‘The world said I was dead – in so many ways I was’: Paul McCartney on the lost years after the Beatles | Paul McCartney
The strangest rumour started floating around just as the Beatles were breaking up – that I was dead. We had heard it long before, but suddenly, in that autumn of 1969, stirred up by a DJ in America, it took on a force all its own, so that millions of fans around the world believed I was actually gone. At one point, I turned to my new wife and asked, “Linda, how can I possibly be dead?” She smiled as she held our new baby, Mary, as aware of the power of gossip and the absurdity of these ridiculous newspaper headlines as I was.