Paul McCartney - The Beatles The Beatles Paul McCartney James Paul McCartney Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE (born 18 June 1942) is an English musician, singer, songwriter and composer. With John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, he gained worldwide fame as a member of the Beatles, and his collaboration with Lennon is one of the most celebrated songwriting partnerships of the 20th century. After the group's break-up, he pursued a solo career, later forming the band Wings with his first wife, Linda, and singer-songwriter Denny Laine. Guinness World Records described McCartney 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, and as the "most successful songwriter" in United Kingdom chart history.More than 2,200 artists have covered his Beatles song "Yesterday", more than any other song in history. Wings' 1977 release "Mull of Kintyre", is one of the all-time best-selling singles in the UK.

Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist in March 1999, McCartney has written, or co-written 32 songs that have reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100, and as of 2012 he has sold over 15.5 million RIAA-certified units in the United States. McCartney has released an extensive catalogue of songs as a solo artist and has composed classical and electronic music. He has taken part in projects to promote international charities related to such subjects as animal rights, seal hunting, landmines, vegetarianism, poverty and music education. McCartney has married three times and is the father of five children. Childhood McCartney was born on 18 June 1942, in Walton Hospital, Liverpool, England, where his mother, Mary (née Mohin), had qualified to practise as a nurse. His father, James ("Jim") McCartney, was absent from his son's birth due to his work as a volunteer firefighter during World War II Paul has one younger brother, Michael (born 7 January 1944).

Though the children were baptised in their mother's Roman Catholic faith, their father, a former Protestant turned agnostic, felt Catholic schools sacrificed the education of their students for the sake of their religious teachings, so he and Mary did not emphasise religion in the household. McCartney attended Stockton Wood Road Primary School from 1947 until 1949, when he transferred to Joseph Williams Junior School due to overcrowding at Stockton. In 1953, he passed the 11-plus exam, with only three others out of ninety examinees, gaining admission to the Liverpool Institute. In 1954, he met schoolmate George Harrison on the bus to the Institute from his suburban home in Speke. Harrison had also passed the exam, meaning he could attend a grammar school rather than a secondary modern school, where most pupils went until becoming eligible to work.

The two quickly became friends; McCartney later admitted: "I tended to talk down to him, because he was a year younger." McCartney's former home, 20 Forthlin Road The family's primary wage earner, Mary's income as a midwife enabled them to move into 20 Forthlin Road in Allerton, where they lived until 1964. She rode a bicycle to her patients; McCartney described an early memory of her leaving at "about three in the morning [the] streets ... thick with snow". On 31 October 1956, when McCartney was fourteen, his mother died of an embolism. McCartney's loss later became a point of connection with John Lennon, whose mother, Julia, had died when he was seventeen. A trumpet player and pianist who led Jim Mac's Jazz Band in the 1920s, McCartney's father kept an upright piano in the front room, and he encouraged his sons to be musical.

Jim gave Paul a nickel-plated trumpet for his fourteenth birthday, but when rock and roll became popular on Radio Luxembourg, Paul traded it for a £15 Framus Zenith (model 17) acoustic guitar, rationalising that it would be difficult to sing while playing a trumpet. He found it difficult to play guitar right-handed, but after noticing a poster advertising a Slim Whitman concert and realising that Whitman also played left-handed, he reversed the order of the strings. McCartney wrote his first song, "I Lost My Little Girl", on the Zenith, and composed another early tune that would become "When I'm Sixty-Four" on the piano. Against his father's advice, he took few piano lessons, preferring to learn by ear. Heavily influenced by American rhythm and blues music, Little Richard was his schoolboy idol. "Long Tall Sally" was the first song McCartney performed in public, at a Butlins holiday camp talent competition.

Musical career 1957–1960: the Quarrymen At the age of fifteen, McCartney met Lennon and his band, the Quarrymen, at the St Peter's Church Hall fête in Woolton on 6 July 1957. The Quarrymen played a mix of rock and roll and skiffle, a type of popular music with jazz, blues and folk influences. The band invited McCartney to join soon afterwards as a rhythm guitarist, and he formed a close working relationship with Lennon. Harrison joined in 1958 as lead guitarist, followed by Lennon's art school friend Stuart Sutcliffe on bass, in 1960. By May 1960, the band had tried several names, including Beatals, Johnny and the Moondogs and the Silver Beetles. They adopted the name the Beatles in August 1960 and recruited drummer Pete Best shortly before a five-engagement residency in Hamburg. 1960–1970: the Beatles Informally represented by Allan Williams, the Beatles' first booking was for a series of performances in Hamburg, starting in 1960.

In 1961, Sutcliffe left the band and McCartney reluctantly became their bass player. The Beatles recorded professionally for the first time while in Hamburg, credited as the Beat Brothers, they performed as the backing band for English singer Tony Sheridan on the single "My Bonnie". This brought them to the attention of Brian Epstein, a key figure in their subsequent development and success. He became their manager in January 1962. Ringo Starr replaced Best in August, and the band had their first hit, "Love Me Do", in October, becoming popular in the UK in 1963, and in the US a year later. Their fans' hysteria became known as "Beatlemania", and the press sometimes referred to McCartney as the "cute Beatle". In 1965, the Beatles released the McCartney composition "Yesterday", featuring a string quartet. Included on the Help! LP, the song was the group's first recorded use of classical music elements and their first recording that involved only a single band member. "Yesterday" became the most covered song in popular music history. Later that year, during recording sessions for the album Rubber Soul, McCartney began to supplant Lennon as the dominant musical force in the band.

Musicologist Ian MacDonald wrote, "from [1965] ... [McCartney] would be in the ascendant not only as a songwriter, but also as instrumentalist, arranger, producer, and de facto musical director". Critics described Rubber Soul as a significant advance in the refinement and profundity of the band's music and lyrics. Considered a high point in the Beatles catalogue, both Lennon and McCartney claimed lead authorship for the song, "In My Life". McCartney said of the album, "we'd had our cute period, and now it was time to expand." Recording engineer Norman Smith stated that the Rubber Soul sessions exposed indications of increasing contention within the band: "the clash between John and Paul was becoming obvious ... [and] as far as Paul was concerned, George [Harrison] could do no right—Paul was absolutely finicky." In 1966, the Beatles released the album Revolver. Featuring sophisticated lyrics, studio experimentation and an expanded repertoire of musical genres ranging from innovative string arrangements to psychedelic rock, the album marked an artistic leap for the Beatles. The first of three consecutive McCartney A-sides, the single "Paperback Writer" preceded the LP's release.

The Beatles produced a short promotional film for the song, and another for its B-side, "Rain". The films, described by Harrison as "the forerunner of videos", aired on The Ed Sullivan Show and Top of the Pops in June 1966. Revolver also included McCartney's "Eleanor Rigby", which featured a string octet. According to Gould, the song is "a neoclassical tour de force ... a true hybrid, conforming to no recognizable style or genre of song"With the exception of some backing vocals, the song included only McCartney's lead vocal and the strings arranged by producer George Martin. The Beatles gave their final commercial concert at the end of their 1966 US tour. Later that year, McCartney completed his first musical project apart from the group—a film score for the UK production The Family Way. The score was a collaboration with Martin, who used two McCartney themes to write thirteen variations. The soundtrack failed to chart, but it won McCartney an Ivor Novello Award for Best Instrumental Theme. Upon the end of the band's performing career, McCartney sensed unease in the band and wanted them to maintain creative productivity. He pressed them to start a new project, which became Sgt.

Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, widely regarded as rock's first concept album. Inspired to create a new persona for the group, to serve as a vehicle for experimentation and to demonstrate to their fans that they had musically matured, McCartney invented the fictional band of the album's title track. As McCartney explained, "We were fed up with being the Beatles. We really hated that fucking four little mop-top approach. We were not boys we were men ... and [we] thought of ourselves as artists rather than just performers." Starting in November 1966, the band adopted an experimental attitude during recording sessions for the album. According to engineer Geoff Emerick, "the Beatles were looking to go out on a limb, both musically and sonically ... we were utilising a lot of tape varispeeding and other manipulation techniques ... limiters and ... effects like flanging and ADT."Their recording of "A Day in the Life" required a forty-piece orchestra, which Martin and McCartney took turns conducting. The sessions produced the double A-side single "Strawberry Fields Forever"/"Penny Lane" in February 1967, and the LP followed in June.

McCartney's "She's Leaving Home" was an orchestral pop song. MacDonald described the track as "[among] the finest work on Sgt. Pepper — imperishable popular art of its time."Based on an ink drawing by McCartney, the LP's cover included a collage designed by pop artists Peter Blake and Jann Haworth, featuring the Beatles in costume as the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, standing with a host of celebrities. "After Brian died ... Paul took over and supposedly led us you know ... we went round in circles ... We broke up then. That was the disintegration. I thought, 'we've fuckin' had it.'" —John Lennon, Rolling Stone magazine, 1970 Epstein's death in August 1967 created a void, which left the Beatles perplexed and concerned about their future. McCartney, stepping in to fill that void, gradually became the de facto leader and business manager of the group Lennon had once led. His first creative suggestion after this change of leadership was to propose that the band move forward on their plans to produce a film for television, which was to become Magical Mystery Tour.

The project was "an administrative nightmare throughout", according to Beatles' historian Mark Lewisohn.McCartney largely directed the film, which brought the group their first unfavourable critical response. However, the film's soundtrack was more successful. Released in the UK as a six-track double extended play disc (EP), and as an identically titled LP in the US, filled out with five of the band's recent singles. The only Capitol compilation later included in the group's official canon of studio albums, the Magical Mystery Tour LP achieved $8 million in sales within three weeks of the release, higher initial sales than any other Capitol LP up to that point. In January 1968, EMI filmed the Beatles for a promotional trailer intended to advertise the animated film Yellow Submarine, loosely based on the imaginary world evoked by McCartney's 1966 composition. Though critics admired the film for its visual style, humour and music, the soundtrack album issued seven months later received a less enthusiastic response. By late 1968, relations within the band were deteriorating. The tension grew while recording The Beatles, commonly known as the White Album.

Matters worsened the following year during the Let It Be sessions, when a camera crew filmed McCartney lecturing the group: "We've been very negative since Mr. Epstein passed away ... we were always fighting [his] discipline a bit, but it's silly to fight that discipline if it's our own". In March 1969, McCartney married Linda Eastman, and in August, the couple had their first child, Mary, named after his late mother. For Abbey Road, the band's last recorded album, Martin suggested "a continuously moving piece of music"; urging the group to think symphonically. McCartney agreed, but Lennon did not. They eventually compromised, agreeing to McCartney's suggestion, an LP featuring individual songs on side one, and a long medley on side 2. By 1970, in the midst of business disagreements, McCartney, pitted against his bandmates, announced his departure from the group on 10 April. He filed suit for the band's formal dissolution on 31 December 1970.

More legal disputes followed as McCartney's attorneys, his in-laws John and Lee Eastman, fought Lennon, Harrison and Starr's business manager, Allen Klein, over royalties and creative control. An English court legally dissolved the Beatles on 9 January 1975, though sporadic lawsuits against their record company EMI, Klein and each other persisted until 1989. 1970–1981: Wings "I didn't really want to keep going as a solo artist ... so it became obvious that I had to get a band together ... Linda and I talked it through and it was like, 'Yeah, but let's not put together a supergroup, let's go back to square one.'" —McCartney After the Beatles' break-up in 1970, McCartney continued his musical career with his first solo release, McCartney, a US number-one album. Apart from some vocal contributions from Linda, McCartney is a one-man album, with Paul providing compositions, instrumentation and vocals. In 1971, he collaborated with Linda and drummer Denny Seiwell on a second album, Ram.

A UK number one and a US top five, Ram included the co-written US number-one hit single "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey". Later that year, ex-Moody Blues guitarist Denny Laine joined the McCartneys and Seiwell to form the band Wings. McCartney had this to say on the groups's formation: "Wings were always a difficult idea ... any group having to follow [the Beatles'] success would have a hard job ... I found myself in that very position. However, it was a choice between going on or finishing, and I loved music too much to think of stopping." In September 1971, the McCartneys' daughter Stella was born, named in honour of Linda's grandmothers, both of whom were named Stella. Following the addition of guitarist Henry McCullough, Wings' first concert tour began in 1972 with a début performance in front of an audience of seven hundred at the University of Nottingham. Ten more dates followed as they travelled across the UK in a van during an unannounced tour of universities, during which the band stayed in modest accommodation and received pay in coinage collected from students, while avoiding Beatles songs during their performances.

A seven-week, 25-show tour of Europe followed, during which the band played solely Wings and McCartney solo material with the exception of a few covers, including the Little Richard hit "Long Tall Sally", the only song McCartney played during the tour that had previously been recorded by the Beatles. McCartney wanted the tour to avoid large venues; most of the small halls they played had capacities of fewer than 3,000 people. Of his first two post-Beatles tours, McCartney said, "The main thing I didn't want was to come on stage, faced with the whole torment of five rows of press people with little pads, all looking at me and saying, 'Oh well, he is not as good as he was.' So we decided to go out on that university tour which made me less nervous ... by the end of that tour I felt ready for something else, so we went into Europe." In March 1973, Wings achieved their first US number-one single, "My Love", included on their second LP, Red Rose Speedway, a US number one and UK top five.

Paul's collaboration with Linda and former Beatles producer Martin resulted in the song "Live and Let Die", which was the theme song for the James Bond film of the same name. Nominated for an Academy Award, the song reached number two in the US and number nine in the UK. It also earned Martin a Grammy for his orchestral arrangement. Music professor and author Vincent Benitez described the track as "symphonic rock at its best". After the departure of McCullough and Seiwell in 1973, the McCartneys and Laine recorded Band on the Run. The album was the first of seven platinum Wings LPs. It was a US and UK number one, the band's first to top the charts in both countries and the first ever to reach Billboard magazine's charts on three separate occasions. One of the best-selling releases of the decade, it remained on the UK charts for 124 weeks. Rolling Stone named it Album of the Year for 1974, and in 1975 it won Grammy Awards for Best Contemporary/Pop Vocal and Best Engineered Album. In 1974, Wings achieved a second US number-one single with the title track.

The album also included the top-ten hits "Jet" and "Helen Wheels", and earned the 413th spot on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time McCartney during a Wings concert, 1976 Wings followed Band on the Run with the chart-topping albums Venus and Mars (1975) and Wings at the Speed of Sound (1976). In 1975, they began the fourteen-month Wings Over the World Tour, which included stops in the UK, Australia, Europe and the US. The tour marked the first time McCartney performed Beatles songs live with Wings, with five in the two-hour set list: "I've Just Seen a Face", "Yesterday", "Blackbird", "Lady Madonna" and "The Long and Winding Road". Following the second European leg of the tour and extensive rehearsals in London, the group undertook an ambitious US arena tour that yielded the US number-one live triple LP Wings over America. In September 1977, the McCartneys had a third child, a son they named James.

In November, the Wings song "Mull of Kintyre", co-written with Laine, was quickly becoming one of the best-selling singles in UK chart history. The most successful single of McCartney's solo career, it achieved double the sales of the previous record holder, "She Loves You", and went on to sell 2.5 million copies and hold the UK sales record until the 1984 charity single, "Do They Know It's Christmas?". London Town (1978) spawned a US number-one single ("With a Little Luck"), and was Wings' best-selling LP since Band on the Run, making the top five in both the US and the UK. Critical reception was unfavourable, and McCartney expressed disappointment with the album. Back to the Egg (1979) featured McCartney's collaboration with a rock supergroup dubbed "the Rockestra". Credited to Wings, the band included Pete Townshend, David Gilmour, Gary Brooker, John Paul Jones and John Bonham. Though certified platinum, critics panned Back to the Egg.

Wings completed their final concert tour in 1979, with twenty shows in the UK that included the live début of the Beatles songs "Got to Get You into My Life", "The Fool on the Hill" and "Let it Be". In 1980, McCartney released his second solo LP, the self-produced McCartney II, which peaked at number one in the UK and number three in the US. As with his first album, he composed and performed it alone.The album contained the song "Coming Up", the live version of which, recorded in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1979 by Wings, became the group's last number-one hit. By 1981, McCartney felt he had accomplished all he could creatively with Wings and decided he needed a change. The group disbanded in April 1981 following disagreements over royalties and salaries. 1982–1990 In 1982 McCartney 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.

The following year, he and Jackson worked on "Say Say Say", McCartney's most recent US number one as of 2012. McCartney earned his latest UK number one as of 2012 with the title track of his LP release that year, "Pipes of Peace". In 1984, McCartney starred in the musical Give My Regards to Broad Street, a feature film he also wrote and produced which included Starr in an acting role. Disparaged by critics, Variety described the film as "characterless, bloodless, and pointless". Roger Ebert awarded it a single star and wrote, "you can safely skip the movie and proceed directly to the soundtrack". The album fared much better, reaching number one in the UK and producing the US top-ten hit single "No More Lonely Nights", featuring David Gilmour on lead guitar. In 1985, Warner Brothers commissioned McCartney to write a song for the comedic feature film Spies Like Us. He composed and recorded the track in four days, with Phil Ramone co-producing.

McCartney participated in Live Aid, performing "Let it Be", but technical difficulties rendered his vocals and piano barely audible for the first two verses, punctuated by squeals of feedback. Equipment technicians resolved the problems and David Bowie, Alison Moyet, Pete Townshend and Bob Geldof joined McCartney on stage, receiving an enthusiastic crowd reaction. McCartney collaborated with Eric Stewart on Press to Play (1986), with Stewart co-writing more than half the songs on the LP. In 1988, McCartney released Снова в СССР, released only in the Soviet Union, which contained eighteen covers; recorded over the course of two days. In 1989, he joined forces with fellow Merseysiders Gerry Marsden and Holly Johnson to record an updated version of "Ferry Cross the Mersey", for the Hillsborough disaster appeal fund. That same year, he released Flowers in the Dirt; a collaborative effort with Elvis Costello that included musical contributions from Gilmour and Nicky Hopkins.McCartney then formed a band consisting of himself and Linda, with Hamish Stuart and Robbie McIntosh on guitars, Paul "Wix" Wickens on keyboards and Chris Whitten on drums.

In September 1989, they launched the Paul McCartney World Tour, his first in over a decade. The following year, he released the triple album, Tripping the Live Fantastic, which contained select performances from the tour. In 1990, the US publication Amusement Business presented McCartney with an award for the highest grossing show of the year; his two performances at Berkeley earned over $3.5 million. He performed for the largest paying stadium audience in history on 21 April 1990, when 184,000 people attended his concert at Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. 1991–2000 McCartney ventured into orchestral music in 1991, when the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society commissioned a musical piece by him to celebrate its sesquicentennial. He collaborated with composer Carl Davis, producing Liverpool Oratorio. The performance featured opera singers Kiri Te Kanawa, Sally Burgess, Jerry Hadley and Willard White, with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and the choir of Liverpool Cathedral. [137] Reviews were negative.

The Guardian was especially critical, describing the music as "afraid of anything approaching a fast tempo", and adding that the piece has "little awareness of the need for recurrent ideas that will bind the work into a whole". The paper published a letter McCartney submitted in response in which he stated, "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." The New York Times was slightly more generous, stating, "There are moments of beauty and pleasure in this dramatic miscellany ... the music's innocent sincerity makes it difficult to be put off by its ambitions". Performed around the world after its London premiere, the Liverpool Oratorio reached number one on the UK classical chart, Music Week. In 1991, McCartney performed a selection of acoustic-only songs on MTV Unplugged and released a live album of the performance entitled Unplugged (The Official Bootleg). During the 1990s, McCartney collaborated twice with Youth of Killing Joke as the musical duo "the Fireman". The two released their first electronica album together, Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest, in 1993.

McCartney released the rock album, Off the Ground, in 1993. The subsequent New World Tour followed, which led to the release of the Paul Is Live album later that year. Starting in 1994, McCartney took a four-year break from his solo career to work on Apple's 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 "widescreen radio".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. In March 1997, the Queen of England knighted him for services to music. In 1997, McCartney released the rock album Flaming Pie. Starr appeared on drums and backing vocals in "Beautiful Night". Later that year, he released the classical work Standing Stone, which topped the UK and US classical charts. In 1998, he released Rushes, the second electronica album by the Fireman.

In 1999, McCartney released Run Devil Run. Recorded in one week, and featuring Ian Paice and David Gilmour, it was primarily an album of covers with three McCartney originals. He had been planning such an album for years, having been previously encouraged to do so by Linda, who had died of cancer in April 1998. In 1999, he continued his experimentation with orchestral music on Working Classical. In 2000, he released the electronica album Liverpool Sound Collage with Super Furry Animals and Youth, using the sound collage and musique concrète techniques that had fascinated him in the mid-1960s. He contributed the song "Nova" to a tribute album of classical, choral music called A Garland for Linda (2000), dedicated to his late wife. 2001–present Having witnessed the 11 September 2001 attacks from the JFK airport tarmac, McCartney was inspired to take a leading role in organising the Concert for New York City. His studio album release in November that year, Driving Rain, included the song "Freedom", written in response to the attacks.

The following year, McCartney formed a band with guitarists Rusty Anderson and Brian Ray, accompanied by Wickens on keyboards and Abe Laboriel, Jr. on drums.They began the Driving World Tour later that year, which included stops in the US, Mexico and Japan. The tour resulted in the double live album Back in the U.S., released internationally in 2003 as Back in the World. The tour earned a reported $126.2 million, an average of over $2 million per night, and Billboard named it the top tour of the year. In July 2002, McCartney married Heather Mills. In November, on the first anniversary of Harrison's death, McCartney performed at the Concert for George. He participated in the National Football League's Super Bowl, performing "Freedom" during the pre-game show for Super Bowl XXXVI in 2002 and headlining the halftime show at Super Bowl XXXIX in 2005.The English College of Arms honoured McCartney in 2002 by granting him a coat of arms. His crest, featuring a Liver Bird holding an acoustic guitar in its claw, reflects his background in Liverpool and his musical career.

The shield includes four curved emblems which resemble beetles' backs. The arms' motto is Ecce Cor Meum, Latin for "Behold My Heart". In 2003, the McCartneys had a child, Beatrice Milly. Starr and McCartney promoting The Beatles: Rock Band in 2009 In July 2005, he performed at the Live 8 event in Hyde Park, London, opening the show with "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and closing it with "The Long and Winding Road". In September, he released the rock album Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, for which he provided most of the instrumentation. In 2006, McCartney released the classical work Ecce Cor Meum. The rock album Memory Almost Full followed in 2007. In 2008, he released his third Fireman album, Electric Arguments. Also in 2008, he performed at a concert in Liverpool to celebrate the city's year as European Capital of Culture. In 2009, after a four-year break, he returned to touring and has since performed over 80 shows.

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.On 9 September 2009, EMI reissued the Beatles catalogue following a four-year digital remastering effort, releasing a music video game called The Beatles: Rock Band the same day. 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—a venue constructed to replace Shea Stadium in Queens, New York. These performances yielded the double live album Good Evening New York City later that year. In 2010, McCartney opened the Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In July 2011, McCartney played two sold-out concerts at the new Yankee Stadium.

A New York Times review of the first concert reported that McCartney was "not saying goodbye but touring stadiums and playing marathon concerts." In September 2011, having been commissioned by the New York City Ballet, McCartney released his first score for dance, a collaboration with Peter Martins called Ocean's Kingdom.Also in 2011, McCartney married Nancy Shevell. He released Kisses on the Bottom, a collection of standards, in February 2012; that same month the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences honoured him as the MusiCares Person of the Year, two days prior to his performance at the 54th Grammy Awards. As of 2012, McCartney remains one of the world's top draws. He played to over 100,000 people total during two performances in Mexico City in May, the shows grossing nearly $6 million.

In June 2012, McCartney closed Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee Concert held outside Buckingham Palace, performing a set that included "Let It Be" and "Live and Let Die".He closed the opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London on 27 July, singing "The End" and "Hey Jude" and inviting the audience to join in on the coda. Having donated his time, he received £1 from the Olympic organisers. Musicianship McCartney is largely a self-taught musician. Musicologist Ian MacDonald described McCartney's approach as "by nature drawn to music's formal aspects yet wholly untutored ... [he] produced technically 'finished' work almost entirely by instinct, his harmonic judgement based mainly on perfect pitch and an acute pair of ears ... [A] natural melodist—a creator of tunes capable of existing apart from their harmony". McCartney commented, "I prefer to think of my approach to music as ... rather like the primitive cave artists, who drew without training." Bass guitar McCartney's skill as a bass player has been acknowledged by other bassists, including Sting, Dr. Dre bassist Mike Elizondo, and Colin Moulding of XTC.

Known to play using a plectrum or pick almost exclusively, McCartney only occasionally plays fingerstyle. He does not use slapping or muting techniques. Strongly influenced by Motown, in particular by James Jamerson, McCartney called him a hero for his melodic style. Also influenced by Brian Wilson, McCartney commented: "because he went to very unusual places". Another favourite bassist is Stanley Clarke. "Paul is one of the most innovative bass players ... half the stuff that's going on now is directly ripped off from his Beatles period ... He's an egomaniac about everything else, but his bass playing he'd always been a bit coy about." —Lennon, Playboy magazine, January 1981 During McCartney's early years with the Beatles, he primarily used a Höfner 500/1 bass, though in 1965, he began sporadically using a Rickenbacker 4001S for recording. While typically using Vox amplifiers, by 1967 he had also begun using a Fender Bassman for amplification.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, he used a Wal 5-String, which he said made him play more thick-sounding basslines, in contrast to the much lighter Höfner, which inspired him to play more sensitively, something he considers fundamental to his playing style. He changed back to the Höfner around 1990 for that reason. He uses Mesa Boogie bass amplifiers while performing live. MacDonald identified "She's a Woman" as the point when McCartney's bass playing began to evolve dramatically, and Beatles biographer Chris Ingham singled out Rubber Soul as the moment when McCartney's playing exhibited significant progress, particularly on "The Word".Bacon and Morgan agreed, calling McCartney's 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." MacDonald inferred 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 "delivered his most spontaneous bass-part to date".

Bacon and Morgan described 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." MacDonald considered the track the Beatles' best B-side, stating that its "clangorously saturated texture resonates around McCartney's [bassline]", which MacDonald described as "so inventive that it threatens to overwhelm the track". MacDonald also indicated the influence of Indian classical music in "exotic melismas in the bass part". McCartney identified Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band as containing his strongest and most inventive bass playing, particularly on "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". Acoustic guitar "If I couldn't have any other instrument, I would have to have an acoustic guitar." —McCartney, Guitar Player, July 1990 McCartney primarily flatpicks while playing acoustic guitar, though he also uses elements of fingerpicking.

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". McCartney singled out "Blackbird" as a personal favourite and described his technique for the guitar part in the following way: "I got my own little sort of cheating way of [fingerpicking] ... I'm actually sort of pulling two strings at a time ... I was trying to emulate those folk players."He employed a similar technique for "Jenny Wren". He played an Epiphone Texan on many of his acoustic recordings, but also used a Martin D-28. Electric guitar McCartney played lead electric guitar on several Beatles recordings, including what MacDonald described as a "fiercely angular slide guitar solo" on "Drive My Car", which McCartney played on an Epiphone Casino. McCartney said of the instrument, "if I had to pick one electric guitar it would be this." He contributed what MacDonald described as "a startling guitar solo" on the Harrison composition "Taxman" and the "shrieking" guitar on "Sgt.

Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and "Helter Skelter". MacDonald also praised McCartney's "coruscating pseudo-Indian" guitar solo on "Good Morning Good Morning".On his "Taxman" solo, McCartney commented, "I was very inspired by Jimi Hendrix. It was really my first voyage into feedback."In 1990, when asked who his favourite guitar players were he included Eddie Van Halen, Eric Clapton and David Gilmour, stating, "but I still like Hendrix the best." He has primarily used a Gibson Les Paul for electric work, particularly during live performances. Vocals McCartney's vocals cross several musical genres. On "Call Me Back Again", according to Benitez, "McCartney shines as a bluesy solo vocalist" while MacDonald called "I'm Down" "a rock-and-roll classic" that "illustrates McCartney's vocal and stylistic versatility". MacDonald described "Helter Skelter" as an early attempt at heavy metal, and "Hey Jude" as a "pop/rock hybrid", pointing out McCartney's "use of gospel-style melismas" in the song and his "pseudo-soul shrieking in the fade-out".

Benitez identified "Hope of Deliverance" and "Put It There" as examples of McCartney's folk music efforts while musicologist Walter Everett considered "When I'm Sixty-Four" and "Honey Pie" attempts at vaudeville. MacDonald praised the "swinging beat" of the Beatles' twenty-four bar blues song, "She's a Woman" as "the most extreme sound they had manufactured to date", with McCartney's voice "at the edge, squeezed to the upper limit of his chest register and threatening to crack at any moment." MacDonald described "I've Got a Feeling" as a "raunchy, mid-tempo rocker" with a "robust and soulful" vocal performance and "Back in the U.S.S.R." as "the last of [the Beatles'] up-tempo rockers", McCartney's "belting" vocals among his best since "Drive My Car", recorded three years earlier. Keyboards McCartney played piano on several Beatles songs, including "Every Little Thing", "She's a Woman", "For No One", "A Day in the Life", "Hello, Goodbye", "Hey Jude", "Lady Madonna", "Let It Be" and "The Long and Winding Road".

MacDonald considered the piano part in "Lady Madonna" as reminiscent of Fats Domino, and "Let It Be" as having a gospel rhythm. MacDonald called McCartney's Mellotron intro on "Strawberry Fields Forever" an integral feature of the song's character. McCartney played a Moog synthesizer on the Beatles song "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" and the Wings track "Loup (1st Indian on the Moon)". Ingham described the Wings songs "With a Little Luck" and "London Town" as "full of the most sensitive pop synthesizer touches". Drums McCartney played drums on the Beatles songs "Back in the U.S.S.R.", "Dear Prudence", "Martha My Dear", "Wild Honey Pie" and "The Ballad of John and Yoko". He also played all the drum parts on his first and second solo albums McCartney and McCartney II, as well as on the Wings album Band on the Run and most of the drums on his solo LP Chaos and Creation in the Backyard. Tape loops In the mid-1960s, when visiting artist friend John Dunbar's flat in London, McCartney brought tapes he had compiled at then-girlfriend Jane Asher's home.

They included mixes of various songs, musical pieces and comments made by McCartney that Dick James made into a demo for him.Heavily influenced by American avant-garde musician John Cage, McCartney made tape loops by recording voices, guitars and bongos on a Brenell tape recorder and splicing the various loops. He referred to the finished product as "electronic symphonies". He reversed the tapes, and speeded them up and slowed them down to create the effects he wanted, some of which the Beatles later used on the songs "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "The Fool on the Hill". Early influences McCartney performing in Prague, June 2004 Achievements Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist in March 1999, Guinness World Records described McCartney 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. According to Guinness, he is "the most successful songwriter" in UK singles chart history and "the most successful musician of all time".

He 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 number 1. In total, the songs have spent 1,662 weeks in the charts (up to the beginning of 2007)." McCartney wrote or co-wrote 32 number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100: twenty with the Beatles; nine solo and/or with Wings; one as a co-writer of "A World Without Love", a number-one single for Peter and Gordon; one as a co-writer on Elton John's cover of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"; and one as a co-writer with Jackson on "Say Say Say". As of 2012, he has sold 15.5 million RIAA certified units in the United States.

Credited with more number ones in the UK than any other artist, McCartney has participated in twenty-four chart topping singles: seventeen with the Beatles, one solo, and one each with Wings, Stevie Wonder, Ferry Aid, Band Aid, Band Aid 20 and "The Christians et al". 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). "Yesterday" is the most covered song in history with more than 2,200 recorded versions, 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 [last] century in the US". His 1968 Beatles composition, "Hey Jude", is also a career highlight.

It achieved the highest sales in the UK that year, topping the US charts for nine weeks, longer than any other Beatles single. It was also the longest single released by the band, and at seven minutes eleven seconds, the longest ever number one to that point. "Hey Jude" is the best-selling Beatles single, achieving sales of over five million copies soon after its release. In July 2005, his performance of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" with U2 at Live 8 became the fastest-released single in history. Available within forty-five minutes of its recording, hours later it had achieved number one on the UK Official Download Chart Awards In 1990, the IAU's Minor Planet Center named the planet 4148, "McCartney" in his honour. In May 2000, the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors awarded him a Fellowship. In 2008, he received a BRIT award for Outstanding Contribution to Music, as well as an honorary Doctor of Music degree from Yale University. In 2010, President Barack Obama honoured McCartney with the Gershwin Prize for his contributions to popular music.

He returned to the White House later that year as a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors. McCartney won two Grammy awards with Wings, and two as a solo artist. In 2012, he became the last Beatle to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.On 8 September 2012, during a ceremony in Paris, French President François Hollande decorated McCartney with the Légion d'Honneur, with a rank of officer, for his services to music The 'Paul is dead' myth | The Beatles Bible The ‘Paul is dead’ myth The ‘Paul is dead’ myth 1 2 Next The 'Paul Is Dead' myth began in 1969, and alleged that Paul McCartney died in 1966. The Beatles are said to have covered up the death, despite inserting a series of clues into their songs and artwork. The story goes that at 5am on Wednesday 9 November 1966, McCartney stormed out of a session for the Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album, got in to his Austin Healey car, and subsequently crashed and died.

Somewhat improbably, McCartney was said to have been replaced by a lookalike, called variously William Shears Campbell or William Sheppard. William Campbell allegedly became Billy Shears on Sgt Pepper, while William Sheppard was supposedly the inspiration behind The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill (actually an American named Richard Cooke III). In fact, the crash never happened. Between 6 and 19 November 1966, McCartney and his girlfriend Jane Asher were on holiday, travelling through France and Kenya. However, a couple of relevant incidents did take place. On 26 December 1965 McCartney crashed his moped, resulting in a chipped tooth (seen in the videos for Paperback Writer and Rain ) and a scar on his top lip, which he hid by growing a moustache. Additionally, on 7 January 1967 McCartney's Mini Cooper was involved in an accident on the M1 motorway outside London, as a result of which it was written off. However, the car was being driven by a Moroccan student named Mohammed Hadjij, and McCartney was not present. Hadjij was an assistant to London art gallery owner Robert Fraser.

The pair turned up at McCartney's house on the evening of 7 January, and were later joined by Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones and antiques dealer Christopher Gibbs. The party decided to head to Jagger's home in Hertfordshire, before moving on to Redlands, Richards' Sussex mansion (and scene of his later drugs bust). McCartney travelled with Jagger in the latter's Mini Cooper, while Hadjij drove in McCartney's Mini. The two cars became separated during the journey. Hadjij crashed McCartney's Mini and was hospitalised with injuries. The heavily customised car was highly recognisable, so rumours began circulating that McCartney had been killed in the incident. The following month a paragraph appeared in the February 1967 edition of the Beatles Book Monthly magazine, headed "FALSE RUMOUR": Stories about the Beatles are always flying around Fleet Street. The 7th January was very icy, with dangerous conditions on the M1 motorway, linking London with the Midlands, and towards the end of the day, a rumour swept London that Paul McCartney had been killed in a car crash on the M1.

But, of course, there was absolutely no truth in it at all, as the Beatles' Press Officer found out when he telephoned Paul's St John's Wood home and was answered by Paul himself who had been at home all day with his black Mini Cooper safely locked up in the garage. Beatles Book Monthly Although the magazine downplayed the incident, and claimed the car was in McCartney's possession The origins of the myth Belief that Paul McCartney may have died in the mid 1960s began in 1969. The first known print reference was in an article written by Tim Harper which appeared in the 17 September edition of the Times-Delphic, the newspaper of the Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. Harper later claimed that he wasn't the original source for any of the claims in his articles. He said he was writing for entertainment purposes only, and said he got the information from a fellow student, Dartanyan Brown. Mr Brown is said to have got the story from a musician who had heard it on the Californian west coast, and that he also read the story in an underground newspaper.

The rumours gained momentum on 12 October 1969, after an on-air phone call to radio presenter Russ Gibb, a DJ on WKNR-FM in Michigan. The caller, identified only as 'Tom', claimed that McCartney was dead, and instructed Gibb to play Revolution 9 backwards, where the repeated "number nine" phrase was heard as "turn me on, dead man". Listening to the show was Fred LaBour, an arts reviewer for student newspaper The Michigan Daily. LaBour used clues from Gibb's programme along with others he had invented himself - including the name of William Campbell, the alleged replacement for McCartney. I made the guy up. It was originally going to be Glenn Campbell, with two Ns, and then I said 'that's too close, nobody'll buy that'. So I made it William Campbell. Fred LaBour The Michigan Daily published it on 14 October, under the title McCartney Dead; New Evidence Brought To Light. Although clearly intended as a joke, it had an impact far wider than the writer and his editor expected.

Shortly afterwards, Russ Gibb co-produced a one-hour special called The Beatle Plot, giving the rumour greater prominence; by then it was well on its way to become a national, then international, talking point, inspiring fans to pore over their albums for further clues. A British version of the rumour is believed to have existed prior to the American one, with fewer details. The sources are unknown, but the notion of McCartney dying in a road accident appears to have originated there. The Beatles' responses Although The Beatles and their press office at Apple were initially bewildered and somewhat annoyed by the story's refusal to die away, there is evidence that the group members themselves found it amusing. In an edition of Life magazine dated 7 November 1969, McCartney reassured fans that "Rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated," paraphrasing Mark Twain. "However," he continued, "if I was dead, I'm sure I'd be the last to know." The magazine's cover featured Paul and Linda with their children, in a picture taken on their Scottish farm. The cover featured the words "The case of the 'missing' Beatle - Paul is still with us".

Shortly after the issue went on sale the rumours started to decline. In his revealing Rolling Stone interview in 1970, John Lennon was asked about the death story. He responded in a typically forthright fashion: I don't know where that started, that was barmy. I don't know, you know as much about it as me... No, that was bullshit, the whole thing was made up. We never went for anything like that. We put tit-tit-tit in Girl . It would be things like a beat missing or something like that, see if anyone noticed - I know we used to have a few things, but nothing that could be interpreted like that. Lennon referred to the myth in 1971's How Do You Sleep?, his vitriolic attack on McCartney from the Imagine album. The song contains the lines: "Those freaks was right when they said you was dead, the one mistake you made was in your head". McCartney parodied the rumours with the title and cover or his 1993 album Paul Is Live. The artwork was based on the Abbey Road cover photograph; instead of the 28IF number plate, a car shows 51 IS instead.

To reinforce the cycle of life, he is pictured being dragged across the famous zebra crossing by one of the offspring of his sheepdog Martha.

Question: Paul McCartney, and supposedly inspiration for a Beatles song/song title?
Answer: Martha