Linda McCartney

Although best known for being the wife of Paul McCartney and also for her successful vegetarian food range, Linda McCartney, née Eastman, had a successful career on the periphery of the music prior to meeting her famous husband. McCartney came from a privileged background in New York and after majoring in Fine Arts at the University of Arizona she eventually took up a career in photography having worked as an assistant to her photographer boyfriend David Dalton. Whilst working for the American magazine 'Town and Country' she was commissioned to do a shoot with The Rolling Stones who were promoting an album. Slowly she began to build a portfolio of celebrity shoots including artists such as Aretha Franklin, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, The Who and The Doors. A photograph McCartney took of Eric Clapton was used on the front cover of 'Rolling Stone' magazine, becoming the first female photographer ever to have work featured on the magazine's cover- a few years later she appeared on the cover of the magazine herself along with husband Paul, the only person in the magazine's history to have appeared on the cover on both sides of a camera lens. She married Paul McCartney after meeting him at a club in London in the late 1960s and they became one of the music business's most enduring couples. She became a member of the post-Beatles band Wings, playing keyboard and providing backing vocals, and enjoyed a successful pop career before going on to launch a successful vegetarian food brand under her own name. In 1995 she was diagnosed with breast cancer and succumbed to the disease in 1998 at the age of 56.

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