LOS ANGELES – Of the dozens of TV presentations slated to commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9/11, only one counts a former Beatle as its central figure. Paul McCartney was on a plane at JFK Airport in New York when the Twin Towers were attacked– he could see plumes of smoke from the airplane windows– and stayed in town once his flight was detained. He subsequently performed “The Concert for New York” at Madison Square Garden. His experiences on the street with New Yorkers and the concert itself are part of a documentary film, “The Love We Make,” airing on Showtime on Sept. 10.
The film was directed by Bradley Kaplan and Albert Maysles, the co-director of “Grey Gardens” and “Gimme Shelter.”
“There was fear in the air. I’d never experienced that, particularly in New York,” McCartney told a gathering of television critics here. Referencing the courage of his parents’ generation after World War II, when people sang between bombing attacks, he said, “I thought maybe I’d be able to help America out of this fearfulness.”
Addressing the Television Critics Association event via satellite from Cincinnati, where he is on a concert tour, McCartney on Thursday confirmed he has been drawn into the phone hacking scandal in the U.K.
“When I go back after this tour I’m going to talk to the police because I apparently have been hacked,” McCartney said. “I don’t know much about it, but I do think it’s a horrendous violation of privacy, and I think it’s been going on for a long time and more people than we’ve heard about knew about it.”
