Good Morning, Good Morning

The day started out quite sunny, but soon became overcast with a hint of rain on the horizon. We left our flat early that morning in an attempt to make the most of the short time we had left in England. Without even realizing it , we somehow wound up back at EMI (funny, that happened a lot), however it was clear that at a little after ten on a Sunday morning, we had arrived a bit too early. It didn't look as though anyone - not even the staff - had shown up yet. We stood for a moment and tried to decide on our next plan of action. We talked, looked up and down the street and saw nothing of interest to us. Except.......that…….guy...…

As we turned toward the end of the block (in the direction that Paul would be walking from his house), we saw someone who looked vaguely familiar. He was quite "rumpled", wearing a jacket, shirt and pants that had absolutely no relation to each other. It began to dawn on us (and we should have known all along) that this disheveled mess walking in our direction was none other than Paul, all alone and trying not to attract attention. Not the clothes I would have chosen for that purpose, but that's just me...

Now, to be clear, seeing Paul McCartney in person is always a shock to the senses, no matter how you slice it. In those incredible last moments just before contact when our adrenaline went flying through the roof, the four of us would simultaneously flip the switch into auto-pilot mode. We'd start frantically talking over each other as a jumble of comments spilled out at once ("Here he comes!", "Is he coming?", "Oh shit! Has he seen us?", "Okay, okay we're okay", "What the hell is he wearing??" among other bits of nonsense), immediately followed by a calmer, casual, more controlled facade. As he continued to bounce down the street towards us, we were ready to give him a proper hello. He really looked like he'd had a rough night, as though he'd just fallen out of bed and rolled into those terribly mis-matched clothes. We didn't care that he was unshowered, unshaven and uncombed, but we were a little surprised that he would be seen in public that way. His mood was good and he was smiling broadly as he got closer to us. After a few minutes of chatter, I asked if I could take a picture of him with the girls. He said sure, and immediately put his arms out for everyone to gather around. I quickly snapped a pic, and Linda (our Linda) got ready to take another one, this time with me in it.

I took this one of Paul and the girls

Now here's where things went a bit sideways. Linda had some intermittent problems with her camera, whereby the film would sometimes slip off the internal spindle and not advance properly. As a result, she would wind up taking a double-exposure photograph. As my bad luck would have it that day, the shot of me grinning like a cheshire cat standing next to Paul became one of those double-exposure fatalities, with an image of a not-so-happy JoAnn on top. If you look very closely and use a bit of imagination, you can just barely make out that flowered shirt Paul is wearing, and my smiling face right next to him. I have a friend who is very diligently working his magic to try to bring that lesser image of Paul, me, JoAnn and Evy to the forefront. He has not been terribly successful so far, but I keep fingers crossed that with today's technology, we might get lucky. In the meantime, here is my original and the work in progress. Paul is on the left, my face is just visible over the passenger door of the car that is turning. I know, it's tough to make out, believe me no one is sadder about that than I am. I don't have many pics of me with Paul, and why I didn't hand over my camera to Linda that day to take another shot, just in case, I'll never know...

Imagination is needed to fill in the blanks…

It's the heads of the ghost of Paul and the short girl next to him (me)

With all the conversation and the picture snapping, Paul had already spent about ten minutes outside with us. The time had come and he began to say his goodbyes as he turned to enter the parking lot and studio entrance. We told him we were leaving the next morning, and wished him well on his last remaining concert dates at Wembly. He seemed very surprised that we were not staying a few more days and seeing the shows, but we explained that we just couldn't arrange it this time. With hugs and a thumbs up, he was off inside. That was the last of our Paul sightings in London, and what a great way to finish things off. 

When the Wings Over America album was released in the U.S. in December of 1976, we each bought it immediately. We had several more amazing memories tied up with that tour now, and the album just made it all the more real to us. Call me back again, indeed.


That’s all for now.....Thanks for reading, see ya next time!