Biography
Linda Eastman entered the world in New York on September 24, 1941, as the daughter of copyright attorney Lee Eastman rather than a descendant of the Eastman/Kodak clan, contrary to popular belief. Photography nevertheless ran in her veins, and throughout the 1960s she emerged as one of the most prominent chroniclers of the rock circuit, placing images of Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and the Doors in Rolling Stone and additional periodicals. She encountered Paul McCartney at the unveiling of the Beatles’ 1967 landmark Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Band, and after his extended partnership with Jane Asher ended, the pair began seeing each other, ultimately exchanging vows on March 12, 1969.
Her union with the final unmarried member of the Fab Four ignited intense press scrutiny; as a divorcée and single mother from a brief late-1950s marriage, she drew sharp rebukes from both ethical commentators and devoted Beatles followers. Those attacks intensified once the group split, with detractors, mirroring the charges leveled at Yoko Ono, claiming she had hastened the band’s demise. Yielding to Paul’s urging, she took up piano lessons; the 1971 album Ram appeared under the joint billing Paul & Linda, and later that year she entered the lineup of his new group Wings. Despite relentless assaults on her instrumental abilities, she kept performing and traveling alongside her husband for years, also serving as the muse for numerous tracks from his solo catalog.
Beyond music she earned recognition as a leading campaigner for animal welfare. A committed vegetarian, she issued several widely purchased cookbooks, among them 1989’s Home Cooking and 1995’s Linda’s Kitchen, and launched a lucrative range of frozen meat-free dishes manufactured in environmentally responsible facilities. She also released volumes of photographs, including 1982’s Linda’s Pictures and 1992’s Sixties: Portrait of an Era, and received an animation prize at the Cannes Film Festival for the 1980 short Seaside Woman. Breast cancer was detected in 1995; the illness claimed her life on April 17, 1998, when she was 56. The solo anthology Wide Prairie appeared after her death later that same year.
Her union with the final unmarried member of the Fab Four ignited intense press scrutiny; as a divorcée and single mother from a brief late-1950s marriage, she drew sharp rebukes from both ethical commentators and devoted Beatles followers. Those attacks intensified once the group split, with detractors, mirroring the charges leveled at Yoko Ono, claiming she had hastened the band’s demise. Yielding to Paul’s urging, she took up piano lessons; the 1971 album Ram appeared under the joint billing Paul & Linda, and later that year she entered the lineup of his new group Wings. Despite relentless assaults on her instrumental abilities, she kept performing and traveling alongside her husband for years, also serving as the muse for numerous tracks from his solo catalog.
Beyond music she earned recognition as a leading campaigner for animal welfare. A committed vegetarian, she issued several widely purchased cookbooks, among them 1989’s Home Cooking and 1995’s Linda’s Kitchen, and launched a lucrative range of frozen meat-free dishes manufactured in environmentally responsible facilities. She also released volumes of photographs, including 1982’s Linda’s Pictures and 1992’s Sixties: Portrait of an Era, and received an animation prize at the Cannes Film Festival for the 1980 short Seaside Woman. Breast cancer was detected in 1995; the illness claimed her life on April 17, 1998, when she was 56. The solo anthology Wide Prairie appeared after her death later that same year.
Albums
