Paul McCartney

Members: Paul Mccartney

Active: 1957 - present

HISTORY

Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE, (born June 18, 1942) is an English rock and roll songwriter,musician and singer, best known as a member of The Beatles and one half of the Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership. McCartney was a member of the The Beatles, "the greatest and most influential act of the rock era", and Wings, is a solo artist, and has taken part in many other musical projects that were put together solely for the aim of financially assisting international charity. McCartney is the most successful popular-music composer and recording artist ever, with sales of 100 million singles and 60 gold discs.

In The Beatles, McCartney was one-half of the songwriting team credited as Lennon-McCartney, along with fellow band member John Lennon. Beatles songs attributed solely to McCartney include "Can't Buy Me Love", "Hello Goodbye", "Hey Jude", "Let It Be", and "The Long and Winding Road. McCartney's song "Yesterday" is listed as the most covered song in history: more than 2,000 versions have been recorded, and it has been played more than 7,000,000 times on American TV and radio.

Following the announcement of his departure from The Beatles on 10 April 1970,[8] McCartney launched a successful solo career (he released his first album on 17 April 1970) and formed the band Wings - scoring 30 top ten singles in the United Kingdom and United States. The keyboardist for Wings was McCartney's first wife, Linda McCartney.

At the time of its release, in 1977, the Wings single "Mull of Kintyre" became the highest-selling record in British chart history (and remained so until 1984). McCartney has also worked in the classical music field (with works such as Liverpool Oratorio) and ambient/electronic music (under the pseudonym The Fireman).

McCartney was awarded the MBE on October 16, 1965, by Queen Elizabeth II, and, on 11 March 1997, he was knighted (Knight Bachelor) by her for his services to music. He dedicated his knighthood to fellow Beatles John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr and the people of Liverpool.

McCartney is listed in The Guinness Book Of Records as the most successful musician in popular music history. He has achieved twenty-nine U.S. number 1 singles, twenty of them with The Beatles, the rest with Wings, and as a solo artist. McCartney owns the copyrights to more than three-thousand songs, including all of the songs written by Buddy Holly, his childhood idol. He also owns the publishing rights to musical scores such as Guys and Dolls, A Chorus Line, and Grease. Aside from his musical work, McCartney is a painter (although until recently he kept his artwork private) and a strong advocate for animal rights,vegetarianism, music education (LIPA), and against landmines.

EARLY YEARS 1942 - 1957

James Paul McCartney was born in the Walton General Hospital in Liverpool, England, where his mother, Mary, had worked as the nursing sister in the maternity ward. His brother, Michael, was born nearly two year later (7 January 1944). Paul was baptised as a Catholic, but was raised non-denominationally; his mother was a Roman Catholic and his father, James 'Jim' McCartney, was a Protestant. Like many in Liverpool, McCartney has some Irish heritage. His maternal grandfather, Owen Mohin/Mohan was born in 1880, in Tullynamalrow, County Monaghan, Ireland, and married his maternal grandmother, Mary Theresa Danher (from Toxteth, Liverpool) in 1905.

In 1947, when Michael was three years old, Mary McCartney became a domiciliary midwife. She was on-call at all hours of any day or night, but her job allowed the McCartney family to move to Sir Thomas White Gardens, off St Domingo Road in Everton, to live in a rent-free flat that was supplied by her employers. They moved again shortly after, to 72 Western Avenue in Speke, and then to 12 Ardwick Road (also in Speke) which was part of a new estate in the suburbs of Liverpool. Paul remembered lots of mud on the unfinished roads and the feeling of being "on the edge of the world, like Christopher Columbus". Money was a problem in the McCartney house; Jim McCartney earned up to 6.00 a week working for the A. Hannay cotton company - less than his wife. The McCartneys did not own a television until The Queen's coronation in 1953, and never owned a car.

Paul took the 11-plus exam in 1953, and passed. Of the 90 children from the Joseph Williams School in Liverpool)[22] that took the exam, only three others passed, which gained all four a place at the Liverpool Institute in Mount Street, Liverpool's top grammar school. He first met future bandmate George Harrison on the bus to school. Harrison lived at 24 Upton Green, a block away from McCartney's house.

In 1955, the McCartney family moved again, to 20 Forthlin Road, a council house in Allerton. The house is now owned by The National Trust. Mary rode a bicycle to the houses where she was needed as a midwife, and one of McCartney's earliest memories is of her setting off to deliver a baby at someone's house when it was snowing heavily. Mary died from breast cancer, on 31 October 1956,when Paul was 14. It later created an additional bond between him and John Lennon, whose mother Julia Lennon died on 15 July 1958 when Lennon was 17.

McCartney came from a musical family. His father Jim was a self-taught trumpet player and pianist who had his own band called "Jim Mac's jazz Band" in the 1920s, and encouraged his two sons to be musical. Jim had an upright piano in their front room that he had bought from Harry Epstein's store in Everton. McCartney's grandfather, Joe McCartney, played an E-flat tuba, the bass instrument in a brass band. McCartney said that his father used to point out the bass parts in songs on the radio, and took Paul to brass band concerts in local parks. McCartney senior bought his son a trumpet after the death of his wife Mary. When skiffle music became popular, McCartney swapped the trumpet at Rushworth and Dreapers (the largest musical instrument suppliers on Merseyside at the time) for a 15 Framus Zenith (model 17) acoustic guitar, which he still owns.

Paul, being left handed, found the guitar impossible to play.[29] He had never seen a left-handed guitarist, until he saw a poster advertising Slim Whitman who was playing at the Liverpool Empire, and realised that Whitman played left-handed, and noticed that his guitar was strung the opposite way to a right handed player. McCartney wrote "I Lost My Little Girl" on the Zenith, which was his first song. He later started playing piano (using his father's upright piano) and composed the melody to "When I'm Sixty-Four". His father advised him to take some music lessons (which he did) but McCartney preferred to learn 'by ear'. McCartney also played his father's Framus Spanish guitar when writing early songs with bandmate John Lennon.

1957-1960 THE QUARRYMEN AND THE SILVER BEATLES

Fifteen-year-old Paul McCartney met John Lennon and The Quarrymen at the Woolton church hall fete on 6 July 1957. McCartney played "Twenty Flight Rock", "Be-Bop-A-Lula", and a medley of Little Richard hits to Lennon and the band during a break. A few days later he was invited by Quarryman Pete Shotton to join the group as a guitarist. McCartney's first gig with The Quarrymen was on October 18, 1957 at the New Clubmoor Hall in Norris Green, Liverpool.

At the start of their friendship Lennon's Aunt Mimi disapproved of McCartney because he was, she said, "working class", and called McCartney "John's little friend". McCartney's father told Paul that John would get him "into trouble", although he later allowed The Quarrymen to rehearse in the front room at 20 Forthlin Road.

McCartney formed a close-working relationship with John Lennon and they collaborated on many songs (Lennon called it 'writing eyeball-to-eyeball'). Lennon and McCartney's first compositions were written at Forthlin Road, at Mimi's house at 251 Menlove Avenue, and at the Liverpool Institute. McCartney wrote the chords and words down in a schoolbook, and prefaced each one with lines like, "A Lennon-McCartney original", or, "Another Lennon-McCartney original" - conforming to an early agreement between the duo, that all the songs that were written by either of them, or together, would be credited to both songwriters. This came about because Lennon liked the idea of "Lennon-McCartney", which echoed the songwriting credits of Leiber & Stoller; the songwriters whose names appeared on many of the records they owned from the 1950s.

McCartney's Liverpool Institute schoolmate, George Harrison, joined soon after as lead guitarist, followed by the addition of Stuart Sutcliffe on bass. By May 1960, they had tried several new names, including the "Silver Beetles", before shortening it to The Beatles for their performances in Hamburg in August 1960.

Allan Williams started managing The Silver Beetles in May 1960, and booked them into Bruno Koschmider's Indra club in Hamburg, and Pete Best joined them on drums as soon as the Hamburg season was confirmed. Pete Best's mother ran the Casbah Club in Liverpool, where The Beatles had played a few times in August 1959.

McCartney's father was reluctant to let the teenage Paul go to Hamburg, until Paul pointed out how much money he would earn, which was 2.50 per day, per musician. As this was more than his father earned, Jim finally agreed.They first started playing at the Indra club - sleeping in small, dirty rooms in the Bambi Kino - and then later moved (after the closure of the Indra) to the Kaiserkeller, which was much bigger. In October 1960, they left Koschmider's club and worked at the "Top Ten Club", which was run by Peter Eckhorn. When McCartney and Pete Best went back to the Bambi Kino to get their belongings they found it in almost total darkness. As a snub to Koschmider, they found a condom, attached it to a nail on the concrete wall of their room, and set fire to it. There was no chance of it causing any great damage, but Koschmider reported them for attempted arson, and McCartney and Best spent three hours in a local jail. This led to George Harrison being deported back to the UK for being under the age limit of 18 and working, and Best and McCartney were also later deported.

Although they returned to Hamburg (when Harrison became 18-years-old) Sutcliffe had left the band, and Paul was coerced into playing bass. He played Sutcliffe's bass guitar, and then bought a Hofner bass, which the left-handed McCartney was able to turn upside down without the volume controls restricting his playing. He later bought a left-handed Hofner bass.

1960 - 1970 THE BEATLES

Upon their return from Hamburg to Liverpool, The Beatles played their first of many concerts at the Cavern club, on February 9, 1961. McCartney knew that other bands were playing the same songs that they played, which prompted him and Lennon to write more of their own material. It was at the Cavern that Brian Epstein first saw The Beatles playing live,[59] and later signed them to a management contract. Epstein managed his family's NEMS record shop, and was known as being a homosexual, but it never personally bothered McCartney, or the other Beatles. McCartney explained that Epstein used to take them to after-hours late-night drinking clubs that they had previously never had access to, and greatly encouraged them when record companies refused to give them a contract. McCartney knew what being gay meant, but he was never propositioned, and didn't see it as any problem at all., McCartney played at the Cavern Club again, in 1999, with David Gilmour and Ian Paice.

The Beatles signed a record contract that Epstein had arranged on May 9, 1962, with Parlophone records, having previously (and now notoriously) been auditioned but ultimately turned down by Decca records, whose A&R manager, Dick Rowe, told Epstein that "Groups of guitars are on the way out, Mr Epstein - you really should stick to selling records in Liverpool. "Love Me Do" was released on October 5, 1962, and featured McCartney singing solo on the chorus line.

All the Lennon-McCartney songs on the first pressing of Please Please Me album (recorded in one day on February 11, 1963) as well as the single "From Me to You", and its B-side, "Thank You Girl", are credited to "McCartney-Lennon"; this would later change to "Lennon-McCartney". For McCartney, the move to London, from Liverpool, was an exciting one, and he made many trips to Charing Cross Road, just to visit the plethora of guitar shops there, even though he couldn't afford to buy a new guitar at the time.

The Beatles stopped touring in mid-1966, after their last concert in Candlestick Park, San Francisco, on August 29, 1966. The other three Beatles had often advocated the idea of stopping touring, but McCartney had resisted. After the Candlestick Park concert, The Beatles scrambled into the back of a plain steel van, with nothing to sit on. This was the last straw, even for McCartney. After having played so many concerts where they couldn't be heard, and being totally exhausted, he finally agreed with the rest of the band that they should stop playing live concerts.

Back in London again - after recording sessions - Lennon, Harrison and Starr retreated to secure country houses in the so-called 'stockbroker belt' of southern England. McCartney continued to live in central London: in Jane Asher's parents' house in the centre of town (57 Wimpole Street) and then in Cavendish Avenue, St John's Wood - a short distance from the Abbey Road Studios.

In the same year, McCartney attempted to convince The Beatles to return to the stage, suggesting the project "Get Back", which evolved into the film and album Let It Be. Although it was released before Let It Be, Abbey Road was the last album The Beatles recorded.

McCartney often pressured the engineers at EMI to get a better bass sound on Beatles recordings, and was frustrated by the relatively weak sound on their earlier records. He later used Abbey Road's new multi-track tape decks to record extra bass lines after the basic tracks had been laid down. In 1969 an urban myth developed that McCartney had been killed in a car crash.

Although all the other members had previously left The Beatles at various times (and then returned) McCartney was the one who publicly announced the break-up on 10 April 1970, a week before releasing his first solo album, McCartney. It included a press-release inside with a self-written interview explaining the end of The Beatles and his hopes about the future. The Beatles' partnership was legally dissolved after McCartney filed a lawsuit on 31 December 1970.

McCartney was the first to be involved in a musical project outside of The Beatles, when he composed the score for the feature film The Family Way, in 1966. The soundtrack was later released as an album (also called The Family Way), and won the Ivor Novello Award for Best Instrumental Theme. Also, in 1966, he asked by Kenneth Tynan to write the songs for the National Theatre's production of As You Like It by William Shakespeare, starring Laurence Olivier, but declined. McCartney also wrote songs for and produced other artists including Mary Hopkin, Badfinger, and The Bonzo Dog Band.

1970'S PAUL MCCARTNEY AND WINGS

Phil Spector was putting the finishing touches to Let It Be and The Beatles stumbled towards breakup in 1970, McCartney was working on his eponymous debut solo album, McCartney. He played all the instruments ("bass, drums, acoustic guitar, lead guitar, piano, Mellotron, organ, toy xylophone and bow and arrow" and sang all the lead vocals. Backing vocals were provided by his new wife, Linda, whom he had married the previous year. Along with "Every Night", a hit for Phoebe Snow in 1979, the album also contained the acclaimed "Maybe I'm Amazed", called "one of the best songs he ever wrote" and #338 on the List of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. It is one of McCartney's many love songs for Linda. He followed his debut album with a solo single in 1971 titled "Another Day". The accompanying album,Ram, was credited to both Paul and Linda McCartney.

Later that year the McCartneys formed a new band, Wings, with ex-Moody Blues guitarist Denny Laine and drummer Denny Seiwell, and released their debut album, Wild Life. McCartney insisted from the beginning of their marriage that his wife should be involved in his professional life and later tour in his band, so that they did not have to be apart during these periods. In 1972, Paul and Linda McCartney took their new band on an unplanned tour of British universities and small European venues, turning up unannounced and collecting a small entry fee at the door. In February 1972 Wings released a single called "Give Ireland Back to the Irish", written after the events of Bloody Sunday, that was banned by the BBC. McCartney said, "From our point of view, it was the first time people questioned what we were doing in Ireland. It was so shocking. I wrote "Give Ireland Back to The Irish", we recorded it and I was promptly 'phoned by the Chairman of EMI Sir Joseph Lockwood, explaining that they wouldn't release it. He thought it was too inflammatory. I told him that I felt strongly about it and they had to release it, he said, 'Well, it'll be banned', and of course it was". Wings also embarked on the 26-date Wings Over Europe Tour.

In 1973, Wings released Red Rose Speedway. McCartney starred in a TV special, a variety show called James Paul McCartney. Later that year, the band released Band on the Run, which won two Grammy Awards and is perhaps Wings' most lauded work. A contemporary review by Jon Landau in Rolling Stone issue #153 described the album as "the finest record yet released by any of the four musicians who were once called the Beatles [(with the possible exception of John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band)]". In retrospective reviews, Q magazine placed the album at #75 in its list of the 100 Greatest British Albums Ever, and it was ranked #418 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

In late 1973, McCartney wrote the theme song for the James Bond film, Live and Let Die. In 1974, Wings achieved three hits with the singles "Jet", "Band on the Run" and "Junior's Farm". In 1975 and 1976 the band embarked on the ambitious Wings Over the World tour, which was captured on vinyl in the number one album Wings over America.

In 1977, Wings released "Mull of Kintyre", a song about McCartney's Scottish home. McCartney upon discovering that a lot of popular, (non traditional) Scottish songs had been written by Englishmen, wondered if he could write one too. Explaining how the song came into being, McCartney stated: "I certainly loved Scotland enough, so I came up with a song about where we were living, an area called Mull of Kintyre. It was a love song really, about how I enjoyed being there and imagining I was travelling away and wanting to get back there". It reached and stayed at number 1 in the UK for nine weeks and for several years held the record as the highest-selling single in the UK.

In 1979, McCartney organised the Concerts for the People of Kampuchea, and Wings toured again. In 1980, McCartney was arrested for being in possession of marijuana in Tokyo, and was held in custody for ten days before being deported to the UK. Wings disbanded in 1981.

McCartney's relationship with John Lennon after The Beatles split in 1970 was troubled, although the pair reportedly reconciled before Lennon's death.

Lennon took up residence with Yoko Ono in New York City's Dakota building in 1973. McCartney would often call him in New York but was never sure what reception he would get.

A jam session involving Lennon and McCartney reportedly took place in 1974 and surfaced on the bootleg A Toot and a Snore in '74.

In a 1980 interview with Playboy magazine, Lennon was prompted that there was considerable speculation about whether the Beatles were now "dreaded enemies or the best of friends." He replied that they were neither, and that he hadn't seen any of The Beatles for "I don't know how much time." He also said that the last time he had seen McCartney they had watched the episode of Saturday Night Live where Lorne Michaels made his $3,200 cash offer to get The Beatles to reunite on the show. The two had seriously considered going to the studio to appear on the show for a joke, but were too tired.

1980'S

Wings resumed activity in the autumn of 1980, but on the morning of 9 December 1980 McCartney woke to the news that Lennon had been murdered in outside his Dakota building home. Lennon's death caused an outpouring of grief around the world and a media frenzy around the surviving members of The Beatles. On the evening of 9 December, when McCartney was outside on an Oxford Street recording studio, he was surrounded by dozens of reporters and questioned. When asked for his reaction about Lennon's death, he said, "I was very shocked, this is terrible news." He also said that he had spent a part of the day in the studio listening to some material because he "just didn't want to sit at home." When asked why, he replied, "I didn't feel like it." He later added, "It's a drag, isn't it?" When publicised, his "drag" remark was criticised. In a later interview, McCartney insisted he had intended no disrespect whatsoever and simply could not say more, given the shock and sadness he felt over Lennon's murder.

McCartney wrote and starred in the 1984 film Give My Regards to Broad Street. The film and soundtrack featured the US and UK Top 10 hit "No More Lonely Nights", but the film did not do well commercially[citation needed] and received a negative critical response. Roger Ebert, for example, awarded the film a single star and wrote "you can safely skip the movie and proceed directly to the sound track".

In the second half of the decade McCartney would find new collaborators. Eric Stewart had appeared on McCartney's Pipes of Peace album; he co-wrote most of McCartney's 1996 album, Press to Play[90]. McCartney returned the favour by cowriting two songs for Stewart's band, 10cc - "Don't Break the Promises" (...Meanwhile, 1992), and "Yvonne's the One" (Mirror Mirror, 1995). McCartney also began a musical partnership with singer-songwriter Elvis Costello (Declan Macmanus). The resulting songs would appear on several singles and albums by both artists, notably "Veronica" from Costello's album Spike, and "My Brave Face" from McCartney's Flowers in the Dirt, both released in 1989. Further McCartney/Macmanus compositions would surface on the 1991 album Mighty Like a Rose (Costello) and 1993's Off the Ground (McCartney).

Costello talked about their collaboration:

"When we sat down together he wouldn't have any sloppy bits in there (meaning the songs). That was interesting. The ironic part is, if it sounds like he wrote it, I probably did and vice versa. He wanted to do all the ones with lots of words and all on one note, and I'm the one trying to work in the 'Please Please Me' harmony all over the place."

1990'S

McCartney released three pop/rock albums in the 1990s: Off the Ground (1993), Flaming Pie (1997), and the 1999 covers album, Run Devil Run. The decade also saw him venture into classical music, with 1991's Liverpool Oratorio followed by Standing Stone (1997) and Working Classical (1999).

Director Geoff Dunbar worked with McCartney on an animated film about the work of French artist Honore Daumier in 1992, which won the both of them a Bafta award.

In the early 1990s, the three surviving Beatles McCartney, Harrison and Starr reunited to work on Apple's The Beatles Anthology, a comprehensive retrospective consisting of a documentary series; three double albums of alternative takes, live recordings and remixes of Beatles songs (the first of which, Anthology 1 was released in 1995); and a photobook (released in 2000). They also created two new Beatles songs, "Free as a Bird" (1995) and "Real Love" (1996) by layering new music onto unfinished tracks Lennon had made before his death fifteen years earlier.

During the filming of The Beatles Anthology, McCartney and Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono set to work in his home-studio on an extreme avant-garde musical piece called "Hiroshima Sky". The McCartney-Ono tape consists of E-minor chords played by Linda on keyboards, with Paul playing double bass, with Sean Lennon and younger members of McCartneys family playing whatever they could lay their hands on, whilst Yoko sang. The tape has never been officially released.

In the late 1990s, however, McCartney and Ono were in dispute again, over the writing credits for a number of Beatles songs McCartney had wanted to change the credits from the traditional Lennon-McCartney to 'Paul McCartney and John Lennon' for the song, "Yesterday". McCartney claimed that he and Lennon had agreed in the past that the credits could be reversed, if any one of them wanted to, on any future releases. He later withdrew his request.

2000'S

Wingspan: An Intimate Portrait (2001) is a documentary that features a collection of behind-the-scenes films and intimate photographs that Paul and Linda McCartney took of their family and bands over the years. Interspersed throughout the (88 mins) film is an interview by Mary McCartney with her father, Paul McCartney. Mary is the baby inside McCartney's jacket on the back cover photograph of his first solo album, McCartney, and was one of the producers of the documentary.

On 20 October 2001, McCartney took a lead role in organising The Concert for New York City in response to the September 11 terrorist attacks. A few days before the concert, McCartney was involved in a car crash at a crossroads in New York's East Hampton resort. He complained of back pains but did not need hospital treatment.

George Harrison died of cancer on 29 November 2001. McCartney told Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood, Today and Extra about George being like his "baby brother" in The Beatles, even though Harrison was only nine months younger than McCartney. George Harrison passed away in a Hollywood Hills mansion that was once leased by Sir Paul McCartney, and was previously owned by Courtney Love.

On 29 November 2002, on the first anniversary of Harrison's death, McCartney, Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Jeff Lynne, Billy Preston, Joe Brown, Jools Holland, Sam Brown, Olivia Harrison, Dhani Harrison, among many others that attended the Concert For George at the Royal Albert Hall in London. McCartney played "Something", and started the song by playing a ukulele unaccompanied. He explained this by saying that when he and George got together, they would often play Beatles songs (and their own) on a ukulele. McCartney, Clapton and Starr reunited on "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" for the first time since the song was recorded. The profits from the concert went to Harrison's charity, the Material World Charitable Foundation.

In 2002, McCartney went on another major American tour. The tour continued around the rest of the world in 2003, and 2004. His backing band, formed for the 2002 tour and continuing with the same musicians to this day, includes Rusty Anderson (guitar/vocals), Brian Ray (guitar/bass/vocals), Paul 'Wix' Wickens (keyboards, guitar, accordion, vocals), and Abe Laboriel Jr. (drums, vocals). He also contributed to an album titled Good Rockin' Tonight: The Legacy Of Sun Records, which included a version of the Elvis Presley hit "That's All Right (Mama)" recorded with Presley musicians Scotty Moore and D.J. Fontan.

McCartney performed during the pre-game ceremonies at the NFL's Super Bowl XXXVI on 3 February 2002, and was the half-time performer at Super Bowl XXXIX on 6 February 2005. Unlike previous years, he was the 'only' performer in the entire half - time show. His set consisted of "Drive My Car", "Get Back", "Live And Let Die" and "Hey Jude".

Early in 2003, McCartney went to Russia to play a concert in Red Square. The Russian President, Vladimir Putin, gave McCartney a tour of Red Square, and McCartney played a solo (private) version of "Let It Be" for the President. Whilst singing "Hey Jude" - during the concert - he called out to President Putin to sing along.

In June 2004, McCartney headlined the Glastonbury Festival - which was his first ever appearance at a British music festival. McCartney and festival organiser Michael Eavis picked up the NME Award on behalf of the Festival which won 'Best Live Event' in the 2005 awards.

McCartney performed at the main Live 8 concert on 2 July 2005, playing "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" with U2 to open the Hyde Park event (the song choice reflecting the 20 years after Live Aid), then returning almost ten hours later to close the show with "Get Back", "Drive My Car" (sharing the vocals with George Michael), "Helter Skelter", "The Long And Winding Road", and an ensemble rendition of the refrain from "Hey Jude". Ringo Starr reproached McCartney for not asking him to play with him at Live 8.

On 18 June 2006 McCartney celebrated his 64th birthday, an event prefigured in his song "When I'm Sixty-Four", the first song The Beatles laid down on 8 December 1966 the day they began recording what Rolling Stone magazine adjudged to be the most influential rock album of all time, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. It was a widely celebrated event for, as the cultural commentator Paul Vallely noted in The Independent: "Paul McCartney's 64th birthday is not merely a personal event. It is a cultural milestone for a generation too. For, such is the nature of celebrity, McCartney is one of those people who throughout his life has, in some intangible way, represented the hopes and aspirations, joys and sorrows of those who were born in the baby-boom era which had its adolescent awakening in the Sixties and Seventies."

McCartney joined Jay-Z and Linkin Park onstage at the 2006 Grammy Awards in a performance of his Beatles' classic "Yesterday" to commemorate the recent passing of Coretta Scott King, while also performing "Fine Line" and "Helter Skelter" on his own. McCartney later noted that it was the first time he had performed at the Grammys and said, "I finally passed the audition", which was a reference to the statement made by John Lennon at the end of The Beatles' rooftop concert - shown in the Let It Be film.

ALBUMS

1970 - McCartney

1980 - McCartney II

1982 - Tug of War

1983 - Pipes of Peace

1986 - Press to Play

1988 - ????? ? ????

1989 - Flowers in the Dirt

1993 - Off the Ground

1997 - Flaming Pie

1999 - Run Devil Run

2001 - Driving Rain

2005 - Chaos and Creation in the Backyard

LIVE ALBUMS

1990 - Tripping the Live Fantastic

1990 - Tripping the Live Fantastic: Highlights!

1991 - Unplugged (The Official Bootleg)

1993 - Paul Is Live

2002 - Back in the U.S.

2003 - Back in the World

COMPILATIONS

1987 - All the Best!

1993 - The Paul McCartney Collection

2005 - Never Stop Doing What You Love