Reflecting on the Paul McCartney-Heather Mills divorce settlement, Alex Massie, blogging from the other side of the Pond, observes,
Isn’t £24m pretty fair compensation for having endured Sir Paul McCartney for four years. It works out at £16, 427 a day which, as a per diem, seems quite reasonable…
(Of course if you take the view that she is but a gold-digger, then McCartney can reflect that £24m to tell her where to hop-off is money well spent.)
Quite. Heather’s certainly improved her pre-Paul lifestyle enormously for her four year investment, certainly more so than, say, the return on a University education. And £24m is barely more than nuisance money to Sir Paul.
The whole controversy immediately reminds me of how the Beatles changed their tune on the issue of money as their personal status changed. In their leanest days, before fames hit, they covered Berry Gordy and Janie Bradford’s “Money,” which put forth the cynical view that,
- Your lovin’ gives me a thrill
But your lovin’ don’t pay my bills
Now give me money
That’s what I want
In 1964’s “Can’t Buy Me Love,” one of McCartney’s infamous Silly Love Songs, we see a wistfulness:
- I may not have a lot to give but what I got I’ll give to you
I don’t care too much for money, money can’t buy me love
In “All You Need Is Love,” written when McCartney and his songwriting partner John Lennon were wealthy and newly married, they inform us that,
- There’s nothing you can make that can’t be made.
No one you can save that can’t be saved.
Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be in time
It’s easy.
All you need is love, all you need is love.
Presumably, hallucinogenics drugs also contributed to this newfound economic consciousness.
Toward the end, with 1969’s Abbey Road, however, the message was much more cryptic. In “You Never Give Me Your Money,” McCartney foreshadows today’s events:
- You never give me your money
You only give me your funny paper
and in the middle of negotiations
you break down
I’m not sure how much Sir Paul’s views evolved during the Wings era and thereafter. Economic commentary seems not to have been as strongly featured in them, as I can’t recall any post-Beatles hits with that theme.
