42 THENEWYORKER,OCTOBER18, 2021
E
arly evening in late summer, the
golden hour in the village of East
Hampton. The surf is rough and
pounds its regular measure on the shore.
At the last driveway on a road ending
at the beach, a cortège of cars—S.U.V.s,
jeeps, candy-colored roadsters—pull
up to the gate, sand crunching pleas-
antly under the tires. And out they come,
face after famous face, burnished, ex-
pensively moisturized: Jerry Seinfeld,
Jimmy Buffett, Anjelica Huston, Juli-
anne Moore, Stevie Van Zandt, Alec
Baldwin, Jon Bon Jovi. They all wear
expectant, delighted-to-be-invited ex-
pressions. Through the gate, they mount
a flight of stairs to the front door and
walk across a vaulted living room to a
fragrant back yard, where a crowd is
circulating under a tent in the familiar
high-life way, regarding the territory,
pausing now and then to accept refresh-
ments from a tray.
Their hosts are Nancy Shevell, the
scion of a New Jersey trucking family,
and her husband, Paul McCartney, a bass
player and singer-songwriter from Liv-
erpool. A slender, regal woman in her
early sixties, Shevell is talking in a confid-
ing manner with Michael Bloomberg,
who was the mayor of New York City
when she served on the board of the
Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
Bloomberg nods gravely at whatever
Shevell is saying, but he has his eyes fixed
on a plate of exquisite little pizzas. Would
he like one? He narrows his gaze, trying
to decide; then, with executive dispatch,
he declines.
McCartney greets his guests with the
same twinkly smile and thumbs-up charm
that once led him to be called “the cute
Beatle.” Even in a crowd of the accom-
plished and abundantly self-satisfied, he
is invariably the focus of attention. His
fan base is the general population. There
are myriad ways in which people betray
their pleasure in encountering him—de-
scribing their favorite songs, asking for
selfies and autographs, or losing their
composure entirely.
This effect extends to friends and
peers. Billy Joel, who has sold out Mad-
ison Square Garden more than a hun-
dred times, has spent Hamptons after-
noons over the years with McCartney.
Still, Joel told me, “he’s a Beatle, so there’s
an intimidation factor. You encounter
someone like Paul and you wonder how
close you can be to someone like that.”
In July, 2008, when Joel closed Shea
Stadium, as the final rock act before the
place came under the wrecking ball, he
invited McCartney to join him and per-
form “I Saw Her Standing There.” Shea
Stadium is, after all, where Beatlemania,
in all its fainting, screaming madness,
reached its apogee, in the sixties. For
the encore, “Let It Be,” Joel ceded his
piano to McCartney. I asked him if he
minded playing second fiddle to his
guest. “I am second fiddle!” he said. “Ev-
eryone is second fiddle to Paul Mc-
Cartney, aren’t they?”
McCartney knows that, even in a
gathering of film stars or prime minis-
ters, he is surrounded by Beatles fans.
“It’s the strangest thing,” he told me.
“Even during the pandemic, when I’m
wearing a mask, even sunglasses, people
stop and say, ‘Hey, Paul!’” He’ll gamely
try to level the interpersonal playing field
by saying that, after so many years, “I’m
a Beatles fan, too,” often adding, “We
were a good little band.” But he also
knows that fandom can curdle into ma-
levolence. In 1980, Mark David Chap-
man, a Beatles fan, shot John Lennon
to death outside the Dakota, on Cen-
tral Park West. Nineteen years later, in
Henley-on-Thames, west of London,
another mentally troubled young man,
Michael Abram, broke into George Har-
rison’s estate and stabbed him repeat-
edly in the chest.
McCartney is a billionaire. A vast
amount of that fortune can be ascribed
to the songs that he wrote with Len-
non before the first moon landing. Yet
his audiences usually exceed those of
his most esteemed peers. Bob Dylan’s
catalogue of the past forty years is im-
mensely richer than McCartney’s, but
Dylan generally plays midsize theatres,
like the Beacon, in Manhattan; Mc-
Cartney sells out Dodger Stadium and
the Tokyo Dome.
He continues to write and record,
just as he continues to breathe—“It’s
what I do,” he told me. Recently, “Mc-
Cartney III Imagined,” a remix of his
latest album, was No. 1 on Billboard’s
Top Rock Albums Chart. Although he
admits that he’s “not very big” on hip-
hop, he once holed up at the Beverly
Hills Hotel with Kanye West to col-
laborate on a few songs. West’s “Only
One,” inspired by his late mother, Donda,
and his daughter North, came out of
a session with McCartney. Another
collaboration with West, “FourFive-
Seconds,” was a hit for Rihanna. When
she ran into McCartney on a commer-
cial airline flight a few years later, she
took out her phone and posted a video
on Instagram: “I’m about to put you on
blast, Mr. McCartney!”
The party shifted into a new phase.
A platform had been laid over the swim-
ming pool, and rows of folding chairs
were set up in front of a large screen.
McCartney took his seat in the make-
shift theatre flanked by his daughters
Stella, who is fifty years old and a fash-
ion designer, and Mary, who is fifty-two,
a photographer, and the host of a ve-
getarian cooking show. It was time to
screen a special hundred-minute version
of “The Beatles: Get Back,” a three-part
documentary series more than six hours
in length made by the director Peter
Jackson, and scheduled to stream on Dis-
ney+ during the Thanksgiving weekend.
The event had been billed as a sneak
preview, but it was also an exercise in
memory. “Get Back” is a remake of sorts.
Nearly everyone at the party knew the
story. In January, 1969, the Beatles as-
sembled at Twickenham Film Studios,
in West London, to rehearse songs for
their album “Let It Be.” The idea was to
film their sessions there, perform some-
where in public—proposals ranged from
an amphitheatre in Syria to Primrose
Hill—and then release the edited re-
sult as a movie. By the time the eighty-
minute documentary, also called “Let
It Be,” appeared, in May, 1970, the band
had come to an end. Most fans have al-
ways thought of the documentary as
“the breakup movie,” a dour, dimly lit
portrayal of bitter resentments and col-
lapsing relationships. Jackson and his
team combed through sixty hours of
Beatles film and even more audiotape
from more than half a century ago to
tell the story anew.
The lights in the back yard went
down. An audience of luminaries turned
into dozens of anonymous silhouettes.
First came a short, featuring Jackson,
who made his name and fortune with
the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, speak-
ing to us from his studio in New Zea-
land. He explained that he had relied
on cutting-edge techniques to enhance
the soundtrack and the imagery. And, PREVIOUS SPREAD: ETHAN A. RUSSELL /
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