Paul MCCARTNEY

James Paul McCartney (Liverpool, Merseyside, June 18, 1942) is a British singer-songwriter, composer, musician, multi-instrumentalist, writer, activist, painter and actor. who along with John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, gained worldwide fame for being the bassist and one of the singers of the rock band The Beatles, recognized as the most popular and influential in the history of modern music; his songwriting partnership with Lennon is one of the most celebrated of the 20th century. After the band's split, he continued his solo music career and formed Wings with his first wife, Linda, and Denny Laine.

McCartney is recognized as one of the most successful songwriters and artists of all time, with sixty gold records and surpassing 100,000,000 albums and 100,000,000 singles sold both as a solo artist and with The beatles. More than 2,200 artists have covered his song with The Beatles "Yesterday", making it the most covered song in popular music history. His 1977 song with Wings, "Mull of Kintyre", is one of the singles Best sellers in the UK. He has been inducted twice into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (as a member of The Beatles in 1988, and as an individual artist in 1999), and has been recognized with twenty-one Grammy Awards (having won them both individually and with The Beatles). McCartney has written, or co-written, 32 songs that have reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100, and as of 2014 had sold more than 15 million RIAA-certified units in the United States. McCartney, Lennon, Harrison and Starr were made Members of the Order of the British Empire in 1965, and in 1997, he was knighted for his services to music.

McCartney has released a vast catalog of songs as a solo artist and has composed soundtracks for motion pictures, classical and electronic music. He has been involved in projects to help international charities dealing with issues such as animal rights, sealing, land mine clearance, vegetarianism, poverty and music education. He has been married three times and is the father of five children.

He is ranked eleventh on Rolling Stone magazine's 100 Greatest Singers. In addition, as a member of The Beatles, he is ranked first on the 100 Greatest Artists list, by Rolling Stone magazine. same post. Likewise, she ranks third among the 100 best bassists of the same magazine. He also ranks second on the 100 Great Composers of the aforementioned publication, second only to Bob Dylan.

Biography

1942-1956: early years

James Paul McCartney was born on June 18, 1942, at Walton Hospital in Liverpool, England, where his mother, Mary Patricia (née Mohin) (1909-1956), had worked as a nurse. His father, James ("Jim") McCartney (1902-1976), was absent during the birth of his son due to volunteering as a firefighter during the Battle of Britain. Paul has a younger brother, Michael, born 7 on January 1, 1944. Although they were baptized by their mother's Catholic church, their father was a Protestant and later became an agnostic, so no religion was practiced at home.

He began his studies at Stockton Wood Road Primary School in Speke, where he attended from 1947 to 1949, when he was transferred to Joseph Williams Junior School in Belle Vale due to overcrowding in Stockton. In 1953, he passed the 11-plus exam, along with three others out of a total of ninety examinees, thus gaining admission to the prestigious Liverpool Institute. In 1954, he met fellow student George Harrison on the bus from their home to the institute. in Speke. Harrison had also passed the exam, which meant he could attend a grammar school instead of a secondary modern school , where most students attended until they were fit. to work They quickly became friends; McCartney would later admit: "I tended to talk down to him because he was a year younger."

Old house of McCartney, 20 Forthlin Road. The McCartney family moved to this address in 1955.

McCartney's mother was a midwife and the main breadwinner for the family, which enabled them to move to 20 Forthlin Road in Allerton, where they lived until 1964. She often used her bicycle to see her patients; McCartney would describe an early memory of her going "around three in the morning to the streets... snow-covered". On October 31, 1956, when McCartney was fourteen, her mother died of a stroke. McCartney's loss later became a point of connection to John Lennon, whose mother, Julia, had died when he was seventeen.

McCartney's father was a trumpeter and pianist in his band called Jim Mac's Jazz Band. He had an upright piano in his living room, encouraging his children to be musicians, and advised Paul to take piano lessons, but he preferred to learn by ear. Jim gave Paul a nickel-plated trumpet for his fourteenth birthday., but when rock and roll became popular on Radio Luxembourg, McCartney traded it for a £15 Framus Zenith (model 17) acoustic guitar, as it allowed him to sing and play at the same time. Being left-handed, McCartney found it difficult to play the guitar right-handed, but when he saw a poster advertising a Slim Whitman concert and realizing that Whitman also played the guitar left-handed, he reversed the order of the strings. McCartney he wrote his first song, "I Lost My Little Girl," on the Zenith, and composed another tune on the piano that would later become "When I'm Sixty-Four." rhythm and blues influenced him deeply, and Little Richard was his idol during his student days; the first song he sang in public was "Long Tall Sally", in a talent competition at Butlins holiday camp.

1957-1960: The Quarrymen

At the age of fifteen, McCartney met Lennon and his band, during a party at St Peter's Church in Woolton on 6 July 1957, The Quarrymen played half-rock and roll music. i>, half skiffle, a type of popular music with influences from jazz, blues and folk. the band later invited McCartney to join as rhythm guitarist, after McCartney auditioned playing Twenty Flight Rock and formed a close working relationship with Lennon. Harrison joined in 1958 as lead guitarist, followed by Stuart Sutcliffe, Lennon's art school friend, as bassist in 1960. In May of that year they tried several new names including Beatals, Johnny and the Moondogs and The Silver Beetles. They finally adopted the name The Beatles in August 1960 and recruited drummer Pete Best shortly before they were booked to play Hamburg.

1960-1970: The Beatles

McCartney (following left) with Lennon, Harrison and Starr, arriving at Kennedy Airport in February 1964.

Represented informally by Allan Williams, The Beatles' first contractual obligation was a series of performances in Hamburg, beginning in 1960. In 1961, Sutcliffe left the band and McCartney reluctantly became the new bassist. They first recorded professionally while residing in Hamburg, as a backing band for British singer Tony Sheridan on the single "My Bonnie". This work caught the attention of Brian Epstein, a key figure in the group's subsequent development and success.. He became their manager in January 1962. Ringo Starr replaced Best in August, and the band released their first hit, "Love Me Do", in October, reaching the peak of popularity in the UK in 1963. and in the United States a year later. The hysteria they caused among his fans became known as "Beatlemania", and McCartney was sometimes referred to in the press as the "cute Beatle".

In August 1965, The Beatles released McCartney's composition "Yesterday," which features a string quartet. Included on the album Help!, the song was the first to include elements of classical music and also to feature a single Beatle. "Yesterday" would become the most covered song on the history of popular music. Later that year, during the recording sessions for the album Rubber Soul, McCartney began to supplant Lennon as the dominant musical force in the band. Musicologist Ian MacDonald wrote: "Since [1965] [...] [McCartney] would be growing not only as a composer, but also as the instrumentalist, arranger, producer and de facto musical director of The Beatles" Critics describe Rubber Soul as a significant advance in the refinement and depth of the band's music and lyrics. Considered a high point in The Beatles' catalogue, both Lennon and McCartney have claimed to be the creators of the music for the song "In My Life". McCartney said of the album: "We'd had our cute period, and now it was time to go further." Recording engineer Norman Smith stated that the Rubber Soul sessions gave signs of increasing discord within the band: "The clash between John and Paul was becoming obvious [...] to Paul, George [Harrison] couldn't do anything right—Paul was being absolutely thorough."

McCartney (following left) with Harrison, George Martin and Lennon at a 1966 recording session.

In 1966, The Beatles released the album Revolver. With sophisticated lyrics, studio experiments, and a wide repertoire of musical genres ranging from innovative string arrangements to psychedelic rock, the album marked an artistic leap for The Beatles. The single "Paperback Writer", the first of three McCartney's consecutive A-sides, was released in advance of Revolver. The Beatles produced a short promotional film for the song, and another for its B-side, "Rain". The tapes, described by Harrison as "the forerunner of music videos", were broadcast on The Ed Sullivan Show and Top of the Pops in June 1966. Revolver also included McCartney's "Eleanor Rigby", which featured an octet of strings. According to Gould, the song is "a neoclassical feat [...] a true hybrid, in that there is no recognizable style or genre in the song". Except for some backing vocals, the song featured only McCartney's lead vocals. and string arrangements by producer George Martin.

The band played their last commercial concert at the end of their 1966 US tour. Later that year, McCartney completed his first musical project outside the group—the background music for the British film The Family Way. The project was a collaboration with Martin, who used two of McCartney's themes to write thirteen variants of them. The soundtrack flopped on the charts, but it did win McCartney an Ivor Novello Award for Best Instrumental Theme.

Due to the end of their live performance season, McCartney sensed a general malaise within the band and wanted it not to affect their artistic and creative productivity. He pressured them to start a new project, which became Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, widely considered the first rock concept album. Inspired to create a new person in the group, to serve as an engine for experimentation and for To prove to his fans that they had matured musically, McCartney invented the fictional title band for the album. As McCartney would explain: "We were sick of being The Beatles. We really hated that damn stereotype of four little mop-tops. We were not children, we were adults […] and we saw ourselves as artists and not just as performers».

Beginning in November 1966, the band adopted an experimental attitude during the recording sessions for the album. According to engineer Geoff Emerick: "The Beatles sought to exhaust all possibilities, both musically and sonically. [...] we used a lot of variations on tape and other manipulation techniques [...] limiters and [...] effects like flanging and artificial double-tracking." The recording of "A Day in the Life" required a forty-piece orchestra, which Martin and McCartney took turns conducting. The sessions produced the double A-side single "Strawberry Fields Forever"/"Penny Lane" in February 1967, and the album followed in June. McCartney's "She's Leaving Home" was a pop song with orchestra. MacDonald described the song as "[among] the best work in Sgt Pepper—a folk art of its day that will never perish." Based on an ink drawing by McCartney, the album cover included a collage designed by pop artists Peter Blake and Jann Haworth, featuring The Beatles dressed as Sergeant Pepper's Gang of Lonely Hearts [Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band], surrounded by a host of celebrities. The thick mustaches worn by all four Beatles reflected the growing influence of hippie style trends in the band, while their clothing "parodied the fashion in Britain for military-style clothing", wrote Gould. Academic David Scott Kastan describes Sgt. Pepper as "the most important and influential rock and roll album ever recorded".

Epstein's death in August 1967 created a void in the group, leaving them perplexed and concerned about their future. McCartney, stepping in to fill that void, gradually became a de facto leader. and representing the group's commercial interests, a role that fell to Lennon years earlier. His first creative suggestion after this change in leadership was to propose that the band continue with their plans to produce a TV movie, which would become Magical Mystery Tour. The project was "an administrative nightmare in every respect", according to Beatle historian Mark Lewisohn. McCartney would direct much of the film, which brought the first unfavorable review of work done by the band. However, the band soundtrack of the film was more successful. It was released in the UK as a six-track double EP, and in the US as a similarly named LP, filled with five songs recently released as a single by the band. This Capitol-exclusive compilation would later be included in the group's official album canon, and would reach sales of $8 million within three weeks of its release, thus becoming Capitol's best-selling initial album.

In January 1968, EMI made a promotional trailer with The Beatles to publicize the animated film Yellow Submarine, loosely based on the imaginary world evoked by McCartney in the song of the same name. Although critics praised the film for its visual style, humor, and music, the soundtrack released seven months later received a less enthusiastic response. By late 1968, relations within the band were deteriorating. Tensions grew during the recording of the White Album. Internal problems continued the following year during sessions for the Get Back project (later retitled Let It Be), where a comment by McCartney towards the group was filmed: «We have been very negative since “Mr. Epstein "died [...] we were always dealing with [his his] discipline from him a little bit, but it's silly to deal with that discipline if he's a part of us."

In March 1969, McCartney married Linda Eastman, and in August, the couple had their first child, Mary, in memory of their late mother. For Abbey Road, the last work From The Beatles' studio, Martin suggested a "continuously moving piece of music", urging the group to think symphonically. McCartney agreed, but Lennon disapproved. Finally the compromise was, accepting McCartney's suggestion: an album with individual songs on side one, and a long medley on side two.

On April 10, 1970, amid business disagreements with his bandmates, McCartney announced his departure from the group. Eight months later, on December 31, 1970, he filed a lawsuit for the band's formal dissolution. More legal wrangling continued as McCartney's lawyers (and also family members), John and Lee Eastman, battled Allen Klein, Lennon, Harrison and Starr's business manager, over royalties and creative control. An English court legally dissolved The Beatles on January 9, 1975, although sporadic lawsuits against their record company EMI, Klein, and others persisted until 1989. They are widely regarded as one of the most popular and influential phenomena in the history of the Beatles. rock music.

1971-1981: Wings

After The Beatles broke up in 1970, McCartney continued his musical career with the release of his first solo album, McCartney, which would be number one in the United States. Apart from some vocal input from Linda, it is a minimalist album with Paul writing all the songs and playing all the instruments. A year later, he collaborated with Linda and drummer Denny Seiwell on a second album, Ram . Reaching number one in the UK and the top five in the US, Ram includes the co-written single "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey," which charted at number one in the US. topped the US charts. Later that year, former Moody Blues guitarist Denny Laine joined the McCartneys and Seiwell to form the band Wings. McCartney commented on the origin of the group: "Wings was always a difficult idea...any group that had to continue the phenomenon [of The Beatles] would have a difficult task...I found myself in that same position. Still, it was a choice between going on and ending, and I liked music too much to think of stopping." In September 1971, their daughter Stella was born, named after both of Linda's grandmothers, who had carried the same name.

Following the addition of guitarist Henry McCullough, Wings' first tour began in 1972, debuting to a crowd of 700 at Nottingham University. The presentation was followed by ten other unannounced concerts at different British universities; To get around, the band used a van and they stayed in modest rooms, in addition to only receiving as pay the voluntary collection of the students who witnessed the show. McCartney avoided playing any Beatles-related songs. Four months later they began a 25-show tour across Europe, during which the band played exclusively Wings and McCartney solo material except for a few covers, including the hit song Little Richard's "Long Tall Sally", the only song McCartney performed during the tour related to his time as a Beatle. McCartney wanted to avoid presentations taking place in large spaces; most of the small venues where they played held fewer than 3,000 people. Of their first two post-Beatles tours, McCartney would say, "The main thing was that I didn't want to go up on stage and be faced with five rows of reporters with little notebooks.", everyone looking and saying, "Oh, well, it's not as good as it used to be." So we decided to do concerts around universities to avoid nerves [...] At the end of the tour I felt ready for something else, so we went to Europe."

In March 1973, Wings scored their first US number-one single, "My Love", from their second album, Red Rose Speedway, a US number-one hit and top five in the United Kingdom. The collaboration between Paul and Linda with Martin, the former producer of The Beatles, led to the song "Live and Let Die", which was the theme song for the film namesake of James Bond. Nominated for an Academy Award, the song reached number two in the US and number nine in the UK. It also made Martin a Grammy winner for his orchestral arrangement. Music teacher and author Vicent Benítez described the song as "symphonic rock at its best".

Following the departure of McCullough and Seiwell in 1973, the McCartneys and Laine recorded Band on the Run. It was the first of seven consecutive albums to be certified platinum by the RIAA. It was also the first to reach number one on both sides of the Atlantic. One of the best-selling releases of the decade, it stayed on the UK charts for 124 weeks. Rolling Stone named it Album of the Year in 1974, and in 1975 it won the Grammy Award for Best Vocal Performance and Best Arrangement for Album. In 1974, Wings achieved their second US number one single with the song that gives the album its title. The LP also included the top ten singles "Jet" and "Helen Wheels", and was placed at number 413 on the list compiled by Rolling Stone of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

McCartney during a concert in Italy of the Wings Over the World Tour, September 1976.

Following the successful Band on the Run, Wings released the albums Venus and Mars (1975) and Wings at the Speed of Sound (1976), both number one in the United Kingdom and the United States. In 1975, they began the fourteen-month Wings Over the World Tour, which included performances in the United Kingdom, Australia, Europe, and the United States. The tour was the first time McCartney had performed songs by The Beatles live with Wings, five of them making the set list: "I've Just Seen a Face", "Yesterday", "Blackbird", "Lady Madonna" and "The Long and Winding Road". Following the second European leg of the tour and extensive recording sessions in London, the group embarked on an ambitious arena tour of concerts in the United States that gave place the triple live album Wings Over America, number one in that country in 1977.

In September 1977, the McCartneys had their third child, James. In November, the Wings song "Mull of Kintyre", co-written with Laine, quickly became the best-selling single in UK history. Considered the most successful single of McCartney's solo career, it achieved twice the number of sales. sales of the previous record holder, "She Loves You", and went on to sell 2.5 million copies as well as holding the UK sales record until the release of the charity single "Do They Know It's Christmas?" in 1984.

London Town (1978) spawned a US number-one single ("With a Little Luck"), and was Wings' best-selling album since Band on the Run, reaching the top five in the United States and the United Kingdom. Critical reception was unfavorable, with McCartney expressing his disappointment with the album.Back to the Egg (1979) features McCartney's collaboration with a rock supergroup called "The Rockstra". Credited to Wings, the band consisted of Pete Townshend, David Gilmour, Gary Brooker, John Paul Jones and John Bonham. Although it was certified platinum, it garnered unfavorable reviews from the music press. Wings finished their last concert tour in 1979, with twenty concerts in the UK that included the live debut of The Beatles' songs "Got to Get You into My Heart". Life", "The Fool on the Hill" and "Let it Be".

McCartney arriving at Amsterdam-Schiphol Airport in January 1980.

In 1980, McCartney released his second solo album, the self-produced McCartney II, which reached number one in the UK and number three in the US. As with his first album, he composed and performed all of the material by himself. The album contained the song "Coming Up", the live version of which, recorded in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1979 by Wings, became the last number one of the group. By 1981, McCartney felt he had accomplished all he could creatively with Wings and perceived the need for a change. The group dissolved in April 1981 after disagreements over royalties and profit distribution.

1982-1990

In 1982 he collaborated with Stevie Wonder on the song "Ebony and Ivory", produced by George Martin and included on McCartney's album Tug of War, and with Michael Jackson on the song "The Girl is Mine", included in Thriller. "Ebony and Ivory" meant for McCartney to achieve the record of placing 28 singles at number one on the Billboard Hot 100. The following year, he and Jackson collaborated on "Say Say Say", McCartney's last single to reach the top of the US charts. In that same year, he achieved his last number one in the United Kingdom with the single "Pipes of Peace", included in the self-titled album.

In 1984, McCartney wrote and produced the musical Give My Regards to Broad Street, a film in which he also starred and starr. Scorned by critics, Variety described the film as "characterless, emotionless, and meaningless". Film critic Roger Ebert awarded it a single star, writing: "You can skip the movie and skip straight to the soundtrack". The album was much better received, reaching number one in the UK and producing the single "No More Lonely Nights", featuring David Gilmour on guitar, which peaked at number six on the Billboard Hot 100. In 1985, Warner Brothers commissioned McCartney to write a song for the movie Spies Like Us. He composed and recorded the title track in four days, with co-production by Phil Ramone. McCartney participated in the Live Aid concert, performing "Let It Be", though technical difficulties meant that vocals and piano were barely audible for the first two hours. stanzas, interrupted by feedback beeps. The technical team resolved the issues and David Bowie, Alison Moyet, Pete Townshend and Bob Geldof joined McCartney on stage, receiving an enthusiastic reaction from the crowd.

McCartney collaborated with Eric Stewart on Press to Play (1986), co-writing half of the album's songs with him. In 1988, McCartney released exclusively for the Soviet Union Снова в СССР, which contained eighteen covers of rock and roll songs; it was recorded over the course of just two days. In 1989, he joined forces with Gerry Marsden and Holly Johnson to record "Ferry Cross the Mersey", a charity single for the victims of the Hillsborough tragedy. That same year, he released Flowers in the Dirt; a collaborative effort with Elvis Costello, which included musical contributions from Gilmour and Nicky Hopkins. Shortly thereafter McCartney decided to form a band consisting of himself and Linda, Hamish Stuart and Robbie McIntosh on guitars, Paul "Wix" Wickens on guitars. keyboards and Chris Whitten on drums. In September 1989, they launched The Paul McCartney World Tour, their first in over a decade. The following year, he released the triple album, Tripping the Live Fantastic, which contained a selection of performances performed on tour. In 1990, the American magazine Amusement Business awarded recognition of McCartney for putting on the highest-grossing show of the year; his two performances at Berkeley grossed more than $3.5 million. During the tour, McCartney broke the attendance record for a private concert on April 21, 1990 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, playing in front of 184,000 people. at the Maracana Stadium.

1991-2000

Paul McCartney at the Grammy Awards in February 1990.

McCartney ventured into orchestral music in 1991, when the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society commissioned a piece of music to celebrate its sesquicentenary. He collaborated with composer Carl Davis, resulting in the album Liverpool Oratorio. The work featured opera singers Kiri Te Kanawa, Sally Burgess, Jerry Hadley and Willard White, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and the Liverpool Cathedral Choir. Reviews of the album were mostly negative.. The Guardian was especially critical, describing the music as "unafraid to approach a fast beat", adding that the piece has "little awareness of the need to [contain] recurring ideas that tie the song together." piece as a whole." The newspaper published McCartney's rebuttal, in which he pointed out the reason for the work's fast beats and added: "fortunately, history shows that many good pieces of music were not to the liking of the critics. of the time, so I'm happy to let [...] people judge the merits of the work for themselves." The New York Times was slightly more generous, stating: "There are moments of beauty and pleasure in this dramatic miscellany [...] the innocent sincerity of the music makes it hard to be taken aback by its ambitions." Performed around the world after its London premiere, Liverpool Oratorio reached number one on the British classical music chart, Music Week.

In 1991, McCartney performed a selection of songs acoustically for MTV Unplugged and released an album of the live performance called Unplugged (The Official Bootleg). He also collaborated with Killing Joke's Youth to form the musical duo The Fireman. They released their first electronic music album, Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest, in 1993. That same year, McCartney released the rock album Off the Ground. Subsequently, he embarked on a new world tour, The New World Tour, which ended with the release of the live album Paul is Live at the end of the year.

Beginning in 1994, McCartney paused his solo career for four years to work on the Apple project The Beatles Anthology alongside Harrison, Starr and Martin. He recorded a radio series called Oobu Joobu in 1995 for Westwood One, which he described as "widescreen radio". Also in 1995, Charles from Wales introduced McCartney as an Honorary Member. from the Royal College of Music—"unbelievable stuff for someone who can't read a musical note", commented McCartney.

In 1997, McCartney released his new studio album, Flaming Pie, which featured Starr playing drums and backing vocals on the track "Beautiful Night". In 1998, he released a second classical music effort, Standing Stone, which reached number one on both the UK and US classical music charts. In 1998, Rushes , The Fireman's second electronica album. The following year, McCartney released Run Devil Run. Recorded in just one week, and featuring Ian Paice and David Gilmour, it is composed primarily of cover songs and three McCartney tracks. He had been planning an album like this for years, prompted mainly by Linda, who died of cancer in April 1998.

In 1999, he continued his experimentation with orchestral music in Working Classical. In 2000, he released the electronica album Liverpool Sound Collage with the Super Furry Animals and Youth, using sound collage and musique concrete techniques that had fascinated him in the mid-1980s. He contributed the song "Nova" to the choral-classical music tribute album A Garland for Linda (2000), dedicated to his late wife.

2001-2010

After witnessing the September 11, 2001 attacks from JFK Airport, McCartney was inspired to take an active role in organizing the concert for New York City. His studio album released in November of that year, Driving Rain, included the song "Freedom", written in response to the bombings. The following year, McCartney toured with a band made up of the guitarists Rusty Anderson and Brian Ray, accompanied by Paul "Wix" Wickens on keyboards and Abe Laboriel, Jr. on drums. They began the Driving World Tour in April 2002, which included performances in the United States, Mexico, and Japan.. The tour resulted in the double live album Back in the U.S., released internationally in 2003 as was Back in the World. The tour grossed $126.2 million., averaging more than two million dollars a night, and was named tour of the year by Billboard.

In July 2002, McCartney married Heather Mills. In November, on the first anniversary of George Harrison's death, McCartney performed at the Concert for George. He participated in the National Football League's Super Bowl, performing "Freedom" during the show before the game for Super Bowl XXXVI in 2002 and headlined the halftime show at Super Bowl XXXIX in 2005. The English College of Arms honored McCartney in 2002 by awarding him a coat of arms. His crest, made up of a liver bird holding an acoustic guitar in its talon, reflects his Liverpudulian roots and his musical career. The coat of arms includes four curved symbols that resemble the backs of beetles (in reference to the word beetle, beetle in English). The motto on the shield is Ecce Cor Meum, Latin for "Behold my heart". In 2003, the McCartneys had a daughter, Beatrice Milly.

McCartney at the Live 8 concert organized at the Hyde Park in London in July 2005.

In July 2005, he performed at the Live 8 benefit concert in Hyde Park, London, opening the show with "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (with U2) and closed it with "Drive My Car" (with George Michael), "Helter Skelter", and "The Long and Winding Road". In September, released the rock album Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, on which he provided most of the instrumentation. In 2006, McCartney released the classical music work Ecce Cor Meum. The rock album Memory Almost Full followed in 2007. In 2008, he released his third album as The Fireman Electric Arguments. Also in 2008, he participated in a concert in Liverpool to celebrate the city's year as European Capital of Culture. In 2009, after a four-year absence, he returned to touring and has since performed over 80 times. More than forty-five years after The Beatles first appeared on American television on The Ed Sullivan Show, McCartney returned to the same stage in New York to perform on the Late Show with David Letterman. On September 9, 2009, EMI reissued The Beatles' catalog after four years of painstaking digital remastering, releasing a music video game called The Beatles: Rock Band on the same day.

McCartney's enduring fame has made him a popular choice for opening new venues. In 2009, he performed three sold-out concerts at the newly built Citi Field—a venue created to replace Shea Stadium in Queens, New York. These performances produced the double live album Good Evening New York City later that year. In 2010, McCartney opened the Consol Energy Center arena in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

2011-present

In July 2011, McCartney played two sold-out concerts at the new Yankee Stadium. A New York Times review of the first concert reported that McCartney was "not out, but visiting arenas and playing marathon concerts." In September 2011, after being requested by the New York City Ballet, McCartney released his first recording intended for dance, a collaboration with Peter Martins called Ocean's Kingdom. Also in 2011, he married Nancy Shevell. He released Kisses on the Bottom, a collection of classic jazz songs, in February 2012; that same month the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences honored him as the MusiCares Person of the Year, two days before his performance at the 54th Grammy Awards.

McCartney playing in Montevideo, Uruguay, April 12, 2012.

Even in the second decade of the xxi century, McCartney remains one of the most sought after musical artists by the public. He played to a total of more than 100,000 people during his two performances in Mexico City in May 2012, raising nearly $6 million. In June, McCartney closed Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee concert, held outside the Buckingham Palace, performing a setlist that included "Let It Be" and "Live and Let Die". She also closed the opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London on July 27, singing " The End" and "Hey Jude" and inviting the attendees to participate in the coda of the song. For his work at the ceremony, McCartney received the representative payment of £1.

On December 12, McCartney performed with all three former members of Nirvana (Krist Novoselic, Dave Grohl, and Pat Smear) during the final act of the event 12-12-12: The Concert for Sandy Relief, viewed by approximately two thousand million people around the world. On August 28, 2013, McCartney released the first single from his follow-up album New, released in October 2013.

A television special celebrating the legacy of the seven-time Grammy Award-winning group, The Beatles, and their first performance on The Ed Sullivan Show, featuring McCartney and Starr, was taped on the 27th January 2014 at the Ed Sullivan Theater, broadcast February 9, 2014 on CBS. The show, titled The Night That Changed America: A Grammy Salute to The Beatles, featured 22 classic Beatles songs performed by various artists, including McCartney and Starr.

On May 19, 2014, it was reported that McCartney had been prescribed bedridden with an unspecified virus, and had to cancel a sold-out concert tour in Japan scheduled to begin that week. The tour included a performance at the famous Budokan Hall. McCartney also had to postpone his US dates from June to October, as part of his doctor's order for him to make a full recovery. However, he resumed the tour with a vigorous three-hour performance in Albany, New York on 5 September. July 2014. On August 14, 2014, McCartney performed the last concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, California, before its demolition. It was the same place where The Beatles played their last concert in 1966.

In 2014, McCartney wrote and performed "Hope for the Future", the ending song for the video game Destiny. In November 2014, a 42-song tribute album titled The Art of McCartney, which features a wide range of artists performing McCartney's work solo and with The Beatles. Also that year, McCartney collaborated with American recording artist Kanye West on the single "Only One », released on December 31.

In January 2015, McCartney collaborated again with West and Barbadian singer Rihanna on the single "FourFiveSeconds", which they performed live at the 57th Grammy Awards on February 8, 2015. 2015. McCartney is reported to be one of the many producers on West's upcoming album SWISH, and was a special guest on the album's second single, "All Day", which also features the presence of Theophilus London and Allan Kingdom.

On February 15, 2015, McCartney appeared and performed with Paul Simon during Saturday Night Live's 40th Anniversary Special. McCartney and Simon performed the first verse of "I've Just Seen a Face" on their acoustic guitars, and McCartney later performed "Maybe I'm Amazed". McCartney shared lead vocals with Hollywood supergroup Hollywood Vampires. Alice Cooper in his version of "Come and Get It", which was included on his debut album released on September 15, 2015.

On March 9, 2016 McCartney announces the first dates of his new One On One tour. from 1970 to 2015. In October of that year he participated in the Desert Trip festival along with other rock figures such as The Rolling Stones, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, The Who and Roger Waters.

In 2017 he participated in a cameo as an actor in the movie Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar's Revenge, playing the role of Uncle Jack.

On June 19, 2018, after a week of mysterious hints on her Instagram account, it was announced that the double single "I Don't Know / Come On To Me" would be released the following day. », which would be part of his new studio album titled Egypt Station scheduled for the fall of this year. In 2020, during the confinement due to the COVID-19 pandemic, he decided to record McCartney III taking the role of each instrument, all played by himself as well as McCartney (1970) and McCartney II (1980). This is the eighteenth studio album by the British musician and was released on December 18, 2020 by the record company Capitol Records. On Friday, November 5 of the same year, The Lyrics, his new 960-page book in two volumes with 154 songs that Paul composed since his participation with The Beatles, his later band Wings, and his greatest hits in his solo career. McCartney III Imagined is the musician's nineteenth solo album released in 2021 and is a new version of the 2020 album McCartney III.

Musicality

Largely a self-taught musician, McCartney's approach was described by musicologist Ian Macdonald as "by nature drawn to the formal aspects of music despite being totally uneducated [...] Technically he produces 'formal' works almost entirely by instinct, his harmonic judgment is based largely on perfect musical perception and a keen pair of ears [...] [a] melodist by nature—a creator of tunes capable of existing apart from their harmony." McCartney commented: "I prefer to think about my musical approach [...] something like primitive cave artists, who drew without having any training."

Electric Bass

McCartney's prowess as a bassist has been recognized by other bassists, such as Sting, Dr. Dre bassist Mike Elizondo, and XTC's Colin Molding. Although his use of picks is best known, McCartney occasionally plays using the technique of fingerpicking. He does not use techniques such as slap or muting. which McCartney called a hero for his melodic style. He was also influenced by Brian Wilson, as he commented, “Because he went to very unusual places.” Another of his favorite bassists is Stanley Clarke.

During McCartney's early years with The Beatles, he primarily used a Höfner 500/1 bass, although in 1965, he began sporadically using a Rickenbacker 4001S for recording sessions. Although he typically used Vox amps, by 1967 he had begun using a Fender Bassman for amplification as well. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he used a Wal 5-string bass, which he said made him play bass lines. which sounded fatter, in contrast to the much lighter Höfner, which inspired him to play with greater sensitivity, something he considers essential to his style. He switched back to the Höfner around 1990 for this reason. He uses bass amps Mesa Boogie when he plays live.

MacDonald identified "She's a Woman" as the turning point from which McCartney's bass style began to evolve dramatically, and Beatles biographer Chris Ingham singled out Rubber Soul as the moment where McCartney's technique showed significant advances, most notably on "The Word". Bacon and Morgan concur, calling McCartney's groove on the track " a high point in pop bass playing and [...] the first evidence on recording of his significant technical ability on the instrument." MacDonald perceives the influence of "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" by James Brown and Wilson Pickett's "In the Midnight Hour", American soul songs from which McCartney drew elements and inspiration to "deliver his most spontaneous bass part to date".

Bacon and Morgan described his bass line on the song "Rain" as "an astonishing piece of playing [...] [McCartney] thinking both in terms of rhythm and 'bass lead'; [...] [choosing] the area of the neck [...] [in which] you feel the right way that will give you the clarity for the melody without making your sound too soft for the groove i>." MacDonald considers the track The Beatles' best B-side, declaring that its "thunderous, overdriven texture resonates around McCartney's [bass line]", which MacDonald described as "so creative it threatens with overwhelming the track ». MacDonald also noted the influence of Indian classical music in the "exotic melismas of the bass part". McCartney notes that Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band contains some of his strongest and most inventive bass playing, most notably on "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds."

Acoustic guitar

McCartney primarily uses flatpicking while playing acoustic guitar, though he also uses elements of fingerpicking. Examples of his acoustic guitar playing on tracks with The Beatles include "Yesterday", "I'm Looking Through You", "Michelle", "Blackbird", "I Will", "Mother Nature's Son", and "Rocky Raccoon". McCartney singles out "Blackbird" » as one of his favorite tracks and described his guitar technique as follows: «I have my own technique for cheating [in fingerpicking] [...] he actually plucked two strings at the same time [...] I was trying to emulate those folk players." He employed a similar technique for "Jenny Wren". He played an Epiphone Texan on many of his acoustic recordings, but also came to use a Martin D-28.

Electric guitar

McCartney playing a Gibson Les Paul in concert, 2009.

Shortly before he became the band's bassist, McCartney began playing a Rosetti Solid 7 which he grew to dislike. McCartney subsequently played lead guitar on several Beatles recordings, including what MacDonald described as a " fiercely oblique slide guitar solo” on “Drive My Car,” where McCartney used an Epiphone Casino. McCartney said of the model: "If I had to pick one electric guitar, this would be it". Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and "Helter Skelter." MacDonald also praised McCartney's "sparkling, pseudo-Indian" guitar solo on "Good Morning Good Morning". McCartney also played lead guitar on "Another Girl". On the other hand, in Wings, McCartney often gave up electric guitar work. other members of the group, although he played most of the lead guitar in Band on the Run. In 1990, when asked who his favorite guitarists were, he mentioned Eddie Van Halen, Eric Clapton and David Gilmour, stating, "But I still like Hendrix the best." He has primarily used the Gibson Les Paul for his electrical work, particularly during his live performances.

Voice

McCartney's voice spans several genres of music. On "Call Me Back Again," according to Benítez, "McCartney shines as a blues lead vocalist," while MacDonald called "I'm Down" "a rock and roll classic." roll" which "illustrates McCartney's vocal and stylistic versatility". MacDonald described "Helter Skelter" as an early approach to heavy metal, and "Hey Jude" as a "hybrid pop/rock", noting McCartney's "use of 'gospel-like' melismas" in the song and his "pseudosoul shrieks in the fade- out". Benitez identified "Hope of Deliverance" and "Put It There" as examples of McCartney's folk efforts while musicologist Walter Everett considers "When I' m Sixty-Four" and "Honey Pie" attempts at vaudeville. MacDonald praised the "swing beat" of "She's a Woman" as "the most extreme sound [The Beatles] had ever made." ] to date", with McCartney's voice "on the edge, pushed to the upper limit of his chest meter and at threatening to break at any moment." MacDonald described "I've Got a Feeling" as "voluptuous, rock neither slow nor fast" with a "robust and soulful" vocal performance and "Back in the U.S.S.R.» as "the last fast rock [of The Beatles]", McCartney's best "belting" vocal since "Drive My Car", recorded three years earlier. vocal exceeds 4 octaves reaching from A1 to C6 (or A6)

Keyboard Instruments

McCartney playing piano at the White House East Room, 2010.

McCartney played piano on several Beatles songs including "Every Little Thing", "She's a Woman", "For No One", "A Day in the Life", "Hello, Goodbye", "Hey Jude", "Lady Madonna", "Let It Be" and "The Long and Winding Road". MacDonald notes the piano part of "Lady Madonna" as reminiscent of Fats Domino, and "Let It Be" for having a gospel beat. MacDonald considers McCartney's mellotron intro on "Strawberry Fields Forever" a fundamental characteristic of the song's nature. McCartney played a Moog synthesizer on the Beatles song "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" and on the Wings track "Loup (1st Indian on the Moon)". Ingham described the Wings songs "With a Little Luck" and "London Town" as "full of the most sensitive synth-pop touches".

Battery

McCartney played drums on The Beatles' songs "Back in the U.S.S.R", "Dear Prudence", "Martha My Dear", "Wild Honey Pie", and "The Ballad of John and Yoko". drum parts on his solo albums McCartney, McCartney II and McCartney III", as well as the Wings album Band on the Run and most of the percussion on his solo album Chaos and Creation in the Backyard. McCartney also played drums on Paul Jones's cover of "And the Sun Will Shine" on 1968. Using the pseudonym Paul Ramon, which he had first used during The Beatles' first tour of Scotland in 1960, McCartney played drums in 1969 on the Steve Miller Band's "Celebration Song" and "My Dark Hour"..

Tape Loops

In the mid-1960s, while visiting the London apartment of his friend the artist John Dunbar, McCartney brought with him tapes he had kept at the home of his then-girlfriend Jane Asher. These included mixes of different songs, musical excerpts, and statements made by McCartney that Dick James turned into a demo for him. Heavily influenced by American avant-garde musician John Cage, McCartney made loops by recording vocals., guitars and bongos on a Brenell tape recorder and mixing the various tapes. He referred to the finished product as "electronic symphonies". He reversed the tapes, sped them up, and slowed them down to create whatever effects he wanted, some of which were later used by The Beatles on the songs "Tomorrow Never Knows" and " The Fool on the Hill".

Early Influences

McCartney's early musical influences were Little Richard, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins, and Chuck Berry. When asked why The Beatles didn't include Presley on the cover of Sgt. Pepper, McCartney responded: "Elvis was too important and [was] way above the rest to even mention [...] so we didn't put him on the list because he was more than just a [...] pop singer, he was Elvis the King." McCartney stated that for his bass line in "I Saw Her Standing There", he referenced directly to Berry's song "I'm Talking About You".

McCartney called Little Richard an idol, whose falsetto singing inspired McCartney's own vocal technique. McCartney said he wrote "I'm Down" as a means of imitating Little Richard. In 1971, McCartney he bought the publishing rights to Holly's catalogue, and in 1976, on the fortieth anniversary of Holly's birth, McCartney launched the annual "Buddy Holly Week" in England. The festival has included special performances by famous musicians, song contests, drawing contests, and special events including performances by The Crickets.

Lifestyle

Creative escapes

As a student in the 1950s, McCartney excelled in art-related subjects, constantly being recognized for his visual works. However, his indiscipline negatively affected his academic grades, preventing him from gaining admission to art school. During the 1960s, he delved into the visual arts, introducing himself to experimental cinema, and regularly attended film, theater, and theater performances. and classical music. His first exposure to the London avant-garde was through artist John Dunbar, who introduced McCartney to art dealer Robert Fraser. In Fraser's apartment he first learned about art appreciation and met Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, Peter Blake, and Richard Hamilton. McCartney later purchased works by Magritte, using his painting of an apple for the Apple Records logo. McCartney became involved in the renovation and expansion of the Indica Gallery in Mason's Yard, London, which Barry Miles had co-founded and where Lennon met Yoko Ono. Miles also co-founded the International Times, an underground newspaper that McCartney helped start with direct financial support and by providing interviews to attract advertising revenue. Thousands later he would write the official McCartney biography, Many Years From Now (1997).

McCartney became interested in painting after seeing artist Willem de Kooning at work in his studio on Long Island. McCartney began painting in 1983, first exhibiting his work in Siegen, Germany in 1999. The exhibition of 70 paintings included portraits of Lennon, Warhol and David Bowie. Although initially reluctant to display his paintings publicly, McCartney changed his mind after event organizer Wolfgang Suttner took a genuine interest in his art. In September In 2000, the first UK exhibition of McCartney's paintings opened, featuring 500 canvases at the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol, England. The following month, McCartney's art debuted in his hometown of Liverpool. McCartney commented on this: 'I have been offered an exhibition of my paintings at the Walker Art Gallery... where John and I often used to spend a pleasant afternoon. So I'm very excited about it. I didn't tell anyone I painted for 15 years, but now I'm out of the closet." McCartney is Senior Patron of the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, a school in the building that was formerly the Liverpool Institute for Boys.

When McCartney was a child, his mother read him poems and encouraged him to read. His father encouraged Paul and his brother Michael to do crossword puzzles with him, to increase their "word power", as McCartney would put it. In 2001, McCartney published Blackbird Singing, a volume of poems and lyrics to his songs for which he gave public readings in Liverpool and New York. In the foreword to the book, he explains: "When I was a teenager... I really wanted to have a poem published in the magazine of the school. I wrote something [a poem] deep and meaningful—which was rejected—and I guess I've been trying to answer them ever since.” His first children's book was published by Faber & Faber in 2005, titled High in the Clouds: Fievel Urban Furry, a collaboration with writer Philip Ardagh and animator Geoff Dunbar. The book, which tells the story of a squirrel whose tree house is bulldozed by real estate developers, had been conceived and drafted by McCartney and Dunbar over several years as an animated film. The Observer labeled it an "anti-capitalist children's book".

In 1981, McCartney approached Geoff Dunbar to direct an animated short called Rupert and the Frog Song; McCartney was the writer and producer, and also lent his voice to some of the characters. In 1992, he worked with Dunbar on an animated film about the work of French artist Honoré Daumier, for which they won a BAFTA Award. In 2004, they worked together on the animated short film Tropic Island Hum. The accompanying single, "Tropic Island Hum"/"We All Stand Together", reached number 21 in the UK.

McCartney also produced and hosted The Real Buddy Holly Story, a 1985 documentary featuring interviews with Keith Richards, The Everly Brothers, Holly's family, and others. In 1995, he made a guest appearance in the Simpsons episode "Lisa the Vegetarian" and directed a short documentary about the Grateful Dead.

In 2015, it was revealed that McCartney turned down an offer to play the father of character Emily (Helen Baxendale) on the series Friends.

Business

Since the first edition of the "Sunday Times Rich List" in 1989, McCartney has been the UK's richest musician, with an estimated fortune of £730 million in 2015. In addition to his involvement in Apple Corps and MPL Communications, a holding created for their business interests, owns a music publisher with an extensive catalogue, with access to over 25,000 copyrights, including publishing rights to musicals Guys and Dolls, A Chorus Line, Annie and Grease. He earned £40 million in 2003, revenue the highest that year for a British artist. The figure rose to £48.5 million in 2005. McCartney's 18 dates on his On the Run tour grossed £37 million in 2012.

McCartney signed his first recording contract, as a member of The Beatles, with Parlophone Records, a subsidiary of EMI, in June 1962. In the United States, recordings of The Beatles were distributed by EMI subsidiary Capitol Records. The Beatles re-signed with EMI for another nine years in 1967. After forming their own record label, Apple Records, in 1968, The Beatles' recordings would be released through Apple although the master copies were still owned by EMI. In the aftermath of The Beatles' breakup, McCartney's music continued to be released by Apple Records under The Beatles' contract with EMI in 1967, which ran until 1976. Following the formal dissolution of The Beatles' association in 1975, McCartney returned to sign with EMI worldwide and Capitol in the United States, Canada and Japan, acquiring ownership of his solo catalog from EMI as part of the deal. In 1979, McCartney signed with Columbia Records in the United States and Canada—reportedly receiving the industry's most lucrative recording contract to date, while continuing to be EMI's distributor in the rest of the world. McCartney returned to Capitol in the United States in 1985, remaining with EMI until 2006. In 2007, McCartney signed with Hear Music, becoming the label's first artist. He was there since 2012's Kisses on the Bottom album. He stayed with Hear Music until 2016, when he re-signed a worldwide deal with Capitol Records.

In 1963, Dick James formed Northern Songs to publish Lennon-McCartney songs. McCartney initially owned 20% of Northern Songs, which became 15% after a public offering in 1965. In 1969, James sold a controlling interest in Northern Songs to Associated Television (ATV) of Lew Grade, after which McCartney and John Lennon sold their remaining shares although they remained under contract with ATV until 1973. In 1972, McCartney re-signed with ATV for seven years in a joint publishing agreement between ATV and McCartney Music. Since 1979, MPL Communications has published McCartney's songs. McCartney and Yoko Ono attempted to buy the Northern Songs catalog in 1981, but Grade declined their offer, deciding to sell ATV in its entirety to businessman Robert Holmes à Court. Michael Jackson later bought ATV in 1985. In 1995, Jackson merged his catalog with Sony for £59,052,000 ($95 million), creating Sony/ATV Music Publishing, in which he retained a half stake. Over the years, McCartney has been critical of Jackson's purchase and handling of Northern Songs. Now formally dissolved, in 1995 it was absorbed into the Sony/ATV catalogue. McCartney receives his royalties from royalties which together are 33⅓ percent of total US business revenue, ranging elsewhere between 50 and 55 percent. Two early Beatles songs—"Love Me Do" and "P.S. I Love You"—were published by an EMI affiliate, Ardmore & Beechwood, before signing with James. McCartney acquired his publishing rights from Ardmore in the mid-1980s, and they are the only two Beatles songs owned by MPL Communications.

Drugs

McCartney's first exposure to drugs was during his days with The Beatles in Hamburg, when they often used phenmetrazine to keep themselves energized while performing for extended periods. Bob Dylan introduced them to marijuana in a hotel room in New York in 1964; McCartney remembers him as "hallucinating a lot" and "laughing uncontrollably". His use of the narcotic soon became habitual, and according to Miles, McCartney wrote the line "another kind of mind" in "Got to Get You into My Life" specifically as a reference to cannabis. During the filming of Help!, McCartney would occasionally smoke a joint in the car on the way to the studio, and frequently he would forget his lines. Director Richard Lester overheard two physically attractive women trying to persuade McCartney to use heroin, but he refused. Introduced to cocaine by Robert Fraser, McCartney used the drug regularly during the filming of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band , and for about a whole year, but stopped because of his disgust at the unpleasant melancholy he felt afterwards.

Initially reluctant to try LSD, McCartney finally did so in late 1966, taking his second "trip" in March 1967, with Lennon, after a study session by Sgt. Pepper. He later became the first Beatle to speak publicly about his drug use, stating: "It opened my eyes... [and] made me a better, more honest, more tolerant, member of society." He demonstrated his position on cannabis to the public in 1967, when he, along with the other Beatles and Epstein, added his name to a July ad in The Times, calling for its legalization, the release of those imprisoned for possession, and research on marijuana for medical uses.

In 1972, McCartney was fined £1,000 by a Swedish court for possession of cannabis.^{[citation needed]} Shortly thereafter, police Scotland found plants of marijuana growing on his farm, leading to his conviction for illegal cultivation and a £100 fine in 1973.^{[citation needed]} As a result of his drug convictions Linda was repeatedly denied a visa by the United States government until December 1973. Arrested again for marijuana possession in 1975, in Los Angeles, Linda took responsibility, and the charges were soon thrown out by the court. In January 1980, when Wings were flying to Tokyo for a tour of Japan, customs officials found approximately 200g of cannabis in their luggage. McCartney was arrested and taken to a local jail, while the Japanese government decided what to do. After ten days, he was released and deported without charge. In 1984, while McCartney was vacationing in Barbados, authorities arrested him for possession of marijuana and fined him $200. Upon his return to England, he stated: "Cannabis it's [...] less harmful than rum punch, whiskey, nicotine and cola, all of which are perfectly legal [...] I don't think [...] [that] I was doing anybody any harm at all." In 1997, he spoke in support of decriminalizing the drug: "People are smoking marijuana anyway and making criminals out of them is wrong."

Vegetarianism and Activism

Since 1975, McCartney has been a vegetarian; he and his wife Linda were vegetarians for most of their thirty years of marriage. They decided to stop eating meat after Paul observed some lambs in the field eating a lamb meal. Soon after, the couple became active advocates for animal rights. In his first interview after Linda's death, he vowed to continue working for animal rights, spending £3,000,000 in 1999 to ensure that his food company Linda McCartney Foods be kept free of genetically modified ingredients. In 1995, he narrated the documentary Devour the Earth, written by Tony Wardle. McCartney is a supporter of the animal rights organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). He has been featured in the organization's campaigns and, in 2009, held an exhibition on factory farms entitled "Glass Walls".. McCartney has also supported campaigns spearheaded by the Humane Society of the United States, Humane Society International, World Animal Protection, and the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation.

McCartney wearing a t-shirt with message no more landmines (“No more landmines”) during a concert in 2004.

After marrying Mills, McCartney joined her campaign against landmines, becoming a sponsor of the UK's Adopt-A-Minefield campaign. He wore a T-shirt with an anti-landmine message to some performances on his Back in the World tour.In 2006, the McCartneys traveled to Prince Edward Island to raise international awareness about the seal hunt. The couple debated Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams on Larry King Live, arguing that fishermen should stop hunting seals and instead develop a whale-watching ecotourism business. McCartney it also supports the Make Poverty History campaign against global poverty.

McCartney has participated in various recordings and charity performances, such as Concerts for the People of Kampuchea, Ferry Aid, Band Aid, Live Aid, Live 8, and the recording of "Ferry Cross the Mersey". In 2004, he donated a song to an album to help the "American Campaign for Burma," in support of Burmese Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. In 2008, he donated a song for a CD to the organization Aid Still Required, whose goal was to raise funds to help Southeast Asia recover from the 2004 tsunami.

In 2009, McCartney wrote to Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, asking why he was not a vegetarian. As McCartney would explain: "He replied very nicely, saying, 'My doctors tell me I have to eat meat.' And I wrote to him again, telling him, you know, I don't think that's right...I think he should be told...he can get protein from elsewhere...it just doesn't work for me. it seems good that —the Dalai Lama— on the one hand, he says: "Hey guys, don't harm sentient beings [...] Oh, and by the way, I'm eating a steak".

Save the Arctic is a campaign to protect the Arctic and an international protest to raise awareness of Arctic oil exploration, drawing the support of more than five million people. These include McCartney, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and eleven Nobel Peace Prize winners.

In 2014, McCartney narrated a video for PETA, titled "Glass Walls", which was harshly critical of slaughterhouses, the meat industry, and their effect on animal welfare.

In 2015, following British Prime Minister David Cameron's decision to give members of parliament a free vote to change the anti-fox hunting law, McCartney commented: "The people of Great Britain support this government Tory on many things, but the vast majority of us will be against them if hunting is reintroduced. It is cruel and unnecessary and they will lose the support of ordinary people and animal lovers like me."

Meditation

In August 1967, McCartney met Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at the London Hilton Hotel and later traveled to Bangor in North Wales for an initiation weekend, where he and the other Beatles learned the basics of music. Transcendental Meditation. In his official biography he commented: "The whole meditation experience was very good and I continue to use the mantra [...] I find it relaxing." In 2009, McCartney and Starr headlined a benefit concert at Radio City Music Hall, raising three million dollars for the David Lynch Foundation project to finance the teaching of Transcendental Meditation to young people in situations of social vulnerability.

Football

McCartney has publicly professed his support for Everton, and is also pro-Liverpool. In 2008, speculation about his loyalty ended when he said: "Here's the deal: My father was born at Everton, my Family members are officially Evertonians, so if it's a derby or an FA Cup final between the two of them, I would have to support Everton. But after a concert at Wembley Arena I got a little friendly with Kenny Dalglish, who had been at the concert, and I thought, “You know what? I'll support both of them because it's all about Liverpool."

He is also an honorary member of Liverpool Football Club since 15 April 2012

Personal relationships

Brides

Dot Rhone

McCartney's first formal partner in Liverpool was Dot Rhone, whom he met at the Casbah club in 1959. According to Spitz, Rhone felt that McCartney had a compulsion to control every situation. He often chose her clothes and makeup, encouraging her to let her hair grow like Brigitte Bardot, and at least once insisted that she have to restyle her cut, as she had not been satisfied. When McCartney traveled to Hamburg with The Beatles for the first time wrote to Rhone regularly, and she accompanied Cynthia Powell to Hamburg when they played there again in 1962. The couple were in a two-and-a-half-year relationship, planning to marry until Rhone suffered of a miscarriage; according to Spitz, McCartney, "now unattached", ended the relationship.

Jane Asher

McCartney met British actress Jane Asher on April 18, 1963, when a photographer asked them to pose during a performance by The Beatles at London's Royal Albert Hall. The two began a relationship, and in November that year he and Asher moved into his parents' house at 57 Wimpole Street, London. They lived there for more than two years until the couple moved into McCartney's house in St. John's Wood, in March 1966. He wrote several songs while living with the Ashers, including "Yesterday", "And I Love Her", "You Won't See Me", and "I'm Looking Through You", the the latter three inspired by their romance. They had a five-year relationship and planned to get married, but Asher broke off the engagement after finding out in an affair with Francie Schwartz.

Handcuffs

Linda Eastman

McCartney playing next to his wife Linda in 1976.

Linda Eastman was a music fanatic, as she once remarked, "All my teenage years were spent with my ear to the radio." She would sometimes skip class to witness artists like Fabian, Bobby Darin, and Chuck Berry. She became a popular photographer with various rock groups, including The Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Grateful Dead, The Doors, and The Beatles, whom she first met at Shea Stadium in 1966. She commented: "It was John who interested me from the beginning. He was my Beatle idol. But when I met him the fascination quickly faded, and I found out that it was Paul I liked." The couple met formally in 1967 at a Georgie Fame concert at the Bag O'Nails club, during her assignment in the UK to photograph rock musicians in London. As Paul recalls, "The night Linda and I met, I ran into her in a crowded club, and although normally I would have been nervous to flirt with her, I knew I had to... The audacity worked for me! me that night!" Linda said of the encounter: "I was pretty out of grief actually. I was with someone else [that night] [...] and I saw Paul on the other side of the room. He looked so beautiful that I made up my mind that I had to win him over." The couple married in 1969. Of their relationship, Paul commented: "We've had a lot of fun together [...] exactly the essence of how we are, our favorite activity is just to hang out, to have fun. And Linda is great at just following the moment.” And she added, “We were crazy. We had a big argument the night before we got married, and it almost got [the wedding] called off [...] [it's] miraculous that we did it. But we did it."

The two collaborated musically after The Beatles broke up, forming Wings in 1971. They faced derision from some fans and critics, who questioned their inclusion. She was nervous about performing opposite Paul, who explained, "She got over the nerves, she got through it, and she was very brave." Paul also defended her musical ability: "I taught Linda the basics of keyboards [...] She took a couple of lessons and learned some blues stuff [...] She did very well and made it look easier than it was [...] The critics would say: “She really isn't touching” or “Look at her, she is touching with one finger”. But what they didn't know is that sometimes she was playing a thing called a Minimoog, which can only be played with one finger. It was monophonic." He went on to say, "We knew we were in it for fun [...] it was just something we wanted to do, so if it was the wrong thing, what to me? We didn't have to justify ourselves." Former Wings McCullough guitarist said of collaborating with Linda, "Trying to get things together with a trainee in the group wasn't work as far as I was concerned."

The couple had four children—Linda's daughter Heather (legally adopted by Paul), Mary, Stella, and James—and remained married until Linda's death from breast cancer at age 56 in 1998. After their In death, Paul told The Daily Mail: “I got a consultant because I knew I was going to need a little help. He was great, especially in helping me undo my guilt [about wishing I had been] perfect all along...a real guy. But then I thought, wait a minute. We are only human. That was the beauty of our marriage. We were just a boyfriend and a girlfriend having babies."

Heather Mills

In 2002, McCartney married Heather Mills, a former model and anti-landmine activist. In 2003, the couple had a daughter, Beatrice Milly, named after Mills's late mother, and one of her daughters. McCartney's aunts. They separated in April 2006 and divorced on bad terms in March 2008. In 2004, McCartney commented to the media about his animosity towards his partners: "[The British public] didn't like my separation with Jane Asher [...] I married [Linda], a divorced New Yorker with a child, and at the time it was not to her liking."

Nancy Shevell

McCartney married New Yorker Nancy Shevell in a civil ceremony at City Hall in Old Marylebone, London, on October 9, 2011. The wedding was a modest event attended by around 30 people including family and friends The couple had been dating since November 2007. Shevell is a vice president of a family-owned transportation conglomerate that contains New England Motor Freight. She is a former board member of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

The Beatles

John Lennon

Although McCartney had an acrimonious relationship with Lennon, they became closer in early 1974, even playing together again on one occasion. In the years after, the two grew apart. Although McCartney phoned Lennon frequently, he was apprehensive about how he would be received. During a call, Lennon told her, "You're all pizza and fairy tales!" In an effort to avoid talking solely about the music business, they often talked about cats, babies, or baking bread..

On April 24, 1976, the two were watching an episode of Saturday Night Live together at Lennon's home in the Dakota, during which Lorne Michaels made a cash offer of $3,000 to reunite The Beatles. Although they seriously considered going to the studio where the show was being made—which was only a few blocks away—they thought it was too late. This was the last time they were together. In 2000, VH1 fictionalized this event into the TV movie Two of Us. McCartney's Last Phone Call to Lennon, days before Lennon and Ono published Double Fantasy, he was friendly; McCartney said of the call: "[It's] a comforting factor for me, because I feel like it was sad that we never really sat down to work out our differences. But luckily for me, the last phone conversation I had with him was great, and we didn't have any kind of friction."

Reaction to Lennon's assassination

On December 9, 1980, McCartney heard the news that Lennon had been murdered the night before, creating a media frenzy surrounding the surviving members of the band. recording in Oxford Street, surrounded by journalists who asked him his reaction to the death of his former partner, he replied: "It's a drag" (It's a drag ). He was quickly criticized by the press for what appeared to be a superficial response. He later explained: "When John died somebody stuck a microphone at me and said, 'What do you think about that?' a-asidio” (“It's a dra-a-ag”) and I meant it with every inch of despondency I could muster. When you put that in print he says: "In London today when McCartney was asked to comment on his dead friend of his, he said: 'It's a bummer.'" It looks like a very flippant comment to make." He also described his first exchange with Ono after the assassination, and his last conversation with Lennon:

I spoke to Yoko the day after he was murdered, the first thing he said was, "John had a lot of appreciation for you." In the last conversation I had with him we were still the best mates. He was always a very warm man, John. His brusqueness was all shallow. He used to lower his glasses, those grandmother's glasses, and he said, "It's just me." They were like a wall, you know? A shield. Those are the moments I appreciate.

In 1983, he commented in an interview: "I would not have been so typically human and so reserved if I had known that John was going to die. I would have made a greater effort to get inside that "mask" and have a better relationship with him. The following year, she said that he went home that night, watched the news on TV with his children, and cried most of the night. In 1997, he admitted that at the time, ex-Beatles lived in fear of being killed, too. He told Mojo magazine in 2002 that Lennon was his greatest hero. In 1981, McCartney sang part of the backing vocals on Harrison's tribute to his former bandmate, "All Those Years Ago", which featured Starr on drums. McCartney released "Here Today" in 1982, a song that Everett described as "an unforgettable tribute" to McCartney's friendship with Lennon.

George Harrison

Speaking about his relationship with McCartney, Harrison commented: "Paul would help as long as you'd already worked on his ten songs: that's when, after he'd avoided working on one of my songs, he'd help. It was nonsense. It was a very selfish thing, actually [...] There are a lot of tracks, though, where I played bass [...] and what I did, if he had written a song, was learn all the parts for Paul and then he would come to the studio and say (sometimes he was very rude): 'Do this'. He would never give you the opportunity to act otherwise ».

Reaction to the death of George Harrison

Following Harrison's death in November 2001, McCartney issued a statement outside his home in St. John's Wood, calling him "a lovely man and a very brave man who had a wonderful sense of humour." He went on to say, "We grew up together and had so many great moments together. That is what I will remember. I'll always love him, he's my little brother." On the first anniversary of his death, McCartney performed Harrison's "Something" on a ukulele at the Concert for George. He also performed "For You Blue" and "All Things Must Pass." ", and played piano in Eric Clapton's rendition of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps".

Tours

• 1989-1990: The Paul McCartney World Tour
• 1991: Unplugged Tour 1991
• 1993: The New World Tour
• 2002: Driving World Tour
• 2003: Back In The World Tour
• 2004: '04 Summer Tour
• 2005: The 'US' Tour
• 2009: Summer Live '09
• 2009: Good Evening Europe Tour
• 2010-2011: Up and Coming Tour
• 2011-2012: On the Run
• 2013-2015: Out There! Tour
• 2016-2017: One On One Tour
• 2018-2019: Freshen Up Tour
• 2022: Got Back Tour

Achievements and World Records

• Figure in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most successful musician and composer in the history of popular music, with sales of 100 million singles and 60 gold records.
• He has achieved twenty-nine number one single in the US. Twenty of them with The Beatles, the rest with Wings and as a solo artist.
• He has been involved in simpler number one in the UK than any other artist with a variety of credits reaching 24 times the number one in the UK: Solista (1), Wings (1), with Stevie Wonder (1), The Christians et al (1), Ferry Aid (1), Band Aid (1), Band Aid 20 (1) and The Beatles (17).
• He is the only artist to have reached the number one of the UK as a soloist (“Pipes of Peace”), duo (“Ebony and Ivory” with Stevie Wonder), in trio (“Mull of Kintyre”, Wings), quartet (“She Loves You”, The Beatles), quinteto (“Get Back”, The Beatles with Billy Preston) and as part of a music group for charity (Ferry Aid).
• In the United States it reached 29 times the number one with singles: Solo (1), Wings (5), with Stevie Wonder (1), with Michael Jackson (1), with Linda McCartney (1), with The Beatles (20); it was also the composer of "A World Without Love", a simple number 1 for Peter and Gordon.
• His song “Yesterday” is the most versioned song in history with more than 3500 recorded versions and has played more than 7 000 000 times on the TV and radio of the United States, so McCartney received a prize.
• His single with Wings of 1977, "Mull of Kintyre", became the single with more sales in the history of British successes, and thus remained until 1984.
• The lower planet 4148, discovered in 1983, was named "McCartney" in his honor.

Discography

The official Paul McCartney discography published since 1970 consists of twenty-four studio albums (seven with Wings), four compilation albums, eight live albums, and one box set of all studio albums. He is enrolled in the Guinness World Records as the most successful musician and composer in the history of popular music, with 60 gold records and sales of 100 million singles. According to the page britishhitsongwriters.com he is the most successful songwriter in UK singles history, based on the weeks his compositions were on the charts. As a performer or songwriter, McCartney was responsible for 30 number one singles on the US Hot 100.

Studio Albums: Solo and Wings

• McCartney (1970)
• Ram (1971)
• Wild Life (1971) (Wings)
• Red Rose Speedway (1973) (Wings)
• Band on the Run (1973) (Wings)
• Venus and Mars (1975) (Wings)
• Wings at the Speed of Sound (1976) (Wings)
• London Town (1978) (Wings)
• Back to the Egg (1979) (Wings)
• McCartney II (1980)
• Tug of War (1982)
• Pipes of Peace (1983)
• Give My Regards to Broad Street (1984)
• Press to Play (1986)
• Снова в СССР (1988)
• Flowers in the Dirt (1989)
• Off the Ground (1993)
• Flaming Pie (1997)
• Run Devil Run (1999)
• Liverpool Sound Collage (2001)
• Driving Rain (2001)
• Chaos and Creation in the Backyard (2005)
• Memory Almost Full (2007)
• Kisses on the Bottom (2012)
• New (2013)
• Egypt Station (2018)
• McCartney III (2020)

Awards

Paul McCartney Star at Hollywood Fame Walk.

Filmography