Paul At Fifty

By CATHY BOOTH LONDON

In the bucolic Sussex countryside south of London, there's a farm where pheasants and peacocks roam wild. The yard is dotted with cows and chickens, horses and sheep, even reindeer. The owner designed the circular house himself. He built the chicken coops too. His wife is noted for her meatless lasagna and vegetarian burgers. They seem a nice couple, married 21 years, with four well-mannered kids.

Meet Paul McCartney at 50. Or nearly: he hits the mid-century mark on June 18. It's been a little more than two decades since the Beatles, the biggest pop phenomenon ever, broke up. Yet even now the baby-faced member of the quartet who sent girls into spasms of screaming ecstasy on The Ed Sullivan Show back in 1964 is still "the cute one." His stylishly long hair has gone salt-and-pepper. When he smiles, crinkles arc downward from his hazel eyes. He wears loose vests even though there doesn't seem to be any pudge to hide. Otherwise, there's nothing flashy about him: just a pair of old Timberlands on his feet, a wedding ring with a tiny jade heart on his hand and that cheeky irreverence well known to fans of the Fab Four.

"I was thinking, what's this article going to be called?" McCartney asks gamely with a grin. "My bet's on 'Paul at Fifty' so that everyone can go, 'What? Jeez-us Curr-hrist! He's fifty! He isn't, is he? Bloody hell! That makes me old!' That's what they want. They want to use me as a gauge." He laughs and winks. "So use me as a gauge, and have a good time, and thank you very much for noticing me!"

Use me as a gauge. Clever of McCartney to pick that theme. The Beatles, after all, personified the 1960s. Their songs reflected a generation's passage from '50s innocence to '70s disillusionment, from teen love to psychedelic drugs and mysticism. The four clean-cut boys in pudding-basin haircuts who sang of love (yeah, yeah, yeah) became the tortured souls of Let It Be. The other half of the Beatles' famous writing team, John Lennon, is dead, struck down by the gun of a crazed fan in 1980; as a result, Lennon's contributions to the Beatles have taken on mythic proportions. But it's McCartney who remains the icon of the '60s generation.

Turning 50, McCartney is a man who has learned to live with the snide , remarks about his brassy American wife Linda, with the accusation that he caused the Beatles breakup in 1970 and with Lennon's hurtful comments that he was a boring prig who wrote only Muzak. "I still get wounded," he says, "but I've come to the point where I tell myself, 'Give yourself a break. No one else will.' I like ballads. I like babies. I like happy endings. They say domesticity is the enemy of art, but I don't think it is. I had to make a decision: Am I going to be just a family guy, or should I go up to London three nights a week, hit the nightclubs, occasionally drop my trousers and swear a lot in public? I made my decision, and I feel O.K. with it. Ballads and babies. That's what happened to me."

Since November, McCartney has been holed up weekdays in a renovated 18th century mill overlooking England's southern coastline. He is laying down songs in his private 48-track Hog Hill Studio for an untitled album -- his 23rd since the Beatles' breakup two decades ago -- and preparing for a new tour next year. Hog Hill boasts the latest in electronic gear, but there are nostalgic and whimsical touches too, like Elvis Presley's bass from Heartbreak Hotel, the Mellotron from Strawberry Fields Forever and a Megaroids video game. Next to the studio is a cozy kitchen featuring a spread of Linda's veggie foods. Upstairs is a retreat for writing amid the scent of fresh flowers and patchouli.

In between recording sessions recently, McCartney slipped upstairs to talk about life after the Beatles. "I'm only interested in looking back now because I have this misbelief about my life. Did I really get here?" he asks while munching on a cheese-and-pickle sandwich. He stares out at a view of rolling green hills that is a long way from the council housing of his Liverpool youth. "I hear myself telling stories to my kids, and sometimes I ask myself, 'Are you sure about this one, man?' "

Yes, we're sure. James Paul McCartney was the son of working-class Irish parents. His father was a cotton salesman and an ex-jazz trumpeter and piano man, his mother a midwife. As a child, McCartney was a Boy Scout and a bird watcher. His first real instrument was a Zenith six-string, which he played left-handed. In 1960 he was just one of four unknown teenagers performing in the squalor of Liverpool's underground Cavern club. By 1965 the Beatles had stormed America, met the Queen and been hailed as pop prophets. By 1971 -- before any of the four hit 30 -- it was all over, ruined by a bitter business fight.

Yet even now, The Guinness Book of Records lists the Beatles as the most successful group in history, with more than 1 billion disks and tapes sold. McCartney is the most successful songwriter in the history of the U.S. record industry, having penned 32 No. 1 hits, vs. Lennon's 26. McCartney has racked up more gold and platinum disks (75) than any other performer in history. His song Yesterday is the most recorded ever, with more than 2,000 versions.

McCartney's unspoken fear is that he will be remembered only as a pop singer who made pretty records. The Master of Ear Candy, shallow and self-indulgent if catchy and commercial -- and, of course, never as good as his now dead collaborator, Lennon. McCartney's critics forget that he was the prime force behind such songs as Hey Jude, The Long and Winding Road, Penny Lane, Eleanor Rigby and Let It Be. Post-Beatles, he was the most successful survivor, with 17 gold albums and hits like Band on the Run, Ebony and Ivory, Say Say Say and the James Bond theme Live and Let Die. McCartney shallow? It depends on whether one wants hummable riffs or Lennonesque angst.

McCartney's answer to the doubters has been to work. He struggled artistically after Lennon's slaying and his own 10-day incarceration in Japan for marijuana possession in 1980, but he continued to churn out albums, and he hit the road in 1989 after a 13-year absence. His world tour attracted 2.5 million fans, and in the U.S. he was the biggest single act in 1990, beating out Janet Jackson and Madonna.

McCartney is a rich man today, worth an estimated $600 million, although he claims not to know the full extent of his assets. He has become one of the biggest independent publishing tycoons in the world, holding the copyrights to 3,000 songs, including the scores of such musicals as Guys and Dolls, A Chorus Line and Grease, all the songs of his boyhood hero, Buddy Holly, and many other pop favorites. In addition, his London-based company, MPL Communications, has its hand in film ventures like the artsy animated short Daumier's Law, which debuted at the Cannes Film Festival last month.

Up close, McCartney can flash his ever ready charm at will. One minute he's open and sincere; the next he's closed, in automatic public relations mode. He's a clever lad, practical in business matters yet irreverent at heart. He's eager to put you at ease, but he gets miffed if you pry too closely. Just a few friends ever see the McCartney house, set in the forest in Sussex. His & Scottish estate is reachable only by foot across a bog or by four-wheel drive. Decades of Beatlemania haven't dehumanized him, but he has learned to be wary.

McCartney likes to stress how ordinary he is. "One thing that can bring you bad luck is when you start to get bigheaded," he says. His M.B.E. (Member of the Order of the British Empire) medal from the Queen and most of the gold records are put away in storage. He's into organic farming and carpentry. He sent the kids off to state schools. Heather, 29, "theirs" although she is from Linda's first marriage, is a potter. Mary, a dark-haired 22-year-old beauty, works at MPL handling copyrights. Red-headed Stella, 20, studies fashion design. James, 14, is a blond Paul look-alike and a Jimi Hendrix fan who, as a right-hander, has to play his dad's left-handed guitar upside down. The whole family is vegetarian; Linda even has a line of frozen veggie dishes. "Imagine seeing your wife's face looking out from the freezer department at you," hoots McCartney.

This Paul McCartney hardly seems like the man who would sneak marijuana into Japan, who sent unsigned letters to those who offended him or who begrudged money for his father, as some disgruntled former associates and relatives claim. He also seems a long way from the rocker who scandalized the world by admitting he had experimented with LSD, although there's no denying his repeated run-ins with the law over marijuana. Whether McCartney has given up that habit is debatable. He admits to only one vice: drinking Johnnie Walker Red Label Scotch and Classic Coke. "Four, and I'm anybody's," he jokes to friends.

He is mostly Linda's, however. Although he has a circle of acquaintances ranging from fellow musician and Liverpudlian Elvis Costello to artist Brian Clarke, Linda is his best friend. The critics have always carped that she can't sing or play keyboards, that she dressed like a slob and, alas, has hairy legs. She is still dismayed by such pettiness and knows that onstage she seems ill at ease. "I'm an uncomfortable-looking person anyway," she confesses, "but I love playing. It's fun. And, of course, the real truth is, I'm in the band so Paul and I can stay together." Yet she is a professional in her own right. Her forthcoming book, Linda McCartney's Sixties, includes her photos of famous friends like Hendrix and Janis Joplin, whom she knew long before she knew McCartney.

McCartney stands now over the control board, chewing his fingernails. For three days, he has been fretting about just the right sound for one track, a number reminiscent of Abbey Road. Fans are forever pestering him with questions about the Walrus, Rita the meter maid, Desmond and Molly, and, of course, the secret message on Revolution 9. But McCartney refuses to overanalyze the Beatles' songs. "They're just songs," he says. "We never had a theme on a Beatles album, even Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. We kinda knew we were reflecting the times, but if you had asked me then, I would've said the songs just sort of fell out."

It nettled McCartney for years that the songs that fell out were always credited to Lennon-McCartney, never McCartney-Lennon. Time has healed the soreness of their 1970 rift. Sort of. "Even when John was attacking me in the press, I thought he was the same great, lovable, complex guy," says McCartney. "I nearly said hateable, but hateable's too far because he's died. If he were alive, I could say that." He has tried various other collaborators, from Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder to, most recently, Costello. But, he admits, "it would be mad to think I'd written with anyone better since John. He was a one-off, very special guy."

Although he rarely goes to Liverpool today, McCartney is lead patron of a fund-raising effort to turn his old school, Liverpool Institute, into a Fame- type training ground for the musically talented. When the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic asked him to help mark its 150th anniversary, he ventured into classical music and composed a 90-minute choral epic called Paul McCartney's Liverpool Oratorio. It was a brave try for a man who doesn't read or write music. But it turned out to be strangely flat, a criticism that McCartney shrugs off. He was more worried that rock friends would think it "fruity."

When he's not working, McCartney says his list of things to do includes finishing the family sports shed, sailing Sunfishes and painting, a hobby he took up at age 40. Two hundred abstracts, landscapes and portraits of Linda litter their homes. McCartney laughs ahead of time at the reaction this will elicit: "Bloody hell, look at him. Thinks he's Van Gogh, does he!"

He is constantly telling people he's not the big celeb they expect. "Don't you ever feel you've lived a few lives? Well, to me, the Beatles were another life," says McCartney. "Certain people when they get rich wear a lot of fur coats and big diamond watches. I've gone the other way. I'd rather be remembered as a musician than a celebrity," he says, standing up and snapping his fingers, signaling he wants to get back to work.

Last we saw, McCartney was still chewing a fingernail, worrying over a riff in the studio. He didn't look much like McCartney the rock icon. He was just a musician trying to get it right.