#i feel like this answer doesnt really do justice to the subject ughhhh

[sgt-paul]

Hey! Hope all is going well :) I’m curious if you have any information/sources about Linda’s role in Paul’s life during the Beatles breakup and the time after? Paul has said she saved him. I do think she provided so much stability and comfort throughout their marriage and I’m interested in knowing more

thanks so much, i hope all is going well with you too! i’m terrible at remembering and also, organizing stuff like this but i tried to gather a few interviews where paul mentions it.

“I suppose before I married Linda I was about to burn myself out, but I didn’t realize it at the time, you know. But looking back now, kinda 10 years, 11 years later, there were definitely a few moments there where I was getting near the edge kinda thing, but Linda is kind of a steadying influence.” (1980)

“She saved me from general overall excess, which was pretty much total sort of party and work.” (1991)

“I remember very early on apologising because I was so tired, I said, 'I'm really tired, I'm sorry.' She said, 'It's allowed.' I remember thinking, Fucking hell! That was a mind-blower. I'd never been with anyone who'd thought like that: 'It's allowed.' And it was quite patently clear that it was allowed to be tired. I think I'd trained myself never to appear tired. Always to be on the ball. 'Sorry I'm yawning. I'm sorry,' which is complete bullshit. It's a Beatles thing, you had to be there, you had to be on time.” (1997 - MYFN)

“I was in a bit of a state when I first knew Lin. There were a lot of drugs and I was living on my own, totally overdoing it, boozing away. It was a case of, ‘Yeh-hey, have some more drugs...’ ‘Have you got some?’ ‘Try this one...’ ‘Don’t mind if I do.’ It was the Sixties, the hardcore Sixties and it was really starting to get to me. Looking back I can see I was doing too much, but I didn’t think so at the time. I just had trouble getting my head off the pillow sometimes. I remember once almost suffocating myself whilst trying to sleep and thinking, ‘You’re probably going too far here, son, but never mind.’ Linda would say, ‘Let’s just cool it down.’ She was a huge help. She started to put some sense back into my life. She put some order into it.” (1998) + “I helped with the shearing and mowing the fields—and horse-riding. That was the biggest thing. Linda taught me to horse-ride. I really remember at that time being on a horse and thinking I’ve got control of something. It was a feeling of some sort of power that was very strong. Through the nature in Scotland, through riding and through her support I did manage to get it back together.” (1998)

I ask him what has given him most happiness. “I think marrying Linda. Personal happiness. It was a reawakening. With the Beatles you lose your identity. You put your identity into the common identity and you’re a Beatle.” (2001)

“It had been a heavy, difficult period, but meeting Linda and starting a family was the escape. I’d see there was life out there. [...] Because, Christ, I’d worked like a devil with the Beatles for all those years, and it didn’t appear like there was going to be any happiness at the end of it. So, suddenly I found it, and grabbed it. The album was my escape. We made it in the front parlour. Get home, new baby, it was that joy, it transforms your life. I hadn’t had a baby before – we had Heather from Linda’s first marriage – so home was great joy and solace for me.” (x)

Has the whole process of navigating fame and the pressures of the music industry affected your mental health? I think so, yes. But, in truth, I just took to booze. There wasn’t much time to have mental health issues, it was just, fuck it, it’s boozing or sleeping. But I’m sure it did, as they were very depressing times. It’s funny, I remember when I first met Linda, she was divorced with a child and living in New York and having to fend for herself. She got depression and I remember her saying she made a decision. She said, “You know what? I’m not going to have this depression, because if I do I’m going to be in the hands of other people. And I’m not going to allow that to happen.” So she sort of picked herself up by her bootstraps and said, “I’ve got to get out of this myself.” And I think that was what I was able to do, to get out of the depression by saying, “OK, this is really bad and I’ve got to do something about it.” So I did. (2020)

“Having just met Linda, there was a romantic element to it and there was a new discovery of you know, thinking about a family and so all of that was very nice. You know I’d be playing a bit of electric guitar let’s say, just sort of playing around and Linda would come in and say “I didn’t know you played electric!”. I said “Oh yeah, yeah, I do, a little bit”, (...) she was very encouraging, so that would encourage me to go “Right I’m gonna do a song with a big electric on it!”. [...] I think as I said Linda was a huge help, I’d hate to think what’d have happened if I didn’t have her.” (2020)

i think some people tend to think this “saving” only had to do with what was going on with the band at the time, and while that is undoubtedly true too, like whether we are talking about the personal or the business troubles, or paul feeling like an “unemployed worker” and all that stuff, linda was there as a shoulder to lean on and her support and love were( incredibly important to paul. but the way paul talks about it, when he mentions her steadying influence etc, i think he also (or maybe even more so) means it in regard to his messy lifestyle and his generally crazy behaviour in the 60s, which definitely peaked after his breakup with jane and before (/around) he got together with linda. so the transition from that lifestyle with all the drugs and clubbing, the groupies, the "i have 4 girlfriends" mess, the workaholic mindset, plus the slight uncertainty which was followed by complete uncertainty and instability after jane had left him, to a much calmer, a more stable and comforting family life with linda, heather, and later mary, was a huge thing and i can definitely see why paul values linda's role in that so much and why he credits her as the person who basically "saved" him. i'm sure this change didn't happen in a day or anything, but i think we just sort of take paul finding linda for granted, like he was extremely lucky that linda arrived at that exact point in his life and helped paul put himself on the right track basically and was able to provide him so much support and love. she showed him a new way of life, a new way of looking at things a different mindset etc, which paul really needed in order to avoid completely burning himself out. and i'm sure that that's also why he stresses this so much, because he knows that her influence turned out to be super important and all that.