MCCARTNEY TALKED TO GOD DURING WIFE'S ILLNESS

LONDON (Reuters) Paul McCartney talked to God "more often" during his
wife's struggle with cancer, the former Beatle said Sunday.

But he wasn't sure if there was life after death, partly because he had
received no message from fellow Beatle John Lennon, who was murdered in New
York in 1980.

In an interview with the BBC's "Breakfast with Frost" program, McCartney
also said he would advise people not to take drugs. He once spent nine days
in jail in Japan for possessing marijuana.

McCartney said his wife Linda, who in October made her first public
appearance in 18 months, was now very well but that it had been a shock
when she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

"It makes you talk to it, or God, a little more often," he said. "The idea
that there is someone to hand it over, I think unless you're very religious
you live your life not thinking there's anyone you can hand it to and I
think, you know, that was quite a blessing for us to find."

Asked if he believed in life after death, he said: "When we were kids we
always used to say, 'Okay, whoever dies first get a message through'...Well
then when John died I thought well maybe we'll get a message because I know
he knew the deal. I haven't had a message from John."

He added: "So I don't know, I don't know if you can get messages back
(after death). Maybe you live but there's no postal service."

McCartney, who has called for the legalization of cannabis, said he favored
decriminalization of the drug. But when his children asked him about drugs,
"I always say to them...if you want my advice, you know, don't do any."

He denied that it was singer Bob Dylan who introduced him to pot. "It was
on an occasion where Bob was there, but it was a friend of Bob's," he said.

McCartney, better known nowadays for his cleanliving vegetarian lifestyle,
told his official biographer earlier this year that he was "turned on to
pot" by Dylan in 1964.

McCartney said Lennon was not as acerbic in private as he often was in
public and it was not right to blame Lennon for the 1970 breakup of the
Beatles.

"I think we'd come full circle, I think we all sort of knew it, having
finished touring, having made a few records there wasn't really in our
minds anywhere else to go," he said.

McCartney, 55, was knighted by Queen Elizabeth earlier this year for his
services to pop music. In October, he won a standing ovation in London for
the world premiere of his first solo classical music symphony, "Standing
Stone."

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