Linda McCartney was born
Linda Louise Eastman in
New York, New York to a Jewish-American family. She grew up in the wealthy
Scarsdale area of
Westchester County, New York and graduated from
Scarsdale High School in 1960. Her father,
Lee Eastman, was
songwriter Jack Lawrence's attorney, and at the senior Eastman's request, Lawrence titled a song "
Linda" in honor of then five-year-old Linda. Her mother was
Louise Linder Eastman, heiress to the Linder Department Store fortune, who died in the 1962 crash of
American Airlines Flight 1 in
Queens, New York.
Before her marriage to
Paul McCartney, she served as the house photographer for the
Fillmore East in
New York City. She was a popular photographer and took professional portraits of artists such as
Aretha Franklin, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Eric Clapton, Simon and Garfunkel, The Who, The Doors and
The Rolling Stones. Her first marriage was to
John Melvin See, Jr. whom she met at the
University of Arizona. They married on
June 18, 1962 and their daughter
Heather Louise was born
31 December 1962. They were divorced in June 1965.
On
15 May 1967, she met McCartney at a
Georgie Fame concert at
The Bag O'Nails club in London; She was in the UK on an assignment to take photographs of musicians. McCartney, Linda and members of the
The Animals went on to The Speakeasy, a club on Margaret Street, and Eastman later accompanied McCartney back to his house in Cavendish Avenue. The two met again four days later at a launch party for the
Sgt. Pepper album at Brian Epstein's house in
Belgravia. Linda had a four-year-old daughter back in
New York City, and flew back to New York when her assignment was completed.
Paul asked Linda to move in with him in October 1968, and the two were married on
12 March 1969. She was four months pregnant with his daughter
Mary McCartney. She and her husband raised four children:
Heather Louise (from her previous marriage, whom Paul adopted),
Mary Anna, Stella Nina, and
James Louis. She has three grandsons and a grandaughter, all born after her death:
Mary's two sons Arthur Alistair Donald, (born
3 April 1999) and Elliot Donald (born
1 August 2002) and
Stella's son Miller Alasdhair James Willis (born
25 February 2005). Her daughter Stella gave birth to a baby girl named Bailey Linda Olwyn Willis on
8 December 2006 with the child's middle name in honour of her late grandmother.
After the breakup of the Beatles in 1970, Paul began teaching her to play keyboards, and included her in the lineup for his new band,
Wings. Wings garnered several
Grammy Awards for their music, and became one of the most successful bands of the 1970s, although Linda's musical talent was a continuing source of controversy.
In
1977, a single entitled "Seaside Woman" was released by an obscure band called
Suzy and the Red Stripes on
Epic Records in the U.S. In reality, Suzy and the Red Stripes were Wings with Linda McCartney on lead vocals. The song was written solely by Linda and recorded by Wings in 1972, in response to a lawsuit by
ATV (which owned
Northern Songs) over Paul's practice of granting Linda co-writing credit on his songs, which had the effect of transferring a share of the publishing royalties to
MPL Communications from ATV. The lawsuit was settled out of court.
Her album
Wide Prairie, which included "Seaside Woman", was released posthumously in 1998.
Linda was diagnosed in 1995 with
breast cancer, and her condition soon grew worse as the cancer spread to her liver. Talking about the medication used to treat Linda's breast cancer, Paul McCartney said: "If a drug has got to be used on humans then legally it has to be finally tested on an animal ... This was difficult for Linda when she was undergoing her treatment." He also claimed that Linda had been kept in the dark about how the drugs she took may have been tested on animals: "During the treatment, a nice answer is a nice answer and if they (the doctors) say, `It's OK to have this because we didn't test it on animals', you are going to believe them."
Linda McCartney died at age 56 on
17 April 1998 on the McCartney family ranch in
Tucson, Arizona. Her husband and four children were at her bedside, and they each took a turn in saying goodbye. Paul suggested that fans remember her by donating to breast-cancer research charities that do not support animal-testing, "or the best tribute — go veggie".
Memorial services were held for Linda McCartney at
St. Martin-in-the-Fields in
London and at
Riverside Church in her hometown of
Manhattan.
