leslie," she said with a smile. "Don't you think? I'll tell him you'll be over at about six." It certainly was fate. My life would never be the same again.
——
Sources: Beatles '66: The Revolutionary Year by Steve Turner / The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present / Many Years From Now by Barry Miles / Paul Mccartney: The Life, Philip Norman / Anthology / Blackbird: The Life and Times of Paul McCartney by Geoffrey Giuliano / John, Paul, George, Ringo and Me: The Real Beatles Story, Tony Barrow / Fab: An Intimate Life Of Paul McCartney by Howard Sounes / The Cutting Edge: The Story Of The Beatles' Hairdresser Who Defined An Era by Leslie Cavendish /