Person attributes
Who is Paul McCartney?
Paul McCartney is an English musician and a former member of the legendary music band ‘The Beatles’. A multiple Grammy Award winner, he is also a two-time inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (as a member of The Beatles in 1988, and as a solo artist in 1999), and one of the most successful composers and performers of all time. With his unprecedented success as a musician he has achieved a legendary status, and is regarded as one of the icons of 20th century English music. He loved music from a young age and was influenced by his father who was a trumpet player. He began writing songs as a teenager and started playing the guitar. As a young man he met John Lennon in a church festival and Lennon who played with a band invited Paul to join them. Soon other aspiring musicians too joined the group, and thus ‘The Beatles’ was born. Over the next few years ‘The Beatles’ went on to achieve phenomenal fame and all the group members, including Paul McCartney became internationally famous. He was already an influential figure by the time The Beatles broke up and easily embarked on a successful solo career. Along with all his musical achievements, he is also well-known for his philanthropic activities and social activism
Career
Over the next few years, the band adopted the name, ‘The Beatles’. It also saw many changes in the personnel and by 1962 he line-up consisted of Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr.
The band’s first single, “Love Me Do”, principally written by Paul McCartney in collaboration with Lennon was released in 1962. The single became a hit and the Beatles became very popular.
In 1965 the group released their album, ‘Help!’ which spawned the hit single “Yesterday” written by Paul McCartney. The song went on to become one of the most covered songs in the history of recorded music with more than 2,200 cover versions.
Paul McCartney gave the group an idea for a concept album, ‘Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band’ which was released in 1976 to immediate success. It performed well commercially and was also critically acclaimed. It spent 27 weeks at the top of the albums chart in the United Kingdom and won four Grammy Awards in 1968.
Even though the band achieved phenomenal popularity and widespread success, the relations between the band members became strained and they started having frequent disagreements. Thus Paul McCartney left the band in 1970.
In 1971, he along with his wife Linda McCartney, session drummer Denny Seiwell, and former Moody Blues guitarist Denny Laine formed the rock band ‘Paul McCartney and Wings’.
Paul McCartney and Wings released several albums over the next decade including ‘Red Rose Speedway’ (1973), ‘Band on the Run’ (1973), ‘Venus and Mars’ (1975), ‘Wings at the Speed of Sound’ (1976), and ‘Back to the Egg’ (1979). The group disbanded in 1981 following disagreements over royalties and salaries.
The 1980s was a difficult time for Paul McCartney. He had become a drug addict and was arrested for possession of marijuana and fined. The same decade also saw the murder of his former partner, John Lennon, which deeply disturbed him. Even though he continued creating music, he could not achieve much success during this period.
During the 1990s, he collaborated with Martin Glover—popularly known as Youth—who was bassist of the rock band ‘Killing Joke’ and formed the band ‘The Fireman’. They came out with the album ‘Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest’, in 1993. The same year, McCartney released the rock album, ‘Off the Ground’.
He took a break from his solo career to work on ‘The Beatles Anthology’, a documentary TV series, a three-volume set of double albums, and a book focusing on the history of The Beatles. All the three surviving Beatles, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, participated in the making of the works.
He continued touring, performing and recording new albums well into the new millennium even though he was now in his sixties. The albums he released during this period include ‘Ecce Cor Meum’ (2006), ‘Memory Almost Full’ (2007), and ‘Electric Arguments’ (2008).
