Recommendations of the Editorial team
In the early 1970s, something happened that would be hard to believe today: a journalist who had made himself quite unpopular with fabricated stories about the Wings received a gift that, in retrospect, sounds as bizarre as it is legendary.
According to drummer Denny Seiwell, who was playing with the Wings at the time, the journalist was invited to write a report about the life of a band family “on the road”. McCartney, his wife Linda and their then young children Heather, Mary and Stella accompanied the tour.
Seiwell remembers: “We take him to the sound check, leave him backstage – the full program. We let him on the bus, he sees how we live and so on. He then stayed, but strangely enough not for the concert. He flew home.”
Baby poop in the plastic soap dish – and off we go
It was a big surprise for McCartney and the band when this same reporter – even though he wasn’t at the concert – published a devastating live report. “He ripped us off,” Seiwell remembers. “Everything about us: how we lived, how we traveled, how we sounded.”
McCartney and Linda responded to this slur in their own unique way.
“Stella was a baby at the time. So Paul and Linda took one of those little plastic soap dishes from our hotel, put one of Stella’s leavings in it, packaged the whole thing up and sent it to him,” Seiwell said. “You see – I said it. I don’t know if they want to make it public or not. But I thought it was the perfect response to an example of those British press snipers.”
Paul McCartney himself has neither officially confirmed nor denied this anecdote. Seiwell may be exaggerating. But somewhere it “smells” of truth. However, the story does not appear in his current Wings biography – too out of date?