Name | Sir Paul McCartney |
---|
Birth name | James Paul McCartney |
---|
Background | solo_singer |
---|
Img alt | A man in his early sixties, wearing a white shirt and black suspenders during a concert, playing a bass guitar. |
---|
Birth name | James Paul McCartney |
---|
Born | June 18, 1942Liverpool, England, UK |
---|
Instrument | Vocals, bass, guitar, piano, keyboards, drums, ukulele, mandolin |
---|
Genre | Rock, psychedelic rock, experimental rock, rock and roll, pop, hard rock, classical music |
---|
Occupation | Musician, singer-songwriter, artist, composer, activist, record producer, film producer, businessman |
---|
Years active | 1957–present |
---|
Label | Hear Music, Apple, Parlophone, Capitol, Columbia, Concord Music Group, EMI, One Little Indian, Vee-Jay |
---|
Associated acts | The Beatles, The Fireman, The Quarrymen, Wings, Linda McCartney, Denny Laine |
---|
Url | |
---|
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 (born 18 June 1942) is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. Formerly of
The Beatles (1960–1970) and
Wings (1971–1981), McCartney is the most commercially successful songwriter in the history of
popular music, according to
Guinness World Records. Wings' 1977 single "
Mull of Kintyre" became the first single to sell more than two million copies in the UK, and remains the UK's top selling non-charity single. 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"
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."
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.
;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.
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 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. 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." 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. both McCartney and Mills are patrons of Adopt-A-Minefield. In 2003, he played a personal concert for the wife of a wealthy banker and donated his one million dollar fee to the charity. 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. 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.
Critique, recognition and achievements
, 6 June 2004|left]]
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)." 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". 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 3 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.
from President Barack Obama in the White House, June 2010.]]
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: }}
Discography
Tours
Arms
Notes | Sir Paul McCartney's agent was Hubert Chesshyre, LVO, Clarenceux King of Arms |
---|
Crest | On a Wreath of the Colours A Liver Bird calling Sable supporting with the dexter claws a Guitar Or stringed Sable. |
---|
Escutcheon | Or between two Flaunches fracted fesswise two Roundels Sable over all six Guitar Strings palewise throughout counterchanged. |
---|
Motto | ECCE COR MEUM (Behold my heart) |
---|
References
;Footnotes
;Bibliography
External links
Paul McCartney's Official Website
Paul McCartney's Animation Website
Paul McCartney Ecce Cor Meum audio Podcast
Liverpool celebrates Irish ancestry
Paul McCartney: Financial Accounts
Satellite View of Childhood Home of Paul McCartney
Category:1942 births
Category:1960s singers
Category:1970s singers
Category:1980s singers
Category:1990s singers
Category:2000s singers
Category:2010s singers
Category:English-language singers
Category:English male singers
Category:English multi-instrumentalists
Category:English pop singers
Category:English rock bass guitarists
Category:English rock guitarists
Category:English rock pianists
Category:English rock singers
Category:English singer-songwriters
Category:English people of Irish descent
Category:English vegetarians
Category:Backing vocalists
Category:20th-century classical composers
Category:Apple Records artists
Category:Best Original Music Score Academy Award winners
Category:BRIT Award winners
Category:Capitol Records artists
Category:Grammy Award winners
Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners
Category:Ivor Novello Award winners
Category:Knights Bachelor
Category:Members of the Order of the British Empire
Category:Music from Liverpool
Category:Parlophone artists
Category:Mercury Records artists
Category:People convicted of drug offenses
Category:Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees
Category:Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees
Category:The Beatles members
Category:The Quarrymen members
Category:Wings members
Category:World record holders
Category:Musicians from Liverpool
Category:Living people
Category:Honorary Members of the Royal Academy of Music
Category:Transcendental Meditation practitioners
Category:Liverpool Institute alumni
Category:British billionaires
Category:Silver Clef Awards winners
Category:Animal rights advocates