Paul and Linda McCartney drove from Paris to the French port Le Havre on 2 October 1970.
They had booked, under the name Paul Martin, to travel to New York City on the SS France, a 1,037-foot 11-deck liner. Their first class accommodation cost around $3,000. They were joined on the journey by their daughters Heather and Mary.
We were on holiday in France and thinking about making another album. I’d written a few new songs and we thought that for a change we’d go to New York to record. It’s a good place, with a lot of great musicians and would give us a different slant. We’d tried the amateur bit with McCartney, going back to square one; now we wanted to get a bit more professional…It was a crazy journey. I wore shades a lot of the time and nobody really bothered us. But there was one woman who got annoyed at me coming into the dining room wearing them. I thought, ‘What the hell. I’m on holiday, I’ll do what I want’ and I didn’t particularly want to have to relate to some of these people. She got annoyed, saying, ‘Take your sunglasses off. Elizabeth Taylor is on this boat and she doesn’t wear them.’ I said, ‘Well I’m not Elizabeth Taylor!’
Wingspan
The McCartneys disembarked at Pier 92, West 52nd Street on the morning of 7 October, and checked in at the Stanhope Hotel. The primary purpose of the trip was to record their album Ram.