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45s.com -- Recording Artist Information: Paul McCartney
Date Born June 18, 1942 Location Allerton, Liverpool, England Music Rock and Roll singer, guitarist, songwriter Charted Pop/Rock Hits 40 + 72 with The Beatles Period Active March 6, 1971 to.... Biggest Hits Ebony And Ivory; Say Say Say; Silly Love Songs; My Love; Coming Up. Music List and Data Search Music List Notable Information Paul McCartney was a founding member of The Beatles" in the late 1950's -- originally known as The Quarrymen, Johnny & The Moondogs, The Rainbows, and The Silver Beatles. Paul McCartney and John Lennon were prolific songwriters. He has written over 50 Top 10 singles. Paul won Grammy's Lifetime Achievement Award in 1990, and he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1997.
Other Names Born James Paul McCartney Other Web Sites Usenet - rec.music.artists.paul-mccartney MPL Communications: Paul McCartney
Macca-L: The Paul McCartney List
Paul McCartney Guitar Collection
FAQ - Paul McCartney List [Macca-L]
Usenet - rec.music.artists.paul-mccartney
Paul McCartney was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999. The following information was obtained from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:
Paul McCartney was the first of the Beatles to work on an extracurricular recording project (the soundtrack to the 1966 film The Family Way) and also the first to release a bonafide, song-filled solo album (McCartney, which appeared as the Beatles were dissolving in 1970). In the years since their breakup, McCartney has been the most prolific ex-Beatle and has also enjoyed the greatest measure of commercial success. Between his work with the Beatles, as a solo artist and leader of Wings, McCartney has written or cowritten more than 50 Top Ten singles. On his own and with Wings, McCartney has recorded nearly 30 albums over the past three decades, averaging an album a year. Moreover, McCartney has cracked the Top Forty on 35 occasions, with and without Wings. When combined with the Beatles' 49 Top Forty singles, Paul McCartney is the most successful pop-music composer ever and the second-greatest hitmaker, behind Elvis Presley.
Beyond the numerical achievements, McCartney's career is noteworthy for the purposeful way in which he demystified himself as a rock star. During the Seventies - a decade of pampered superstars and ornately costumed glitter rockers - McCartney modestly presented himself as a family man who happened to be a working musician. His solo work can be viewed as a celebration of everyday life. McCartney has rarely been a favorite of rock critics, but his body of work - some of it lightweight, much of it underrated - has given boundless pleasure to the music-loving public. Having been the primary melodist within the Beatles, it is not surprising that McCartney's knack for an ear-catching pop tune has remained very much in evidence with Wings and as a solo artist.
McCartney's low-key solo debut found him playing all the instruments, including keyboards, guitar, bass and drums. A one-man show full of charming songs and fragments that added up to an evocation of (in his own words) "home, family, love," McCartney anticipated the more intimate singer-songwriter movement that would fill the early-Seventies void after the chaos and clangor of the Sixties. McCartney appeared in April 1970, two weeks before the Let It Be, the last studio release from the Beatles. Ram appeared a year later, credited to Paul and Linda McCartney. (The two had been married on March 12, 1969.) Ram became a favorite of FM rock radio and even yielded a Number One single, the whimsical, ambitious "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey."
For the rest of the decade, save for the odd solo single, McCartney devoted his creative energies to Wings. Under the Wings rubric, McCartney worked with wife Linda (who played keyboards and sang) and a fairly stable lineup of musicians. Strange as it may seem, Wings stayed together longer than the Beatles, though there were several personnel changes. McCartney clearly intended Wings to be perceived not as a solo vehicle but a band, and he willingly submerged his identity within the group framework, especially on Wings' 1971 debut, Wild Life. However, Wings' finest hour was Band on the Run (1973), by which time the group had been pared down to a three-piece: the McCartneys and Denny Laine, formerly of the Moody Blues. Band on the Run appeared to be McCartney's attempt to deflect criticism that his post-Beatles' efforts lacked substance. The album and its three Top Ten hits - "Jet," "Band on the Run" and "Helen Wheels" - represent some of his most inspired work.
Wings enlarged to a five-piece again by the time of Venus and Mars, with the addition of guitarist Jimmy McCullough and drummer Joe English, and their full-scale tour, preserved on Wings over America, was a major rock and roll event. Commercially, McCartney had his finger on the pulse of the Seventies. Five consecutive Wings albums - Red Rose Speedway, Band on the Run, Venus and Mars, Wings at the Speed of Sound and Wings over America (a triple live album) - topped the album charts. At the height of punk-rock in 1977, Wings' sentimental tribute to hearth and home, "Mull of Kintyre," became the best-selling single in British history. So popular were Wings that in 1978 the group could fill a 13-track best-of, Wings Greatest, with nothing but hits. In 1979, Wings switched labels, from Capitol to Columbia, and released their last album, Back to the Egg. The group officially disbanded in April 1981.
McCartney resumed his solo career with 1980's McCartney II. He followed it with Tug of War (1982), which reunited him with Beatles producer George Martin and proved to be his strongest outing since Band on the Run. McCartney duetted with Stevie Wonder on "Ebony and Ivory" and sang with Michael Jackson on "The Girl Is Mine," which appeared on the latter's Thriller. Both songs went to Number One. Another duet with Jackson, "Say Say Say," turned up on McCartney's Pipes of Peace (1983). Give My Regards to Broad Street, a feature film and accompanying soundtrack, released in 1984, included reworkings of several Beatles songs.
The McCartney catalog has swelled since the mid-Eighties as he's tackled an eclectic assortment of projects. These include a solid run of solo albums (Press to Play, Flowers in the Dirt, Off the Ground, Flaming Pie), live albums from two world tours (Tripping the Live Fantastic and Paul Is Live), an all-acoustic session for MTV (Unplugged: The Official Bootleg), an album of vintage rock and roll covers (Choba B CCCP, initially released only in the Soviet Union), and a pair of electronic "rave" albums issued under the alias "The Fireman." McCartney also explored classical forms with his Liverpool Oratorio (1991), written with conductor Carl Davis, and the orchestral piece Standing Stone (1997), composed to honor the 100th anniversary of EMI, his record label.
With this vast output, McCartney has proven himself to be one of the more versatile musical figures of the 20th century.
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