McCartney Plans Tribute To Linda

Hundreds, maybe thousands, of mourners are expected inside and outside the church for Linda McCartney's memorial service in London Monday night.

Paul McCartney's office says that among the 700 invited guests are the other two surviving former Beatles, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.

The whole congregation and choir at St. Martin-in-the-Fields church will sing Let It Be. But a spokesman says there are no plans for the ex-Beatles to sing together alone.

Linda McCartney died of breast cancer in April at age 56. McCartney wrote Let It Be for his own mother, Mary, who herself died of breast cancer when he was 14 years old.

A friend says McCartney doesn't want the memorial to be a morbid affair. She says the service will celebrate Linda McCartney's life and her love of music, family, animals, vegetarianism, and photography.

Outside the church, animal activists and fans will hold a candlelight vigil in Trafalgar Square.

McCartney, reportedly devastated at the loss of the woman from whom he had spent only one night apart in almost 30 years of marriage, has shut himself away since returning to the farmhouse home they shared in Sussex, southern England.

McCartney has not appeared in public since the death of his wife, whom he described in a poignant statement in April as the love of his life.

Friends said McCartney would deliver a tribute to Linda during the service, but television crews and photographers are banned from the interior of the church.

The McCartneys' four children - Heather, Mary, Stella, and James - are expected to attend. (Heather, Linda McCartney's child from a previous marriage, was reared by Paul and Linda.)

Friends said John Lennon's first son, Julian, might attend, although it was not known whether his widow, Yoko Ono (with whom McCartney had a lengthy feud after the 1970 breakup of the Beatles), would join them.

Paul and Linda, who played and sang together in the 1970s band Wings after the Beatles dissolved, recorded six songs written by her shortly before her death for a planned tribute album.