Historical Figure
Sir Paul McCartney
b. 1942
English musician (born 1942)
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"BBC Radio 4 Front Row Interview" — December 26, 2012
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Biography
Sir James Paul McCartney is an English musician. He gained global fame with the Beatles, for whom he was the bassist and keyboardist, and shared primary songwriting and lead vocal duties with John Lennon. McCartney is known for his melodic approach to bass-playing, versatile tenor vocal range and musical eclecticism, exploring genres ranging from pre-rock and roll pop to classical, ballads and electronica. His songwriting partnership with Lennon is the most successful in music history.
Timeline
The story of Sir Paul McCartney, told in moments.
His mother Mary dies of breast cancer. He is 14. He picks up a trumpet his father gave him, then trades it for a guitar because you can't sing while playing trumpet. He teaches himself left-handed, stringing the guitar in reverse.
Meets John Lennon at a church fete in Woolton. McCartney can tune a guitar and play "Twenty Flight Rock" from memory. Lennon can't tune a guitar. McCartney joins the Quarrymen. He is 15. Lennon is 16. Between them they'll write more number-one hits than anyone in history.
Wakes up in his room on Wimpole Street with a complete melody in his head. He plays it on a bedside piano and puts in placeholder lyrics: "Scrambled eggs, oh my baby how I love your legs." It becomes "Yesterday." He can't believe he didn't steal it from somewhere. He plays it for people for weeks, asking if they've heard it before.
Drives the production of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. 700 hours of studio time. Four months. McCartney pushes the band to experiment with orchestras, tape loops, animal sounds, Indian instruments. The album redefines what a pop record can be. It takes the Grammy for Album of the Year.
Announces he is leaving the Beatles. The press release is included as a self-interview with his debut solo album. Q: "Is your break with the Beatles temporary or permanent?" A: "I don't know." It's permanent.
Forms Wings with his wife Linda and guitarist Denny Laine. Critics savage the early records. He doesn't care. "Band on the Run" in 1973 silences most of them. Wings tours the world in a way the Beatles never could: unannounced shows in university halls, European bus tours, stadium concerts.
Arrested at Tokyo airport for possession of marijuana. Spends nine days in a Japanese jail. Wings' Japan tour is canceled. Linda and the kids fly home without him. He later says it was the stupidest thing he ever did.
Knighted by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace. Sir Paul. His daughter Stella designs the outfit.
Plays a surprise concert at the reopened Cavern Club in Liverpool, the venue where the Beatles played 292 times in the early 1960s. Tickets are available only via a last-minute announcement. The club holds 280 people.
Uses AI technology developed by Peter Jackson to extract John Lennon's voice from a 1978 demo cassette. The result is "Now and Then," released as the final Beatles song. The last note the four of them will ever play together, separated by decades and death and a machine that wasn't invented when the band was alive.
In Their Own Words (20)
Criticism didn't really stop us and it shouldn't ever stop anyone, because critics are only the people who can't get a record deal themselves.
The Beatles Anthology (2000), p. 96, 2000
“You’re up on your beautiful Appaloosa stallion. It’s a fine spring day. We’re riding through the woods. The bluebells are all out, and the sky is a clear blue." I had barely got to the end of the sentence when she closed her eyes and gently slipped away. She was unique, and the world is a better place for having known her. I love you, Linda.
Last words to his wife, Linda, as recounted by McCartney in a statement released to the press three days after her death; as quoted in "Linda's Death 'Heartbreak' for McCartney" by Emma Ross, Tucson Citizen (April 21, 1998), p. B1, 1998
When I see bacon, I see a pig, I see a little friend, and that's why I can't eat it. Simple as that. But I'll eat Linda's veggie bacon. All her food was so good.
Animal Times interview, Fall, 1998, 1998
Ebony and ivory live together in perfect harmony Side by side on my piano keyboard, oh Lord why don't we?
"Ebony and Ivory" from Tug of War (1982), 1982
You'd think that people would have had enough of silly love songs I look around me and I see it isn't so Some people want to fill the world with silly love songs And what's wrong with that? I'd like to know 'Cause here I go again... I love you.
"Silly Love Songs", 1976, 1976
Artifacts (15)
Vital Signs Vol. 11 No. 8, 1 July 1987 (IA nrmcorlandovitalsigns1108870701)
U.S. Naval Hospital Orlando
FSA in the news (IA fsainnews1949unit)
United States. Farm Security Administration United States. Farmers Home Administration
NAVY MEDICINE Vol. 95, No. 2 March-April 2004 (IA NavyMedicineVol.95No.2March-april2004)
U.S. Navy. Bureau of Medicine and Surgery
one of the great events of my life, as dazzling as first love
s of tutors. When Russell was eleven, his brother Frank introduced him to the work of Euclid, which he described in his autobiography as "one of the great events of my life, as dazzling as first...
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