Long and sordid road: Fans sad for McCartney

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A shame, but will this affect McCartney’s image or legacy in any lasting way? Hardly likely, says Bruce Spizer, author of six books about the Beatles.

“Most people understand that Paul, like any person, has faults, but they know him as a family man, based on the wonderful marriage he had with Linda,” said Spizer. “So they would take all this with extreme skepticism.” Of the Beatles fans he’s heard discussing it, he says a good 90 percent don’t believe the reported allegations against Paul.

Steven Beer, an entertainment attorney in New York, falls into that camp. “I believe you can’t always accept what you read or hear,” says Beer, 47. “What we’re seeing here is just the negative gamesmanship that divorce brings. Maybe he had bad judgment in his choice of a partner, but in my mind, Paul McCartney continues to be a rock ’n’ roll icon with a positive character.

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“He’s a responsible Dad,” Beer adds. “He doted on his wife Linda. He even put her in his band! What more could you want? He deserves a medal for that.”

Certainly McCartney isn’t the first celebrity to have dirty laundry aired from a relationship gone sour. And yet if the celebrity is well-liked — or in the case of a Beatle, loved — these scandals tend to be mere blips on the screen, says Ken Baker, West Coast executive editor of the celebrity magazine US Weekly.

“The public will forgive a beloved celebrity for just about anything, save murder,” said Baker. “It’s this mesmerizing force that celebrities have. People see them as part of their extended family.”

“The world loves Paul, and people are gonna love Paul pretty much whatever they read,” he said. And in a he-said she-said matchup, it’s no contest: “People are going to believe the person they like and the person they know.”

Kenyon Phillips, 31, finds it hard to believe all the messy details reported by the media, basically because McCartney, in his eyes, was maybe too nice — a “wimp,” actually.

“Paul was more the goody-goody,” says Phillips, founder of a New Wave band called Unisex Salon. “He was never the cool one.” That, he says, was Lennon, who had “that air of menace. It was sexy, and dangerous.”

However the divorce plays out, fans like Pisani, the housepainter in Massachusetts, hope that one thing won’t be forgotten: the Beatles’ music.

“Their music came into our lives,” he said. “If it hadn’t, we’d be even more crazy now. It’s so easy to focus on the scandal. But it’s important not to forget the wonderfulness of what they did create.

“It’s just so important to remember what felt good about a Beatles song.”

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