Linda McCartney

Released: October 26, 1998

Songwriter: Carla Lane Linda McCartney Paul McCartney

Producer: Paul McCartney

Through the bars and morning light
What is this feeling?
Why can't I move?
Sometime today they'll set me free
I'll hear a voice and it will be my friend
The white coated man

Where's the wind? Where are the leaves?
What happened? Why this pain?
Sometime today they'll set me free
I'll hear a voice and it will be my friend
The white coated man

If man wants life and eternity
Then men must pay and men must see
That we are theirs to mind
But man is the voice, man is the law
If man gets sick he will find a cure
Our friend, the white coated man

In the distance people are laughing
Do they know about me?
Why can't I see?
And they will pay, the silent ones
And they will pay, the silent ones will pay
The silent ones will pay
The silent ones will pay
The silent ones will pay

Before she met Paul McCartney, Linda Eastman McCartney (1941-1998) was a professional photographer. Despite the name, she had no connection to the Eastman Kodak fortune – rather, her family were Jewish immigrants who moved to America at a time when it was common for Jewish-Americans to choose English last names as a way to assimilate.

In May 1967, Paul was in the audience at a small music club when he struck up a conversation with Linda. In May 1968, he made an excuse to see her the next time he was in New York. Within a month, they were inseparable, and they stayed devoted to each other until she died of cancer in 1998.

Paul’s biographer called the marriage “by far the happiest and most durable in pop.” With Paul as a coach, Linda went on a notorious rise from totally untrained musician, to a (self-acknowledged) mediocre member of Wings, to the respected counter-melody, co-writer, and muse of Paul’s late-career music. In 1975, she added “activist” to her resume, when she and Paul became the most famous converts to vegetarianism at the time.

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Wide Prairie

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