#playboytoaman

[illleavemymessageinmysong]

Playboy To A Man : she’s going to make you suffer tonight, to turn you from a playboy into a man

Talking to his daughter Mary for the ‘Wingspan’ documentary, Paul spoke of the period in his life leading up to Linda and him becoming a couple.

“At a certain age you start to sort of think, wow, you know, I’ve got to get serious, I can’t just be a playboy all my life”.

Interesting to hear him describe himself in those terms. Certainly, the late Spring and early Summer of 1968 was a particularly busy period for him, relationship wise.

Whether by accident or design, one of the songs Paul co-wrote with Elvis Costello in the late ‘80s, ‘Playboy To A Man’ describes the situation he found himself in at that time very well and, perhaps, a particularly painful public incident.

Of course with it being a collaboration, we can’t know who came up with particular lines. There are certainly some in there that have Elvis’s mark but I’ve got a feeling Paul had significant input, too. Could it be that a couple of lines, in particular, refer to the events of 20 July 1968 when Jane Asher appeared on Simon Dee’s prime time Saturday evening chat show ‘Dee Time’ and said of her relationship with Paul:

“I haven’t broken it off, but it’s finished”

According to Francie Schwartz in her book ‘Body Count’, Paul was watching the show with her and his family at his Dad Jim’s home in the Liverpool area.

The line from ‘Playboy To A Man’, “she’s going to make you suffer tonight, to turn you from a playboy into a man”, seems particularly apt for how he must have felt that night, watching it with his family and knowing much of the country was watching. It also speaks of how it may have led to a change in his attitude to the playboy lifestyle, if not immediately, within a couple of months once Linda moved in and they became a couple.

If the song does describe this period, he doesn’t go easy on himself.

“You had your own way one too many times and now you’re going to find out what it’s like, just what it’s like now you’re a mess, you wanted something you could never possess” (does that last part refer to Jane’s determination to keep up her acting career?)

“You went your own way one too many nights, you treated her like some small oversight. What in the world makes her think that she can, turn you from a playboy into a man”

The line “but that’s the trouble ‘cause every girl still thinks you’re hers” echoes a quote from Jane in Michael Braun’s 1964 book, ‘Love Me Do: The Beatles Progress’,

“He can’t see that my feelings for him are real and that the fans’ are fantasy”.

Yes, by accident or design, it describes his emotional landscape in ‘68 very well. If by accident, I doubt it would have gone unnoticed by him.

#paul mccartney #paul mccartney lyrics #playboytoaman #DeeTime #jane asher