Sir Paul McCartney has been fielding fan requests for over six decades, but there is one request he will always refuse: posing for selfies. The 83-year-old former Beatles star, who went solo in 1970, opened up about how fame has evolved over his career in a recent podcast interview. Speaking to Richard Osman and Marina Hyde on The Rest is Entertainment, he explained that smartphones have fundamentally altered fan interactions.
"Now – phones. So if I meet someone, they’re reaching for their phone, and I say: ‘I’m sorry, I don’t do pictures.’ And that is radical these days," McCartney said. He recounted telling Oprah Winfrey about his policy: "I told that to Oprah – I'm name-dropping now – and she said, ‘You don't do pictures?’ I said, ‘No.’ She said, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘I don't want to.’ It's as simple as that."
The monkey analogy
McCartney elaborated on why he consistently declines selfie requests, saying he does not want to feel like the performing monkey he once saw on a beachfront in Saint-Tropez. "The minute I start thinking I’m something above myself, I won’t like me. It’s very important for me to just be me," he explained. "So I say to people: I don’t want to do photos. And they say, ‘Why?’ And I say, ‘I'll tell you what...’ – and I go into this long explanation about how, down on the south coast of France in Saint-Tropez, there’s a man on the beachfront who has a monkey, and you pay to have your photo taken with the monkey."
He added: "I really do not want to feel like that monkey. And when I take a picture with someone, I do feel like him. I’m not me anymore – I’m suddenly something else."
Critique of influencer culture
Elsewhere in the interview, McCartney criticized modern influencer culture, admitting he "just doesn’t really get it." He said: "I’m not that generation. But you can’t help seeing it. My wife will be looking at Instagram and showing me something, and then one of those will come on."
He continued: "I think it's funny – and I suppose it always happened – but people who don’t seem to be particularly talented are incredibly famous. Billions of hits and views. You’ve got to be careful about talking about that, because it makes you sound very old-fashioned. Which I am."
McCartney is married to Nancy Shevell, former vice president of New England Motor Freight, whom he wed in 2011. He was previously married to first wife Linda McCartney from 1969 until her death in 1998, and to businesswoman Heather Mills from 2002 to 2008. Earlier this month, he surprised fans at Abbey Road Studios with a secret playback of his new album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane.
