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Areas under the Mayas' control, approximately 1870

Chan Santa Cruz or U Noh Kah Balam Nah Chan Santa Cruz is the Maya town now known as Felipe Carrillo Puerto in what is now the Mexican state of Quintana Roo. This name is often assigned to the Maya free state ruled from Chan Santa Cruz for much of the second half of the 19th century. Nonetheless, indigenous documentation including the 'Proclamation' of The State of The Cross and copious correspondence on behalf of this same state give its indigenous name as Juan, (Huaan), de la Cruz, 'The State of The Cross'.

History[link]

Pre-Columbian period[link]

The people of the State of the Cross are predominantly indigenous descendants of the Maya. The northern portion of the mapped area was probably included within the state of Coba during the Classic Period. One of two successors to the defunct League of Mayapan, this state held the eastern half of the Yucatán Peninsula during the decades preceding the European invasion.

Early post-invasion influences include Arawak and Carib refugees from the islands, shipwrecked Spaniards and escaped African slaves. Later, Chinese coolies fled British Honduras and settled among the 'Crusoob', (Villa Rojas 1945). More recently the state has been flooded with Mexican nationals, Haitians and Euro-American hoteliers/tourists.

Contact period[link]

After the Spanish had made their presence known for some years, the Xiu Maya state of the western half of the peninsula, tired of fighting both the Itza' and the Spanish, allied itself with the Spanish Empire. This alliance subsequently inflicted massive property and population losses upon the Itza' Maya state. Nonetheless, The Itza' state continued to train and educate indigenous Maya leaders in the sanctuaries of the southern province, Peten Itza', 'Lake of the Adepts', right through the invasion and sack of the island capital Tayasil, by general Martín de Ursúa on March 13, 1697, ('6 Kimi, 9 Kank'in'). Indeed, there is internal evidence that the Maya Hieroglyphic manuscript, now held in Madrid, Spain was created at Tayasal some years after the invasion of Yucatán. This evidence includes paper from a Spanish book which was employed as a base for several pages of the manuscript (Coe 1998).

Uaan[link]

The province of Uaan, ('Fan Palm, Entity, State, Exist'), remained unknown to the Spanish, (for example Diego de Landa makes no mention of this province in his enumeration of Yucatecan provinces). Nonetheless, the provincial capital, Chable, ('Anteater'), is mentioned several times in the books of Chilam Balam as a cycle seat (Edmonson 1984). Upon the fall of Peten Iz'a, only the Iz'a province of Uaan maintained anything like an independent existence, and this only through strict secrecy.

Pacification[link]

The Spanish were thoroughly occupied in 'pacifying' the Maya of the western half of the Iz'a state through the 18th century. The most famous of these campaigns was against the indigenist Kanek, and his followers. This campaign finally ended with the martyrdom of the Kanek and his closest followers on December 14, 1761, ('10 Kaban, 15 Yax').

Uprising[link]

When the Spanish Creols declared Yucatecan independence and began fighting over control of the resources of their infant slave state, the Maya leadership saw their best chance to recover their freedom and independence. This action had been in the planning for some time as revealed by recently discovered letters (constituting written orders, through an established military chain of command, to step up the plan) written in the wake of the martyrdom of the Batab of Chichimilla, Antonio Manuel Ay, on August 26, 1847, (6 Kaban, 5 Xul), in a sanctuary plaza at Saki, the sacred 'White' city of the north. Exactly three days after Ay's murder, the eastern Maya, now identified as Uiz'oob, ('Loincloths'), rose in a general uprising which nearly drove the invaders entirely from the peninsula (Huchim 1997:97-107). This uprising, reaching its high tide in 1848, called La Guerra de las Castas, Caste War of Yucatan by the Spanish, resulted in the liberation of the old Iz'a Maya state, leaving the old Xiu Maya state in the hands of the Yucateco Creols. The descendants of this short-lived Maya free state and those who live like them are commonly known as 'Cruzoob', (Reed 1964).

Betrayal and the fall of the Maya Free State[link]

From the late 1850s through 1893 the United Kingdom recognized the Maya free state as a de facto independent nation, even sponsoring treaty negotiations between the Spanish Yucateco state and the Maya Crusoob state. These negotiations resulted in a signed international treaty, which was never ratified by either party. The Maya state had extensive trade relations with the British colony of British Honduras, and its military was substantially larger than the garrison and militia in British Honduras. In contrast to the Yucatecans and the Mexicans, the British found it both practical and profitable to maintain good relations with the Maya free state for some years.

All this changed when British citizens were executed (along with the entire Yucatec 'Creol' garrison) after the siege and fall to the Maya of Bacalar, originally the Myan holy city of Bak Halal ('Decanting Water').(Reed 1964)

No one will ever know for sure why the commanding general ordered a wholesale slaughter of the garrison. Possibly he was tired of retaking the city from the more aggressive Yucateco state. Regardless, this action frightened the tiny British Colonial establishment in neighboring British Honduras.

The British Government assigned Sir Spenser St. John to disentangle Her Royal Majesty's Government from indigenous free states and the Maya free state in particular. In 1893, HRMG signed the Spenser Mariscal Treaty which ceded all of the Maya free state's lands to Mexico. Meanwhile the 'Creols' on the west side of the Yucatán peninsula had come to realize that their minority-ruled mini-state could not outlast its indigenous neighbor. After the Creols offered their country to anyone who might consider the defense of their lives and property worth the effort, Mexico finally accepted. With both legal pretext and a convenient staging area in the western side of the Yucatán peninsula, Chan Santa Cruz was occupied by the Mexican army in the early years of the 20th century, (Reed 1964).

Mexican occupation did not end resistance by the indigenous Maya, who continued to conduct guerilla attacks against the Mexicans under the leadership of General Fransisco May. In 1935, May signed a formal peace treaty with the government of Mexico.

Various treaties with Mexico were signed by the leaders of the indigenous state through the late 1930s and 1940s. These treaties, "Letters of General May", make very interesting reading today. Following General May's death, the remaining Maya officials initiated contacts with Washington through the archaeologist and American spy, (Harris, Sadler 2003), Sylvanus Morley, (Sullivan 1992).

Religion[link]

One of the notable aspects of the Maya free state was the reappearance of Maya religion in an indigenous form, sometimes called "The Cult of The Talking Cross". This was most probably a continuation of native beliefs, reemerging when the Spanish colonist's civil war released the Maya from the repressions of Yucatán's Hispanic population. The indigenous priests had maintained their ancient religious texts and the spiritual knowledge contained therein, as they continue to do today, (Roys 1933, Thompson 1965).

Maya sacred books[link]

Upon the arrival of Friar Jacobo de Testera, leading the first of the Franciscan Missions to the Maya in the second half of the 16th century, a Maya encyclopedia project was begun. This project was designed to collect prayers, orations, commentaries and descriptions of native life as aids to the destruction of Maya culture in general and Maya religion specifically. Diego de Landa's famous Relación de las cosas de Yucatán contains much of the Spanish explanatory text of this encyclopedia without however, employing any of the actual indigenous texts (Tozzer 1941).

The Maya elders who participated in this project, including Juan Na Chi Kokom, former leader of the Itza' state in eastern Yucatan, were most likely willing volunteers who saw the project as a way to preserve Maya culture and religion. After the project was anathemized by the Roman Church the former Maya collaborators collected and reconstructed as much as they could and assembled them into a loose collection of texts which is now known as the Books of Chilam Balam (Roys 1933).

The Books of Chilam Balam, ('Spokesman of the Patron'), (Barrera Vasquez 1948, Roys 1933, Edmonson 1982, 1987, Bricker & Miram 2001). Existing copies of these books from Calkini, Chan Kan, Chumayel, Ixil, Kaua, Mani, Tixkakal and Tisimin, present evidence for distinct Xiu and Itza' recensions. (Barrera Vasquez 1948). Usually translated as a collection of historical and mythological texts, this book actually contains a great deal of information specifically pertaining to the ancient Maya Calendar and the priests who maintained it.

Contents of the Books of Chilam Balam include daily reminders for diviners, natal charts for each day, rituals associated with each day, the selection, training and initiation of Maya calendar priests, a Maya rosary prayer, a divination prayer, sacrifices at the sacred well of Chich'en Itza', auto sacrifice, pilgrimage places, the Maya years and cycles, advice to a woman already seven months pregnant, and Maya family life.

The Songs of Dzitbalche, (Barrera Vasquez 1965) is a collection of songs, prayers and ritual speeches. This collection includes traditional girls' songs, prayers for seating images, and others.

The Ritual of the Bakabs, (Roys 1965, Marin 1987, etc.). Usually translated as a collection of medical texts. The first half of this book is comparable to the books of Chilam Balam of Chumayel and Tizimin and actually contains songs, advice, prayers and ritual speeches. These texts include one on the Maya Pontiff, one on the Chiuoh lineage, one on seers, several for novice diviners, a midwife's prayer and a renewal prayer for the divining seeds. The second half of this book is comparable to the second half of the Chilam Balam of Kauá and Maya herbals, it also contains, mostly herbal, medical remedies for a wide variety of ailments.

Maya Herbals, (Roys 1931, Ethnobotany of the Maya).

The Maya Church[link]

Shortly after Yucatan was declared an independent state, the Yucatán Peninsula was divided into two independent warring states: a Hispanic slave state in the west, and a Maya free state in the east. For the first time in centuries the Maya were in charge of a state which sponsored their indigenous faith. (The Roman Church had consistently refused even to ordain native Maya as priests). Previously, the village lay assistants maestros cantores, who were sons of Maya priests often acted as members of their fathers' profession as well, (Clendenin 1978).

The Maya Church in every Crusero village and town, houses the Holy Cross in her sanctuary. Maya churches are easily distinguished from Roman churches by the presence of a walled inner sanctum, the gloria, inside the Maya church (Villa Rojas 1945).

God and His Angels[link]

• K'u, 'God', is one, undepictable and incorporeal, (Motul Dictionary).
• Hunab K'u, 'Unique God', (Motul Dictionary).
• Hahal K'u, 'True God', (Motul Dictionary).
• Tepal, 'Lord', epithet for God and His Angels, (Motul Diactionary).
• Ahau, 'Lord', epithet for God and His Angels, (Motul Dictionary).
• Yumil Kaan, 'Father of the Sky', widespread indigenous epithet for God and His Angels (Berendt 1888).
• Chakoob, 'Angels', are God's active force, who manifest his will on earth and can be petitioned for aid. There are 1, 4, 5, 6, or 7 Chakoob, one for each direction addressed in a particular ritual. The directions are color coded along with their Chakoob. Thus, east is red, north is white, west is black, south is yellow, sky is blue, earth is green and the center is clear (Thompson 1965).
• Kiichpam Kolel, 'Beautiful Grandmother', U Kolel Cab, 'Grandmother Earth', Guadelupe, any of the feminine principles of the universe, (Gann 1888, Thompson 1933, Villa Rojas 1945). She and the other feminine spirits are autonomous and can be petitioned for good through prayers before her cross or image.
• Yumz'iloob, 'Fathers', 'Patrilineage Ancestors' are autonomous and can be petitioned for good or ill through prayers before the appropriate lineage crosses, (Villa Rojas 1945).
• Balam, 'Jaguar', 'Patron' of the village, town, province, state, nation which acts as agent and protector for the social unit in question, (Proskouriakoff 1961, Villa Rojas 1945).
• Balamoob, 'Jaguars', Twenty 'Patrons' of the days of the 260 day Sacred Round, the four 'Yearbearers' of the 365 day year, the Ahauoob of the 360 day 'year', and the K'atun, (Proskouriakoff 1961, Villa Rojas 1945).
• Ik'oob, 'Spirits', are autonomous and can be petitioned for good or ill, (Villa Rojas 1945).
• K'asal Ik'oob, 'Evil Spirits', are autonomous and chaotic and must be exorsized before any ritual can begin, and appeased before any ritual can end, (Villa Rojas 1945).
• Ix Ceel, 'Little Tree', family devotional cross, (Roys 1965).

Worship[link]

There are two great annual festivals, both descended from the two great annual festivals of the Precolumbian Maya. U K'in Crus, ('The Day of The Cross'), is the ancient Maya New (365 day) Year Festival and U K'in Kolel, ('The Feast of Our Grandmother', Guadelupe), is the ancient Maya New (360 day) 'Year' Festival.

The Crusoob also celebrate a 'Mass' and 'Novenas' which always include corn tortillas and typically tamales, meat, fruit, atole, pepper, chocolate, a dessert and an alcoholic beverage, (Villa Rojas 1945).

The Holy Cross[link]

The Holy Cross must be guarded and fed several times a day. Every householder has a small domestic cross with a diminutive huipil, ('woman's dress'), and a mirror around its neck. This little female cross was known in Precolumbian times as Ix Cel, ('Little/female Tree'). In addition to the village Patron Cross and the Household crosses, there are special Lineage Crosses for important lines, four Guardian Crosses at the entrances to town and others which guard sinkholes and wells, (Villa Rojas 1945). The religion of the people now is quite mixed, with some devoted exclusively to the indigenous church and its ritual calendar, while others are exclusively or partially Roman Catholic, Protestant or Evangelical.

The shrines of the "Talking crosses" remain a vital part of the local culture to this day. Indeed, as recently as 2002 the Mexican Government finally lifted the stigma of witchcraft, to which indigenous priests had been subject under Mexican Civil and Roman Church law, recognizing the Church of The Talking Cross as a legitimate religion, (plaque on shrine in Carrillo Puerto).

The state of the Cross[link]

The State of The Cross was proclaimed on x,x,1849?, in Xoken, ('Read it to me'), a south-eastern satellite of modern Valladolid where the Proclamo was first read to the people.

The capital, Noh Kah Balam Nah Chan Santa Cruz, was founded in about 1850 near a sacred cenote, a natural well providing a year round source of holy water, where the talking cross continues to speak. (Reed 1964, Villa Rojas 1945)

The city was laid out in the Precolumbian Maya manner, surrounding a square with the Balam Nah, the 'Patron Saint's House', and the school at the east, the Pontiff's house at the west, the General's houses at the north and the storehouses and market to the south, (Reed 1964).

The regional capitals in Bak Halal, Chun Pom, (Vigia Chico) and Tu Luum, were probably laid out on the same plan as the capital.

At its greatest extent, 1860s-1890s, The State of The Cross encompassed all of the southern and central parts of the Mexican state of Quintana Roo. With associated, buffer and splinter groups The State of The Cross was the core of a broader indigenist liberation movement which controlled virtually all of the old Iz'a territories. These territories include the eastern, central and southern portions of the Yucatán peninsula, extending from Cape Catoche south to include what is now northwestern Belize and northeastern Guatemala.

National records[link]

The 'Proclamation of Juan de la Cruz', El Proclamo in Spanish, is the Maya free state's formal declaration of independence. Appended to the Proclamation are the state's constitution and by-laws. In addition to responsibilities for military service (the constitution was written in time of war) and support for the indigenous church, the Maya people (and those of any race) who consented to the sovereignty of the new state were guaranteed equal and fair treatment, (Bricker 1981).

Official correspondence and international treaties of the Maya state[link]

• Treaties with the Yucateco state.
• Treaty with the Yucateco state sponsored by the British Government in Hondouras (11 Jan. 1884).
• Treaties with the British Government.
• Official correspondence with Washington, (Sullivan 1992).
• Treaties with the Mexican Government, (Correspondence of General May)
• Treaties of the Guatemalan Government.
• Treaties of the Yucateco state.
• Treaties between Mexico and the British Government. (The Spenser Mariscal Treaty, 1893).

Officials[link]

Most Maya offices are unpaid or are paid by donations from wealthy and/or devout members of the community. These officials are typically among the oldest and most impoverished of the people, having distributed most of their personal property to finance the associated community festivals, (Redfield and Villa Rojas 1962).

Religious officials[link]

• Ahau Kan, Ah Z'ab Kan, 'Lord Wisdom', 'He Rattle Snake', the Supreme Pontiff of the Maya church, now known as Nohoch Tata, 'Great Father', (Tozzer 1941, Villa Rojas 1945).
• Kan Ek', 'Wise Star', one of four Cardinals who held forth from the four holy cities: Bakhalal, now Bacalar, in the east, Sakil, Spanish Valladolid, in the north, Ich Kan Si Ho', Spanish Merida, in the west, and Cham Putun, now 'Champoton', in the south, disused, (Edmonson 1984).
• Ek', 'Star', one of eight Archbishops in the Maya church, disused, (Motul Dictionary).
• Cho'op, 'Macaw', one of twenty Provincials or Bishops in the Maya Church, disused. Only the Province of Uaan now survives, the Cho'opil Uaan is now the Supreme Pontiff of the Maya church and is known as the Nohoch Tata, (Motul Dictionary, Villa Rojas 1945).
• The first Nohoch Tata was Manual Nahuat, 1847 until his death on March 23, 1851.
• K'in, 'Sun', one of eighty Priests, sometimes identified in Spanish as Sacerdote, in the Maya Church. A diviner, one of a multitude who employs the Maya Sacred Calendar of 20 daily patrons and thirteen daily personalities/numbers, disused, (Motul Dictionary, Tedlock 1982).
• Ik', 'Spirit', an Exorcista, a blessing, (Motul Dictionary, Roys 1933).
• Uay, 'Familiar Spirit', 'Nagual', a Medium, one with good relations in the spirit world, (Motul Dictionary, Redfield 194x).
• K'ay, 'Fish', a Cantor, (Motul Dictionary).
• T'an, 'Word', Rezador, an Orator, (Motul Dictionary).
• Le, 'Leaf', Yerbatero, a Herbalist, (Motul Dictionary).

Civil officials[link]

• Halac Uinik, 'Real Man, Presidente Municipal, is a civil official at the level of provincial governor or higher, (Motul Dictionary). The first Halach Uinik at Chan Santa Cruz was Jose Maria Barrera, who held the position until his assassination in 1852.
• Batab, 'Hatchet', Delegado, is the local civil official at the village level or lower, (Motul Dictionary).
• Tupil, 'Earring', 'Novice', 'Alderman', is the entry level civil official at the village level or lower, including the Kambesah, 'Teacher' and the Kanan K'u, 'Sacristan', (Motul Dictionary).

Military officials[link]

• Ahau K'atun Kiuik', General de la Plaza, (Motul Dictionary, Villa Rojas 1945). The supreme commander of Maya military forces. This position was held by several different individuals. There is some evidence that the first, most effective and longest serving General of the Plaza was Bernardino Cen (Sullivan 1992). The last fully recognized General of the PLaza was General May, who signed the final peace treaties with the Mexican government through the 1930s and 40's. Subsequent attempts to revive the generalship have failed to garner the support of the community as a whole and the military survives primarily as an honor guard for the Maya Church.
• Ahau K'atun, General, there are four of these, one for each direction. Nonetheless, during the war of liberation it was the generals of the north and of the south who garnered the most space in the Spanish and British colonial press, (Motul Dictionary, Villa Rojas 1945).
• The first General of The North was Cecilio Chi, victor at Valladolid and Iz'amal, 1847 until his death in May, 1849. The second General of The North was Venancio Pec, 1849-1852.
• The first General of The South was Jacinto Pat, victor at Peto, Tekax, Tikul, 1847 until his assassination in December, 1849. The second General of The South was Florentino Chan, 1849-1852.
• Coronel
• Major
• Ah K'atun, Capitan, (Motul Dictionary, Villa Rojas 1945)
• Teniente
• Sergento
• Caporal
• K'atun, Soldado, 'Private, Soldier in general', (Motul Dictionary, Villa Rojas 1945)

Traditional occupations[link]

• Konol, 'Seller', is a member of the merchant class which, while maintaining homes in the communities, does little farming and travels frequently from market to market in search of the best prices, (Motul Dictionary, Redfiel and Villa Rojas 1962).
• Ah Pak, Ah Nun Baal, Albanil, 'Waller', 'Immovable Thing', is a mason, (Motul Dictionary, Redfield and Villa Rojas 1962).
• Ah Kab, 'Beekeeper', (Motul Dictionary, Redfield and Villa Rojas 1962).
• Ah Men Che, Carpintero, Carpenter, (Motul Dictionary, etc.).
• K'ol Nal, Graniero, 'Farm Corn', is the largest class consisting of subsistence farmers, (Motul Dictionary, etc.).

See also[link]

• Kakure Kirishitan, a Japanese evolution of Catholicism after the interdiction of ordained priests.

References[link]

• Arzapalo Marin, Ramon 1987, El Ritual de los Bacabes, UNAM, Mexico.
• Avila Zapata, Felipe Nery, 1974, El General May: Ultimo jefe de las tribus mayas. Ediciones del Gobierno del Estado de Yucatan: Coleccion paginas de nuestra Historia, Mérida, Yucatan, Mexico.
• Barrera Vasquez, Alfredo, 1948, El Libro de los libros de Chilam Balam. Ediciones Porrua, Mexico, Mexico.
• Berendt, 1888. The Lord's Prayer in three languages, Smithsonian Institution, Washington.
• Bricker, Victoria, 1981 The Indian Christ, The Indian King: the indigenous substrate of Maya myth and ritual. University of Texas Press, Austin.
• Bricker, Victoria and Miram, 2001. The Book of Chilam Balam of Kaua.
• Ciudad Real, Antonio?, 1604? Calepino Maya. (Motul Dictionary).
• Cogolludo, Tomas, Lopez (1688), Historia de Yucatan
• Clendenin, Inga, 1978. Ambivalent Conquest: Spaniard and Maya in the Yucatan peninsula.
• Chamberlan, 19xx. Materials for a bibliography of the cast war in Yucatan.
• Coe, Michael, 1998. Art of the Maya Scribe.
• Landa, Diego de, 1941. Relacion de las cosas de Yucatan. (Alfred M.Tozzer, trans.) Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
• Edmonson, Munroe, 1984. The Ancient Future of the Itz'a: The Book of Chilam Balam of Tizimin. University of Texas Press, Austin.
• Edmonson, Munroe, 1987. Heaven Born Merida: The book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel. University of Texas Press, Austin.
• Gann, Thomas, 188x. Explorations in British Honduras ?.
• Harris, Charles & Sadler Louis, 2003. The Archaeologist was a Spy.
• Martinez Huchim, Patricia, 1997. "The Uprising of the Men in Loincloths". Guerra de las Castas en Yucatan, Sastun, ano. #1, Mérida.
• Proskouriakoff, Tatiana, 1961. "Lords of the Maya Realm". Expedition Magazine, 4.1.
• Reed, Nelson, 1964. The Caste War in Yucatan.
• Roys, Ralph, 1931. The Ethnobotany of the Maya. Middle American Research Series, Publication 2, New Orleans.
• Roys, Ralph, 1933. The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel. Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication 438, Washington.
• Roys, Ralph, 1965. The Ritual of the Bacabs, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.
• Redfield, Robert & Villa Rojas, 1962. Chan Kom: a Maya Village. Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago.
• Sullivan, Paul, 1992. Unfinished Conversations: Mayas and foreigners between two wars. New York.
• Tedlock, Barbara, 1982. Time and the Highland Maya. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.
• Thompson, J.E.S. 1933. Explorations in British Honduras. Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago.
• Thompson, J.E.S., 1965. Maya History and Religion. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.
• Villa Rojas, Alfonso, 1945. The Maya of East Central Quintana Roo, Mexico. Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication 559, Washington.

External links[link]

• A visit to Chan Santa Cruz

Celia Cruz
Celia Cruz in Paris, France, April 1980
Background information
Birth name	Úrsula Hilaria Celia de la Caridad Cruz Alfonso
Also known as	La Reina de la Salsa, La Guarachera de Cuba
Born	(1925-10-21)October 21, 1925 Havana, Cuba
Died	July 16, 2003(2003-07-16) (aged 77) Fort Lee, New Jersey, U.S.
Genres	Salsa, bolero
Occupations	Singer
Years active	1948–2003
Labels	Fania Records, RMM Records & Video, Sony Discos
Associated acts	Sonora Matancera, Fania All-Stars
Website	Official website

Celia Cruz (October 21, 1925 – July 16, 2003) was a Cuban-American and was one of the most successful salsa performers of the 20th century, having earned twenty-three gold albums. She was renowned internationally as the "Queen of Salsa" as well as "La Guarachera de Cuba."^[1]

She spent much of her career living in New Jersey, and working in the United States and several Latin American countries. Leila Cobo of Billboard Magazine once said "Cruz is indisputably the best known and most influential female figure in the history of Cuban music."

Early life[link]

Úrsula Hilaria Celia de la Caridad Cruz Alfonso was born on October 21, 1925^[2] in the diverse, working-class neighborhood of Santos Suárez in Havana, Cuba.^[3] She was the second eldest of fourteen children^[4] born to Catalina Alfonso and Simón Cruz. Simón Cruz worked in the railroads as a stoker, and his wife took care of the extended family.^{[citation needed]}

While growing up in Cuba's diverse 1930s musical climate, Cruz listened to many musicians who influenced her adult career, including Fernando Collazo, Abelardo Barroso, Pablo Quevedo and Arsenio Rodríguez. Cruz also studied the words to Yoruba songs with colleague Mercedita Valdes (an Akpwon santeria singer) from Cuba and Celia made various recordings of this religious genre singing even back up for other female akpwons like Candita Batista.^[5]

When she was a teenager, her aunt took her and her cousin to cabarets to sing, but her father encouraged her to keep attending school, in hopes that she would become a Spanish language teacher. However, one of her teachers told her that as an entertainer she could earn in one day what most Cuban teachers earned in a month. Cruz began singing in Havana's radio station Radio Garcia-Serra's popular "Hora del Té" daily broadcast, she sang the tango "Nostalgias" (and won a cake as first place) often winning cakes and also opportunities to participate in more contests. Her first recordings were made in 1948 in Venezuela.^{[citation needed]}

Career[link]

In 1950, Cruz made her first major breakthrough, after the lead singer of the Sonora Matancera, a renowned Cuban orchestra, left the group and Cruz was called to fill in. Cruz was hired permanently by the orchestra, but she wasn't well accepted by the public at first. However, the orchestra stood by their decision, and soon Cruz became famous throughout Cuba. During the 15 years she was a member, the band traveled all over Latin America, becoming known as "Café Con Leche" (coffee with milk). Cruz became known for her trademark shout "¡Azúcar!" ("Sugar!" in Spanish). The catch phrase started as the punch line for a joke Cruz used to tell frequently at her concerts. Once, she ordered cafe cubano (Cuban coffee) in a restaurant in Miami. The waiter asked her if she'd like sugar, and she replied that, since he was Cuban, he should know that you can't drink Cuban coffee without it! After having told the joke so many times, Cruz eventually dropped the joke and greeted her audience at the start of her appearances with the punch line alone. In her later years, she would use the punch line a few times, to later say: "No les digo más 'Azúcar', pa' que no les dé diabetes!" which means "I won't say 'Sugar' anymore so that you won't get diabetes".^{[citation needed]}

With Fidel Castro assuming control of Cuba in 1959, Cruz and her husband, Pedro Knight, refused to return to their homeland and became citizens of the United States. In 1966, Cruz and Tito Puente began an association that would lead to eight albums for Tico Records. The albums were not as successful as expected. However, Puente and Cruz later joined the Vaya Records label. There, she joined accomplished pianist Larry Harlow and was soon headlining a concert at New York's Carnegie Hall.

Cruz's 1974 album with Johnny Pacheco, Celia y Johnny, was very successful, and Cruz soon found herself in a group named the Fania All-Stars, which was an ensemble of salsa musicians from every orchestra signed by the Fania label (owner of Vaya Records). With the Fania All-Stars, Cruz had the opportunity of visiting England, France, Zaire (Today's DR Congo), and to return to tour Latin America; her performance in Zaire is included in the film Soul Power.^[6] In the late 1970s, she participated in an Eastern Air Lines commercial in Puerto Rico, singing the catchy phrase ¡Esto sí es volar! (This really is flying!).

Celia Cruz used to sing the identifying spot for WQBA radio station in Miami, formerly known as "La Cubanísima": "I am the voice of Cuba, from this land, far away,..., I am liberty, I am WQBA, the most Cuban! (Yo soy de Cuba, la voz, desde esta tierra lejana, ..., soy libertad, soy WQBA, Cubanísima!) During the 1980s, Cruz made many tours in Latin America and Europe, doing multiple concerts and television shows wherever she went, and singing both with younger stars and stars of her own era. She began a crossover of sorts, when she participated in the 1988 feature film Salsa, alongside Robby Draco Rosa.

In 1990, Cruz won a Grammy Award for Best Tropical Latin Performance - Ray Barretto & Celia Cruz - Ritmo en el Corazon. She later recorded an anniversary album with la Sonora Matancera. In 1992, she starred with Armand Assante and Antonio Banderas in the film The Mambo Kings. In 1994, President Bill Clinton awarded Cruz the National Medal of Arts. In 2001, she recorded a new album, on which Johnny Pacheco was one of the producers.

On July 16, 2002, Cruz performed to a full house at the free outdoor performing arts festival Central Park SummerStage in New York City. During the performance she sang, "Bemba Colora." A live recording of this song was subsequently made available in 2005 on a commemorative CD honoring the festival's then 20 year history entitled, "Central Park SummerStage: Live from the Heart of the City". Cruz appeared on the 2006 Dionne Warwick album My Friends & Me.

Death[link]

Celia Cruz's mausoleum in Woodlawn Cemetery, The Bronx, New York.

On July 16, 2003, Cruz died of brain cancer at her home in Fort Lee, New Jersey, at the age of 77. She was survived by her husband, Pedro Knight (died February 3, 2007). She had no children. After her death, her body was taken to lie in state in Miami's Freedom Tower, where more than 200,000 fans paid their final respects. Her body was returned to New Jersey where tens of thousands of fans paid tribute to her at the funeral home. A service was held for her in St. Patrick's Cathedral. She was interred in a private mausoleum at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. An epilogue in her autobiography notes that, in accordance with her wishes, Cuban soil which she had saved from a visit to Guantánamo Bay was used in her entombment.

Legacy[link]

Celia Cruz Plaza in Union City, New Jersey.

In February 2004, her last album, Regalo del Alma, won a posthumous award at the Premios Lo Nuestro for best Salsa release of the year. It was announced in December 2005 that a musical called "Assuca" would open in Tenerife before touring the world. The name comes from Cruz's well-known catch phrase of "¡Azúcar!"

On June 4, 2004, the heavily-Cuban-American community of Union City, New Jersey heralded its annual Cuban Day Parade by dedicating its new Celia Cruz Park (also known as Celia Cruz Plaza), which features a sidewalk star in her honor, at 31st Street and Bergenline Avenue, with Cruz's widower, Pedro Knight, present. There are four other similar dedications to Cruz around the world.^[7] Cruz's star has expanded into Union City's "Walk of Fame",^[8] as new marble stars are added each spring to honor Latin entertainment and media personalities, such as merengue singer Joseíto Mateo, salsa singer La India, Cuban musician Israel "Cachao" Lopez, Cuban tenor Beny Moré,^[9] Tito Puente, Spanish language television news anchor Rafael Pineda, salsa pioneer Johnny Pacheco,^[10] singer/bandleader Gilberto Santa Rosa and music promoter Ralph Mercado.^[11]

On May 18, 2005, the National Museum of American History, administered by the Smithsonian Institution and located in Washington, D.C., opened "¡Azúcar!", an exhibit celebrating the life and music of Celia Cruz. The exhibit highlights important moments in Cruz's life and career through photographs, personal documents, costumes, videos, and music.

On September 26, 2007, through May 25, 2008, Celia, a musical based on the life of Celia Cruz, played at the off-Broadway venue, New World Stages. Some performances were in Spanish and some in English. The show won four 2008 HOLA awards from the Hispanic Organization of Latin Actors.^[12]

Discography[link]

Grammy awards[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Celia Cruz

• Celia Cruz homepage
• Celia Cruz discography at Discogs.
• Celia Cruz's Discography (album covers) at Florida International University archives
• Celia Cruz's Discography (recordings) at Florida International University archives
• Celia Cruz videos
• Celia Cruz at the Internet Movie Database.
• Celia Cruz at Findagrave.com
• ¡Azúcar! The Life and Music of Celia Cruz at the National Museum of American History.
• In May 2011, the VOA Special English service of the Voice of America broadcast a 15-minute program on Celia Cruz. A transcript and MP3 of the program, intended for English learners, can be found at Celia Cruz, 1925-2003: 'The Queen of Salsa'

Lope de Vega
Portrait of Lope de Vega
Born	Félix Arturo Lope de Vega y Carpio (1562-11-25)25 November 1562 Madrid, Spain
Died	27 August 1635(1635-08-27) (aged 72) Madrid, Spain
Occupation	Poet, playwright
Language	Spanish
Literary movement	Baroque
Notable work(s)	Fuente Ovejuna The Dog in the Manger La Arcadia

Félix Arturo Lope de Vega y Carpio (25 November 1562 – 27 August 1635) was a Spanish playwright and poet. He was one of the key figures in the Spanish Golden Century Baroque literature. His reputation in the world of Spanish literature is second only to that of Cervantes, while the sheer volume of his literary output is unequalled, making him one of the most prolific authors in the history of literature.

Nicknamed "The Phoenix of Wits" and "Monster of Nature" (because of the sheer volume of his work) by Miguel de Cervantes, Lope de Vega renewed the Spanish theatre at a time when it was starting to become a mass cultural phenomenon. He defined the key characteristics of it, and along with Calderón de la Barca and Tirso de Molina, he took Spanish baroque theatre to its greater limits. Because of the insight, depth and ease of his plays, he is regarded among the best dramatists of Western literature, his plays still being represented worldwide. He was also one of the best lyric poets in the Spanish language, and author of various novels. Although not well known in the English-speaking world, his plays were presented in England as late as the 1660s, when diarist Samuel Pepys recorded having attended some adaptations and translations of them, although he omits mentioning the author.

Some 3,000 sonnets, 3 novels, 4 novellas, 9 epic poems, and about 1,800 plays are attributed to him. Although he has been criticised for putting quantity ahead of quality, nevertheless at least 80 of his plays are considered masterpieces. He was a friend of the writers Quevedo and Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, and the sheer volume of his lifework made him envied by not only contemporary authors such as Cervantes and Góngora, but also by many others: for instance, Goethe once wished he had been able to produce such a vast and colourful work.^[1]

Life[link]

Félix Lope de Vega y Carpio was born in Madrid to a family of undistinguished origins, recent arrivals in the capital from Valle de Carriedo in Cantabria, whose breadwinner, Félix de Vega, was an embroiderer. He later added the distinguished name of Carpio from one of his in-laws.

The first indications of young Lope's genius became apparent in his earliest years. At the age of five he was already reading Spanish and Latin, by his tenth birthday he was translating Latin verse, and he wrote his first play when he was 12.

His fourteenth year found him enrolled in the Colegio Imperial, a Jesuit school in Madrid, from which he absconded to take part in a military expedition in Portugal. Following that escapade, he had the good fortune of being taken into the protection of the Bishop of Ávila, who recognized the lad's talent and saw him enrolled in the University of Alcalá. Following graduation Lope was planning to follow in his patron's footsteps and join the priesthood, but those plans were dashed by his falling in love and realizing that celibacy was not for him.

In 1583 Lope enlisted in the army, and he saw action with the Spanish Navy in the Azores. Following this he returned to Madrid and began his career as a playwright in earnest. He also began a love affair with Elena Osorio, an actress and the daughter of a leading theater owner. When, after some five years of this torrid affair, Elena spurned Lope in favor of another suitor, his vitriolic attacks on her and her family landed him in jail for libel and, ultimately, earned him the punishment of eight years' banishment from the court and two years banishment from Castile.

Exile[link]

He went into exile undaunted, in the company of the 16-year-old Isabel de Urbina, the daughter of a prominent advisor at the court of Philip II, whom he was subsequently forced to marry. A few weeks after their marriage, however, Lope signed up for another tour of duty with the Spanish navy: this was the summer of 1588, and the Armada was about to sail against England.

Lope's luck again served him well, and his ship, the San Juan, was one of the few vessels to make it home to Spanish harbors in the aftermath of that failed expedition. Back in Spain, he settled in the city of Valencia to live out the remainder of exile and to recommence, as prolifically as ever, his career as a dramatist.

In 1590 he was appointed to serve as the secretary to the Duke of Alba, which required him to relocate to Toledo.

Return[link]

Lope's house in Madrid (1610–1635).

In 1595, following Isabel's death in childbirth, he left the Duke's service and – eight years having passed – returned to Madrid. There were other love affairs and other scandals: Antonia Trillo de Armenta, who earned him another lawsuit, and Micaela de Luján, an illiterate but beautiful actress, who inspired a rich series of sonnets and rewarded him with four children. In 1598 he married Juana de Guardo, the daughter of a wealthy butcher. Nevertheless, his trysts with others – including Micaela – continued.

The 17th century were the years when Lope's literary output reached its peak. He was also employed as a secretary, but not without various additional duties, by the Duke of Sessa. Once that decade was over, however, his personal situation took a turn for the worse. His favorite son, Carlos Félix (by Juana), died and, in 1612, Juana herself died in childbirth. Micaela also disappears from the history around this point. Deeply affected, Lope gathered his surviving children from both unions together under one roof.

His writing in the early 1610s also assumed heavier religious influences and, in 1614, he joined the priesthood.^[2] The taking of holy orders did not, however, impede his romantic dalliances, although it is somewhat unclear what role his employeer the duke, fearful of losing his secretary, played in this by supplying him with various female companions. The most notable and lasting of his relationships during this time was with Marta de Nevares, who would remain with him until her death in 1632.

Further tragedies followed in 1635 with the loss of Lope, his son by Micaela and a worthy poet in his own right, in a shipwreck off the coast of Venezuela, and the abduction and subsequent abandonment of his beloved youngest daughter Antonia. Lope de Vega took to his bed and died of Scarlet fever, in Madrid, on 27 August of that year.

Work[link]

This section is written like a personal reflection or essay rather than an encyclopedic description of the subject. Please help improve it by rewriting it in an encyclopedic style. (August 2008)

This section includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (April 2009)

Title page of El testimonio vengado.

A rapid survey of Lope's nondramatic works can begin with those published in Spain under the title Obras Sueltas (Madrid, 21 vols., 1776–79). The more important elements of this collection include the following:

• La Arcadia (1598), a pastoral romance, is one of the poet's most wearisome productions;
• La Dragontea (1598) is a fantastic history in verse of Sir Francis Drake's last expedition and death;
• El Isidro (1599) is a narrative of the life of Saint Isidore, patron saint of Madrid, composed in octosyllabic quintillas;
• La Hermosura de Angélica (1602), in three books, is a sort of continuation of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso.

Lope de Vega is one of the greatest Spanish poets of his time, along with Luis de Góngora and Francisco de Quevedo. In the 1580s and 1590s his poems of moorish and pastoral themes were extremely popular, in part because Lope —who appears in these poems as a moor called Zaide or a shepherd called Belardo— portrayed elements of his own love affairs. In 1602 he published two hundred sonnets with his La Hermosura de Angélica and in 1604 he republished them with new material in his Rimas. In 1614 his religious sonnets appeared in a book entitled Rimas sacras, which was another huge bestseller. Finally, in 1634 a third book of similar name, Rimas humanas y divinas del licenciado Tomé de Burguillos, which has been considered his masterpiece as a poet and the most modern poem book of the 17th century: Lope created a heteronym, Tomé de Burguillos, a poor scholar who is in love with a maid called Juana and who observes society from a cynical and disillusional position.

Background[link]

Lope always treated the art of comedy-writing as one of the humblest of trades and protested against the supposition that in writing for the stage his aim was glory and not money. Spanish drama, if not literally the creation of Lope, at least owes him its definitive form – the three act comedia – regardless of the precepts of the prevailing school of his contemporaries. Lope accordingly felt bound to prove that from the point of view of literary art, he attached no value to the rustic traits of his humble age: in his Arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo (1609) – his artistic manifesto and the justification of his style, breaking the neoclassical three unities (place, time, and action) – Lope begins by showing that he knows as well as anyone the established rules of poetry, and then excuses himself for his inability to follow them on the ground that the "vulgar" Spaniard cares nothing about them: "Let us then speak to him in the language of fools, since it is he who pays us."

Lope boasted that he was a Spaniard pur sang, steadfastly maintained that a writer's business is to write so as to make himself understood, and took the position of a defender of the language of ordinary life.

His literary culture was chiefly Latin-Italian and, while he defends the tradition of the nation and the pure simplicity of the old Castilian, he still did not wish to be taken for an uninformed person, a writer devoid of classical training: he especially emphasizes the fact that he has passed through university, and he continually accentuates the difference between those who know Latin and ignorant laymen.

The vast majority of his works were written in haste and to order. Lope does not hesitate to confess that "more than a hundred of my comedies have taken only twenty-four hours to pass from the Muses to the boards of the theatre." His biographer Pérez de Montalbán, a great admirer of this kind of cleverness, tells how on certain occasion in Toledo, Lope composed fifteen acts in as many days: that is to say, five entire comedies in two weeks.

In spite of some discrepancies in the figures, Lope's own records indicate that by 1604 he had composed, in round numbers, as many as 230 three-act plays (comedias). The figure had risen to 483 by 1609, to 800 by 1618, to 1000 by 1620, and to 1500 by 1632. Montalbán, in his Fama Póstuma (1636) set down the total of Lope's dramatic productions at 1800 comedias and more than 400 shorter sacramental plays. Of these 637 plays are known to us by their titles, but only the texts of some 450 are extant, including two that he wrote at the age of twelve. Many of these pieces were printed during Lope's lifetime, either in compilations of works by various authors or as separate issues by booksellers who surreptitiously bought manuscripts from the actors or had the unpublished comedy written down from memory by persons they sent to attend the first performance.

Themes and sources[link]

The classification of this enormous mass of dramatic literature is a task of great difficulty. The terms traditionally employed – comedy, tragedy, and the like – do not apply to Lope's oeuvre. Another approach to categorization is needed. In the first place, Lope's work essentially belongs to the drama of intrigue: be the subject what it may, it is always the plot that determines everything else. It is from history, Spanish history in particular, that Lope borrows more than from any other source. It would in fact be difficult to say what national and patriotic subjects, from the reign of the half-fabulous King Pelayo down to the history of his own age, he did not put upon the stage. Nevertheless, Lope's most celebrated plays belong to the class called capa y espada or "cloak and dagger", where the plots are almost always love intrigues complicated with affairs of honor, most commonly involving the petty nobility of medieval Spain.

Among the best known works of this class are El perro del hortelano (The Dog in the Manger), La viuda de Valencia (The Widow from Valencia), and El maestro de danzar. In some of these Lope strives to set forth some moral maxim and to illustrate its abuse by a living example. Thus, on the theme that poverty is no crime, we have the play entitled Las Flores de Don Juan. Here, he uses the history of two brothers to illustrate the triumph of virtuous poverty over opulent vice, while simultaneously (but indirectly) attacking the institution of primogeniture, which often places in the hands of an unworthy person the honor and substance of a family when the younger members would be much better qualified for the trust. Such morality pieces are, however, rare in Lope's repertory; generally, his sole aim is to amuse and stir his public, not troubling himself about its instruction. His focus remains fixed on the plot.

Legacy[link]

Monument in Madrid (1902).

Lope encountered a poorly organized drama: plays were composed sometimes in four acts, sometimes in three, and though they were written in verse, the structure of the versification was left far too much to the caprice of the individual writer. Because the Spanish public liked it, he adopted the style of drama then in vogue. Its narrow framework, however, he enlarged to an extraordinary degree, introducing everything that could possibly furnish material for dramatic situations: the Bible, ancient mythology, the lives of the saints, ancient history, Spanish history, the legends of the Middle Ages, the writings of the Italian novelists, current events, and everyday Spanish life in the 17th century. Prior to Lope, playwrights barely sketched the conditions of persons and their characters; with fuller observation and more careful description, Lope de Vega created real types and gave to each social order the language and accoutrements appropriate to it. The old comedy was awkward and poor in its versification; Lope introduced order into all the forms of national poetry, from the old romance couplets to the rarest lyrical combinations borrowed from Italy. He was thus justified in saying that those who should come after him had only to go on along the path which he had opened.

List of works[link]

Plays[link]

Listed here are some of the better-known of Lope's plays:

• El maestro de danzar (1594) (The Dancing Master)
• El acero de Madrid (The Steel of Madrid)
• El perro del Hortelano (The Gardener's Dog, a variation of The Dog in the Manger fable)
• La viuda valenciana (The Widow from Valencia)
• Peribáñez y el comendador de Ocaña
• Fuenteovejuna
• El anzuelo de Fenisa (Fenisa's Hook)
• El cordobés valeroso Pedro Carbonero
• El mejor alcalde, el Rey (The Best Mayor, The King)
• El Nuevo Mundo descubierto por Cristóbal Colón (The New World Discovered by Christopher Columbus)
• El caballero de Olmedo (The Knight of Olmedo)
• La dama boba (The Stupid Lady; The Lady-Fool)
• El amor enamorado
• El castigo sin venganza (Justice Without Revenge)
• Las bizarrías de Belisa
• El mayordomo de la duquesa de Amalfi (The Duchess of Amalfi's Steward)
• Lo Fingido Verdadero (What you Pretend Has Become Real)
• El niño inocente de La Guardia (The Innocent Child of La Guardia)

Opera[link]

• La selva sin amor (18 December 1627) (The Lovelorn Forest), first Spanish opera / zarzuela^[3]

Poems[link]

• La Dragontea (1598) ("Drake the Pirate")
• El Isidro (1599) ("Isidro")
• La hermosura de Angélica (1602) ("The Beauty of Angelica")
• Rimas (1602) ("Rhymes")
• Arte nuevo de hacer comedias (1609)
• Jerusalén conquistada (1609)
• Rimas sacras (1614)
• La Filomena (1621)
• La Circe (1624)
• El laurel de Apolo (1630)
• La Gatomaquia (1634)
• Rimas humanas y divinas del licenciado Tomé de Burguillos (1634)

Prose fiction[link]

• Arcadia (published 1598) (The Arcadia), pastoral romance in prose, interspersed with verse
• El peregrino en su patria (published 1604) (The Pilgrim in his Own Country), adaption of Byzantine novels
• La Dorotea (published 1632)

References[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Lope de Vega

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Lope de Vega

Spanish Wikisource has original text related to this article: Lope de Vega

Wikisource has original text related to this article: Lope de Vega

In Harry Turtledove's novel Ruled Britannia, Lope de Vega is pictured as a Spanish soldier-playwright who interacts with William Shakespeare. He return to Spain at the end of the novel to continue his writing career.

Notes[link]

Sources[link]

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 
• Hayes, Francis C. (1967). Lope de Vega. Twayne's World Author Series. New York: Twayne Publishers. 

External links[link]

• Works by Lope de Vega at Project Gutenberg
• Audiobooks. Read, listen along and download Lope de Vega's poetry in Spanish. Free at AlbaLearning

Sir Paul McCartney MBE, Hon RAM, FRCM
McCartney performing in England, 2010
Background information
Birth name	James Paul McCartney
Born	(1942-06-18) 18 June 1942 (age 70) Liverpool, England, UK
Genres	Rock, pop, classical, electronica
Occupations	Musician, composer, music producer, film producer, businessman
Instruments	Vocals, bass guitar, guitar, keyboards, drums, ukulele, mandolin, recorder
Years active	1957–present
Labels	Hear, Apple, Parlophone, Capitol, Columbia, Concord, EMI, One Little Indian, Vee-Jay
Associated acts	The Quarrymen, The Beatles, Wings, The Fireman, Linda McCartney, Denny Laine
Website	www.paulmccartney.com
Notable instruments
Höfner 500/1 Rickenbacker 4001S Epiphone Texan Gibson Les Paul Epiphone Casino Martin D-28

Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE, Hon RAM, FRCM (born 18 June 1942) is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. Formerly of the Beatles (1960–1970) and Wings (1971–1981), he has been described by Guinness World Records as "The Most Successful Composer and Recording Artist of All Time", with 60 gold discs and sales of over 100 million albums and 100 million singles.^[1] With John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, he gained worldwide fame as a member of the Beatles, and with Lennon formed one of the most celebrated songwriting partnerships of the 20th century. After leaving the Beatles, he began a solo career and later formed the band Wings with his first wife, Linda Eastman, and singer-songwriter Denny Laine.

According to the BBC, his Beatles song "Yesterday" has been covered by over 2,200 artists—more than any other song. Wings' 1977 release, "Mull of Kintyre", became one of the best-selling singles ever in the UK, and he is "the most successful songwriter" in UK chart history, according to Guinness.^[2] As a songwriter or co-writer, he is included on thirty-one number one titles on the Billboard Hot 100, and as of 2012 he has sold over 15.5 million RIAA certified units in the United States.

He has composed film scores, classical and electronic music, and released a large catalogue of songs as a solo artist. He has taken part in projects to help international charities, and has been an advocate for animal rights, vegetarianism, and music education; he has been active in campaigns against landmines and seal hunting, and supported efforts such as Make Poverty History. His company MPL Communications owns the copyrights to more than 25,000 songs, including those written by Buddy Holly, as well as the publishing rights to the musicals Guys and Dolls, A Chorus Line, and Grease. He is one of the UK's wealthiest people, with an estimated fortune of £475 million in 2010. He has been married three times and is the father of five children.

Childhood[link]

McCartney was born in Walton Hospital in Liverpool England, where his mother, Mary (née Mohin), had twelve years earlier, "satisfied her state registry requirements" for nursing, writes Beatles biographer Bob Spitz.^[3] His father James, or "Jim" McCartney, was absent at his son's birth due to his work as a volunteer fire fighter during World War II.^[3] McCartney has one brother, Michael, born 7 January 1944, and though they were baptised in their mother's Roman Catholic faith, "religion did not play a part in their upbringing" according to biographer Barry Miles, as McCartney's father was a Protestant turned agnostic.^[4]

In 1947 he began attending Stockton Wood Road Primary School, by 1952 Joseph Williams Junior School,^[5] where he passed the 11-plus exam in 1953 with three others out of ninety examinees, thus gaining admission to the Liverpool Institute.^[6] However, when he took his A-level exams at age nineteen, he passed only one subject – Art.^[7] In 1954, while taking the bus from his home in the suburb of Speke to the Institute, he met George Harrison,^[8] who had also passed the exam, meaning they could both go to a grammar school rather than a secondary modern school, which the majority of pupils attended until they were eligible to work.^[9]

20 Forthlin Road now attracts large numbers of tourists.

In 1955 the McCartneys moved to 20 Forthlin Road in Allerton, where they lived through 1964.^[10] Paul was the first member of his family to own a car and his mother rode a bicycle to houses where she worked as a midwife; he describes an early memory of her leaving at "about three in the morning" the "streets ... thick with snow".^[11] On 31 October 1956, when he was fourteen, his mother died of an embolism after a mastectomy operation to stop the spread of her breast cancer.^[12] The loss of his mother at fourteen was later a point of relation with John Lennon, whose mother Julia also died when he was young, after being struck by a car when he was seventeen.^[13]

McCartney's father was a trumpet player and pianist who had led Jim Mac's Jazz Band in the 1920s and encouraged his son to be musical. He kept an upright piano in the front room that he purchased from Epstein's North End Music Stores.^[14] His father, Joe McCartney, played an E-flat tuba.^[15] Jim McCartney used to point out the bass parts in songs on the radio, and often took his son to local brass band concerts.^[16] Jim gave his son a nickel-plated trumpet for his fourteenth birthday,^[17] but when rock and roll became popular on Radio Luxembourg,^[18] Paul traded it for a £15 Framus Zenith (model 17) acoustic guitar, realising it would be too difficult to sing, "with a trumpet stuck in your mouth."^[17] Being left-handed, he found right-handed guitars difficult to play, but when he saw a poster advertising a Slim Whitman concert, he realised that Whitman played left-handed with his right-handed guitar strung the opposite way. He then restrung his guitar and after some adjustments, found it easier to play.^[17] McCartney wrote his first song ("I Lost My Little Girl") on the Zenith, and an early tune which became, "When I'm Sixty-Four", on the piano, for which, despite his father's advice, he took only a couple of lessons for, preferring instead he says, to learn "by ear."^[14] He was heavily influenced by American rhythm and blues music, and has stated that Little Richard was his idol when he was in school. The first song he ever sang on a stage in public was "Long Tall Sally", at a Butlins holiday camp talent competition.^[19]

Musical career[link]

1957–1960: The Quarrymen[link]

McCartney met Lennon and the Quarrymen at the St. Peter's Church Hall fête in Woolton on 6 July 1957, when he was fifteen years old.^[20] He joined the group soon after, and formed a close working relationship with Lennon. Harrison joined in 1958 as lead guitarist, followed in 1960 by Lennon's art school friend, Stuart Sutcliffe on bass.^[21] By May 1960, they had tried several new names, including "Johnny and the Moondogs" and "the Silver Beetles", playing a tour of Scotland under that name with Johnny Gentle. They changed the name of the group to "the Beatles" in mid-August 1960 and recruited Pete Best on drums prior to the first of what would be five engagements in Hamburg, Germany.^[22]

1960–1970: The Beatles[link]

McCartney (left) in 1964 with Beatles bandmates Harrison and Lennon

From August 1960 the Beatles were booked by Allan Williams to perform in Hamburg, and during their extended stays there over the next two years, they performed as the resident group at two of Bruno Koschmider's clubs, the Indra, then the Kaiserkeller, and upon returns to Liverpool, at the Cavern Club.^[23] In 1961 Sutcliffe left the band, and McCartney reluctantly became their bass player.^[24] The Beatles recorded their first published music in Hamburg, performing as the backing band for Tony Sheridan on the single "My Bonnie".^[25] The recording would later bring them to the attention of a key figure in their subsequent development and commercial success, Brian Epstein, who became their manager in January 1962.^[26] Epstein eventually negotiated a record contract for the group with Parlophone in May of that year.^[27] After replacing Best with Ringo Starr in August, they became increasingly popular in the UK during 1963 and in the US in 1964, in a frenzied adolation that became known as "Beatlemania",^[28] during which McCartney was dubbed, "the cute Beatle", according to Miles.^[29] In 1965 they were each appointed as a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE).^[30]

After the recording of the Beatles hit "Yesterday" (1965), McCartney contacted the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in Maida Vale London, to ask if they would record an electronic version of the song, but he never followed up.^[31] When visiting artist John Dunbar's flat in London, he would bring along tapes he had compiled at then girlfriend Jane Asher's home,^[32] mixes of various songs, musical pieces and comments made by McCartney that Dick James made into a demo for him.^[33] Heavily influenced by American avant-garde musician John Cage, he made tape loops by recording voices, guitars, and bongos 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" (1966). He referred to the tapes as "electronic symphonies".^[34] In 1966 he rented a ground floor and basement flat from Starr at 34 Montagu Square, to be used as a small studio for spoken-word recordings by poets, writers (including William S. Burroughs) and avant-garde musicians.^[35] 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 come of the endeavour as Apple and the Beatles slid into business and personal difficulties.^[35] After touring almost non-stop for a period of nearly four years, and giving more than 1,400 live performances internationally,^[36] the group gave their final commercial concert at the end of their 1966 US tour.^[37]

They continued to work in the recording studio and before their break-up in 1970 produced what some critics consider to be their finest material, including the innovative and widely influential albums Revolver (1966), Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), The Beatles (1968) and Abbey Road (1969).^[38] Between 1963 and 1970 the group released twenty-two UK singles and twelve LPs, of which seventeen of the singles and eleven of the LPs became number ones.^[39] The band topped the US Billboard Hot 100 twenty times, and recorded fourteen number one albums.^[40] Lennon and McCartney became one of the most celebrated songwriting partnerships of the 20th century.^[41] McCartney's contributions to the band's hit song's include: "Can't Buy Me Love" (1964), "Yesterday" (1965), Paperback Writer" and "Eleanor Rigby" (1966), "Hello, Goodbye" (1967), "Hey Jude" (1968), "Get Back (1969)", "Let It Be" and "The Long and Winding Road" (1970).^[42]

In March 1969 he married Linda Eastman, whom he first met in May 1967. The couple had their first child together, Mary, named after Paul's late mother, in August 1969.^[43] In October 1969 a rumour surfaced that McCartney had died in a car crash, but it was quickly proven false when a November Life magazine cover featured him and his family with the caption, "Paul is Still With Us."^[44]

1970–1981: Wings[link]

McCartney during a Wings concert, 1976

After the Beatles break-up in 1970 McCartney continued his musical career, releasing his first solo album, McCartney, in 1970, which contained the stand-out track "Maybe I'm Amazed", written for Linda.^[45] With the exception of some vocal contributions from her, it is a "one-man album with Paul playing all the instruments" himself, writes Beatles biographer Bill Harry.^[46] In 1971 Paul collaborated with Linda on a second album, Ram, a UK number one which included the co-written US number one hit song, "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey".^[47] Later that year, the pair were joined by ex-Moody Blues guitarist Denny Laine and drummer Denny Seiwell to form the group Wings, and release their first album together, Wild Life. In September 1971 the McCartney family added a second child, Stella, named in honour of Linda's grandmothers.^[48]

In 1973 McCartney wrote Wings' first US number one, "My Love", included on their second LP, Red Rose Speedway, and his collaboration with Linda and former Beatles' producer George Martin resulted in the James Bond theme song and Wings hit, "Live and Let Die", which was nominated for an Oscar, and earned Martin a Grammy for his orchestral arrangement.^[49] In 1974 Paul wrote a second US number one for Wings, "Band on the Run"; the acclaimed album of the same name, Wings' third, was a massive success that became their first platinum LP.^[50] They followed with the chart topping LPs, Venus and Mars (1975) and Wings at the Speed of Sound (1976).^[51] In September 1977 a third child was born to the McCartneys, a son they named James,^[52] and in November, the Wings song "Mull of Kintyre" was fast becoming "the best-selling single in UK history", writes Beatles biographer Peter Doggett.^[53] Achieving double the sales of the previous record holder, "She Loves You", the track would go on to sell 2.5 million copies, and hold the UK sales record until the 1984 charity single, "Do They Know It's Christmas?".^[54] In 1977 he released Thrillington, an orchestral arrangement of Ram, under the pseudonym Percy "Thrills" Thrillington^[55], with a cover designed by Hipgnosis.^[56]

While London Town (1978) and Back to the Egg (1979) passed with little critical or commercial notice,^[57] the latter involved McCartney's collaboration with a rock supergroup dubbed, "the Rockestra", though credited to Wings, that included Pete Townshend, David Gilmour, Gary Brooker, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham.^[58] Active through 1981, Wings produced seven studio albums, five of which topped the US charts,^[59] as well as their live triple LP, Wings over America,^[60] one of few live albums ever to achieve the top spot in America.^[61] They also recorded six US number one singles including, "Listen to What the Man Said", "Silly Love Songs, "With a Little Luck", and "Coming Up".^[62]

1982–1989[link]

In 1980 he released his second solo LP, the self-produced McCartney II, and as with his first, he composed all the music and performed the instrumentation himself. The album contained the hit songs "Coming Up", "Waterfalls", and "Temporary Secretary".^[63] In 1982 he collaborated with Stevie Wonder on the Martin produced number one hit, "Ebony and Ivory", included on McCartney's Tug of War LP, and with Michael Jackson on "The Girl Is Mine" from Thriller.^[64] The following year he worked with Jackson on the US number one, "Say Say Say", and he earned a UK number one with the title track of his LP release that year, "Pipes of Peace".^[65]

In 1984 he wrote, produced, and starred in the feature film Give My Regards to Broad Street, a musical which "was savagely panned by the critics" according to Harry; and described by Variety as: "Characterless, bloodless, and pointless."^[66] Roger Ebert awarded the film a single star and wrote, "you can safely skip the movie and proceed directly to the sound track",^[67] which fared much better, reaching number one in the UK, and producing the hit single, "No More Lonely Nights", featuring Gilmour on lead guitar.^[68]

He collaborated with Eric Stewart on Press to Play (1986), who co-wrote more than half the songs on the LP, and in 1988, McCartney released Снова в СССР, a Russia-only title that contained eighteen covers which he recorded over the course of two days.^[69] In 1989 he joined forces with fellow Merseysiders including Gerry Marsden of Gerry and the Pacemakers and Holly Johnson of Frankie Goes to Hollywood to record a new version of "Ferry Cross the Mersey", originally recorded twenty-five years earlier by Gerry and the Pacemakers, to generate money for the appeal fund of the Hillsborough disaster, which occurred in April that year when ninety-five Liverpool F.C. fans died as a result of their injuries. The recording was a number one hit in the UK.^[70] In 1989 he released Flowers in the Dirt, a collaborative effort with Elvis Costello which included musical contributions from Gilmour and Nicky Hopkins.^[71]

1990–2000[link]

In 1990 he released the triple LP, Tripping the Live Fantastic, which contained select performances from The Paul McCartney World Tour, his first in over a decade.^[72] The following year he ventured into orchestral music, when the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society commissioned a musical piece by him to celebrate its sesquicentennial. He collaborated with Carl Davis to release Liverpool Oratorio; involving opera singers Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Sally Burgess, Jerry Hadley and Willard White, with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and the choir of Liverpool Cathedral.^[73] The Guardian was critical of the work stating that the music is, "afraid of anything approaching a fast tempo", and the piece has "little awareness of the need for recurrent ideas that will bind the work into a whole".^[74] In response, McCartney wrote a defensive letter to the paper, which they published, where he states: "Happily, history shows that many good pieces of music were not liked by the critics of the time so I am content to ... let people judge for themselves the merits of the work."^[74]

During the 1990s he twice collaborated with Youth of Killing Joke under the alias the Fireman, and released the electronica albums: Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest (1993) and Rushes (1998).^[75] Released in 1993, the rock album Off the Ground was supported by "The New World Tour", which produced the album, Paul Is Live later that year.^[76] Starting in 1994 he took a four-year hiatus from his solo career to work on Apple's the Beatles Anthology project with Harrison, Starr and Martin. He recorded a radio series called "Oobu Joobu" in 1995, for the American network Westwood One, which he described as being "wide-screen radio".^[77] Also in 1995 Prince Charles presented him with an Honorary Fellowship of The Royal College of Music, "kind of amazing for somebody who doesn't read a note of music", commented McCartney,^[78] and in December 1996 he was informed that he was to be named in the 1997 New Year Honours and knighted for services to music; his ceremony took place in March 1997.^[79]

In 1997 he released the rock album Flaming Pie, and the classical work Standing Stone; in 1998 Rushes, his second electronica album as the Fireman.^[80] Run Devil Run (1999), featuring Ian Paice and Gilmour, was primarily an album of covers with three McCartney originals, something he said he had "wanted to do for years", having been previously encouraged to do so by Linda, who had died in April 1998 after losing a seventeen-month battle with cancer.^[81] He contributed a song, "Nova", to a tribute album of choral music dedicated to her called, A Garland for Linda (2000).^[82] He continued his experimentation with orchestral music on Working Classical (1999), and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist in March of the same year.^[83] In May 2000 he was awarded a Fellowship by the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors, and in August he released the electronica album, Liverpool Sound Collage with Super Furry Animals and Youth, utilising the sound collage and musique concrète techniques that fascinated him in the mid-1960s.^[84]

2001–present[link]

In 2001 McCartney released a live album of acoustic-only performances called, Unplugged (The Official Bootleg).^[85] Having witnessed the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks from the JFK airport tarmac, he was inspired to take a lead role in organising The Concert for New York City, and his studio album release that year Driving Rain included the song "Freedom", written for the event as a response to the tragedy.^[86] He toured in support of Driving Rain and in 2002 released the double live album Back in the U.S. (released internationally in 2003 as Back in the World.^[87] In November 2002, on the first anniversary of Harrison's death, McCartney performed at the Concert for George.^[88] He has also participated in the National Football League's Super Bowl, performing "Freedom" in the pre-game show for Super Bowl XXXVI^[89] and headlining the halftime show at Super Bowl XXXIX.^[90]

McCartney and Ringo Starr promoting The Beatles: Rock Band in 2009.

In 2005 he released the rock album Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, and the electronica offering, Twin Freaks; a collaborative project with bootleg producer and remixer Freelance Hellraiser, consisting of remixed versions of songs from throughout his solo career.^[91] In 2006 he released the classical work Ecce Cor Meum; the rock album Memory Almost Full followed in 2007, and in 2008, his third Fireman release, Electric Arguments. In 2008 he performed at a concert in Liverpool to celebrate the city's year as European Capital of Culture.^[92] In 2009, more than forty-five years after the Beatles first appeared on American television during The Ed Sullivan Show, he returned to the same New York theatre to perform on Late Show with David Letterman.^[93] In 2010 he was honoured by Barack Obama with the Gershwin Prize for his contributions to popular music in a live show for the White House with performances by Stevie Wonder, Lang Lang and others.^[94] He returned to the White House later that year as a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors.

McCartney's enduring fame has made him a popular choice to open new venues. In 2009 he played three sold out concerts at the newly built Citi Field in Queens, New York, constructed to replace Shea Stadium, and he released a double live album culled from those performances called, Good Evening New York City later that year.^[95] In 2010 he opened the Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,^[96] and in 2011 he performed the first concerts at the new Yankee Stadium, and released the classical work, "Ocean's Kingdom". He has been touring since 2001 with guitarists Rusty Anderson and Brian Ray, Paul "Wix" Wickens on keyboards and drummer Abe Laboriel, Jr. An upcoming tribute album is expected in June 2012, to coincide with his 70th birthday, featuring recordings of his songs by Kiss, Garth Brooks, Billy Joel, Brian Wilson, Willie Nelson, Steve Miller, B.B. King and others.^[97] Kisses on the Bottom, a collection of standards, was released in February 2012,^[98] that same month he was honoured as MusiCares Person of the Year, two days prior to his performance at the 54th Grammy Awards.^[99]

Musicianship[link]

As a musician, McCartney was largely self-taught, musicologist Ian MacDonald describes his approach as, "by nature drawn to music's formal aspects yet wholly untutoured ... [He] produced technically 'finished' work almost entirely by instinct, his harmonic judgement based mainly on perfect pitch and an acute pair of ears."^[100]

Bass guitar

He has been acknowledged by a diverse group of bass players including, Sting, long-time Dr. Dre bassist Mike Elizondo, and Colin Moulding of XTC.^[101] McCartney is known to play using a plectrum, or pick almost exclusively, but he occasionally plays fingerstyle as well.^[102] During his early years with the Beatles he primarily used a Höfner 500/1 bass live and when recording, though in 1965 he began using a Rickenbacker 4001s for recording, while consistently using Vox amplifiers.^[103] In recent years he has used Mesa Boogie bass amplifiers live and while recording. McCartney confirms the influence of Motown on his playing, in particular that of James Jamerson, whom he described as a "hero", and included with Brian Wilson as his "two biggest influences".^[104]

Whereas MacDonald identifies "She's a Woman" as the point in time which McCartney's bass playing began to evolve dramatically,^[106] Beatles biographer Chris Ingham singles out Rubber Soul as the time when his bass playing, "began to come into its own", particularly on "The Word".^[105] Authors Tony Bacon and Gareth Morgan agree, calling his "groove" on the track, "a high point in pop bass playing" and "the first proof on a recording of his serious technical ability on the instrument."^[107] MacDonald infers the influence of James Brown's "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag", and Pickett's "In the Midnight Hour", American soul tracks from which McCartney absorbed elements and drew inspiration as he "delivers his most spontaneous bass-part to date". He also played piano on the recording.^[108]

Bacon and Morgan describe his bassline for the Beatles' song "Rain" as "an astonishing piece of playing ... [McCartney] thinking in terms of both rhythm and 'lead bass' ... [choosing] the area of the neck ... he correctly perceives will give him clarity for melody without rendering his sound too thin for groove."^[109] MacDonald calls it the Beatles "finest B-side", its "clangorously saturated texture resona[ting] around McCartney's bass".^[110] He describes the bassline as "so inventive that it threatens to overwhelm the track", and he draws attention to the influence of Indian classical music in "exotic melismas in the bass part".^[110]

Acoustic guitar

Examples of his acoustic guitar playing on Beatles tracks include: "Yesterday", "I'm Looking Through You", "Michelle", "Blackbird", "I Will", "Mother Nature's Son" and "Rocky Raccoon".^[111] He played an Epiphone Texan on many, if not most of his acoustic recordings, but he has also used a Martin D-28.^[112]

Electric guitar

He played lead electric guitar on several Beatles' recordings, including what MacDonald describes as a "fiercely angular slide guitar solo" on "Drive My Car",^[113] which he played on an Epiphone Casino, about which McCartney said: "If I had to pick one electric guitar it would be this."^[114] He also contributed what MacDonald calls "a startling guitar solo" on the Harrison composition, "Taxman", and the "shrieking" guitar on "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and "Helter Skelter", as well as "a coruscating pseudo-Indian" solo on "Good Morning Good Morning".^[115] In recent years he has primarily used a Gibson Les Paul for electric work, particularly while performing live.

Piano

He played a piano on many Beatles' songs including, "Every Little Thing", "For No One", "A Day in the Life", "Hello, Goodbye", "Hey Jude", "Lady Madonna", "Let It Be" and "The Long and Winding Road".^[116]

Creative outlets[link]

During the 1960s, McCartney delved into the visual arts, becoming a close friend of leading art dealers and gallery owners, explored experimental film, and regularly attended movie, theatrical and classical music performances. His first contact with the London avant-garde scene was through artist John Dunbar, who introduced him to the art dealer Robert Fraser, who in turn introduced McCartney to an array of writers and artists.^[117] He later became involved in the renovation and publicising of the Indica Gallery in Mason's Yard, London — where Lennon first met Yoko Ono.^[118] The Indica Gallery brought McCartney into contact with Miles, whose underground newspaper, the International Times, McCartney helped to start.^[119] Miles would become de facto manager of Apple's short-lived Zapple Records label,^[120] and he wrote McCartney's official biography, Many Years From Now (1997).^[121]

While living at then girlfriend Jane Asher's parent's house, he took piano lessons arranged by Jane's mother, provided by a teacher from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, a school Beatles' producer Martin had previously attended.^[122] McCartney studied composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Luciano Berio.^[123] He later wrote and released several pieces of modern classical music and ambient electronica, as well as writing poetry and painting. He is lead patron of the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, an arts school in the building formerly occupied by the Liverpool Institute for Boys. The 1837 building, which he attended during his schooldays, had become derelict by the mid-1980s, however, on 7 June 1996, Queen Elizabeth II officially opened the redeveloped building.^[124]

Painting

In 1966 he met art gallery-owner Robert Fraser, whose flat was visited by many well-known artists, some of which McCartney met, including; Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, Peter Blake, and Richard Hamilton, and it was at Fraser's flat where McCartney first learned about art appreciation.^[125] He later started buying paintings by Magritte, using his painting of an apple for the Apple Records logo, and McCartney now owns one of Magritte's easels and a pair of his spectacles.^[126]

McCartney's love of painting surfaced after watching artist Willem de Kooning paint, in Kooning's Long Island studio.^[127] He took up painting in 1983,^[128] and in 1999, he exhibited his paintings (featuring McCartney's portraits of John Lennon, Andy Warhol, and David Bowie) for the first time in Siegen, Germany, and included photographs by Linda. He chose the gallery because Wolfgang Suttner (local events organiser) was genuinely interested in his art, and the positive reaction led to McCartney showing his work in UK galleries.^[129] The first UK exhibition of his work was opened in Bristol, England with more than 50 paintings on display. McCartney had previously believed that "only people that had been to art school were allowed to paint" – as Lennon had.^[129]

In October 2000, 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."^[130] McCartney designed a series of six postage stamps issued by the Isle of Man Post in 2002, and according to BBC News, he is the first major rock star in the world to do so.^[131]

Writing and poetry

When he was young, his mother read him poems and encouraged him to read books, and his father was interested in crosswords and invited he and his brother Michael to solve them with him, so as to increase their "word power", says McCartney.^[132] He was later inspired – in his school years – by Alan Durband, an English literature teacher at the Liverpool Institute.^[133] Durband was a co-founder and fund-raiser at the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool, where Willy Russell also worked, and introduced McCartney to Geoffrey Chaucer's works.^[134]

In 2001 he published 'Blackbird Singing', a volume of poems and lyrics to his songs for which he gave readings in Liverpool and New York City.^[135] In the foreword of the book, he explains: "When I was a teenager ... I had an overwhelming desire to have a poem published in the school magazine. I wrote something deep and meaningful——which was promptly rejected——and I suppose I have been trying to get my own back ever since."^[136] Years later, he wrote a poem about the death of his childhood friend, Ivan Vaughan.^[136] In 2005 he collaborated with author Philip Ardagh and animator Geoff Dunbar to write, High in the Clouds: An Urban Furry Tail, which The Guardian labelled an "anti-capitalist children's book".^[137]

Film

He was interested in animated films as a child, and in 1981 he asked Geoff Dunbar to direct a short animated film called Rupert and the Frog Song. McCartney was the writer and producer and he also added some of the character voices.^[138] In 1992 he worked with Dunbar on an animated film about the work of French artist Honoré Daumier, which won both of them a BAFTA award.^[139] In 2004 they worked together on the animated short film, Tropic Island Hum. In 1995 he made a guest appearance in the "Lisa the Vegetarian" episode of The Simpsons, and directed a short documentary about the Grateful Dead.^[140]

In May 2000 he released Wingspan: An Intimate Portrait, a retrospective documentary that features behind-the-scenes film and photographs that he and Linda took of their family and bands.^[141] Interspersed throughout the eighty-eight minute film is an interview by Mary McCartney with her father. Mary was the baby photographed inside McCartney's jacket on the back cover of his first solo album, McCartney, and was one of the producers of the documentary.^[142]

Lifestyle[link]

Drugs

McCartney live in Dublin, Ireland, 2010

McCartney's introduction to drugs started in Hamburg, Germany, when the Beatles would play for long hours and were often using Preludin to maintain energy, sometimes supplied by friend Astrid Kirchherr. According to McCartney, he would usually take only one, but Lennon would often take four or five by the end of a night.^[143] He recalls getting "very high" and "giggling uncontrollably" when the Beatles were introduced to marijuana by Bob Dylan in a New York hotel room in 1964.^[144] His use of which soon after became habitual,^[145] and according to Miles, any future Beatles' lyrics containing the words "high", or "grass" were written specifically as a reference to cannabis, as was the phrase "another kind of mind" in "Got to Get You into My Life".^[146] During the filming of Help!, he claims he occasionally smoked a joint in the car on the way to the studio during filming, which often made him forget his lines.^[147] Director Dick Lester says that he overheard "two beautiful women" trying to cajole McCartney into using heroin, but he refused.^[147] He was introduced to cocaine by art dealer Robert Fraser, and it was readily available during the recording of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.^[148] McCartney admits that he used the drug for about a year but stopped because of his dislike of the unpleasant melancholy he felt after the drug wore off.^[149]

While initially reluctant to try LSD, he eventually did so in the fall of 1966 with friend Tara Browne.^[150] He took his second "acid trip" with Lennon on 21 March 1967 after a Sgt. Pepper studio session.^[151] He later became the first Beatle to discuss the drug publicly, declaring in a magazine interview that "it opened my eyes" and "made me a better, more honest, more tolerant member of society."^[152] His attitude about cannabis was made public in 1967, when he added his name to a 24 July advertisement in The Times which called for its legalisation, the release of all prisoners imprisoned because of possession, and research into marijuana's medical uses. The advertisement was produced by a group called Soma and was signed by sixty-five people, including Members of Parliament, the Beatles, Epstein, RD Laing, Francis Crick, and Graham Greene.^[153]

Though never arrested by Norman Pilcher's Drug Squad, as Lennon, Harrison, and Mick Jagger had been,^[154] in 1972 Swedish police fined him for cannabis possession, and soon after Scottish police found plants growing on his farm.^[155] He was again arrested for marijuana possession in 1975, and in January 1980, when Wings flew to Tokyo for an eleven concert tour of Japan, as McCartney was going through customs, officials found approximately 8 ounces (218.3 g) of cannabis in his luggage, and he was arrested and taken to a local jail while the Japanese government decided what to do. After ten days, he was released without charge and deported.^[156] He was again arrested for possession of marijuana in 1984 and in 1997, he spoke out in support of decriminalisation, stating "People are smoking pot anyway and to make them criminals is wrong."^[157]

Activism

Paul and Linda became outspoken animal rights activists after their vegetarianism was realised when Paul happened to notice through a window, lambs in a field, as they ate a meal of lamb.^[158] He has also credited the 1942 Disney film Bambi, in which the young deer's mother is shot by a hunter, as the original inspiration for him to take an interest in animal rights.^[159] In his first interview after Linda's death, he promised to continue working for animal rights.^[160] In 1999 he spent £3,000,000 to ensure Linda McCartney Foods remained free of genetically engineered ingredients.^[161]

McCartney wearing a shirt that reads "no more land mines"

Following his marriage to Mills, he joined her in a campaign against landmines, becoming patrons of Adopt-A-Minefield.^[162] In 2003 he played a personal concert for the wife of a wealthy banker and donated his one million dollar fee to the charity.^[163] He also wore an anti-landmines t-shirt during the Back in the World tour.^[164] In 2006 the McCartneys travelled to Prince Edward Island to bring international attention to the seal hunt, this would be their final public appearance together. Their arrival sparked attention in Newfoundland and Labrador where the hunt is of economic significance.^[165] The couple also debated with Newfoundland's Premier Danny Williams on the CNN show Larry King Live. They further stated that the fishermen should quit hunting seals and begin a seal watching business.^[166] McCartney has also criticised China's fur trade^[167] and supports the Make Poverty History campaign.^[168]

He has been involved with several charity recordings and performances, such as the Concerts for the People of Kampuchea, Ferry Aid, Band Aid, Live Aid, and the recording of "Ferry Cross the Mersey" (1989) following the Hillsborough disaster.^[169] In 2004 he donated a song to an album to aid the "US Campaign for Burma", in support of Burmese Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi,^[170] and in 2008 he donated a song to Aid Still Required's CD to assist with the restoration of the devastation done to Southeast Asia from the 2004 Tsunami.^[171]

In 2009, he wrote to the 14th Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso, and asked him why he wasn't a vegetarian, McCartney explains: "He wrote back very kindly, saying, my doctors tell me that I must eat meat. And I wrote back again, saying, you know, I don't think that's right. So we had a little correspondence [and] I think now he's vegetarian most of the time. I think he's now being told ... that he can get his protein somewhere else. It's a little old-fashioned to think that he can only get it from meat [and] It just doesn't seem right – the Dalai Lama, on the one hand, saying, 'Hey guys, don't harm sentient beings ... Oh, and by the way, I'm having a steak.'"^[172]

Football

He attended the 1968 FA Cup Final played by West Bromwich Albion against the Everton Football Club, and after the match, shared cigarettes and whisky with other fans.^[173] Though he has publicly professed support for Everton,^[174] he has also shown support for Liverpool F.C., as in 1968 when he was photographed wearing their rosette.^[175] The ex-Liverpool footballer, Albert Stubbins, was shown on the Sgt. Pepper cover,^[176] and the video for his song "Pipes of Peace" (1983) recreated the 1915 Christmas football game played between German and British troops during World War I.^[177] At the end of "Coming Up (Live at Glasgow)" the crowd chants "Paul McCartney!" until McCartney takes over and changes it to "Kenny Dalglish!", referring to then Liverpool and Scotland striker. At the same concert, Gordon Smith, former football player for the Rangers and Brighton & Hove Albion, met the McCartneys, and later accepted an invitation to visit their home in East Sussex in 1980. Smith later said that McCartney was "thrilled I knew Kenny Dalglish"^[178]

He attended the 1986 FA Cup Final between Liverpool and Everton,^[173] and performed at the Liverpool F.C. Anfield stadium in 2008, as a part of Liverpool's European Capital of Culture year. Dave Grohl from the Foo Fighters sang with McCartney on "Band on the Run", and played drums on "Back in the U.S.S.R.".^[179] Ono and Olivia Harrison attended the concert, along with Ken Dodd, and the former Liverpool F.C. football manager Rafael Benítez.^[180] In 2008 he ended speculation about his allegiance when he said: "Here's the deal: my father was born in Everton, my family are officially Evertonians, so if it comes down to a derby match or an FA Cup final between the two, I would have to support Everton. But after a concert at Wembley Arena I got a bit of a friendship with Kenny Dalglish, who had been to the gig and I thought 'You know what? I am just going to support them both because it's all Liverpool."^[181]

Meditation

On 24 August 1967, McCartney met the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at the London Hilton, and later went to Bangor, in North Wales, to attend a weekend 'initiation' conference, at which time he and the other Beatles learned Transcendental Meditation (TM).^[182] "The whole meditation experience was very good and I still use the mantra ... I find it soothing and I can imagine that the more you were to get into it, the more interesting it would get."^[183] The time McCartney later spent in India at the Maharishi's ashram was highly productive, as nearly all of the songs that would later be recorded for The White Album and Abbey Road were composed there.^[184] Although he was told never to repeat the mantra to anyone else, he admitted he told Linda, and said he meditated a lot while he was in jail in Japan.^[185] In 2009 McCartney and Starr headlined a benefit concert at Radio City Music Hall, raising three million dollars for the David Lynch Foundation to fund instruction in Transcendental Meditation for at-risk youth.^[186]

Personal relationships[link]

Girlfriends[link]

Dot Rhone

McCartney's first serious girlfriend in Liverpool was Dot Rhone, whom he met at the Casbah club in 1959.^[187] According to Spitz, Rhone feels McCartney had a compulsion to control situations, chosing clothes and make-up for Rhone, encouraging her to grow her hair out like Brigitte Bardot's,^[188] and at least once insisting she have it re-styled, to disappointing effect.^[189] When he first went to Hamburg with the Beatles, he wrote to Rhone regularly, and she accompanied Cynthia Lennon to Hamburg when they played there again in 1962.^[190] The couple had a two-and-a-half-year relationship, and were due to marry until Rhone's miscarriage, when according to Spitz, McCartney now "free of obligation", ended the engagement.^[191]

Jane Asher

He 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.^[192] The two began a relationship and he 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.^[193] He 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".^[194] They had a five-year relationship, and planned to marry, but Asher broke off the engagement after she discovered he had become involved with another woman, Francie Schwartz.^[195]

Wives[link]

Linda Eastman

McCartney performing with wife Linda in 1976.

Linda Eastman was a music fan who once commented: "All my teen years were spent with an ear to the radio", and who would at times be truant from school to instead see artists such as: Fabian, Bobby Darin, and Chuck Berry.^[196] She was a popular photographer with groups such as: the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Grateful Dead, the Doors, and the Beatles, whom she first met at Shea Stadium in 1966, about which she commented: "It was John who interested me at the start. He was my Beatle hero. But when I met him the facination faded fast and I found it was Paul I liked."^[197] The pair first properly met in 1967 at a Georgie Fame concert at The Bag O'Nails club,^[198] during her UK assignment to take photographs of rock musicians in London,^[199] Paul remembers: "The night Linda and I met, I spotted her across a crowded club, and although I would normally have been nervous chatting her up, I realised I had to ... Pushiness worked for me that night!"^[197] Linda said this about their meeting: "I was quite shameless really. I was with somebody else [that night] ... and I saw Paul at the other side of the room. He looked so beautiful that I made up my mind I would have to pick him up."^[197] The pair were married in 1969; he describes their relationship: "We had a lot of fun together ... just the nature of how we are, our favourite thing really is to just hang, to have fun. And Linda's very big on just following the moment."^[200] He also added, "We were crazy. We had a big argument the night before we got married and it was nearly called off ... [its] miraculous that we made it. But we did."^[201]

They collaborated musically after the break-up of the Beatles, and later formed Wings together in 1971, a commercially successful band that was active through 1981.^[202] They were both vegetarian and supported the animal rights organisation PETA.^[203] They 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 in 1998.^[204] After her death, Paul stated in The Daily Mail: "I got a counsellor because I knew that I would need some help. He was great, particularly in helping me get rid of my guilt [about wishing I'd been] perfect all the time ... a real bugger. But then I thought, hang on a minute. We're just human. That was the beautiful thing about our marriage. We were just a boyfriend and girlfriend having babies."^[205]

Heather Mills

In 2002 he married Heather Mills, a former model and anti-landmines campaigner.^[206] In 2003, the couple had a child, Beatrice Milly, the first name in honour of Heather's late mother, the second for one of Paul's aunts.^[207] They separated in April 2006 and were divorced in March 2008.^[208] In 2004 he commented on media animosity toward his partners, "They [the British public] didn't like me giving up on Jane Asher", "I married a New York divorcee with a child, and at the time they didn't like that."^[209]

Nancy Shevell

He married New Yorker Nancy Shevell in a civil ceremony at Old Marylebone Town Hall, London on 9 October 2011. The wedding was a "low-key affair" attended by a group of around 30 family and friends.^[210] The couple had been dating since November 2007.^[211] A breast cancer survivor,^[212] she is a member of the board of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority as well as vice president of a family-owned transportation conglomerate which owns New England Motor Freight.^[213]

Beatles[link]

John Lennon

Despite a strained relationship with Lennon, they briefly became close again in 1974, and played music together on two occasions, the only times since the Beatles break-up in 1970.^[214] In later years however, the two grew apart.^[215] While McCartney would often phone, he was apprehensive about the reception he would receive, as during one call when he was told, "You're all pizza and fairytales!"^[216] In McCartney's effort to avoid talking with him only about business, they often spoke of cats, baking bread, or babies.^[217]

On 24 April 1976,^[218] the two were watching an episode of Saturday Night Live together at Lennon's home in New York City, during which Lorne Michaels made a $3,000 cash offer for the Beatles to reunite, and while they seriously considered going to the SNL studio just a few blocks away, they decided it was "too late" and according to Lennon, this was the last time he and McCartney ever spent time together.^[219] This event was fictionalised in the 2000 television film Two of Us.^[220] His last telephone call to Lennon, just days before Lennon and Ono released Double Fantasy, was friendly, he said this about the phone call: "[It is] a consoling factor for me, because I do feel it was sad that we never actually sat down and straightened our differences out. But fortunately for me, the last phone conversation I ever had with him was really great, and we didn't have any kind of blow-up."^[221]

Reaction to Lennon's murder

On the morning of 9 December 1980, he awoke to the news that Lennon had been murdered the previous night, his death creating a media frenzy around the surviving members of the band.^[222] During the evening of 9 December, as he was leaving an Oxford Street recording studio, he was surrounded by reporters and asked for a reaction. He was later criticised for what appeared, when published, to be a superficial response: "It's a drag".^[218] He later explained, "When John was killed somebody stuck a microphone at me and said: 'What do you think about it?' I said, 'It's a dra-a-ag' and meant it with every inch of melancholy I could muster. When you put that in print it says, 'McCartney in London today when asked for a comment on his dead friend said, "It's a drag."' It seemed a very flippant comment to make."^[218] He describes his first exchange with Ono after the murder, and his last conversation with Lennon:

I talked to Yoko the day after he was killed and the first thing she said was, "John was really fond of you." The last telephone conversation I had with him we were still the best of mates. He was always a very warm guy, John. His bluff was all on the surface. He used to take his glasses down, those granny glasses, and say, "It's only me." They were like a wall, you know? A shield. Those are the moments I treasure.^[218]

In 1983, he said: "I would not have been as typically human and standoffish as I was if I knew John was going to die. I would have made more of an effort to try and get behind his "mask" and have a better relationship with him."^[218] He said that he went home that night and watched the news on television – while sitting with his children – crying most of the evening. In 1997, he admitted the ex-Beatles were nervous at the time that they might be the "next" one murdered.^[223] In 2002 he told Mojo magazine that Lennon was his greatest "hero".^[224] In June 1981, six months after the murder, McCartney sang backup on Harrison's tribute to their ex-bandmate, "All Those Years Ago", which also featured Starr on drums.^[225] In 1982 McCartney released "Here Today", a song musicologist Walter Everett describes as "a haunting tribute" to their friendship.^[226]

George Harrison

Harrison said this about working with McCartney: "Paul would always help along when you'd done his ten songs—then when he got 'round to doing one of my songs, he would help. It was silly. It was very selfish, actually ... There were a lot of tracks, though, where I played bass ... because what Paul would do—if he'd written a song, he'd learn all the parts for Paul and then come in the studio and say (sometimes he was very difficult): "Do this." He'd never give you the opportunity to come out with something.^[227]

In late 2001, McCartney learned that Harrison was losing his battle with cancer, and upon his death on 29 November 2001, McCartney issued a statement outside his home in St. John's Wood, calling him "a lovely guy and a very brave man who had a wonderful sense of humour", "We grew up together and we just had so many beautiful times together – that's what I am going to remember. I'll always love him, he's my baby brother."^[228] Harrison spent his last days in a Hollywood Hills mansion that was once leased by McCartney.^[229] On the first anniversary of his death, McCartney played Harrison's "Something" on a ukulele at the Concert for George.^[88] He also performed "For You Blue" and "All Things Must Pass", as well as playing the piano on Eric Clapton's rendition of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps".^[230]

Ringo Starr

Though Starr once described McCartney as "pleasantly insincere", the two generally enjoy each other's company, and at least once vacationed together in Greece, including stops in Athens and on the islands Corfu and Rhodes.^[231] Starr recalls: "We couldn't understand a word of the songs the hotel band were playing, so on the last night Paul and I did a few rockers like "What'd I Say." ^[231] There was at times discord between them as well, particularly during Beatles' sessions for "The White Album", as Apple's Peter Brown recalls, "It was a poorly kept secret among Beatle intimates that after Ringo left the studio Paul would often dub in the drum tracks himself ... [Starr] would pretend not to notice".^[232] In August 1968 the two got into an argument over McCartney's critique of Starr's drum part for "Back in the USSR", which led to Starr temporarily leaving the band.^[232] He returned in September^[233] to find bouquets of flowers on his drum kit. Starr comments on working with McCartney: "Paul is the greatest bass player in the world. But he is also very determined ... [to] get his own way ... [thus] musical disagreements inevitably arose from time to time."^[232]

Recognition and achievements[link]

McCartney performing in Prague, 6 June 2004

McCartney has been described by Guinness World Records as "The Most Successful Composer and Recording Artist of All Time", with 60 gold discs and sales of 100 million albums, 100 million singles, and a writer's credit on forty-three songs that have sold over one million copies each.^[1] According to Guinness, he is "the most successful songwriter" in UK singles chart history, and has written or co-written "188 charted records, of which 129 are different songs. Of these records, 91 reached the Top 10 and 33 made it to No.1. In total, the songs have spent 1,662 weeks on the chart (up to the beginning of 2007)."^[2] In 1986 he received acclaim from the Guinness Book of Records Hall of Fame, "as the most successful musician of all-time."^[234]

In the US, as a songwriter or co-writer, he is included on thirty-one number one singles on the Billboard Hot 100; including twenty with the Beatles and nine solo and/or with Wings,^[235] one as a co-writer on Elton John's cover of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds",^[236] and one as a co-writer of "A World Without Love", a number one single for Peter and Gordon.^[237] As of 2012, he has sold 15.5 million RIAA certified units in the United States.^[238]

Although Elvis Presley has achieved the most UK number-ones as a solo artist with eighteen,^[239] McCartney has been involved in more number-ones in the UK than any other artist under a variety of credits, totalling twenty-four singles: 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".^[240] He is the only artist to reach the UK number one as a soloist ("Pipes of Peace"), duo ("Ebony and Ivory" with Wonder), trio ("Mull of Kintyre", Wings), quartet ("She Loves You", the Beatles), quintet ("Get Back", the Beatles with Billy Preston), and as part of a musical ensemble for charity (Ferry Aid).^[241]

His song "Yesterday" is thought to be the most covered in history with more than 2,200 recorded versions,^[242] 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 ... [and] is the most played song by a British writer this century in the US."^[243] His 1968 Beatles composition, "Hey Jude", is also a career highlight. It achieved the highest sales in the UK that year, and topped the US charts for nine weeks, longer than any other Beatles' single. It was also the longest single ever released by the band, and at seven minutes fifteen seconds was the longest of any number one to that point. Its been covered by several notable artists, including Presley, Bing Crosby, Count Basie, and Wilson Pickett.^[244] It is the best-selling Beatles' single of all-time, with sales of over five million copies achieved soon after its release.^[245]

McCartney receiving the Gershwin Award from President Obama at the White House, June 2010

He 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,^[246] that year the minor planet 4148, was named "McCartney" in his honour.^[247] In July 2005 he was involved with the fastest-released single in history, when his performance of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" with U2 at Live 8 was released before the concert was over. 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.^[248]

On 18 June 2006, McCartney celebrated his 64th birthday, a milestone that was the subject of a tune he wrote at the age of sixteen, which would later become the Beatles' song "When I'm Sixty-Four".^[249] In 2008 he received a BRIT award for Outstanding Contribution to Music,^[250] as well as an honorary Doctor of Music degree from Yale University.^[251] In 2012 he became the last of the "Fab Four" to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.^[252]

Business

McCartney is one of the UK's wealthiest people, with an estimated fortune of £475 million in 2010.^[253] In addition to an interest in Apple Corps, MPL Communications, an umbrella company for his business interests, owns a significant music publishing catalogue, with access to over 25,000 copyrights,^[254] including the publishing rights to the musicals Guys and Dolls, A Chorus Line, and Grease.^[255] He earned £40 million in 2003, making him Britain's highest media earner.^[256] This rose to £48.5 million by 2005.^[257] In 2006 the Trademarks Registry reported that MPL had started a process to secure the protections associated with registering the name "Paul McCartney" as a trademark.^[258]

Northern Songs

Northern Songs was established in 1963 by Dick James to publish the songs of Lennon–McCartney.^[259] The Beatles' partnership was replaced in 1968 by a jointly held company, Apple Corps, which continues to control Apple's commercial interests. Northern Songs was purchased by Associated Television (ATV) in 1969, and was sold in 1985 to Michael Jackson. For many years McCartney was unhappy about Jackson's purchase and handling of Northern Songs.^[260]

Despite the lack of publishing rights to most of his Beatles' songs, he continues to receive his respective share of the writers' royalties, which together are 33⅓% of total commercial proceeds in the US and which vary elsewhere around the world between 50 and 55%.^[261] Two of the Beatles' earliest songs—"Love Me Do" and "P.S. I Love You"—were published by an EMI subsidiary, Ardmore & Beechwood, before signing with James. McCartney acquired their publishing rights from Ardmore in the mid 1980s,^[262] and they are the only two Beatles songs owned by MPL Communications.^[263]

Discography[link]

Solo

Wings, live, and compilations

Tours[link]

Arms[link]

Arms of Paul McCartney 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.[266] 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)[266]

Citations[link]