Linda Eastman grew up in Scarsdale, a wealthy suburb in New York. She attended the University of Arizona where she discovered her passion for photography. At the age of 19 her mother was killed in a plane crash. It was too hard for her to stay home and try to help the family, so she retruned to Arizona. There she married a fellow student, Joseph Melville See, in 1962. Together they had a daughter, Heather, but divorced three years later.
She later moved to New York City, where in 1966 her big break came: after coming across an invitation to a press party for the Rolling Stones, her career took off. She was soon in demand for her work, and she photographed such notables as Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, The Who, Simon and Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, and Otis Redding.
In 1967 she went to London to photograph the Beatles and was introduced to Paul McCartney at a nightclub. Paul recalls this night in his new biography, Many Years From Now: "The night I met Linda I was in the Bag o'Nails watching Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames play a great set.... [Linda] was there with the Animals, who she knew from photographing them in New York.... The band had finished and they got up to either leave or go for a drink or a pee or something, and she passed our table. I was near the edge and stood up just as she was passing, blocking her exit. And so I said, 'Oh, sorry. Hi. How are you? How're you doing?' I introduced myself, and said, 'We're going on to another club after this, would you like to join us?'" They had a lovely evening, and he invited her to the launch party for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts' Club Band a few days later.
Paul stated to Vanity Fair: "A lot of the girls I had met were just girls. She was a real woman." Paul stayed with Linda in New York in 1968 and later that year she went with him to England. On March 12, 1969, when Linda was four months pregnant, the two were married at London's Marylebone Register Office. Paul's fans were devestated by his marriage. Linda had to endure their hatred, coming home to see "American Slut Go Home" graffitied on the walls.
Things only got worse when Paul talked her into touring with Wings, the enormously successful band he put together in 1972 and took on and off the road until 1981. "I'm only there because we like being together," Linda said of her musical partnership with Paul, but her unpolished vocals invited derision. She thought of quitting numerous times, but Paul wouldn't hear of it. She endured ridicule from musicians and fans alike.
On a tour of Tokyo, Paul was busted for possession of marijuana. However, her husband was not the only McCartney to have a run-in with the law: Linda herself was arrested for marijuana possession three times, once in 1975 and twice in 1984. She told PEOPLE in 1993: "I think hard drugs are disgusting, but I must say, I think marijuana is pretty lightweight."
Linda was always an animal lover. As a young girl she used to bring home the injured dogs, sqirrels, and chipmunks and care for them. She went on to spend 25 years of her life as a vegetarian, campaigning tirelessly to save animals from medical experiments as well as ovens. In 1989 she published Linda McCartney's Home Cooking, a bestselling collection of vegetarian recipes. Two years later she launched McVege, a line of vegetarian products that has grown into England's most successful, with sales of more than $56 million in 1997.
In December 1995, Linda went for a routine checkup at London's Princess Grace Hospital. The doctors discovered a malignant tumor in her breast. That month she had it removed and soon began chemotherapy. She was unable to attend Paul's knighting ceremony on March 11, 1997 because of cancer treatments, but by July her hair had grown back. It appeared to everyone that Linda was on the road to full recovery. But in March of 1998, it was learned that the cancer had spread to her liver. The same disease that had taken Paul's mother from him at the tender age of 14 was now taking away his wife, soul mate, and best friend, Linda.
"The only 11 days we ever did not spend the night together," Paul told PEOPLE in 1993, "was when I got put in jail in Japan for pot. That's quite amazing." At 56, Linda McCartney succumbed to breast cancer, with her husband and her four children--Heather, Mary, Stella, and James--by her side. She was in Tucson, Arizona at the family's 150-acre ranch. Paul's statement of her death is as follows: "the kids and I were there when she crossed over. They each were able to tell her how much they loved her. Finally I said to her, `You're up on your beautiful Appaloosa stallion. It's a fine spring day . . . and the sky is clear blue.' I had barely got to the end of the sentence when she closed her eyes and gently slipped away."
The many songs Paul has written for Linda include "My Love," "No More Lonely Nights," "The Lovely Linda," and "Somedays."
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Jane Asher
The many songs Paul has written for Linda include "My Love," "No More Lonely Nights," "The Lovely Linda," and "Somedays."
