Paul McCartney spends time with Linda Eastman

On June 20, 1968, Paul McCartney travelled to the USA for Apple’s promotional activities. His mission was to attend the Capitol Convention in Los Angeles and present The Beatles’ vision for their new label, Apple, to the Capitol Records executives. He was joined by Tony Bramwell, Ron Kass, and Ivan Vaughan.

Upon arrival in the USA, Paul attempted to contact Linda Eastman, whom he had last met in May 1968 during a promotional trip to New York with John Lennon, and who would later become his wife in March 1969.

Actress Peggy Lipton, who had a short-lived romance with Paul in August 1964, recounts in her autobiography that Paul also called her upon landing in New York, inviting her to meet him in Los Angeles. 

The Capitol Convention took place on June 21.

On this day, June 22, Paul and his companions took some leisure time. At some point, they went back to their room, where, to Paul’s surprise, Linda Eastman was waiting for him. In the evening, they went to the home of Capitol Records’s President for cocktails and then to the record company’s barbecue.

After that, they went to the famous LA club, the Whiskey-A-Go-Go. Peggy Lipton came to see him during the night but couldn’t see him until the next day.

(P.S.: Tony Bramwell provided conflicting accounts of the events on those days, so the timeline and sequence are somewhat speculative.)

I was hanging about the bungalow, being generally available, while Paul was writing new songs and rewriting others. Apple President Ron Kass had tried to convince Paul to carry a tape recorder of some sort around with him because he would write incredible song after incredible song and then totally forget them. He would sing an absolute stunner to us in the living room on Monday and then on Tuesday we would ask him to sing that great song he wrote the day before and he wouldn’t have a clue what we were talking about. Anyway, because I was there, hanging around, he started including me in his musical constructions. I got wrapped up that afternoon in the words and intent of “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” and “Back in the USSR.”

Ken Mansfield – From “The White Book: The Beatles, the Bands, the Biz: An Insider’s Look at an Era” by Ken Mansfield, 2007

“The only time I ever, ever saw Linda display any anxiety was the night before she left for Los Angeles,” Robin Richmond says. “She was remarkably, girlishly, coy, and shy and nervous.” Paul had left a message with her answering service (this was before machines; some people use human answering devices to this day, but not many), something like, “Tell Miss Eastman that Paul called and said, ‘Why don’t you come and join me at the Beverly Hills Hotel for a few days?’” Linda found someone to stay with Heather, bought a ticket and was off to L.A.

From “Linda McCartney – A Portrait” by Danny Fields, 2000

The Beverly Hills Hotel, built in 1912 and massively done over in the early ’90s, is a giant pink lodge sort of a building, just west of Los Angeles proper, tucked into twelve florally abundant acres in what was a desert not so long ago, before they brought the water in. […] It is the “Hotel California.” and much more, a perennial player in the entertainment industry and a love-nest in a league of its own. Warren Beatty and Leslie Caron, Jennifer Jones and Norton Simon, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and the John Ono Lennons famously diddled here. […]

About twenty discreet little houses, each with four or five opulent rooms, the bungalows have their own driveway from the street that borders the hotel grounds […] Bungalow five, the most legendary of all the cottages (the preferred love-nest of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, Marilyn Monroe and Yves Montand, etc.), with four bedrooms — these days it is available for $4,000 a night — was PaulMcCartney’s home-away-from-home that June.

From “Linda McCartney – A Portrait” by Danny Fields, 2000

Relieved at how well it had gone we were ready to return to the hotel and leap into the swimming pool again. When we went into the bungalow to change, followed by the trail of girls, we were rather surprised to find Linda [Eastman] sitting there radiantly, totally spaced out, waiting for Paul. She had a joint in one hand and a beatific smile on her face. Paul immediately detached himself from the circus surrounding him and took Linda aside. As I looked across the room, I suddenly saw something happen. Right before my eyes, they fell in love. It was like the thunderbolt that Sicilians speak of, the coup-de-foudre that the French speak of in hushed tones, that once-in-a-lifetime feeling. Paul was struck almost dumb as he and Linda gazed at each other.

Tony Bramwell – From “Magical Mystery Tours: My Life with the Beatles“, 2005

That day had an unusual ending. We had taken a break, and Paul had gone into the bathroom. The suite was laid out with a dining area and living area on one side, separated by a hall that ran alongside with a bedroom at each end and a bathroom in the middle. The door to the hallway was midway between the dining and living areas. With Paul out of the room, I answered a knock at the door and met Linda Eastman for the first time. “Hello, may I help you?” I asked. Speaking through me, not to me, she vaguely replied,“Is Paul here?” Over my shoulder she saw Paul coming through the door that led from the bedroom/bathroom portion of the suite, and wham! She went past me like a Notre Dame football tackle. She full-force embraced him in the doorway, push-pulled him through it, slammed the door shut, and that was the last I saw of him or her that day. (I waited around for about an hour because I had this great idea for a line in “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” that I knew he was dying to hear.) I finally gave up and went home. I am not quite sure what happened that night, but I do know that Linda was with us until I put them on a plane heading east — man!

Ken Mansfield – From “The White Book: The Beatles, the Bands, the Biz: An Insider’s Look at an Era” by Ken Mansfield, 2007

[Paul] found plenty of time to amuse himself in a bungalow of the Beverly Hills Hotel. He staged that weekend what Ron Kass called “The Paul McCartney Black and White Minstrel Show.” In one bedroom Paul installed a beautiful young Hollywood starlet. In the other bedroom he kept one of L.A.’s most famous black call girls. Kass, who was sharing the three-bedroom bungalow with Paul, got to watch his juggling act. He spent the weekend making trips from one bedroom to the other, stopping only to sign room-service bills. On Sunday morning a ringing telephone interrupted the proceedings. It was Linda Eastman. She had flown to California at her own expense and was at that moment in the hotel lobby, speaking to Paul from the house phone.

Paul didn’t skip a beat. He told her to come right on over to the bungalow. She appeared at the door a few minutes later, and Paul brought her right into the sitting room. He knocked on the door of each occupied bedroom and told the girls to dress and split. He and Linda chatted away nonchalantly on the sofa while the Black and White Minstrel Show packed and left in tears. Linda and Paul couldn’t have treated the situation more casually. They seemed just as blase when Peggy Lipton, an American actress who at the time was filming the popular TV series Mod Squad, appeared unannounced on the doorstep of the bungalow to make a declaration of love for Paul. Paul explained he was busy and shut the door in her face. Linda spent the night, and the next day Paul took her sailing with him on the yacht of John Calley, then head of production at Warner Brothers.

Peter Brown – From “The Love You Make: An Insider’s Story of the Beatles“, 2002

That night we all went clubbing again, to the Whiskey-A-Go-Go, where B. B. King and the Chicago Transit Authority (who later shortened their name to Chicago) were playing. The club was hot, dark and crowded. Paul and Linda sat in a corner booth while we acted as a kind of hedge. By a strange coincidence, both Eric Burden and Georgie Fame were in the booth next to us, a fact not missed by Linda or Paul in their state of heightened awareness. Eric and Georgie had been at the Bag O’Nails on the night they had met some thirteen months ago [on May 15, 1967]. Now here they were on the night they had fallen in love. It was a sign.

Paul and Linda left to be on their own back at the bungalow, while the rest of us partied into the early hours.

Tony Bramwell – From “Magical Mystery Tours: My Life with the Beatles“, 2005

On returning to the bungalow, Linda passed around a Victorian cloth drawstring bag stuffed full of grass. In London this bag became her trademark, the legendary ‘spice-bag’ that [Ronnie] Plonk Lane of the Faces wrote about in a song. All kinds of music people started to drop by, like Roger McGuinn from the Byrds. Boyce and Hart, the songwriters for the Monkees, telephoned to invite us to one of their notorious toga parties, a Hollywood version of a Roman orgy. Paul asked me to turn down all invitations so he could spend time alone with Linda. I did, but a leggy young starlet named Peggy Lipton, who had met Paul during their last America tour and still had designs on him, kept calling all through the night.

Tony Bramwell – From “Magical Mystery Tours: My Life with the Beatles“, 2005

[…] “Please, please come over,” Paul said, in one of his waking moments. Well, what else could I do? I went. I actually snuck out of Lou’s house and jumped into my little red Porsche convertible, hair flying in the night air, and whizzed over to the Beverly Hills Hotel. I’d been living with this man for a year. It didn’t matter now. I had to see Paul.

It was four in the morning when I got there.

“He’s sleeping, young lady,” one of the band’s road managers told me, as if to say, “Really, we can’t wake the young prince, now, can we?” I thought to myself, wait a minute, why did Paul call me to come over? I was trying to be cool about it, but I didn’t know how to be cool. Leaving would probably be as close to cool as I could get at this point, but I wasn’t going to give up. I was there. Stuck between the I-should-be-cooI Peggy and I-want-something-to-happen Peggy, I just sat there into the night as the road manager chatted me up. He’d seen The Mod Squad and wanted to know all about it.

“Well, luv,” he eventually said, “we have a boat excursion planned for tomorrow morning and I’m sure Paul will be coming along.” Okay. My mind was speeding. I decided to just sit there and charm the roadie and wait until Paul woke up. And that was exactly what I did. I sat there until around eight o’clock in the morning, nervous as could be. Even worse, I found I still had feelings. Big bad feelings I knew I shouldn’t have had. […]

Peggy Lipton – From “Breathing Out: A Memoir” by Peggy Lipton, David Dalton, Coco Dalton, 2005

WITH PAUL TO HOLLYWOOD (by Tony Bramwell)

[…] Saturday was quite hot with the temperature running between 90 and 100 degrees. All day we tried to urge ourselves away from the hotel pool to see the sights but we never did quite make it! Paul bought some orange swim trunks, I bought a movie camera and we let the hours go by beside the blue pool.

Being a busy executive Ron Kass had ail his telephone calls put through to the poolside and PAUL HELPED HIM OUT BY TAKING ALL THE CALLS AND SCREENING THEM BEFORE PUTTING RON ON THE LINE! Paul put on one of his best voice disguises for this and it seems like most callers believed he was Ron’s American assistant! Mind you, one or two recognised his Mersey tones — including The Beach Boys. On Saturday night we went to the home of Capitol’s President for cocktails and then to the record company’s barbecue in the open-air beside the Century Plaza fountains. Paul signed an autograph for just about EVERYBODY present!

PARTIES

We’d been invited to umpteen clubs and parties but it was impossible to take in the lot. The Byrds were playing at The Kaleidescope, Judy Collins was at The Troubadour. Eventually we went to The Factory for dinner. It’s a discotheque owned by Sammy Davis and various other Hollywood celebrities. Very similar to the better London places but larger—in fact an old factory converted.

From there we went to the Whisky A Gogo to see the blues guitarist Albert King. To our amazement seated at the table next to us were Eric Burdon, Zoot Money, Georgie Fame and at least a dozen London clubbing regulars! We stayed until the end of Albert King’s set and he came over to meet Paul and have a drink. Naturally word went round the club and all along the Sunset Strip that Paul was there. So by the time we came to leave the Whisky we needed police guards, club stewards, bouncers and all the extra help we could muster to get Paul through the crowd and back into our limo. […]

Tony Bramwell – From the Beatles Monthly Book, N°61, August 1968

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