| name | Sir Paul McCartney MBE, Hon RAM, FRCM |
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| birth name | James Paul McCartney |
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| background | solo_singer
|
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| alt | Black-and-white image of McCartney, in his sixties, holding an electric bass. He wears a black buttoned-up suit jacket with black pants. |
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| birth name | James Paul McCartney |
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| birth date | June 18, 1942 |
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| birth place | Liverpool, England, UK |
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| instrument | Vocals, bass guitar, guitar, keyboards, drums, ukulele, mandolin, recorder |
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| genre | Rock, pop, classical, electronica |
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| occupation | Musician, composer, music producer, film producer, businessman |
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| years active | 1957–present |
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| label | Hear, Apple, Parlophone, Capitol, Columbia, Concord, EMI, One Little Indian, Vee-Jay |
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| associated acts | The Quarrymen, The Beatles, Wings, The Fireman, Linda McCartney, John Lennon, Denny Laine |
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| website | |
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| notable instruments | Höfner 500/1Rickenbacker 4001SGibson Les PaulEpiphone TexanEpiphone CasinoFender EsquireFender Jazz BassYamaha BB1200 BassWal 5-String BassMartin D-28
}} |
|---|
Sir James Paul McCartney,
MBE,
Hon RAM,
FRCM (born 18 June 1942) is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. Formerly of
the Beatles (1960–1970) and
Wings (1971–1981), McCartney is listed in ''
Guinness World Records'' as the "most successful musician and composer in popular music history", with 60
gold discs and sales of 100 million
singles in the United Kingdom alone.
With John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, McCartney gained worldwide fame as a member of the Beatles, and with Lennon formed one of the most influential and successful songwriting partnerships in the history of popular music. After leaving The Beatles, McCartney launched a successful solo career and formed the band Wings with his first wife, Linda Eastman, and singer-songwriter Denny Laine.
BBC News Online readers named McCartney the "greatest composer of the millennium". According to the BBC, his Beatles song "Yesterday" has been covered by over 2,200 artists—more than any other song in the history of recorded music. Since its 1965 release it has been played more than 7,000,000 times on American television and radio. Wings' 1977 single "Mull of Kintyre" became the first single to sell more than two million copies in the United Kingdom and remains the UK's top selling non-charity single. Based on the 93 weeks his compositions have spent at the top spot of the UK chart, and 24 number one singles to his credit, McCartney is the most successful songwriter in UK singles chart history. As a performer or songwriter, McCartney was responsible for 31 number one singles on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 chart in the United States, and has sold 15.5 million RIAA certified albums in the United States.
McCartney has composed film scores, classical and electronic music, released a large catalogue of songs as a solo artist, and has taken part in projects to help international charities. He is an advocate for animal rights, for vegetarianism, and for music education; he is active in campaigns against landmines, seal hunting, and Third World debt. He is a keen football fan, supporting both Everton and Liverpool football clubs. His company MPL Communications owns the copyrights to more than 3,000 songs, including all songs written by Buddy Holly, along with publishing rights to the musicals ''Guys and Dolls'', ''A Chorus Line'', and ''Grease''. McCartney is one of the UK's wealthiest people, with an estimated fortune of £475 million in 2010.
Childhood
McCartney was born in Walton Hospital in Liverpool England, where his mother, Mary (née Mohin), had "satisfied her state registry requirments" for nursing, twelve years earlier. His father James, or "Jim" McCartney, was absent at his son's birth due to his work as a volunteer fire fighter during World War II. McCartney has one brother, Michael, born 7 January 1944, and though they were baptised in their mother's Roman Catholic faith, "religion did not play a part in their upbringing", as McCartney's father was a Protestant turned agnostic.
In 1947 he began attending Stockton Wood Road Primary School, by 1952 Joseph Williams Junior School, where he passed the 11-plus exam in 1953 with three others out of ninety examinees, thus gaining admission to the Liverpool Institute. In 1954, while taking the bus from his home in the suburb of Speke to the Institute, he met George Harrison. Passing the exam meant they could go to a grammar school rather than a secondary modern school, which the majority of pupils attended until they were eligible to work.
In 1955 the McCartneys moved to 20 Forthlin Road in Allerton. The first member of his family to own a car, his mother rode a bicycle to houses where she worked as a midwife; he describes an early memory her leaving at "about three in the morning" the "streets ... thick with snow". On 31 October 1956, when he was fourteen, his mother died of an embolism after a mastectomy operation to stop the spread of her breast cancer. The early loss of his mother was later a point of relation with John Lennon, whose mother Julia died after being struck by a car when Lennon was seventeen.
His father was a trumpet player and pianist who had led Jim Mac's Jazz Band in the 1920s and encouraged his son to be musical. He kept an upright piano in the front room that he purchased from Epstein's North End Music Stores. His father, Joe McCartney, played an E-flat tuba. Jim McCartney used to point out the bass parts in songs on the radio, and often took his son to local brass band concerts. He gave Paul a nickel-plated trumpet for his fourteenth birthday, but when rock and roll became popular on Radio Luxembourg, he traded it for a £15 Framus Zenith (model 17) acoustic guitar, realizing that its difficult to sing, "with a trumpet stuck in your mouth." Being left-handed, he found right-handed guitars difficult to play, but when he saw a poster advertising a Slim Whitman concert, he realised that Whitman played left-handed with his right-handed guitar strung the opposite way. He then restrung his guitar and after some adjustments, found it easier to play. McCartney wrote his first song ("I Lost My Little Girl") on the Zenith, and his second song, "When I'm Sixty-Four", on the piano, which despite his father's advice, he took only a couple of lessons for, preferring instead to learn "by ear." He was heavily influenced by American rhythm and blues music, and has stated that Little Richard was his idol when he was in school. The first song he ever sang in public was "Long Tall Sally", at a Butlins holiday camp talent competition.
Musical career
1957–1960
When he was 15, he met
John Lennon and
The Quarrymen at the St. Peter's Church Hall fête in
Woolton on 6 July 1957. He joined the group soon after, and formed a close working relationship with Lennon, collaboratively writing songs together. Harrison joined in early 1958 as lead guitarist, followed in early 1960 by Lennon's art school friend,
Stuart Sutcliffe on bass. By May 1960, they had tried several new names, including "Johnny and the Moondogs" and "the Silver Beetles", playing a tour of Scotland under that name with
Johnny Gentle. They changed the name of the group to "the Beatles" in mid-August 1960 and recruited
Pete Best at short notice to become their drummer for an imminent engagement in Hamburg.
1960–1970: The Beatles
From August 1960, the Beatles were booked by Allan Williams to perform at a club in Hamburg. During extended stays over the next two years, they performed as a resident group in a number of Hamburg clubs. On returns to Liverpool they played at the Cavern club. Prior to the end of the residency, Sutcliffe left the band, so McCartney reluctantly became their bass player. The Beatles recorded their first published musical material in Hamburg, performing as the backing group for Tony Sheridan on the single "My Bonnie", a recording that would later bring them to the attention of a key figure in their subsequent development and commercial success, Brian Epstein, who became their next manager. Epstein eventually negotiated a record contract for the group with Parlophone in May 1962. After replacing Best with Ringo Starr, they became increasingly popular in the UK during 1963 and in the US in 1964. In 1965, they were each appointed as a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE). After touring almost non-stop for a period of nearly four years, and giving more than 1,400 live performances internationally, the group gave their final commercial concert at the end of their 1966 US tour. They continued to work in the recording studio from 1966 until their break-up in 1970. In the eight years from 1962 to 1970, the group released twenty-two UK singles and twelve studio albums, often released in different configurations in the USA and other countries (see discography). In October 1969, a rumour surfaced that McCartney had died in a car crash, but it was soon proven false when a November ''Life'' magazine cover featured McCartney and his family with the caption, "Paul is Still With Us."
Since 1970
After the break-up of the Beatles, McCartney continued his musical career, releasing his first solo album ''McCartney'' in 1970. He worked with his wife Linda McCartney to record a second album, ''Ram'', in 1971. Later that year, the pair were joined by ex-Moody Blues guitarist Denny Laine and drummer Denny Seiwell to form the group Wings. Active between 1971 and 1981, the group released numerous successful singles and albums (see Wings discography). McCartney also collaborated with a number of other popular artists including Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Eric Stewart, and Elvis Costello. In 1985, McCartney played "Let It Be" at the Live Aid concert in London, backed by Bob Geldof, Pete Townshend, David Bowie, and Alison Moyet. In 1989, he joined forces with fellow Merseysiders including Gerry Marsden of Gerry and the Pacemakers and Holly Johnson of Frankie Goes to Hollywood to record a new version of Ferry Cross the Mersey (originally recorded 25 years earlier by Gerry and the Pacemakers) to generate money for the appeal fund of the Hillsborough disaster, which occurred on 15 April that year and in which ninety-five Liverpool F.C. fans died as a result of their injuries.
During the 1990s McCartney ventured into orchestral music, and in 1991 the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society commissioned a musical piece by him to celebrate its sesquicentennial. He collaborated with Carl Davis to release ''Liverpool Oratorio''; involving opera singers Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Sally Burgess, Jerry Hadley and Willard White, with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and the choir of Liverpool Cathedral. The Prince of Wales later honoured McCartney as a Fellow of The Royal College of Music and Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music (2008). Other forays into classical music included ''Standing Stone'' (1997), ''Working Classical'' (1999), ''Ecce Cor Meum'' (2006), and "Ocean's Kingdom" (2011).
In December 1996, he was informed that he was to be named in the 1997 New Year Honours and was to be knighted for services to music; his ceremony took place on 11 March. In 1999, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist. In May 2000, he was awarded a Fellowship by the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors. In 1994 McCartney, Harrison, and Starr began working together on Apple's ''The Beatles Anthology'' documentary series.
Having witnessed the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks from the JFK airport tarmac, McCartney took a lead role in organising The Concert for New York City. In November 2002, on the first anniversary of George Harrison's death, McCartney performed at the Concert for George. He has also participated in the National Football League's Super Bowl, performing in the pre-game show for Super Bowl XXXVI and headlining the halftime show at Super Bowl XXXIX.
McCartney continues to work in the realms of popular and classical music, touring the world and performing at a large number of concerts and events; on more than one occasion he has performed with Ringo Starr. In 2008 he received a BRIT award for Outstanding Contribution to Music and an honorary degree, Doctor of Music, from Yale University. The same year, he performed at a concert in Liverpool to celebrate the city's year as European Capital of Culture. In 2009, he received two nominations for the 51st annual Grammy awards, while in October of the same year he was named songwriter of the year at the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) Awards. On 15 July 2009, more than 45 years after the Beatles first appeared on American television on ''The Ed Sullivan Show'', McCartney returned to the Ed Sullivan Theater to perform on ''Late Show with David Letterman''.
On 2 June 2010, McCartney was honoured by Barack Obama with the Gershwin Prize for his contributions to popular music in a live show for the White House with performances by Stevie Wonder, Lang Lang and many others.
McCartney's enduring popularity has helped him schedule performances in new venues. He played three sold out concerts at newly-built Citi Field in Queens, New York (built to replace the iconic Shea Stadium) on 17, 18, and 21 July 2009. On 27 June 2010, McCartney did a benefit concert at Hyde Park for the Born HIV Free foundation. On 18 August 2010, McCartney opened the Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. On 15–16 July 2011, McCartney performed the first concerts at the new Yankee Stadium.
McCartney has been touring since 2001 with guitarists Rusty Anderson and Brian Ray, Paul "Wix" Wickens on keyboards and drummer Abe Laboriel, Jr. In 2010, plans for an upcoming Paul McCartney tribute album were announced with recordings of McCartney songs by Kiss, Garth Brooks, Billy Joel, B.B. King and others. ''Kisses on the Bottom'', a collection of standards, was released on 7 February 2012. McCartney was honoured as MusiCares Person of the Year on 10 February 2012, two days prior to his performance at the 54th Grammy Awards.
Creative outlets
During the 1960s, McCartney was often seen at major cultural events, such as the launch party for the ''
International Times'' and at
The Roundhouse (28 January and 4 February 1967 respectively). He also delved into the visual arts, becoming a close friend of leading art dealers and gallery owners, explored experimental film, and regularly attended movie, theatrical and classical music performances.
His first contact with the London avant-garde scene was through
John Dunbar, who introduced him to the art dealer
Robert Fraser, who in turn introduced McCartney to an array of writers and artists. McCartney later became involved in the renovation and publicising of the
Indica Gallery in Mason's Yard, London — John Lennon first met
Yoko Ono at the Indica. The Indica Gallery brought McCartney into contact with
Barry Miles, whose underground newspaper, the ''
International Times'', McCartney helped to start. Miles would become ''de facto'' manager of the Apple's short-lived
Zapple Records label, and wrote McCartney's official biography, ''
Many Years From Now'' (1997).
While living at the Asher house, McCartney took piano lessons at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, which The Beatles' producer Martin had previously attended. McCartney studied composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Luciano Berio. McCartney later wrote and released several pieces of modern classical music and ambient electronica, besides writing poetry and painting. McCartney is lead patron of the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, an arts school in the building formerly occupied by the Liverpool Institute for Boys. The 1837 building, which McCartney attended during his schooldays, had become derelict by the mid-1980s. On 7 June 1996, Queen Elizabeth II officially opened the redeveloped building.
Electronic music
After the recording of "
Yesterday" in 1965, McCartney contacted the
BBC Radiophonic Workshop in
Maida Vale, London, to see if they could record an electronic version of the song, but never followed it up. When visiting
John Dunbar's flat in London, McCartney would take along tapes he had compiled at Jane Asher's house. The tapes were mixes of various songs, musical pieces and comments made by McCartney that he had
Dick James make into a demo record for him. Heavily influenced by
John Cage, he made
tape loops by recording voices, guitars, and bongoes on a
Brenell tape recorder, and splicing the various loops together. He reversed the tapes, sped them up, and slowed them down to create the effects he wanted, some of which were later used on Beatles' recordings, such as "
Tomorrow Never Knows". McCartney referred to the tapes as "electronic symphonies".
In the spring of 1966 McCartney rented a ground floor and basement flat from Ringo Starr at 34 Montagu Square, to be used as a small demo studio for spoken-word recordings by poets, writers (including William S. Burroughs) and avant-garde musicians. The Beatles' Apple Records then launched a sub-label, Zapple with Miles as its manager, ostensibly to release recordings of a similar aesthetic, although few releases would ultimately result as Apple and The Beatles slid into business and personal difficulties.
In 1995, McCartney recorded a radio series called "Oobu Joobu" for the American network Westwood One, which he described as being "wide-screen radio". During the 1990s, McCartney collaborated with Youth of Killing Joke under the name The Fireman, and released two ambient electronic albums: ''Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest'' (1993) and ''Rushes'' (1998). In 2000, he released an album titled ''Liverpool Sound Collage'' with Super Furry Animals and Youth, utilising the sound collage and musique concrète techniques that fascinated him in the mid-1960s. In 2005, he worked on a project with bootleg producer and remixer Freelance Hellraiser, consisting of remixed versions of songs from throughout his solo career which were released under the title ''Twin Freaks''. The Fireman's third album ''Electric Arguments'' was released on 25 November 2008. Unlike the first two Fireman albums, this one was more song-based in its structure. McCartney told ''L.A. Weekly'' in a January 2009, "Fireman is improvisational theatre ... I formalise it a bit to get it into the studio, and when I step up to a microphone, I have a vague idea of what I'm about to do. I usually have a song, and I know the melody and lyrics, and my performance is the only unknown."
Film
McCartney was interested in
animated films as a child, and later had the financial resources to ask Geoff Dunbar to direct a short animated film called ''
Rupert and the Frog Song'', in 1981. McCartney was the producer, he wrote the music and the script, and also added some of the character voices. McCartney wrote and starred in the 1984 film ''
Give My Regards to Broad Street''. The film and soundtrack featured the popular hit "
No More Lonely Nights", and the album reached No.1 in the UK, but the film did not do well commercially or critically.
Roger Ebert awarded the film a single star and wrote, "You can safely skip the movie and proceed directly to the sound track." Dunbar worked again with McCartney on an animated film about the work of French artist
Honoré Daumier, in 1992, which won both of them a
BAFTA award. They also worked on ''
Tropic Island Hum'' in 1997. In 1995, McCartney made a guest appearance in the "
Lisa the Vegetarian", an episode of ''
The Simpsons'', and directed a short documentary about
The Grateful Dead.
In May 2000, McCartney released ''Wingspan: An Intimate Portrait'', a retrospective documentary that features behind-the-scenes films and photographs that Paul and Linda McCartney (who had died in 1998) took of their family and bands. Interspersed throughout the 88 minute film is an interview by Mary McCartney with her father. Mary was the baby photographed inside McCartney's jacket on the back cover of his first solo album, ''McCartney'', and was one of the producers of the documentary.
Painting
In 1966, McCartney met art gallery-owner
Robert Fraser, whose flat was visited by many well-known artists. McCartney met
Andy Warhol,
Claes Oldenburg,
Peter Blake, and
Richard Hamilton there, and learned about art appreciation. McCartney later started buying paintings by
Magritte, and used Magritte's painting of an apple for the
Apple Records logo. He now owns Magritte's easel and spectacles.
McCartney's love of painting surfaced after watching artist Willem de Kooning paint, in Kooning's Long Island studio. McCartney took up painting in 1983. In 1999, he exhibited his paintings (featuring McCartney's portraits of John Lennon, Andy Warhol, and David Bowie) for the first time in Siegen, Germany, and included photographs by Linda. He chose the gallery because Wolfgang Suttner (local events organiser) was genuinely interested in his art, and the positive reaction led to McCartney showing his work in UK galleries. The first UK exhibition of McCartney's work was opened in Bristol, England with more than 50 paintings on display. McCartney had previously believed that "only people that had been to art school were allowed to paint" – as Lennon had.
In October 2000, Yoko Ono and McCartney presented art exhibitions in New York and London. McCartney said, "I've been offered an exhibition of my paintings at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool where John and I used to spend many a pleasant afternoon. So I'm really excited about it. I didn't tell anybody I painted for 15 years but now I'm out of the closet."
As an artist, Paul McCartney designed a series of six postage stamps issued by the Isle of Man Post on 1 July 2002. According to BBC News, McCartney seems to be the first major rock star in the world who is also known as a stamp designer.
Writing and poetry
When McCartney was young, his mother read him poems and encouraged him to read books. McCartney's father was interested in
crosswords and invited the two young McCartneys (Paul and his brother Michael) to solve them with him, so as to increase their "word power". McCartney was later inspired – in his school years – by
Alan Durband, who was McCartney's English literature teacher at the Liverpool Institute. Durband was a co-founder and fund-raiser at the
Everyman Theatre in Liverpool, where
Willy Russell also worked, and introduced McCartney to
Geoffrey Chaucer's works. McCartney later took his
A-level exams, but passed only one subject – Art.
In 2001 McCartney published 'Blackbird Singing', a volume of poems, some of which were lyrics to his songs, and gave readings in Liverpool and New York City. Some of them were serious: "Here Today" (about Lennon) and some humorous ("Maxwell's Silver Hammer"). In the foreword of the book, McCartney explained that when he was a teenager, he had "an overwhelming desire" to have a poem of his published in the school magazine. He wrote something "deep and meaningful", but it was rejected, and he feels that he has been trying to get some kind of revenge ever since. His first "real poem" was about the death of his childhood friend, Ivan Vaughan.
In October 2005, McCartney released a children's book called ''High in the Clouds: An Urban Furry Tail''. In a press release publicising the book, McCartney said, "I have loved reading for as long as I can remember", singling out ''Treasure Island'' as a childhood favourite. McCartney collaborated with author Philip Ardagh and animator Geoff Dunbar to write the book.
Contact with fellow ex-Beatles
John Lennon
Although McCartney's post-Beatles relationship with
John Lennon was troubled, they became close again briefly in 1974 and even played together for the only time since The Beatles split (see
A Toot and a Snore in '74). In later years, the two grew apart again. McCartney would often call Lennon, but was never sure of what sort of reception he would get, such as when McCartney once called Lennon and was told, "You're all pizza and fairytales!" McCartney understood that he could not just phone Lennon and only talk about business, so they often talked about cats, baking bread, or babies. According to
May Pang, during Lennon's "Lost Weekend" with her they planned to visit McCartney in New Orleans, where McCartney was recording the ''
Venus and Mars'' album, but Lennon went back to Ono the day before the planned visit after Ono said she had a new cure for Lennon's smoking habit.
In a 1980 interview, Lennon said that the last time he had seen McCartney was when they had watched the episode of ''Saturday Night Live'' (May 1976) in which Lorne Michaels had made his $3,000 cash offer to get Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr to reunite on the show. McCartney and Lennon had seriously considered going to the studio, but were too tired. This event was fictionalised in the 2000 television film ''Two of Us''. His last telephone call to Lennon, which was just before Lennon and Ono released ''Double Fantasy'', was friendly. During the call, Lennon said (laughing) to McCartney, "This housewife wants a career!" which referred to Lennon's househusband years, while looking after Sean Lennon. In 1984, McCartney said this about the phone call: "Yes. That is a nice thing, a consoling factor for me, because I do feel it was sad that we never actually sat down and straightened our differences out. But fortunately for me, the last phone conversation I ever had with him was really great, and we didn't have any kind of blow-up." Linda McCartney, speaking in the same 1984 interview stated: "I know that Paul was desperate to write with John again. And I know John was desperate to write. Desperate. People thought, well, he's taking care of Sean, he's a househusband and all that, but he wasn't happy. He couldn't write and it drove him crazy. And Paul could have helped him ... easily."
;Reaction to Lennon's murder
On the morning of 9 December 1980, McCartney awoke to the news that Lennon had been murdered outside his home in the Dakota building in New York City. Lennon's death created a media frenzy around the surviving members of The Beatles. On the evening of 9 December, as McCartney was leaving an Oxford Street recording studio, he was surrounded by reporters and asked for his reaction to Lennon's death. He was later criticised for what appeared, when published, to be an utterly superficial response: "It's a drag". McCartney explained, "When John was killed somebody stuck a microphone at me and said: 'What do you think about it?' I said, 'It's a dra-a-ag' and meant it with every inch of melancholy I could muster. When you put that in print it says, 'McCartney in London today when asked for a comment on his dead friend said, "It's a drag."' It seemed a very flippant comment to make." McCartney was also to recall:
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In 1983, McCartney said:
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In a ''Playboy'' interview in 1984, McCartney said that he went home that night and watched the news on television – while sitting with all his children – and cried all evening.
McCartney carried on recording after the death of Lennon but did not play any live concerts for some time. He explained that this was because he was nervous that he would be "the next" to be murdered. This led to a disagreement with Denny Laine, who wanted to continue touring and subsequently left Wings, which McCartney disbanded in 1981. Also in June 1981, six months after Lennon's death, McCartney sang backup on George Harrison's tribute to Lennon, "All Those Years Ago", which also featured Ringo Starr on drums. McCartney would go on to record "Here Today", a tribute song to Lennon.
George Harrison
In 1977, Harrison had this to say about working with McCartney: "There were a lot of tracks though where I played bass ... because what Paul would do, if he's written a song, he'd learn all the parts for Paul and then come in the studio and say, 'Do this.' He'd never give you the opportunity to come out with something. Paul would always help along when you'd done his ten songs—then when he got 'round to doing one of my songs, he would help. It was silly. It was very selfish, actually." While being interviewed circa 1988, Harrison said McCartney had recently mentioned the possibility of the two of them writing together, to which Harrison laughed, "I've only been there about 30 years in Paul's life and it's like now he wants to write with me."
In September 1980, Lennon said of Harrison and McCartney's working relationship: "I remember the day [Harrison] called to ask for help on 'Taxman', one of his bigger songs. I threw in a few one-liners to help the song along, because that's what he asked for. He came to me because he could not go to Paul, because Paul would not have helped him at that period." Despite this statement, McCartney did contribute to the song, playing the track's guitar solo.
In late 2001, McCartney learned that Harrison was losing his battle with cancer. Upon Harrison's death on 29 November 2001, McCartney told ''Entertainment Tonight'', ''Access Hollywood'', ''Extra'', ''Good Morning America'', ''The Early Show'', ''MTV'', ''VH1'' and ''Today'' that George was like his "baby brother". Harrison spent his last days in a Hollywood Hills mansion that was once leased by McCartney. On the day Harrison died, McCartney said, "George was a fantastic guy ... still laughing and joking ... a very brave man ... and I love him like ... he's my brother." While guesting on ''Larry King Live'' alongside Ringo Starr, McCartney said of the last time he saw Harrison, "We just sat there stroking hands. And this is a guy, and, you know, you don't stroke hands with guys, like that, you know it was just beautiful. We just spent a couple of hours and it was really lovely it was like ... a favourite memory of mine." On the first anniversary of Harrison's death, McCartney played Harrison's "Something" on a ukulele at the Concert for George. He also performed "For You Blue," "All Things Must Pass," and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps".
Personal relationships
One of McCartney's first girlfriends, in 1959, was called Layla, a name he remembers being unusual in Liverpool at the time. Layla was slightly older than McCartney and used to ask him to baby-sit with her. Julie Arthur, another girlfriend, was Ted Ray's niece.
Dot Rhone
McCartney's first serious girlfriend in Liverpool was Dot Rhone, whom he met at the
Casbah club in 1959. McCartney chose clothes and make-up for Rhone, and he paid for her to have her hair styled like
Brigitte Bardot's. When McCartney first went to Hamburg with The Beatles, he wrote to Rhone regularly, and she accompanied
Cynthia Lennon to Hamburg when The Beatles played there again in 1962. The couple had a three-year relationship, and were due to marry until Rhone's miscarriage.
Jane Asher
McCartney first met the British actress
Jane Asher on 18 April 1963, when a photographer asked them to pose together at a Beatles performance at the
Royal Albert Hall in London. The two began a relationship and McCartney took up residence with Asher at her parents' house at 57 Wimpole Street London, where he lived for nearly three years before the couple moved to McCartney's own house in
St. John's Wood. McCartney wrote several songs while at the Ashers', including "
Yesterday" and several inspired by Asher, among them "
And I Love Her", "
You Won't See Me", and "
I'm Looking Through You". McCartney and Asher had a five-year relationship, and they planned to marry, but Asher broke off the engagement when she discovered McCartney had become involved with another woman,
Francie Schwartz. However, Schwartz stated that McCartney and Asher had already broken up before the incident.
Linda McCartney
In 1969, McCartney married American photographer
Linda Eastman, whom he described as the woman who gave him "the strength and courage to work again" after the break-up of The Beatles. The pair had met previously at a 1967
Georgie Fame concert at
The Bag O'Nails club, during her UK assignment to take photographs of "Swinging Sixties" musicians in London. Paul and Linda were both vegetarian and supported the animal rights organisation
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. They had four children – Linda's daughter
Heather (who was adopted by Paul),
Mary,
Stella and
James – and remained married until Linda's death from breast cancer in 1998.
Heather Mills
In 2002, McCartney married
Heather Mills, a former model and anti-
landmines campaigner. The couple had a child, Beatrice, in 2003. They separated in May 2006 and were divorced in May 2008. Widespread animosity towards McCartney's wives was reported in 2004. "They [the British public] didn't like me giving up on Jane Asher", McCartney said. "I married a New York divorcee with a child, and at the time they didn't like that."
Nancy Shevell
McCartney married New Yorker
Nancy Shevell in a civil ceremony at Old Marylebone Town Hall, London on 9 October 2011. The wedding was a "low-key affair" attended by a group of around 30 family and friends. The couple had been dating since November 2007.
A breast cancer survivor, she is a member of the board of the
New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority as well as vice president of a family-owned transportation conglomerate which owns
New England Motor Freight.
Lifestyle
Drugs
McCartney's introduction to drugs started in
Hamburg, Germany. The Beatles had to play for hours, and they were often given "Prellies" (
Preludin) by German customers or by
Astrid Kirchherr (whose mother bought them). McCartney would usually take one, but Lennon would often take four or five.
McCartney remembered getting "very high" and giggling when The Beatles were introduced to cannabis by Bob Dylan in New York, in 1964. McCartney's use of cannabis became regular, and he was quoted as saying that any future Beatles' lyrics containing the words "high", or "grass" were written specifically as a reference to cannabis, as was the phrase "another kind of mind" in "Got to Get You into My Life". John Dunbar's flat at 29 Lennox Gardens, in London, became a regular hang-out for McCartney, where he talked to musicians, writers and artists, and smoked cannabis. In 1965, Barry Miles introduced McCartney to hash brownies by using a recipe for hash fudge he found in the Alice B. Toklas Cookbook. During the filming of ''Help!'', he occasionally smoked a spliff in the car on the way to the studio during filming, which often made him forget his lines. ''Help!'' director Dick Lester said that he overheard "two beautiful women" trying to cajole McCartney into taking heroin, but he refused.
McCartney's attitude about cannabis was made public in the 1960s, when he added his name to an advertisement in ''The Times'', on 24 July 1967, which asked for the legalisation of cannabis, the release of all prisoners imprisoned because of possession, and research into marijuana's medical uses. The advertisement was sponsored by a group called Soma and was signed by 65 people, including The Beatles, Epstein, RD Laing, 15 doctors, and two MPs.
McCartney was introduced to cocaine by Robert Fraser, and it was available during the recording of ''Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band''. He admitted that he used the drug multiple times for about a year but stopped because of the unpleasant comedown.
In 1967, on a sailing trip to Greece (with the idea of buying an island for the whole group) McCartney said everybody sat around and took LSD, although McCartney had first taken it with Tara Browne, in 1966. He took his second "acid trip" with Lennon on 21 March 1967 after a studio session. McCartney was the first British pop star to openly admit to using LSD, in an interview in the now-defunct ''Queen'' magazine. His admission was followed by a TV interview in the UK on ITN on 19 June 1967, and when McCartney was asked about his admission of LSD use, he said:
McCartney was not arrested by Norman Pilcher's Drug Squad, as Donovan and several members of the Rolling Stones had been. In 1972, however, police found cannabis plants growing on his Scottish farm.
On 16 January 1980, Wings went to Tokyo for 11 concerts in Japan. As McCartney was going through customs, officials found 7.7 ounces (218.3 g) of cannabis in his luggage. He was arrested and taken to a Tokyo prison while the Japanese government decided what to do. McCartney had been previously denied a visa to Japan (in 1975) because he had been convicted twice in Europe for possession of cannabis. Public figures called for McCartney to be put on trial for drug-smuggling. Had he been convicted, he would have faced up to seven years in prison. The Wings Japanese tour was cancelled and the other members of Wings left Japan. After ten days in jail, McCartney was released and deported. He was told that he would not be welcome in Japan again, although a decade later he played a concert in Tokyo. In 1984, Paul and Linda McCartney were both arrested for possession of cannabis.
In an interview in 2004 he stated that he no longer smoked marijuana; he also admitted to taking heroin, LSD and cocaine but said his drug use was never excessive.
Meditation
On 24 August 1967, McCartney met the
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at the
London Hilton, and later went to
Bangor, in North Wales, to attend a weekend 'initiation' conference, at which time he and the other Beatles learned Transcendental Meditation (TM). "The whole meditation experience was very good and I still use the mantra ... I find it soothing and I can imagine that the more you were to get into it, the more interesting it would get." The time McCartney later spent
in India at the Maharishi's ashram was highly productive, as practically all of the songs that would later be recorded for ''
The White Album'' and ''
Abbey Road'' were composed there by McCartney, Lennon, or both together. Although McCartney was told that he was never to repeat the mantra to anyone else, he did tell Linda McCartney, and said he meditated a lot while he was in jail in Japan. In 2009, McCartney, along with
Ringo Starr, headlined a benefit concert at
Radio City Music Hall, raising three million dollars for the
David Lynch Foundation to fund instruction in
Transcendental Meditation for at-risk youth.
Activism
Paul and Linda McCartney became outspoken
vegetarians and animal rights activists. They said that their vegetarianism was realised when they happened to see lambs in a field as they ate a meal of lamb. McCartney has also credited the 1942
Disney film ''
Bambi'' – in which the young deer's mother is shot by a hunter – as the original inspiration for him to take an interest in
animal rights. In his first interview after Linda's death, he promised to continue working for animal rights.
In 1999, McCartney spent £3,000,000 to ensure Linda McCartney's food remained free of
genetically engineered ingredients. In 2002, McCartney gave his support to a campaign against a proposed ban on the sale of certain vitamins, herbs, and mineral products in the European Union. Following his marriage to Heather Mills, McCartney joined her in a campaign against
landmines. Both McCartney and Mills are patrons of
Adopt-A-Minefield. In 2003, McCartney played a personal concert for the wife of a wealthy banker and donated his one million dollar fee to the charity. He also wore an anti-landmines t-shirt on the
Back in the World tour.
In 2006, the McCartneys travelled to Prince Edward Island to bring international attention to the seal hunt (their final public appearance together). Their arrival sparked attention in Newfoundland and Labrador where the hunt is of economic significance. The couple also debated with Newfoundland's Premier Danny Williams on the CNN show ''Larry King Live''. They further stated that the fishermen should quit hunting seals and begin a seal watching business. McCartney has also criticised China's fur trade and supports the Make Poverty History campaign.
McCartney has been involved with a number of charity recordings and performances. In 2004, he donated a song to an album to aid the "US Campaign for Burma", in support of Burmese Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, and he had previously been involved in the Concerts for the People of Kampuchea, Ferry Aid, Band Aid, Live Aid, and the recording of "Ferry Cross the Mersey" (released 8 May 1989) following the Hillsborough disaster.
In 2008, he donated a song to Aid Still Required's CD to assist with the restoration of the devastation done to Southeast Asia from the 2004 Tsunami.
In a December 2008 interview with ''Prospect Magazine'', McCartney mentioned that he tried to convince the Dalai Lama to become a vegetarian. In a letter to the Dalai Lama, McCartney took issue with Buddhism and meat-eating being considered compatible, saying, "Forgive me for pointing this out, but if you eat animals then there is some suffering somewhere along the line." The Dalai Lama responded, saying his doctors advised him to eat meat for health reasons. In the interview McCartney said, "I wrote back saying they were wrong."
Football
The Beatles were advised by Epstein to make no comments about the football clubs they supported because it could alienate some fans, though it was well known that McCartney was a supporter of
Everton Football Club, and that his father and relatives used to take him to matches. His allegiance later shifted to
Liverpool F.C., as on 28 July 1968, The Beatles were photographed in a photographer's studio at 192–212 Gray's Inn Road, with McCartney wearing a Liverpool F.C.
rosette. Linda McCartney later said: "We spent last night listening to Liverpool football team on the radio, wanting them to win so badly. Paul supports Liverpool. He was for Everton for a while because of his family — but it's all Liverpool now."
Lennon and McCartney were present to watch the 1966 FA Cup Final at Wembley, between Everton and Sheffield Wednesday, and McCartney attended the 1968 FA Cup Final (18 May 1968) which was played by West Bromwich Albion against Everton. After the end of the match, McCartney shared cigarettes and whisky with other football fans. The ex-Liverpool player, Albert Stubbins, was the only footballer shown on the ''Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'' cover. McCartney tried to listen (on a radio) to the Liverpool v Manchester United 1977 FA Cup Final, while sailing in the Caribbean, and the video for McCartney's "Pipes of Peace" (in 1983) recreated the 1915 football game played between German and British troops during World War I, at Christmas.
At the end of the live version of "Coming Up" recorded in Glasgow in 1979 (later to become a US number one single) the crowd begins to sing "Paul McCartney!" until McCartney takes over and changes the chant to "Kenny Dalglish!", referring to the current Liverpool and Scotland striker. At the same concert, Gordon Smith, former football player who played for Rangers and Brighton & Hove Albion, met the McCartneys, and later accepted an invitation to visit their home in East Sussex in 1980. Smith later said that McCartney was "thrilled I knew Kenny Dalglish", to which Linda added: "I like Gordon McQueen of Man United", and Smith replied, "I know him too."
McCartney attended the 1986 FA Cup Final between Liverpool and Everton, and in 1989, he contributed to the "Ferry Cross the Mersey" charity single that was recorded to aid victims of the Hillsborough Disaster, which happened during a match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. McCartney performed at the Liverpool F.C. Anfield stadium on 1 June 2008, as a part of Liverpool's European Capital of Culture year. Dave Grohl from the Foo Fighters sang with McCartney on "Band on the Run", and played drums on "Back in the U.S.S.R.". Ono and Olivia Harrison attended the concert, along with Ken Dodd, and the former Liverpool F.C. football manager Rafael Benítez.
In an interview in 2008, McCartney ended speculation about his allegiance when he said:
"Here's the deal: my father was born in Everton, my family are officially Evertonians, so if it comes down to a derby match or an FA Cup final between the two, I would have to support Everton. But after a concert at Wembley Arena I got a bit of a friendship with Kenny Dalglish, who had been to the gig and I thought 'You know what? I am just going to support them both because it's all Liverpool and I don't have that Catholic-Protestant thing.' So I did have to get special dispensation from the Pope to do this but that's it, too bad. I support them both. They are both great teams, but if it comes to the crunch, I'm Evertonian."
In 2010, there was heavy speculation surrounding McCartney that he was to head up a consortium launching a take-over bid for struggling Charlton Athletic. Links between the club and the famous musician go a long way back with Charlton's famous supporters anthem – Valley, Floyd Road – using the tune and a number of lyrics from the Wings song "Mull of Kintyre".
Business
McCartney is one of Britain's wealthiest musicians, with an estimated fortune of £750 million ($1.2 billion) in 2009, although Justice Bennett, in his judgement on McCartney's divorce case found no evidence that McCartney was worth more than £400 million. In December 1998, he was approached to purchase a stake in
Everton Football Club by former school friend
Bill Kenwright who wished to put a consortium together but McCartney chose to decline the offer. In addition to his interest in
Apple Corps, McCartney's
MPL Communications owns a significant
music publishing catalogue, with access to over 25,000 copyrights. McCartney earned £40 million in 2003, making him Britain's highest media earner. This rose to £48.5 million by 2005. In the same year he joined the top American talent agency Grabow Associates, who arrange private performances for their richest clients.
Northern Songs was established in 1963, by
Dick James, to publish the songs of Lennon–McCartney.
The Beatles' partnership was replaced in 1968 by a jointly held company, Apple Corps, which continues to control Apple's commercial interests. Northern Songs was purchased by Associated Television (ATV) in 1969, and was sold in 1985 to Michael Jackson. For many years McCartney was unhappy about Jackson's purchase and handling of Northern Songs.
MPL Communications is an umbrella company for McCartney's business interests, which owns a wide range of copyrights, as well as the publishing rights to musicals. In 2006, the Trademarks Registry reported that MPL had started a process to secure the protections associated with registering the name "Paul McCartney" as a trademark. The 2005 films, ''Brokeback Mountain'' and ''Good Night, and Good Luck'', feature MPL copyrights.
In April 2009, it was revealed that McCartney, in common with other wealthy musicians, had seen a significant decline in his net worth over the preceding year. It was estimated that his fortune had fallen by some £60m, from £238m to £175m. The losses were attributed to the ongoing global recession, and the resultant decline in value of property and stock market holdings.
Critique, recognition and achievements
McCartney is listed in ''
The Guinness Book Of Records'' as the most successful musician and composer in popular music history with sales of 100 million singles and 60 gold discs, "Sir Paul McCartney became the Most Successful Songwriter who has written/co written 188 charted records, of which 91 reached the Top 10 and 33 made it to No.1 totalling 1,662 weeks on the chart (up to the beginning of 2008)."
In the US, McCartney has achieved thirty-two number-one singles on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100, including twenty-one with The Beatles, one as a co-writer on Elton John's cover of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", nine solo, with Wings or other collaborators, and one as the composer of "A World Without Love", a number one single for Peter and Gordon. In the UK, McCartney has been involved in more number-one singles than any other artist under a variety of credits, although Elvis Presley has achieved more as a solo artist. McCartney has twenty four number-one singles in the UK, including seventeen with the Beatles, one solo, and one each with Wings, Stevie Wonder, Ferry Aid, Band Aid, Band Aid 20 and one with "The Christians et all". McCartney is the only artist to reach the UK number one as a soloist ("Pipes of Peace"), duo ("Ebony and Ivory" with Stevie Wonder), trio ("Mull of Kintyre", Wings), quartet ("She Loves You", The Beatles), quintet ("Get Back", The Beatles with Billy Preston), and as part of a musical ensemble for charity (Ferry Aid).
McCartney was voted the "Greatest Composer of the Millennium" by BBC News Online readers and McCartney's song "Yesterday" is thought to be the most covered song in history with more than 2,200 recorded versions and according to the BBC, "The track is the only one by a UK writer to have been aired more than seven million times on American TV and radio and is third in the all-time list. Sir Paul McCartney's Yesterday is the most played song by a British writer this century in the US." After its 1977 release, the Wings single "Mull of Kintyre" became the highest-selling record in British chart history, and remained so until 1984. (Three charity singles have since surpassed it in sales; the first to do so, in 1984, was Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas?" in which McCartney was a participant.)
On 2 July 2005, he was involved with the fastest-released single in history. His performance of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" with U2 at Live 8 was released only 45 minutes after it was performed, before the end of the concert. The single reached number six on the ''Billboard'' charts, just hours after the single's release, and hit number one on numerous online download charts across the world. McCartney played for the largest stadium audience in history when 184,000 people paid to see him perform at Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on 21 April 1990.
McCartney's scheduled concert in St Petersburg, Russia was his 3,000th concert and took place in front of 60,000 fans in Russia, on 20 June 2004. Over his career, McCartney has played 2,523 gigs with The Beatles, 140 with Wings, and 325 as a solo artist. Only his second concert in Russia, with the first just the year before on Moscow's Red Square as the former Communist U.S.S.R. had previously banned music from The Beatles as a "corrupting influence", McCartney hired three jets, at a reported cost of $36,000 (€29,800) (£28,000), to spray dry ice in the clouds above Saint Petersburg's Winter Palace Square in a successful attempt to prevent rain.
The day McCartney flew into the former Soviet country, he celebrated his 62nd birthday, and after the concert, according to ''RIA Novosti'' news agency, he received a phone call from a fan; then-President Vladimir Putin, who telephoned him after the concert to wish him a happy birthday.
In the concert programme for his 1989 world tour, McCartney wrote that Lennon received all the credit for being the avant-garde Beatle, and McCartney was known as "baby-faced", which he disagreed with. People also assumed that Lennon was the "hard-edged one", and McCartney was the "soft-edged" Beatle, although McCartney admitted to "bossing Lennon around." Linda McCartney said that McCartney had a "hard-edge" – and not just on the surface – which she knew about after all the years she had spent living with him. McCartney seemed to confirm this edge when he commented that he sometimes meditates, which he said is better than "sleeping, eating, or shouting at someone".
The minor planet 4148, discovered in 1983, was named "McCartney" in his honour.
On 18 June 2006, McCartney celebrated his 64th birthday, a milestone that was the subject of one of the first songs he ever wrote, at the age of sixteen, The Beatles' song "When I'm Sixty-Four". Paul Vallely noted in ''The Independent'':
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McCartney received his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on 9 February 2012, the last one of the Fab Four to receive the honor.
McCartney received the MusiCares Person of the Year honour on 10 February 2012.
Discography
Tours
Arms
| Notes | Sir Paul McCartney's agent was Hubert Chesshyre, LVO, Clarenceux King of Arms |
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| Crest | On a Wreath of the Colours A Liver Bird calling Sable supporting with the dexter claws a Guitar Or stringed Sable. |
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| Escutcheon | Or between two Flaunches fracted fesswise two Roundels Sable over all six Guitar Strings palewise throughout counterchanged. |
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| Motto | ECCE COR MEUM (Behold my heart) |
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| Previous versions | }} |
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Citations
References
External links
Paul McCartney's Animation Website
Paul McCartney Ecce Cor Meum audio Podcast
Paul McCartney: Financial Accounts
Category:1942 births
Category:English-language singers
Category:English male singers
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