Yeah Yeah Yeah (Beatles/Paul McCartney)

3. Don't Kill the Messenger

October 1965
Toronto

Paul

I woke up the next morning hungover and jetlagged. Throwing the pillow over my face, I lay there until the commotion from outside started to filter into my brain. It was a sound that I'd heard many, many times before.

With a groan, I threw the pillow on the floor and stalked over to the window to open the thick curtains. Squinting at the sunlight, I peered down to the pavement in front of the hotel where, sure enough, several dozen people and a few photographers gathered.

The cat was out of the bag: a Beatle was in town.

I let the curtains fall and walked back to the bed, where I picked up the telephone receiver.

"Could you please send up breakfast up?" I asked. "And get me a transatlantic line to England if you don't mind, thank you."

Twenty minutes later, I had a plate full of scrambled eggs, pork sausage, and deep-fried potatoes in front of me. An hour after that, the hotel operator rang to say that the international line was ready. I carefully dialed the number to Jane's bedsit in Bristol, then lay on the bed listening to the crackle as the call was put through. I imagined it bouncing from station to station halfway across the world until, finally, it was connected.

"Hello?" Jane's voice came on the line.

"It's me," I said. I heard a deep exhale, which possibly could have just been the shitty connection.

"We've said enough, Paul," she replied after a moment. The line went dead and, after a moment, started to beep angrily in my ear.

I don't know why you should want to.... Should wish to go away? I don't know why you don't want to play? I don't know why you... should want to hide? The song from the previous day was still floating in my head. But I can't get through to you, which is probably for the best since a proper call would have cost me 500 quiiiiiiiid! I sang the last bit out loud. I don't have much to say anyway, ohhh la-la-la.

"Fucking hell," I muttered under my breath. We'd made a gigantic mess of things. Just before Jane had left London, we'd had an extravagant row over whether she should go. We'd both said things we didn't mean, but a few things that we very much did. And then she'd left for Bristol, and I'd left for the studio.

And now I was in bloody Toronto besieged in my hotel. I suppose the silver lining was I was very much accustomed to this exact situation. I'd spent most of the past two years stuck in hotel rooms or camped out in tiny dressing rooms, unable to leave for fear that we'd be mobbed. I'd survived off of grotty hotel food and, many nights, bowls of Cornflakes for dinner. So much for touring being a glamorous thing, eh?

Oh, yeah, sure, we were on the top of the world. But that didn't mean that the whole thing wasn't mad. Because it was.

The phone rang, startling me.

"Mr. McCartney," a woman said in a harried voice, and I could hear rapid-fire, desperate voices in the background. "You have a--"

A knock on the door.

Cautiously, I stood up and walked over. Was it a fan? And, if so, was it the sweet sort who just wanted me to sign a record or the more devious kind who would try to barge in? Hesitantly, I peered through the peephole in the door. Then I blinked a few times to be sure that what I was seeing was real. Had he really gotten off his arse to come to collect me?

"I know you're in there," John called. "I can see your shadow beneath the door. Oldest trick in the book, you know."

I opened the door to find my bandmate standing there wearing checked trousers, a black shirt, and a white jacket. He had on tortoiseshell specs, and a thick woolen hat pulled down low, effectively hiding his trademark hair.