Paul McCartney had a strange way of unwinding after Beatles concerts. Stranger still, he asked his girlfriend’s mother to help him with it.
After the chaos of early Beatles concerts, Paul McCartney would head to his girlfriend Iris Caldwell’s house to unwind. Surprisingly, though, he didn’t seek Caldwell’s company to help him relax. Instead, he went to her mother and made a surprisingly intimate request of her. Caldwell said her mother was always happy to oblige.
Paul McCartney asked his girlfriend’s mother for a surprising favor after concerts
In the early 1960s, The Beatles played sweaty shows in cramped, airless basements. After the performances, they needed time to relax. McCartney would go to Caldwell’s house to see her and her parents.
“Paul and John [Lennon] used to love my parents,” Caldwell said, per the book Paul McCartney: The Life by Philip Norman. “My dad was the most totally good man I’ve ever known. Each week, he used to open his pay packet, take only what he needed to feed and clothe us, then give the rest to charity. He’d usually have gone to bed when The Beatles arrived; they called him ‘the Crusher’ because he had these nightmares that made him shout out and roll around in the bed. And they called my mum ‘Violent Vi,’ I suppose because they could never best her in an argument.”
After concerts, McCartney was not there to argue with Vi, though. Instead, he turned to her for comfort.
“After The Beatles had been out on a gig, Paul used to like my mum to comb his legs,” Caldwell said. “He’s quite hairy, and having his legs combed seemed to relax him. He’d say, ‘Ooh, Vi, give me legs a comb’ and roll up his trouser leg, and Mum would get a comb and do it.”
Iris Caldwell said her mother called out the musician for his bad behavior
While McCartney’s request may seem strange, neither Caldwell nor Vi seemed to have a problem with it. McCartney had a close relationship with his girlfriend’s mother; in many ways, she treated him like her own child.
“She loved him but she wasn’t afraid to speak her mind about the way he used his good looks and charm to get away with things — like always smoking other people’s cigarettes instead of buying his own,” Caldwell said. “I remember her saying to him once, ‘You’ve got no heart, Paul.’”
Paul McCartney and his girlfriend broke up often
Though McCartney loved Caldwell and her family, their relationship was a tumultuous one. She didn’t like the fact that “he always had to be the center of attention,” and they bickered and broke up often. During one night out, Caldwell grew so fed up with McCartney’s show-off behavior she upended a bowl of sugar on his head.
“We were always having rows and breaking up,” she said. “And whenever we did, George [Harrison] would be round the next day, asking me to go out with him again.”
By 1963, Caldwell and McCartney had broken up for good.
