LONDON (REUTERS) — Paul McCartney saw tragedy unfold before him Monday in New York for the second time in two months and vowed: “We have got to get behind America. We have got to help America.”
Ironically, the former Beatle had just flown into New York to raise funds for the Sept. 11 hijack attack victims when he witnessed the aftermath of the American Airlines crash.
McCartney, accompanied by his fiancee Heather Mills, was aboard the supersonic airliner Concorde, landed in New York just before JFK Airport was closed.
“As Concorde was landing, the crash had just happened,” McCartney told his press spokesman after landing. “I looked out of the left-hand side of the plane and there was smoke all over the place,” he told spokesman Geoff Baker in a phone call from New York.
“It was a horrendous and tragic irony trying to raise money for the victims of the last crashes. and then something dreadful was happening all over again,” McCartney said.
McCartney said the customs hall on arrival was practically deserted and the FBI gave him an escort to get out of the airport.
History was eerily repeating itself for the Beatle composer. On Sept. 11, McCartney was on the tarmac at JFK waiting for take-off when the suicide hijackers crashed two planes into the towers of the World Trade Center.
“I was sitting on a plane at New York airport and watched it unfold through the windows. It will live with me forever,” said McCartney, who then wrote the song “Freedom” to boost relief funds for the victims.
Monday he returned to New York to promote the record with a string of radio interviews, and he refused to be bowed by the latest tragedy. “That is why I wrote ‘Freedom,’ and that is why I am going to keep pushing it,” he said. “I will not stop.”
McCartney premiered “Freedom” — a “Let It Be”-style anthem — at a Madison Square Garden charity concert of rock ‘n’ roll greats last month. He had been moved to write the song the day after the World Trade Center attacks.
“My father was a fireman, and I was a war baby,” he explained to Britain’s Sun tabloid before the concert, which he called one of the most emotional gigs of his life. “It reminded me of what my father did in the war,” McCartney said. “The heroism of the (New York) firemen hit me in particular. These people were going into the building when most people would have run away.”