Sir James Paul McCartney MBE

McCartney is listed in Guinness World Records as the most successful musician and composer in popular music history, with 60 gold discs and sales of 100 million singles. His song "Yesterday" is listed as the most covered song in history - by over 3,700 artists so far - and has been played more than 7,000,000 times on American television and radio. Wings' 1977 single "Mull of Kintyre" became the first single to sell more than two million copies in the UK, and remains the UK's top selling non-charity single. (Three charity singles have since surpassed it in sales; the first to do so—in 1984—was Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas?", whose participants included McCartney.) According to britishhitsongwriters.com he is the most successful songwriter in U.K. singles chart history based on weeks that his compositions have spent on the chart.

His company MPL Communications owns the copyrights to more than 3,000 songs, including all of the songs written by Buddy Holly, along with the publishing rights to such musicals as Guys and Dolls, A Chorus Line, and Grease. McCartney is also an advocate for animal rights, vegetarianism, and music education; he is active in campaigns against landmines, seal hunting, and Third World debt.

Early years

main: Jim and Mary McCartney Paul McCartney was born in Walton Hospital in Liverpool, England, where his mother, Mary (née Mahon), had worked as a nurse in the maternity ward.Spitz (2005), p75. He has one brother, Michael, born 7 January 1944.Miles (1998), p4. McCartney was baptised Roman Catholic but was raised non-denominationally: his mother was Roman Catholic, and his father, James "Jim" McCartney, was a Protestant turned agnostic.

In 1947, he began attending Stockton Wood Road Primary school. He then attended the Joseph Williams Junior School, and passed the 11-plus exam in 1953 with three others out of the 90 examinees and thus gained admission to the Liverpool Institute.Miles (1998), p9. In 1954, while riding on the bus to the Institute, he met George Harrison, who lived nearby.Spitz (2005), p125. Passing the exam meant that McCartney and Harrison did not have to go to a secondary modern school, which most pupils attended until they were eligible to work. It also meant that Grammar school pupils had to find new friends.Spitz (2005), pp82-83.

McCartney's father was a trumpet player and pianist who had led Jim Mac's Jazz Band in the 1920s. He encouraged his two sons to be musical.Miles (1998), p22. Jim had an upright piano in the front room that he had bought from Brian Epstein's store, and McCartney's grandfather, Joe McCartney, played an E-flat tuba.Spitz (2005), P71.Miles (1998), pp23-24. Jim McCartney used to point out the different instruments in songs on the radio, and often took McCartney to local brass band concerts. After the death of his wife, Mary, Jim McCartney gave McCartney a nickel-plated trumpet, but when skiffle music became popular, McCartney swapped the trumpet for a £15 Framus Zenith (model 17) acoustic guitar.Spitz (2005), p86.Miles (1998), p21.