All he once needed was love. Nowadays, some heavy-duty damage control will attempt to do the trick.
The already contentious divorce between Paul McCartney and Heather Mills McCartney reached new levels of acrimony Wednesday, after a damning deposition filed by the ex-Beatles' estranged missus was leaked to the British press.
According to the documents, excerpts from which were published in the Evening Standard and Daily Mail, the model and anti-landmine activist alleged that McCartney began exhibiting physically and verbally abusive behaviors less than four months into their marriage.
McCartney was quick to lash out at the allegations, vehemently denying them in a statement released through his publicist.
Paul Freundlich said McCartney was looking forward to "defending these allegations vigorously and appropriately" in a courtroom, but otherwise would not speak publicly in order to maintain "some dignity in what is a private matter."
Among the claims Mills McCartney lodged in her 13-page document: McCartney stabbed Mills in the arm with a broken wine glass, refused her the use of a bed pan, shoved her over a coffee table, choked her on more than one occasion, verbally abused her in public and pushed her into a bath while she was pregnant with the couple's child, Beatrice.
Mills McCartney chronicles a litany of other alleged offenses in the deposition, dating from October 2002 up until April of this year, most of which she claims took place while McCartney was under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
In August 2003, she says she confronted McCartney, asking him if he was smoking marijuana, at which point she alleges he grabbed her neck and choked her.
On several occasions, she asserts, McCartney was incapacitated and unable to help care for their daughter. In his absence, Mills McCartney claims the rock legend failed to provide her with the necessary assistance to care for their daughter, including a time when she underwent surgery on her leg and was left "in agony."
The 38-year-old former model also claims McCartney, 64, went out of his way to make her uncomfortable and distressed.
In May 2003, she claims McCartney would not let her out of an obligation to attend one of his concerts and that he pushed her into a bath after an argument broke out. Later the same month, she claims McCartney ordered a bodyguard to cease protecting her after she refused to attend another after-party in his honor and as a result was mobbed by fans and forced to take a 30-minute walk back to their hotel.
Five months later, Mills McCartney states that Sir Paul demanded she not breast feed their daughter, telling her, "They are my breasts." That November, he allegedly ordered her to defer an operation on her amputated leg because the recovery time would interfere with a planned holiday.
This past April, she alleges, an argument resulted in McCartney pouring a glass of red wine over her head and throwing the remains of the glass directly at her. She also says he inadvertently broke the stem of another glass while lunging at her, cutting her arm and causing her "to bleed profusely." After the incident, she claims he put her in a wheelchair, pushed her out of the house and ordered her to apologize for "winding him up."
Despite the various alleged abuses, Mills McCartney says she still cared for McCartney, citing one instance in April. She claims to have found her husband drunk and covered in his own vomit, at which point she, with a broken pelvis, helped him into a bath, consulted with his psychiatrist and led him to bed.
There has been no explanation about how the supposedly private deposition made its way into newsprint, but the incident is the latest in the former couple's increasingly nasty, headline-grabbing divorce.
For her part, Mills McCartney's spokesman, Phil Hall, told the Associated Press that the divorce proceedings were "highly confidential" and that he could not confirm whether the documents delineating the allegations were genuine. He did note that Mills McCartney had been "shocked" by the stories.
Thuogh we're guessing not as shocked as McCartney himself.
The McCartneys announced their split in May of this year, blaming the media's "constant intrusion into [their] private lives" as the cause of their separation.
Because they did not sign a prenuptial agreement prior to their June 2002 wedding, the stakes of the divorce are huge, with some reports suggesting Mills McCartney is seeking half of her estranged husband's $1.6 billion fortune.