Paul McCartney offers 'US' his heart

Paul McCartney may be a baby-boomer icon, but these days, his concert audiences also can include babies. Literally.
"Sometimes I want to tell the mother, 'Get that child home and to bed,' " he quips.

The 64-year-old rocker's multi-generational appeal is documented in Paul McCartney: The Space Within US, a concert DVD due Nov. 14, featuring live performances and previously unreleased footage from his sold-out 2005 tour. Cable network A&E airs an hour-long special Saturday (10 p.m. ET/PT).

The special arrives at a time of personal strife for McCartney, who is enduring an increasingly nasty divorce from Heather Mills. Tawdry tabloid reports surface with regularity.

In a statement issued last week, McCartney's lawyers said, "Our client is saddened by the breakdown of his marriage and requests that his family is allowed to conduct their personal affairs out of the media spotlight for the sake of everybody involved."

Asked directly about his separation, McCartney allows, "It's a very difficult time for me. But with the support of my friends and family, I'm managing to get through."

One gets the sense from Space that work also has been a source of comfort. The DVD features interviews with celebrities expressing admiration for McCartney, while clips recount events such as his wake-up call to the International Space Station last year. McCartney's crewmembers and less-famous fans also get camera time.

"There was a warm, intense feeling, almost like one of family," McCartney says of his interaction with audience members. He had decided to call last year's U.S. trek The US Tour "as a bit of a play on words. But it became even more significant as we got this fantastic feedback."

McCartney has hardly been idle since the tour wrapped. He released his fourth classical CD earlier this month, Ecce Cor Meum (in Latin, "Behold my heart"), an oratorio in four movements composed for choir and orchestra.

"It's my first choral work, strictly speaking," he says of the piece, commissioned more than eight years ago by Anthony Smith, then-president of Oxford's Magdalen College. "It was a huge learning experience, and a great challenge. I'm just a fool; I accept something before I even think about what I've taken on. Then I think, 'How am I going to do this?' "

Ecce, which premieres at London's Royal Albert Hall on Nov. 3 and makes its U.S. premiere Nov. 14 at New York's Carnegie Hall, was recorded by soprano Kate Royal, the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and boys' choirs from Magdalen College and King's College in Cambridge.

"It was funny, because Magdalen and King's Colleges are kind of rivals," says McCartney, who once sang in a children's choir. "I quite liked the idea of bringing them together in the interest of peace. I said that, when they were all standing there, that it was great bringing the colleges together. And one of the kids said, 'Yeah, it's great — it's war!' I'm not quite sure he got the idea. But these guys were all great singers. We had a lot of fun."

Writing Ecce was more sobering, interrupted in 1998 when McCartney's first wife, Linda, lost her battle with breast cancer.

"When Linda died, the piece stopped," he says. "After a few months of grieving, I managed to get back in. and pick it up. I remember sitting at the keyboards, crying — more like weeping, actually. It was kind of therapeutic. I still find it a very sad piece of music, but in an uplifting way."

McCartney doesn't say whether his current works in progress, which include both a pop album and "a new project in the classical field," are providing relief from his situation with Mills.

"I'm just hoping for a happy resolution," he says, "particularly for the sake of our beautiful daughter, Beatrice, and my other children, who are all beautiful. Fingers crossed."