Personal relationships of Paul McCartney

Early relationships[edit]

One of McCartney's first girlfriends, in 1957, was called Layla, a name he remembered as being unusual in Liverpool at the time.^[23] She was slightly older than McCartney and used to ask him to baby-sit with her. Julie Arthur, another girlfriend, was Ted Ray's niece.^[23]


McCartney's first serious girlfriend in Liverpool was seventeen-year-old Dorothy "Dot" Rhone (a bank clerk or a cashier at a chemist's, according to varying accounts),^[24] whom he had met at The Casbah Club in 1959.^[25][26] McCartney picked out the clothes he liked Rhone to wear and told her which make-up to use, also paying for her to have her blonde hair done in the style of Brigitte Bardot, whom both he and John Lennon idolised.^[27] He disliked Rhone seeing her friends, and stopped her from smoking, even though he did so himself.^[28] When McCartney first went to Hamburg with The Beatles, he wrote regular letters to Rhone, and she accompanied Lennon's girlfriend, Cynthia Powell, to Hamburg when the group played there again in 1962.^[29] According to Rhone, McCartney bought her a gold ring in Hamburg, a leather skirt, took her sightseeing, and was very attentive and caring.^[30][31] For the time Rhone was there, the couple lived in a bungalow by the Hamburg docks that belonged to Rosa, a former cleaner at the Indra club.^[32] McCartney admitted that he had other girlfriends in Hamburg when Rhone was in Liverpool,^[28] admitting that they were usually strippers, who knew a lot more about sex than Liverpool girls.^[33]


Rhone later rented a room in the same house as Cynthia Lennon was living,^[34] with McCartney contributing to the rent.^[35] According to Mark Lewisohn's biography Tune In, Dot became pregnant in 1960, and Paul's father, Jim, while being shocked, was nonetheless rather pleased at the prospect of becoming a grandfather. They were to be married soon, but Dot had a miscarriage. She still wore the ring he gave her, and they stayed together until the autumn of 1962 when Paul broke up with her, knowing she'd eventually want to get married (John & Cynthia had recently married in August 1962 due to her pregnancy), and he didn't want to marry anyone at the time because he was still only 20 years old.


He then had a brief relationship with Thelma Pickles, who had previously dated Lennon. She later married Liverpool poet Roger McGough, but she remembered McCartney as growing from a "plump young schoolboy into someone very much his own person" during their time together.^[36] McCartney also had a fiery on–off relationship with Iris Caldwell, the younger sister of singer Rory Storm, who refused to bow to McCartney's demands.^[28] After one argument, Caldwell poured a bowl of sugar over his head, but when McCartney turned up the next day, she had to phone her new boyfriend, George Harrison, to cancel their date.^[37]


Rhone later emigrated to Toronto, Canada,^[38] and McCartney met her again when the Beatles played there, and then again with Wings.^[39] Rhone later said that "Love of the Loved" and "P.S. I Love You" were written about her.^[40] Years later, Cynthia Lennon gave Rhone the gold ring that McCartney had bought Rhone, having once tried it on while Rhone was washing dishes, and forgotten to take it off. Rhone is now a grandmother and lives in Mississauga, Ontario.^[39]