Fran Healy Keeping Vegetarian Promise to Paul McCartney

Posted on Jul 26th 2010 11:00AM by Steve Baltin
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Tim Barber

We're sure musicians everywhere would like to know the answer to this question: how do you get Paul McCartney to play bass on your album, as Travis frontman Fran Healy did? For starters, it helps that Healy has known McCartney for some time, even if their first meeting wasn't an auspicious one.

"I've known Paul since 2000. We did this TV show and he was so nice," Healy tells Spinner. "I sat down and he asked me to come and do a duet with him when he was doing his gig on this TV show. I was like, 'Ah, f---. Yeah, OK,' and I had to learn this rock 'n' roll song. I went up and did it, I completely forgot all the words and it was an absolute embarrassment. It was terrible, but it was funny."

The two, being musicians with mutual friends kept running into each other, so when Healy was on the hunt for a bass player to help contribute to his solo debut, 'Wreckorder,' he decided it didn't hurt to ask. "I thought, 'F--- it, I'm gonna try. I'm just gonna write him an e-mail,'" he says. "So I wrote him and gave him the demo of this song because I thought he would really like it. He loved it."

As has been reported, Healy was so grateful for the rock legend's help he promised to go vegetarian, a promise he's kept so far. "I'm quite Scottish about it," he says. "Whether you promise your dog you're gonna take him for a walk, it's a promise and I'm quite loyal when it comes to things like that."

Even though Paul McCartney is a factor, forsaking meat seems like a big life change, but Healy was already on board with vegetarianism, thanks to a bad dream. "I had a nightmare a few years ago where I was witnessing a cow and a calf being slaughtered," he says. "It was a horrible nightmare and it was so graphic that I just thought, 'I can't eat meat' so I stopped for a while and then I went back to it about six months later. But I've made this promise now and I'm gonna keep to it."

To give Healy some guidance and encouragement, McCartney sent him some vegetarian cookbooks by his late wife, Linda. "It was so sweet when the parcel arrived," he says. "We didn't know what it was, but Paul had written a little post-it note saying, 'This should be enough to get you started. Love, Paul.' I'm like, 'Wow.'"

So, did Macca have any suggestions on recipes? "I asked him and he said the veggie lasagna is amazing," Healy say. "We made it and yeah, it was really great."