Sir Paul McCartney has been fielding fan requests for over 60 years, but there’s one he will always refuse to do – and that’s posing for selfies.
The 83-year-old, who was a founding member of The Beatles before going solo in 1970, opened up about how fame has changed throughout his career in a new podcast interview.
Speaking to The Rest is Entertainment’s Richard Osman and Marina Hyde, he said that phones have changed everything when it comes to 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,” he said.
“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.”
As for why he always declines selfie requests, the singer-songwriter said that he doesn’t want to feel like the performing monkey that he sees on the 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.
“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.”
Elsewhere during the interview, Sir Paul also hit out at the modern day influencer culture, admitting that he “just doesn’t really get it”.
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“I’m not that generation. But you can’t help seeing it,” he said. “My wife will be looking at Instagram and showing me something, and then one of those will come on.
“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.”
Sir Paul is married to former New England Motor Freight vice president Nancy Shevell, with the pair tying the knot in 2011. He was previously married to first wife, Linda McCartney, from 1969 until her death in 1998, and then businesswoman Heather Mills from 2002 until their divorce in 2008.
Earlier this month, Sir Paul surprised fans at Abbey Road Studios for a secret playback of his new album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane.