Linda Eastman McCartney, the photographer whose images of 1960s rock icons have become classics and the wife of former Beatle Paul McCartney, died on in Santa Barbara, Calif., where the McCartneys were vacationing.

She was 56 years old at the time.

Linda McCartney cause of death: What happened to John Eastman sister?

According to Geoff Baker, a family spokesman, the cause was breast cancer that progressed to her liver.

Ms. McCartney worked as a pianist and backup singer in two of her husband’s post-Beatles bands, Wings and an unnamed group that toured in 1989 and 1993, in addition to her job as a photographer.

She was an outspoken supporter of animal rights and vegetarianism, and she converted her passion for vegetarian food into a business in the late 1980s.

Ms. McCartney drew the ire of her husband’s followers at first, but eventually gained the respect of many of them as the wife of a singer who had long been an adolescent heartthrob and was the last Beatle to marry.

Hundreds of tearful girls filled the sidewalk outside the Marylebone Register Office in London on March 12, 1969, when the McCartneys married.

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