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4/4 TIME (SLOW)
THE DOTS = EXTEND THAT NOTE

[V1]
. 8 8 8 8 -8..-8..
Gott ist ge-gen-wär-tig.
. 7 7 7 7 -7..-7..
Las-set uns an-be-ten
.-6 -6 6 7 -8 8 -8..7..
und in Ehr-furcht vor ihn tre-ten.
. 8 8 8 8 -8..-8..
Gott ist in der Mit-te.
. 7 7 7 7 -7.. -7..
Al-les in uns schwei-ge
.-6 -6 6 7 -8 8 -8..7..
und sich in-nigst vor ihm beu-ge.
.8.. 8..-9…. -8.. -8.. 8….
Wer ihn kennt, wer ihn nennt,
. 9 9 -9 8 -8.. 8..
schlag die Au-gen nie-der;
. 9 9 -9 8 -8.. 7..
kommt, er-gebt euch wie-der.

[V2]
Gott ist gegenwärtig, dem die Cherubinen
Tag und Nacht gebücket dienen.
Heilig, heilig, heilig! singen ihm zur Ehre
aller Engel hohe Chöre.
Herr, vernimm unsre Stimm,
da auch wir Geringen
unsre Opfer bringen.

[V3]
Wir entsagen willig allen Eitelkeiten,
aller Erdenlust und Freuden;
da liegt unser Wille, Seele, Leib und Leben
dir zum Eigentum ergeben.
Du allein sollst es sein,
unser Gott und Herre,
dir gebührt die Ehre.

[V4]
Majestätisch Wesen, möcht ich recht dich preisen
und im Geist dir Dienst erweisen.
Möcht ich wie die Engel immer vor dir stehen
und dich gegenwärtig sehen.
Lass mich dir für und für
trachten zu gefallen,
liebster Gott, in allem.

[V5-9]

6 7 -8
Lighting strike
8 -8 7 -8 8 -8 7 -6 7 -8
Inside my chest to keep me up at night
6 7 -8
Dream of ways
8 -8 7 -8 8 -8 7 -6
To make you understand my pain

8 -8 8 -8 8 -8 8 -8 8
Clouds of sulfur in the air
8 -8 8 -8 8 -8 -8 7
Bombs are falling everywhere
9 8 -8 -6
It’s heartbreak warfare

8 -8 8 -8 8 -8 8 -8 8
Once you want it to begin
8 -8 8 -8 8 -8 -8 7
No one really ever wins
9 8 -8 -6
In heartbreak warfare

-6 -7 7 -8 7
If you want more love
6 7 8 8 -6
Why don’t you say so
-6 -7 7 -9 8
If you want more love
9 -9 8 -8 7
Why don’t you say so

Drop his name
Push it in and twist the knife again
Watch my face
As I pretend to feel no pain

Clouds of sulfur in the air
Bombs are falling everywhere
It’s heartbreak warfare

Once you want it to begin
No one really ever wins
In heartbreak warfare

If you want more love
Why don’t you say so
If you want more love
Why don’t you say so
-8 -8 7
Just say so

(Solo)

4 4 -3’ -4 -3’ 4 -3’ 4 -3‘ 4 4
How come the only way to know how high you get me
-3’ -3’ 4 4 -4 -4
Is to see how far I fall
4 4 -3’ -4 -3’ 4 -3’ 4 -3‘ 4 4
God only knows how much I’d love you if you’d let me
-3’ -3’ 4 4 -4 -4
But I can’t break free at all

4 4 6 -5 5 -5 5
It’s heart, heartbreak

8 -8 8 -8 8 -8 8 -8 8
I don’t care if we don’t sleep at all tonight
-8 -8 -8 -8 7 7 -6
Let’s just fix this whole thing now
8 -8 8 -8 8 -8 8 -8 8
I swear to God we’re going to get it right
-8 7 -8 8 -8 7 -6
If you put your weapon down

Red wine and Ambien
You’re talking shit again
It’s heartbreak warfare

Good to know it’s all a game
Disappointment has a name
It’s heartbreak warfare

4/4 TIME (STRICTLY AND JOYFUL)
THE DOTS = EXTEND THAT NOTE

[V1]
.6 7 7. -7 7 8 8 -8
In das War-ten die-ser We-elt
. 9 9 9. -9 8 -8 8..
fällt ein strah-lend hel-les Licht.
. 6 7 7. -7 7 8 8 -8
Weit ent-fernt von dem Ge-drän-ge
. 9 -8 -8. -7 -7 -6 6..
klingt die Stim-me die da spricht:

[C]
.9 9 9 7 -9 8 8 -8
Se-het auf der Ret-ter ko-ommt.
.9 9 9 7 -9 8 8 -8
Wa-chet auf und seid be-rei-it,
.-10 -10 -10. 9 -9 8 -9..
denn der Herr er-löst sein Volk
.-8 8 -9 9. 7 7 -8 8..
wun-de-er-bar zu sei-ner Zeit.
.-10 -10 -10. 9 -9 8 -9..
Denn der Herr er-löst sein Volk
.-8 8 -9 9. 7 7 -7 7..
wun-de-er-bar zu sei-ner Zeit.

[V2]
In die Trauer greift Gott ein,
er ist nahe, dem der weint.
Dass auch in der tiefsten Not
uns das Licht der Hoffnung scheint.

[V3]
In die Trauer greift Gott ein,
er ist nahe, dem der weint.
Dass auch in der tiefsten Not
uns das Licht der Hoffnung scheint.

4 -4 5 6 4 -4
Oh my name is Jock Stewart
4 -4 5 7 -7 -6
I’m a canny gaun man
7 7 7 6 5 -4
And a rovin’ young fellow
4-4 5
I’ve been

4 -4 5 6 4 -4
So be easy and free
4 -4 5 7
When you’re drinkin’
-7 -6
with me
7 7 7 6 5 -4
I’m a man you don’t meet
4 -4 4
every day

3/2 TIME (NORMAL PACE WITH JOY)
THE DOTS = EXTEND THAT NOTE

[V1]
.4..-3” 3 4.. -4.. 5 5 -4.. .
Nun auf-wärts froh den Blick ge-wandt
. 5 6 -5 5.. -4.. 4….
und vor-wärts fest den Schritt!
.6.. 5 6 -6.. 6.. -5 5 -4..
Wir gehn an un – sers Meis-ters Hand,
. 6 4 -5 5… -4.. 4….
und un-ser Herr geht mit.

[V2]
Vergesset, was dahinten liegt
und euern Weg beschwert;
was ewig euer Herz vergnügt,
ist wohl des Opfers wert.

[V3] Und was euch noch gefangen hält,
o werft es von euch ab!
Begraben sei die ganze Welt
für euch in Christi Grab.

[V4] So steigt ihr frei mit ihm hinan
zu lichten Himmelshöhn.
Er uns vorauf, er bricht uns Bahn –
wer will ihm widerstehn?

[V5]
Drum aufwärts froh den Blick gewandt
und vorwärts fest den Schritt!
Wir gehn an unsers Meisters Hand,
und unser Herr geht mit.

3/2 TIME (NORMAL PACE WITH JOY)
THE DOTS = EXTEND THAT NOTE

[V1]
.7.. -6 6 7.. -8.. 8 8 -8.. .
Nun auf-wärts froh den Blick ge-wandt
. 8 9 -9 8.. -8.. 7….
und vor-wärts fest den Schritt!
.9.. 8 9 -10.. 9.. -9 8 -8..
Wir gehn an un – sers Meis-ters Hand,
. 9 7 -9 8… -8.. 7….
und un-ser Herr geht mit.

[V2]
Vergesset, was dahinten liegt
und euern Weg beschwert;
was ewig euer Herz vergnügt,
ist wohl des Opfers wert.

[V3] Und was euch noch gefangen hält,
o werft es von euch ab!
Begraben sei die ganze Welt
für euch in Christi Grab.

[V4] So steigt ihr frei mit ihm hinan
zu lichten Himmelshöhn.
Er uns vorauf, er bricht uns Bahn –
wer will ihm widerstehn?

[V5]
Drum aufwärts froh den Blick gewandt
und vorwärts fest den Schritt!
Wir gehn an unsers Meisters Hand,
und unser Herr geht mit.

3/2 TIME (NORMAL PACE WITH JOY)
THE DOTS = EXTEND THAT NOTE

[V1]
.4.. -3 3 4.. -5.. 6 6 -5.. .
Nun auf-wärts froh den Blick ge-wandt
. 6 7 6< 6.. -5.. 5.... und vor-wärts fest den Schritt! .7.. 6 7 -7.. 7.. 6< 6 -5.. Wir gehn an un-sers Meis-ters Hand, . 7 5 6< 6... -5.. 5.... und un-ser Herr geht mit.[V2] Vergesset, was dahinten liegt und euern Weg beschwert; was ewig euer Herz vergnügt, ist wohl des Opfers wert.[V3] Und was euch noch gefangen hält, o werft es von euch ab! Begraben sei die ganze Welt für euch in Christi Grab.[V4] So steigt ihr frei mit ihm hinan zu lichten Himmelshöhn. Er uns vorauf, er bricht uns Bahn - wer will ihm widerstehn?[V5] Drum aufwärts froh den Blick gewandt und vorwärts fest den Schritt! Wir gehn an unsers Meisters Hand, und unser Herr geht mit.

6 7 -8 8-9 8 -8 8 -8 7
I would have given you all of my heart,

8 9 -10 9 -9 -9 8 8 -8
but there’s someone whose torn it apart.

7 -8 8-9 8 -8 8 -8 7
And she’s taken just all that I had,

-8 8 -8 7 -8 8 -8 7 -8 7
but if you want, I’ll try to love again.

8 9 9 -10 9 9 -9 -9 8 8 -8
Baby, I’ll try to love again, but I know:

6 8 -8 7 -8 -8 -6
The first cut is the deepest.

9 9 9 -10 6 8 -8 7 -8 -8 -6
Baby, I know the first cut is the deepest.

7 -8 8 -9 8-8 -8 7 8 7
When it comes to bein’ lucky, she’s cursed.

8 9 -10 9 9 -9 -9 8 -8
When it comes to lovin’ me, she’s worst.

7 -8 8 -9 8 -8 8 7
I still want you by my side,

8 9 -10 9 9 -9 -9 8 8 -8
just to help me dry the tears that I’ve cried.

7 -8 8 8-8 -8 8 -8 7
And I’m sure gonna give you a try,

-8 8 -8 7 -8 8 -8 7 -8 7
and if you want, I’ll try to love again.

8 9 9 -10 9 9 -9 -9 8 8 -8
Baby, I’ll try to love again, but I know:

6 8 -8 7 -8 -8 -6
The first cut is the deepest.

9 9 9 -10 6 8 -8 7 -8 -8 -6
Baby, I know the first cut is the deepest.

7 -8 8 -9 8-8 -8 7 8 7
When it comes to bein’ lucky, she’s cursed.

8 9 -10 9 9 -9 -9 8 -8
When it comes to lovin’ me, she’s worst.

7 -8 8 -9 8 -8 8 7
I still want you by my side,

8 9 -10 9 9 -9 -9 8 8 -8
just to help me dry the tears that I’ve cried.

7 -8 8 8-8 -8 8 -8 7
And I’m sure gonna give you a try,

-8 8 -8 7 -8 8 -8 7 -8 7
and if you want, I’ll try to love again.

8 9 9 -10 9 9 -9 -9 8 8 -8
Baby, I’ll try to love again, but I know:

6 8 -8 7 -8 -8 -6
The first cut is the deepest.

9 9 9 -10 6 8 -8 7 -8 -8 -6
Baby, I know the first cut is the deepest.

7 -8 8 -9 8-8 -8 7 8 7
When it comes to bein’ lucky, she’s cursed.

8 9 -10 9 9 -9 -9 8 -8
When it comes to lovin’ me, she’s worst.

3 4 -3 4 -4 3 5 -4 4 6 -5
Je hebt me geleerd van jou te gaan houden
5 5 -4 4 3 -3 4 5 -4 4 -4
Zoveel als ‘n meisje dat één keer slechts doet
3 4 -3 4 -6 5 6 -5 5 -4 4
Toe leer me nu ook je weer te vergeten
4 3 4 5 -4 4 4 -3 4 -4 4
Of kom weer terug, dan is alles weer goed

4 -5 5 -5 5 -4 5 -4 4 -4 4 -3
Toen jij in de winkel dat jasje kwam kopen
4 3 -3 4 6 -5 5 -4 5 -4 4
Toen zag ik in jouw nog alleen maar de klant
4 4 -3 4 -6 5 5 5 -4 4 5 -4
Ik vond je wel knap, maar dat liet ik niet blijken
5 -4 5 -5 6 -5 6 -4 5 -5 6
Maar keek toch tersluiks eens naar jouw rechterhand

6 -6 6 5 4 5 -5 -6 6 -5 -6 6
Je was niet getrouwd, had geen ring om je vinger
6 -5 5 -4 4 5 -5 -6 6 -5 6
En toen dus je stem iets galants tot me zei
4 -5 5 -5 6 -5 6 -6 6 -5 -5 -4
Toen heb ik je blozend ‘t antwoord gegeven
4 4 4 4 -4 -4-4 5 5 5 -5
“Vanavond om kwart over zes ben ik vrij”

3 4 -3 4 -4 3 5 -4 4 6 -5
Je hebt me geleerd van jou te gaan houden
5 5 -4 4 3 -3 4 5 -4 4 -4
Zoveel als ‘n meisje dat één keer slechts doet
3 4 -3 4 -6 5 6 -5 5 -4 4
Toe leer me nu ook je weer te vergeten
4 3 4 5 -4 4 4 -3 4 -4 4
Of kom weer terug, dan is alles weer goed

-6 -7 7 -6 77 -7 -6 -7 5
Расцветали
яблоки и
груши

-7 7 -8 -7 -8 -8 7 -7 -6
Поплыли
туманы над
рекой

8 -10 9 -10 9 -9 -9 8 -8 8 -6
Выходила
на берег
Катюша

-9 -8 8 7 -8 -8 7 -7 -6
На высокий
на берег
крутой

Now my name is Jock Stewart,
1 -1 2 3 2 -1
I'm a canny gaun man,
1 -1 2 4 -4 -3
And a roving young fellow I've been.
-3 -4 4 3 2 -1 1 -1 2

Chorus:
So be easy and free,
1 -1 2 3 2 -1
When you're drinkin' wi' me,
1 -1 2 4 -4 -3
I'm a man you don't meet every day.
-3 -4 4 3 2 -1 1 -1 1

Chorus

I have acres of land,
I have men at command,
I have always a shilling to spare.

Chorus

Now, I took out my gun,
With my dog for to shoot
Along by the banks of the Spey.

Chorus

So. come fill up your glasses
Of brandy and wine,
And whatever the cost, I will pay.

Chorus

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Harmonica players today have access to a wealth of software tools that can help them learn, play, record, and maintain their instrument. In this article, we’ll explore some of the most useful softwares for harmonica players. Whether you’re just starting out or you’re an experienced player looking to expand your harmonica horizons, read on for a roundup of handy harmonica helper apps, sites, and programs.

Top Useful softwares for Harmonica players

[toc]

Learning Tools

When you’re first taking up the harmonica, it can be invaluable to have supporting software to supplement your practice. Learning-focused programs can provide structured lessons, receptive feedback, and resources to accelerate your mastery of the instrument.

Apps for Learning Harmonica (for Android & iOS)

Dedicated harmonica learning apps like Harmonica – Play and Learn provide beginner-friendly interfaces with progressive lessons, covering everything from holding the harmonica properly to playing songs. Built-in microphones listen to your playing and offer real-time feedback to improve your technique. Other features like slow tempo controls, note highlights, and repeat loops maximize your retention while learning.

Harmonica Easy Tab

Harmonica Easy Tab is a free mobile app for Android that provides a library of tablature and songs for playing harmonica. It includes over 150 songs with tablature shown in an easy to read format. The app also has useful tools like a tuner, metronome, and transpose options.

Real Harmonica

Music teachers recognize the need for a practical guide to help beginners enter the world of harmonica playing. For those looking to pick up the harmonica, Real Harmonica provides the perfect portable toolkit to start learning anytime.

Real Harmonica is designed for people seeking a functional harmonica instructional they can carry and consult on-the-go. The app covers the many types of harmonica, including diatonic, orchestral, bass, and more. Detailed directions are provided for every harmonica variety so users can get oriented with their new instrument.

The app visually lays out all the notes and holes found on a harmonica. Real Harmonica is easy to pull up and use even during short breaks, making it an ideal learning companion for busy students. Whether you’re able to practice for hours or just have a few minutes to spare, Real Harmonica has the specialized guidance to further your harmonica education.

With Real Harmonica, music teachers have created an application to serve as a true roadmap to musical enlightenment for harmonica beginners. If you’re looking to pick up this satisfying instrument, Real Harmonica has the tools to start playing right away.

Harmonica Bending Trainer

Harmonica Bending Trainer is a mobile app focused on helping players master the challenging technique of bending notes on the harmonica. Available for Android, the free app lets you practice bending while providing visual feedback.

Overall, Harmonica Bending Trainer aptly aids practice and measurement of harmonica bending skills. While light on instruction, its real-time visual feedback makes it easier to develop and self-correct your proficiency with this essential technique. The free specialized app fills a useful niche for bending practice.

Harmonica Clinic

Harmonica Clinic is a paid learning app for iOS focused on techniques like bending, overblowing, and vibrato. Through progressive video lessons and built-in tools, it aims to help players master difficult harmonica skills.

HarpNinja

HarpNinja is a free Android app for learning and playing harmonica. It provides a clean, interactive interface along with tools like songs, lessons, and backing tracks.

Harmonica Lessons

Teach Yourself Harmonica

Harmonica Exercises

The Harmonica Plus

Learn to play the harmonica

Harmonica Saz

YouTube Tutorials

Beyond apps, a world of harmonica tutorial content exists on YouTube. Experienced harmonica teachers share useful tips on embouchure, bending notes, and more. Seeing as well as hearing the guidance makes YouTube an excellent free resource. Searching “learn harmonica” yields many detailed, high-quality video lessons.

Online Courses

For those seeking a structured curriculum, online harmonica courses like HarmonicaLessons.com provide step-by-step training programs. Ranging from absolute beginner lessons to advanced techniques like tongue blocking and overbends, these courses offer guided progression along with community support. Their video libraries allow you to learn at your own pace.

Recording Software

Once you’ve developed your harmonica skills, recording your playing can be rewarding and fun. Specialized software exists to capture harmonica’s expressive nuances.

DAWs for Recording Harmonica

Digital audio workstation (DAW) software like GarageBand, Logic Pro, Ableton Live, and Pro Tools all allow for quality harmonica recording. Their editing capabilities enable you to perfect your takes and add effects. Features like autotune can even compensate for imperfect pitch during bending or overblowing.

Plugins for Harmonica

Harmonica-specific audio plugins can accentuate the instrument’s signature sound. The EastWest Quantum Leap Blues Harmonica virtual instrument simulates a variety of blues harp mics and amps. For convenience, AudioModeling SWAM Harmonica generates realistic harmonica tones via MIDI. And effects like Waves Metaflanger or Soundtoys Crystallizer can infuse your harmonica recordings with psychedelic style.

Backing Tracks

Playing along with backing tracks augments the fun of harmonica while tightening your rhythm and improvisation skills. Some software provides auto-generated accompaniments.

Apps for Jamming to Backing Tracks

Apps like iReal Pro offer a band-in-your-pocket experience, with AI-generated backing tracks in any style, key, and tempo. You can slow tracks down to practice and memorize their chord changes. Then test your soloing chops at full speed while iReal Pro follows you.

YouTube Backing Track Channels

YouTube channels like Backing Tracks for Harmonica provide extensive libraries of style-specific backing tracks to jam along with. Blues, rock, jazz, country, and bluegrass backing tracks give exposure to each genre’s characteristic progressions.

Sheet Music Tools

While harmonica playing doesn’t strictly require reading sheet music, some players appreciate tablature references. Software exists to display and transpose tabs.

Apps for Sheet Music

Mobile sheet music reader apps like Musicnotes or forScore allow you to access, annotate, and even transpose digital sheet music. Their libraries include harmonica songbooks and tablature. You can follow along hands-free on a tablet rather than flipping pages.

Websites for Harmonica Tabs

Websites like Harptabs.com compile user-submitted harmonica tablatures spanning genres from pop to classical. Their song catalogs, often with multiple tab options per song, offer helpful guidance for learning pieces note-for-note. Transposition tools make it easy to adapt tabs to your key of harmonica.

Tuning and Maintenance

Keeping your harps sounding their best involves regular tuning and upkeep. Some software aids this important process.

Tuning Apps

Mobile tuning apps with chromatic pitch detection like Cleartune or InsTuner can assist with tuning your harmonica to concert pitch or custom temperaments like just intonation. Their precision tools and audio feedback help optimize your instrument’s tuning.

Cleaning and Maintenance Tools

Proper harmonica maintenance requires occasional deep cleanings. While not software per se, ultrasonic cleaners provide an effective digital solution to remove grime from a harmonica’s reeds and combs. Just a few minutes of ultrasonic vibration can restore free reed motion and clean airflow.

Conclusion

In summary, exploring specialized software can expand a harmonica player’s abilities and enjoyment. Learning apps expedite mastery, recording tools capture expressive playing, backing tracks make soloing fun, tablature aids reference songs, and maintenance programs keep harps sounding their best. Integrating the variety of helpful digital solutions above will have you wailing the blues – or any genre – in no time. Software might not directly improve the mechanics of your harmonica playing, but it provides assistance to deepen your relationship with the storied instrument.

FAQs

Sidney Thomas “Tommy” Boyce (September 29, 1939 – November 23, 1994) and Bobby Hart (born Robert Luke Harshman; February 18, 1939) were a prolific American duo of singer-songwriters. In addition to three top-40 hits as artists, the duo is well known for its songwriting for The Monkees.

[toc]

Early years

Hart’s father was a church minister and he himself served in the Army after leaving high school. Upon discharge, he travelled to Los Angeles seeking a career as a singer. Boyce was separately pursuing a career as a singer. After being rejected numerous times, Boyce took his father’s suggestion to write a song called “Be My Guest” for rock and roll star Fats Domino. He waited six hours at Domino’s hotel room to present him with the demo, and got Domino to promise to listen to the song. The song hit No. 8 in the US and No. 11 in the UK, becoming Domino’s biggest hit there in several years, and sold over a million copies.  Boyce also found success as the co-writer, with Curtis Lee, of Lee’s 1961 hits “Pretty Little Angel Eyes” and “Under the Moon of Love”.

Boyce met Hart in 1959, and the following year played guitar on Hart’s single “Girl in the Window”, which flopped, but marked the first time he used the name Bobby Hart, since his manager shortened it to fit the label. Their partnership made a breakthrough with a song recorded by Chubby Checker, “Lazy Elsie Molly”, in 1964. They went on to write hits for Jay & the Americans (“Come a Little Bit Closer”), Paul Revere and the Raiders (“(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone”), and The Leaves (“Words”). The latter two songs provided the Monkees with hit B-sides in 1967. The duo also wrote the theme song of the daytime soap Days of Our Lives. At one point in this period, Hart also co-wrote “Hurt So Bad” for Little Anthony & the Imperials with Teddy Randazzo and his regular songwriting partner, Bobby Weinstein. Boyce co-wrote the song “Hello Pretty Girl”, which was a minor hit for singer Ronnie Dove, with Wes Farrell.

The Monkees

In late 1965, they wrote, produced and performed the soundtrack of the pilot for The Monkees, including singing lead vocals (which were later replaced, once the show was cast). In 1966, despite some conflicts with Don Kirshner, who was the show’s musical supervisor, they were retained in essentially the same role. It was Boyce and Hart who wrote, produced and recorded, accompanied by their backing band, the Candy Store Prophets, backing tracks for a large portion of the first season of The Monkees, and the band’s accompanying debut album.

The Monkees themselves re-recorded their vocals over Boyce and Hart’s when it came time to release the songs, including both “(Theme from) The Monkees” and “Last Train to Clarksville”, the latter being a huge hit. Kirshner suddenly relieved Boyce and Hart as producers, by claiming they were using studio time booked for Monkees songs to record tracks for their own solo project.

After their departure from the Monkees, and the negative publicity that erupted when word got out that the band hadn’t played the instruments on their early records, Boyce and Hart were unsure how the Monkees felt about them personally. Attending one of their concerts, though, the duo were spotted in the audience, and singer Davy Jones invited them onstage to introduce them: “These are the fellows who wrote our great hits — Tommy and Bobby!” Every original Monkees album (except for the Head soundtrack and 1996’s Justus) included Boyce and Hart songs.

Other successes

While working with The Monkees, Boyce and Hart embarked on a successful career as recording artists in their own right, releasing three albums on A&M Records: Test Patterns, I Wonder What She’s Doing Tonight, and It’s All Happening on the Inside (released in Canada as Which One’s Boyce and Which One’s Hart?). The duo also had five charting singles; the most well-known of these was “I Wonder What She’s Doing Tonight”, which reached No. 8 in early 1968. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc.[4] “Out & About” (#39) and “Alice Long” (#27) were their other Top 40 hits. The duo also performed “I’ll Blow You a Kiss in the Wind” on the television show Bewitched in one of several TV series appearances that included guest spots on The Flying Nun and I Dream of Jeannie (“Jeannie the Hip Hippie”), and all of these shows were produced by Screen Gems, the television subsidiary of Columbia Pictures. In each of the three sitcom guest appearances, their music was featured including two covers (unreleased) they did on The Flying Nun.

Boyce and Hart had filmed video promos for their songs “Out and About” and “Alice Long”.

Boyce and Hart were involved in producing music for Columbia Pictures’ motion pictures during the mid-late 1960s, including two Matt Helm movies (The Ambushers and Murderer’s Row), Winter A-Go-Go and Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows. They also provided the music score for a TV movie called Three’s a Crowd starring Larry Hagman and Jessica Walter. Boyce and Hart did promos for the U.S. Army Reserve and Coca-Cola. This included the creation of two Coca-Cola commercial jingles, one being a powerful psychedelic song, “Wake Up Girl”, while the other was their single “Smilin’” with totally different lyrics.

In 1971 a sitcom named Getting Together appeared on ABC-TV, starring Bobby Sherman and Wes Stern as two struggling songwriters, who were friends of The Partridge Family (and were introduced on their show in the last episode of the show’s first season). The series was reportedly based loosely on Boyce and Hart’s partnership. At this point, they decided to work on various solo projects.

Dolenz, Jones, Boyce, and Hart

In the mid-1970s, Boyce and Hart reunited with Davy Jones and Micky Dolenz, performing the songs Boyce and Hart had written for The Monkees a decade before. Legally prohibited from using the Monkees name, they called themselves Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart. The group toured amusement parks and other venues throughout America, Japan and other locations from July 4, 1975, to early 1977, also becoming the first American band to play in Thailand. Signed to Capitol Records by Al Coury, the group released an album of new material in 1976. (A live album was also recorded in Japan, but was not released in the United States until the mid-1990s.) The tours coincided with the syndication of the Monkees TV series, and helped boost sales of Arista’s The Monkees Greatest Hits.

Dolenz, Jones, Boyce and Hart also starred in their own TV special called The Great Golden Hits of the Monkees Show, which appeared in syndication. It featured a medley of other Boyce and Hart songs, as well as the songs they had produced for the Monkees. It did not include any songs from their new album.

Later years

Boyce released an album under the pseudonym Christopher Cloud in 1973. He produced several hit records UK rock n roll revival group Darts including, “Daddy Cool/The Girl Can’t Help It”, “Come Back My Love” and “It’s Raining”. In 1979, he formed his own band, called The Tommy Band, and toured the UK as support for Andrew Matheson (ex-Hollywood Brats). The tour was largely ignored by the public, especially in Middlesbrough where reportedly just one person paid to watch the show. Boyce and Hart reunited during the 1980s resurgence of the Monkees, and performed live.

During that same year, The First Bobby Hart Solo Album was released in Europe on WEA. The group included: Bobby Hart on keyboard and vocals, Victor Vanacore on keyboards, Larry Taylor on bass, Vince Megna on guitar, John Hoke on drums, and “Blue Jay” Patton on saxophone. Five years later, in 1983, Hart was nominated for an Oscar for his song “Over You”, written for the film Tender Mercies.

After a stint living in the UK, Boyce returned to live in Memphis, Tennessee, where he taught songwriting on Beale Street, and Nashville, Tennessee, and later suffered a brain aneurysm. On November 23, 1994, Boyce died by suicide, by gunshot.

According to the Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll, Boyce and Hart wrote more than 300 songs, and sold more than 42 million records as a partnership.

Discography

Albums

• Test Patterns (A&M LP 126 (Mono)/SP 4126 (Stereo), 1967, US 200)
• I Wonder What She’s Doing Tonite? (A&M LP 143/SP 4143, 1968, US 109)
• It’s All Happening On The Inside* (A&M SP 4162, 1969)
• Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart (Capitol ST-11513, 1976)
• Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart – Live in Japan (Capitol/Toshiba-EMI ECS-91018, 1981)
• 16 Rarities (SG Records, 1981 – This is a bootleg of B-sides and oddities)
• The Anthology (A&M Records Australia/Polygram 525 193–2, 1995)

Album Notes

• It’s All Happening on the Inside was released in Canada as Which One’s Boyce & Which One’s Hart?

Singles

Singles notes:

• “L.U.V. (Let Us Vote)” was the official campaign song for the Let Us Vote movement to lower the voting age to 18.
• “P.O. Box 9847” and “I Wanna Be Free” were originally released by The Monkees.
• “You and I” (DJB&H) was later re-recorded and released in 1996 by The Monkees.
• “I’ll Blow You A Kiss In The Wind” was featured on the Bewitched episode “Serena Stops the Show”, aired on February 19, 1970, on which Boyce and Hart appeared as themselves. The episode also features Elizabeth Montgomery’s performance (as Serena) of the song.
• “The Ambushers” and “Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows” are Columbia Pictures movie theme titles.

Tommy Boyce Singles:

• Along Came Linda (1962, US 118)
• I’ll Remember Carol (1962, US 80)
• Have You Had A Change of Heart (1962, US MV 146)
• Sunday, the Day Before Monday (1966, US 132)

Bobby Hart Singles:

• Lovers for the Night (1980, US 110)

Lionel Bart (1 August 1930 – 3 April 1999) was a British writer and composer of pop music and musicals. He wrote Tommy Steele‘s “Rock with the Caveman” and was the sole creator of the musical Oliver! (1960). With Oliver! and his work alongside theatre director Joan Littlewood at Theatre Royal, Stratford East, he played an instrumental role in the 1960s birth of the British musical theatre scene after an era when American musicals had dominated the West End.

Best known for creating the book, music and lyrics for Oliver!, Bart was described by Andrew Lloyd Webber as “the father of the modern British musical”. In 1963 he won the Tony Award for Best Original Score for Oliver!, and the 1968 film version of the musical won a total of 6 Academy Awards including the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Some of his other compositions include the theme song to the James Bond film From Russia with Love, and the songs “Living Doll” by Cliff Richard, “Far Away” by Shirley Bassey, “Do You Mind?” (recorded by both Anthony Newley and Andy Williams), “Big Time” (a 1961 cover by Jack Jones of his “Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be” show tune), “Easy Going Me” by Adam Faith, “Always You And Me” by Russ Conway, and several songs recorded by Tommy Steele (“A Handful of Songs”, “Butterfingers” and “Little White Bull”). By the mid 1960s he was as well known for his outlandish lifestyle, his celebrity friends, his excesses, and his parties as he was for his work.

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Early life

He was born Lionel Begleiter, the youngest of seven surviving children of Galician Jews, Yetta (née Darumstundler) and Morris Begleiter, a master tailor. He grew up in Stepney; his father worked in the area as a tailor in a garden shed. The family had escaped the pogroms against Jews by Ukrainian cossacks in Galicia.

As a young man he was an accomplished painter. When Bart was aged six, a teacher told his parents that he was a musical genius. His parents gave him an old violin, but he did not apply himself and the lessons stopped.

Songwriting

He started his songwriting career in amateur theatre, first at The International Youth Centre in 1952 where he and a friend wrote a revue together called IYC Revue 52. The following year the pair auditioned for a production of the Leonard Irwin play The Wages of Eve at London’s Unity Theatre. Shortly afterward Bart began composing songs for Unity Theatre productions, contributing material (including the title song) to its 1953 revue Turn It Up, and songs for its 1953 pantomime, an agitprop version of Cinderella. While at the Unity he was talent-spotted by Joan Littlewood, and so joined Theatre Workshop.[ He also wrote comedy songs for the Sunday lunchtime BBC radio programme The Billy Cotton Band Show.

He first gained widespread recognition through his pop songwriting, penning numerous hits for the stable of young male singers promoted by artist manager and music publisher Larry Parnes. Bart’s pop output in this period includes the hits “Living Doll” (written for Cliff Richard) and “Rock with the Cavemen”, “Handful of Songs”, “Butterfingers” and “Little White Bull” (all for Tommy Steele). During this period, Steele and Mike Pratt were his songwriting partners. He won three Ivor Novello Awards in 1957, a further four in 1958, and two in 1960. He wrote the theme song for the 1963 James Bond film From Russia with Love. His other hits include “Do You Mind?” (recorded by both Anthony Newley and Andy Williams), “Big Time” (a 1961 cover by Jack Jones of his Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be show tune), “Easy Going Me” (Adam Faith), and “Always You And Me” (with Russ Conway).

Bart was also responsible for the discovery of two of Parnes’ biggest stars. It was on his recommendation that Parnes went to see singer Tommy Hicks, whom he signed and renamed Tommy Steele, and Bart also suggested that Parnes see singer Reg Smith, who was then performing at the Condor Club. Although Parnes missed his performance, he went round to Smith’s house and signed him up on the basis of Bart’s recommendation. Smith went on to score a number of UK hits under his new stage name Marty Wilde.

Twenty-seven years after it became a number one hit for Cliff Richard, “Living Doll” was re-recorded by The Young Ones and Richard for Comic Relief, and spent another three weeks at number one.

Musical theatre

Bart’s first professional musical was 1959’s Lock Up Your Daughters, based on the 18th-century play Rape upon Rape by Henry Fielding. Following that, Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be produced by Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop, was noted for encouraging the use of authentic Cockney accents on the London stage and bringing an end to censorship of British theatre. Oliver! (1960), based on Dickens’s Oliver Twist, was a major success.

The music for Oliver! was transcribed by Eric Rogers, who wrote and composed 21 scores for the Carry On films. Bart hummed the melodies and Rogers wrote the notes on his behalf as Bart could not read or write music.

In 1968 Oliver! was made into a movie starring Ron Moody, Oliver Reed and Shani Wallis that won several Oscars, including best film. It is estimated that around this time Bart was earning 16 pounds a minute from Oliver!

Bart’s next two musicals, Blitz! (1962) (from which came the song “Far Away”, a hit for Shirley Bassey) and Maggie May (1964) had successful and respectable West End runs (Blitz!, at the time London’s most expensive musical ever, had a run of 568 performances),[11] but Twang!! (1965), a musical based on the Robin Hood legend, was a flop and La Strada (1969), which opened on Broadway after the removal of most of Bart’s songs, closed after only one performance. By this time Bart was taking LSD and other drugs and was drinking heavily.

Bart used his personal finances to try to rescue his last two productions, selling his past and future rights to his work, including Oliver! which he sold to the entertainer Max Bygraves for £350 (Bygraves later[when?] sold them on for £250,000) to realise capital to finance the shows; Bart later estimated that this action lost him over £1 million.[ By 1972, Bart was bankrupt with debts of £73,000. A twenty-year period of depression and alcoholism ensued. He eventually stopped drinking, although the years of substance abuse seriously damaged his health, leaving him with diabetes and impaired liver function.

In May 1977, an autobiographical musical called Lionel! opened in the West End at the New London Theatre. It was loosely based on Bart’s early life as a child prodigy. Bart added some new songs for the show. The cast included Clarke Peters, Marion Montgomery and Adrienne Posta. The role of Lionel was shared by a young Todd Carty and theatre unknown Chris Nieto. The show closed after six weeks.

Later life

Bart continued writing songs and themes for films, but his only real success in his later years was “Happy Endings”, a song he wrote for a 1989 Abbey National advertising campaign, which featured Bart playing the piano and singing to children.

He received a special Ivor Novello Award for life achievement in 1986. In 1987, encouraged by long-time friend Barry Humphries, he travelled to Australia to attend the opening of a new production of Blitz!, which was then revived in London’s West End in 1990 by the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the London blitz. Cameron Mackintosh, who owned half the rights to Oliver!, revived the musical at the London Palladium in 1994 in a version featuring rewrites by Bart. Mackintosh gave Bart a share of the production royalties. At the peak of his career, Bart was romantically linked in the media with singers Judy Garland and Alma Cogan,[  though he was in fact gay. His sexuality was known to friends and colleagues but he did not “come out” until a few years before his death.

Bart died at the Hammersmith Hospital in West London on 3 April 1999, of liver cancer. His funeral was held at Golders Green Crematorium. A memorial bench is dedicated to him in Kew Gardens.

A first workshop of a musical based on Bart’s life and using his songs, It’s a Fine Life, was staged in 2006 at the Queen’s Theatre, Hornchurch. The play, after substantial development and now titled More! was presented in concert at Theatre Royal Stratford East in 2015 featuring Neil McDermott as Bart, Jessica Hynes as Joan Littlewood and Sonny Jay as Charlene, as well as a special appearance by 1960s pop-star Grazina Frame, who was an original cast member from Bart’s Blitz!.

William Thomas Ward (born 5 May 1948) is an English musician and visual artist, best known as the original drummer of British heavy metal band Black Sabbath. He also performed lead vocals on two Black Sabbath songs: “It’s Alright” from the album Technical Ecstasy and “Swinging the Chain” from the album Never Say Die!.

Biography

Early years and Black Sabbath

Bill Ward started to play drums as a child, listening to the big bands of the 1940s and his major influences were Gene Krupa, Buddy Rich and Louie Bellson. Later he was influenced by drummers such as Larrie Londin, Bernard Purdie, Joe Morello, Keef Hartley, Hughie Flint, John Bonham, Ringo Starr, Jim Capaldi and Clive Bunker. In the mid-1960s Ward sang and played drums in a band called the Rest. Ward and guitarist Tony Iommi played together in a band called Mythology, and upon that band’s dissolution joined vocalist Ozzy Osbourne and bassist Geezer Butler, who had played together in a band called Rare Breed. The new band called themselves Earth, but were soon renamed Black Sabbath.

Ward’s drug and alcohol use increased throughout Black Sabbath’s heyday. By the late 1970s he was drinking during gigs, something he had never done before. He also began experiencing panic attacks.  Ward has said he cannot remember the recording of the 1980 album Heaven and Hell due to his alcohol abuse.  According to Black Sabbath bandmate Iommi, Ward disappeared on 21 August 1980, without saying goodbye, other than a telephone call to then-Black Sabbath vocalist Ronnie James Dio informing him “I’m off then, Ron.” He then briefly played in a band called Max Havoc. He sat out one album (1981’s Mob Rules) before returning to Black Sabbath for 1983’s Born Again album. Ward once again left for health reasons before the band toured in support of Born Again. He again rejoined Black Sabbath in 1984 to record new material with David Donato but after several demo tapes, he once again left Sabbath.

Pranks

According to Tony Iommi, he and the band would often set Ward’s beard on fire and perform other harmful pranks on him. On one occasion, Ward even received third-degree burns. In an interview with Guitar World, Tony described it as follows:

Bill and I were in the studio rehearsing one day and out of the blue I asked him, “May I set you on fire, Bill?” And he said, “Well, not now, not now.” And then I forgot about it. Later on when the day ended, he said to me, “Well, I’m going home now; you still want to set me on fire or what?” And I said, “Sure.” So I took a small can of lighter fluid and sprayed it on him, lit a match, and whoomph. He was wearing these polyester pants so they burned really quickly and he was on the floor screaming and crying. I could not help him because I was so busy laughing. It actually turned out to be quite serious. I felt really bad for him. He was sent to the hospital. Later on, his mother called me on the phone and said, “You barmy bastard, it’s about time you grew up. Our Bill is going to have his leg off.” But things like that always happened to Bill.

Iommi claims that Ward almost died after a prank-gone-wrong during recording of Vol. 4 in 1972. The band were renting a Bel Air mansion belonging to John DuPont of the DuPont chemical company. The band found several spray cans of gold DuPont paint in a room of the house; finding Ward naked and unconscious after a night of heavy drinking, they thought it would be funny to cover the drummer from head to toe in gold paint. Ward soon became violently ill and had a seizure and an ambulance had to be called. The paint had blocked all of Ward’s pores, which his bandmates were subsequently informed can be fatal.

During the recording of Heaven and Hell in 1980, Iommi doused Ward with a solution used by studio technicians to clean the tape heads. He then set light to the solution, which was much more flammable than Iommi had anticipated. Ward suffered third degree burns as a result and still has scars on his legs from the incident.

Solo career

After a few years in hiatus, Ward decided to return to playing music in the late 1980s. In 1989 he went to work on a solo album, which featured a huge array of guest musicians, including former Black Sabbath bandmate Ozzy Osbourne and his guitarist, Zakk Wylde. Released in January 1990, Ward One: Along the Way showcased Ward’s versatility in musical tastes and abilities; he even sang vocals on some of the songs. It would be seven years before he released his second solo album, When the Bough Breaks, in 1997.

In 2002 he released the song “Straws” as a single for charity. The song would reappear on his 2015 album Accountable Beasts.

Later career

Before the full Black Sabbath reunion, Ward and the original Sabbath had reunited twice for short sets, first for Live Aid in 1985 and then at a Costa Mesa, California Ozzy Osbourne show on 15 November 1992. Sabbath, with Judas Priest singer Rob Halford replacing Ronnie James Dio who had recently left the band, opened the show for Osbourne. The Ozzy Osbourne band (Osbourne, Zakk Wylde, Mike Inez, Randy Castillo and John Sinclair) then did a full set before Osbourne was reunited with Iommi, Butler and Ward for four numbers.

Ward made a brief return to the band for a South American tour in 1994 with Tony Martin fronting, before finally rejoining the band for the two shows at the Birmingham NEC, England on 4 and 5 December 1997, which made up the Reunion album. When what was billed as the original line-up reunited for the Ozzfest tour in 1997, Mike Bordin played drums.

Ward was forced to skip all but the last two Black Sabbath appearances in 1998 while he recovered from a heart attack suffered during the tour rehearsals that May. As the band rehearsed, Ward stopped and asked if he could lie down for a spell. He then asked for his a*sistant and informed the band that his arm had gone numb. Iommi and Butler then left for a short time, not knowing the severity of Ward’s condition. Outside, they saw an ambulance pass but weren’t aware what was happening. Upon returning to the rehearsal space a short time later, a frantic Osbourne informed them “Bill has had a heart attack! Bill has had a heart attack!”  As was the case in 1980, he was replaced at short notice by Vinny Appice, although this time it was always intended to be a temporary absence for Ward, health permitting.

In 2000, Ward participated in a partial Black Sabbath reunion of sorts, joining Iommi and Osbourne to record the track “Who’s Fooling Who” for Iommi’s first solo album.

Since mid-2002, Ward has done a monthly internet-only radio show named Rock 50 on radio station WPMD from Cerritos College in California. Ward plays a variety of metal, hard rock, and some classic rock.

Brief reunion with Black Sabbath

In October 2006, news leaked that Ward would be reuniting with Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Ronnie James Dio for a tour though under the moniker Heaven & Hell. However, Ward later decided not to participate in the tour or continue participation in the band because of musical differences with “a couple of the other bandmembers” and a reported concern about extended touring.

On 11 November 2011, Iommi, Butler, Osbourne, and Ward announced that they were reuniting to record a new album with producer Rick Rubin and to start touring in 2012. In February 2012, however, Ward left before work commenced on 13, the first studio recording to include original band members Iommi, Osbourne and Butler since the live album Reunion (1998), which contained two new studio tracks. Ward said that he had failed to reach an agreement regarding his contract. However, he did later admit that his weight would have been an issue in a 2013 tour.  Osbourne also suggested in an open letter that Ward’s decision not to take part was down to his health. In April 2015, Ward criticised Osbourne on his Facebook fan page via a letter to his and the band’s fans. Which prompted a rebuttal from Osbourne on his Facebook page:

Bill, stop this smokescreen about an “unsignable contract” and let’s be honest. Deep down inside you knew you weren’t capable of doing the album and a 16 month tour. Unfortunately for you, our instincts were correct as you were in hospital several times during 2013. Your last hospitalization was for a shoulder surgery that you now say you’ve only just recovered from. This would have meant that our world tour would have been canceled. So how is all of this my fault? Stop playing the victim and be honest with yourself and our fans.

Ward’s surgery on his shoulder prevented him from playing drums again until May 2014,[22] delaying his third studio album Accountable Beasts.  He had also expressed a desire to tour behind the album once it is released, provided that sales were acceptable.

Ward reunited with Sabbath members Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler to accept the “Lifetime Achievement” award at the May 2015 Ivor Novello Awards.

In 2016, Ward debuted with a new band called “Day of Errors”, which played its first gig in June that year at Gaslamp in Long Beach, California and also features Joe Amodea on guitar/vocals and Kill Devil Hill singer Jason “Dewey” Bragg on vocals.

Ward was due to play a string of dates with his new band in December 2017 but had to cancel these when he was hospitalised with heart problems in November.

He once again reunited with Iommi and Butler in Los Angeles in May 2019, as Black Sabbath were awarded a Lifetime Achievement Grammy. Though Sabbath did not perform, Rival Sons performed a set of their songs for the occasion. A short time later Osbourne said in an interview that he wants to play one last show with the band’s original lineup.  Ward announced 3 weeks later on his Instagram that he loved all 3 of his former Black Sabbath bandmates very much and was open-minded to playing a final show with them.

Personal life

Ward has two sons, Nigel and Aron, and one daughter, Emily.

According to his Black Sabbath bandmates Tony Iommi and Ozzy Osbourne, Ward has dramatically changed his lifestyle since Black Sabbath’s 1970s and early 80s heyday. Iommi says he quit smoking, gave up alcohol, adopted a vegan diet, and no longer uses drugs of any kind. Osbourne says that Ward has been sober for approximately 30 years.  However, more recently Osbourne has criticised Ward’s health, describing him in 2013 as “incredibly overweight” and suggesting that he would have been unable to drum for Black Sabbath had he stayed in the band following their 2011 reunion, given his physical condition, although Ward himself has insisted his health has not affected his ability to play the drums.

Ward later admitted he underwent gastrointestinal surgery in 2013, and is still recovering. “My health right now is not bad but it’s not good enough to certainly play in any band never mind Black Sabbath.”

Ward stated in an interview he “lost a friend” in Osbourne after his statements about Ward’s health in 2012, but maintained contact with Butler and Iommi. However, they have since appeared to have reconciled, as Osbourne named Ward as one of the people that kept in touch with him during his health problems in 2019.

Influence

Drumming website Totaldrumsets has listed Ward among “The 100 Most Influential Drummers Ever!” and has defined him “the mastermind behind the unholy birth of heavy metal drumming”.

Equipment

Ward uses Tama drums, Sabian cymbals, Vic Firth drumsticks and Gibraltar hardware.

Tama Imperialstar drums

1. 15″x13″ Tom
2. 16″x16″ Floor Tom
3. 18″x16″ Floor Tom
4. 14″x8″ Snare Drum
5. 14″x5″ Snare Drum
6. 26″x14″ Bass Drum
7. 26″x14″ Bass Drum
8. 20″x14″ Gong Drum

AA and Hand Hammered Sabian cymbals

1. 14″ AA Rock Hats
2. 10″ AA Mini Hats
3. 20″ AA Medium Crash
4. 29″ AA China (custom)
5. 22″ Hand Hammered Raw Bell Dry Ride
6. 14″ Hand Hammered Sizzle Hats
7. 22″ Hand Hammered Medium Crash
8. 14″ Hand Hammered Mini China
9. 22″ Hand Hammered Power Ride
10. 21″ Hand Hammered Medium Crash

War (originally called Eric Burdon and War) is an American funk-rock band from Long Beach, California, known for several hit songs (including “Spill the Wine”, “The World Is a Ghetto”, “The Cisco Kid”, “Why Can’t We Be Friends?”, “Low Rider”, and “Summer”).  Formed in  , War is a musical crossover band that fuses elements of rock, funk, jazz, Latin, rhythm and blues, and reggae. Their album The World Is a Ghetto was Billboard’s best-selling album of 1973. The band transcended racial and cultural barriers with a multi-ethnic line-up. War was subject to many line-up changes over the course of its existence, leaving member Leroy “Lonnie” Jordan as the only original member in the current line-up; four other members created a new group called the Lowrider Band.

History

1960s: Beginnings

In 1962, Howard E. Scott and Harold Brown formed a group called The Creators in Long Beach, California. Within a few years, they had added Charles Miller, Morris “B. B.” Dickerson and Lonnie Jordan to the lineup. Lee Oskar and Papa Dee Allen later joined as well. They all shared a love of diverse styles of music, which they had absorbed living in the racially mixed Los Angeles ghettos. The Creators recorded several singles on Dore Records while working with Tjay Contrelli, a saxophonist from the band Love. In 1968, the Creators became Nightshift (named because Brown worked nights at a steel yard) and started performing with Deacon Jones, a football player and singer.

The original War was conceived by record producer Jerry Goldstein (“My Boyfriend’s Back”, “Hang on Sloopy”, “I Want Candy”) and singer Eric Burdon (ex-lead singer of the British band the Animals). In 1969, Goldstein saw musicians who would eventually become War playing at the Rag Doll in North Hollywood, backing Deacon Jones, and he was attracted to the band’s sound. Jordan claimed that the band’s goal was to spread a message of brotherhood and harmony, using instruments and voices to speak out against racism, hunger, gangs, crimes, and turf wars, and promote hope and the spirit of brotherhood.[citation needed] Eric Burdon and War began playing live shows to audiences throughout Southern California before entering into the studio to record their debut album Eric Burdon Declares “War”. The album’s best known track, “Spill the Wine”, was a hit and launched the band’s career.

1970s: Height of popularity

Eric Burdon and War toured extensively across Europe and the United States. The subtitle of a 1970 review in the New Musical Express of their first UK gig in London’s Hyde Park read: “Burdon and War: Best Live Band We’ve Ever Seen”. Their show at Ronnie Scott’s Club in London on September 18, 1970, is historically notable for being the last public performance for Jimi Hendrix, who joined them onstage for the last 35 minutes of Burdon and War’s second set; a day later he was dead. A second Eric Burdon and War album, a two-disc set titled The Black-Man’s Burdon was released in 1970, before Burdon left the band in the middle of its European tour. They finished the tour without him and returned to record their first album as War.

War (1971) met with only modest success, but later that year, the band released All Day Music which included the singles “All Day Music” and “Slippin’ into Darkness”. The latter single sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc by the R.I.A.A. in June 1972.  In 1972, they released The World Is a Ghetto which was even more successful. Its second single, “The Cisco Kid” shipped gold,  and the album attained the number two spot on Billboard Hot 100 chart, and was Billboard magazine’s Album of the Year as the best-selling album of 1973.

Deliver the Word (1973), the next album, contained the hits “Gypsy Man” and a studio version of “Me and Baby Brother” (previously issued as a live recording), which peaked at #8 and #15 on the Billboard chart. The album went on to sell nearly 2 million copies.[citation needed] The album Why Can’t We Be Friends? was released in 1975. It included “Low Rider” and the title track, which were among the band’s bigger hits.

In 1976, War released a greatest hits record that contained one new song “Summer”, which, as a single, went gold and peaked at number 7 on the Billboard chart. Also released that year were Love Is All Around by Eric Burdon and War, containing mostly unreleased recordings from 1969 and 1970, and Platinum Jazz, a one-off album for jazz label Blue Note. The latter double album had cover art to match the greatest hits album, and was half new material and half compilation, focusing on (but not restricted to) instrumental music. The group continued to attain success with their next album Galaxy (1977), and its title single was inspired by Star Wars. War’s next project was a soundtrack album for the movie Youngblood in 1978.

1980s: The Music Band

In 1979, following the departure of B.B. Dickerson during recording sessions for their next album (replaced by Luther Rabb on bass who completed the album), the band considered changing their name to The Music Band, but decided at the last minute to continue as War, and use “The Music Band” as the title of a series of albums. The series originally consisted of two studio albums (The Music Band, The Music Band 2, both in 1979) and a live album (The Music Band Live, 1980), but after the band left MCA in 1981 and had already made records for other labels, MCA expanded the series with a compilation (The Best of the Music Band, 1982) and a third original album of left-over material (The Music Band – Jazz, 1983).

The group lost another member when Charles Miller (saxophone) was murdered in 1980. He had already been replaced by Pat Rizzo (ex Sly and the Family Stone) in 1979. Other new members joining at this time were Alice Tweed Smith (credited as “Tweed Smith” and “Alice Tweed Smyth” on various albums) on percussion and vocals (giving the band its first female vocalist), and Ronnie Hammon as a third drummer.

After making the one-off single “Cinco de Mayo” for LAX Records in 1981 (Jerry Goldstein’s own label, which also reissued Eric Burdon Declares “War” under the title Spill the Wine the same year), War signed with RCA Victor Records and recorded Outlaw (1982) which included the single plus additional singles “You Got the Power”, “Outlaw”, and “Just Because”. It was followed by Life (is So Strange) (1983) from which the title track was also a single. War’s records from 1979 to 1983 were not as successful as those from the preceding decade, and after the two RCA albums, the band’s activities became sporadic. They did not record another full album until a decade later. The 1987 compilation album The Best of War …and More included two new tracks, “Livin’ in the Red” and “Whose Cadillac Is That?”, and a remixed version of “Low Rider” (in addition to the original version). Papa Dee Allen died of a brain aneurysm which struck him onstage in 1988.

1990s: Reformations

Sampling of War by hip hop artists was prevalent enough to merit the compilation album Rap Declares War in 1992, which was sanctioned by the band. In 1993, War reformed with most surviving previous members (including original members Brown, Jordan, Oskar, and Scott, and later members Hammon and Rizzo), augmented by a large line-up of supporting musicians and still under the management and production of Jerry Goldstein, and released a new album, ☮ in 1994.

In 1996, the group attempted to gain independence from Goldstein, but were unable to do so under the name “War” which remains a trademark owned by Goldstein and Far Out Productions.  In response, Brown, Oskar, Scott, and a returning B.B. Dickerson (who had not worked with War since 1979) adopted a name which referenced one of War’s biggest hits: Lowrider Band. They have yet to record a studio album.

Lonnie Jordan opted to remain with Goldstein and create a new version of War with himself as the only original member. Some other musicians who had joined between 1983 and 1993 were also part of the new line-up. Both the “new” War and the Lowrider Band are currently active as live performance acts.

1996 also saw the release of a double CD compilation, Anthology (1970–1994), later updated in 2003 with a few track substitutions, as The Very Best of War. Another CD compilation from 1999, Grooves and Messages, included a second disc of remixes done by various producers.

21st century

On April 21, 2008, Eric Burdon and Lonnie Jordan reunited for the first time in 37 years to perform a concert as War at the London Royal Albert Hall. The other original surviving members were not asked to be a part of the reunion. The concert coincided with Avenue / Rhino Records’ Eric Burdon and War reissues which included Eric Burdon Declares “War” and The Black-Man’s Burdon, plus compilations The Best of Eric Burdon and War and Anthology. In 2008, Lonnie Jordan’s edition of War released a live album / DVD of songs originally from 1969 to 1975: Greatest Hits Live. War were unsuccessfully nominated for 2009 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. There were rumours that Burdon would join them again in summer 2009, but it did not happen. In 2011, War played “Low Rider” and many other hits at the Rack n’ Roll in Stamford, Connecticut, with Remember September and Westchester School of Rock.

In 2014 the new War released a studio album, Evolutionary. Also in 2014, War was a nominee for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

On June 25, 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed War among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.

Sir James Paul McCartney CH MBE (born 18 June 1942) is an English singer, songwriter, musician, and record and film producer who gained worldwide fame as co-lead vocalist and bassist for the Beatles. His songwriting partnership with John Lennon remains the most successful in history.[4] After the group disbanded in 1970, he pursued a solo career and formed the band Wings with his first wife, Linda, and Denny Laine.

A self-taught musician, McCartney is proficient on bass, guitar, keyboards, and drums. He is known for his melodic approach to bass-playing (mainly playing with a plectrum), his versatile and wide tenor vocal range (spanning over four octaves), and his eclecticism (exploring styles ranging from pre-rock and roll pop to classical and electronica). McCartney began his career as a member of the Quarrymen in 1957, which evolved into the Beatles in 1960. Starting with the 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, he gradually became the Beatles’ de facto leader, providing the creative impetus for most of their music and film projects. His Beatles songs “And I Love Her” (1964), “Yesterday” (1965), “Eleanor Rigby” (1966) and “Blackbird” (1968) rank among the most covered songs in history.[5][6]

In 1970, McCartney debuted as a solo artist with the album McCartney. Throughout the 1970s, he led Wings, one of the most successful bands of the decade, with more than a dozen international top 10 singles and albums. McCartney resumed his solo career in 1980. Since 1989, he has toured consistently as a solo artist. In 1993, he formed the music duo the Fireman with Youth of Killing Joke. Beyond music, he has taken part in projects to promote international charities related to such subjects as animal rights, seal hunting, land mines, vegetarianism, poverty, and music education.

McCartney is one of the most successful composers and performers of all time. He has written or co-written 32 songs that have reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and as of 2009, had sales of 25.5 million RIAA-certified units in the United States. His honours include two inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (as a member of the Beatles in 1988 and as a solo artist in 1999), 18 Grammy Awards, an appointment as a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 1965, and a knighthood in 1997 for services to music. As of 2020, he is also one of the wealthiest musicians in the world, with an estimated fortune of £800 million.

Early life

James Paul McCartney was born on 18 June 1942 at Walton Hospital in the Walton area of Liverpool, where his mother, Mary Patricia (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.[8] McCartney has a younger brother named Michael and a stepsister named Ruth. The children were baptised in their mother’s Catholic faith, even though their father was a former Protestant who had turned agnostic. Religion was not emphasised in the household.[9]

McCartney attended Stockton Wood Road Primary School in Speke from 1947 until 1949, when he transferred to Joseph Williams Junior School in Belle Vale because of overcrowding at Stockton.[10] In 1953, he was one of only three students out of 90 to pass the 11-Plus exam, meaning he could attend the Liverpool Institute, a grammar school rather than a secondary modern school.[11] In 1954, he met schoolmate George Harrison on the bus from his suburban home in Speke. The two quickly became friends; McCartney later admitted: “I tended to talk down to him because he was a year younger.”

Career

1957–1960: The Quarrymen

At the age of fifteen on 6 July 1957, McCartney met John Lennon and his band, the Quarrymen, at the St Peter’s Church Hall fête in Woolton.[26] The Quarrymen played a mix of rock and roll and skiffle, a type of popular music with jazz, blues and folk influences.[27] Soon afterwards, the members of the band invited McCartney to join 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.[28] By May 1960, the band had tried several names, including Johnny and the Moondogs, Beatals and the Silver Beetles.[29] 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

In 1961, Sutcliffe left the band and McCartney reluctantly became their bass player.[31] While in Hamburg, they recorded professionally for the first time and were credited as the Beat Brothers, who were the backing band for English singer Tony Sheridan on the single “My Bonnie”.[32] This resulted in attention from Brian Epstein, who was a key figure in their subsequent development and success. He became their manager in January 1962.[33] 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. The fan hysteria became known as “Beatlemania”, and the press sometimes referred to McCartney as the “cute Beatle”.[34][nb 2] McCartney co-wrote (with Lennon) several of their early hits, including “I Saw Her Standing There”, “She Loves You”, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” (1963) and “Can’t Buy Me Love” (1964).[36]

In August 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.[37] “Yesterday” became one of the most covered songs in popular music history.[38] 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 of the Beatles.”[39] Critics described Rubber Soul as a significant advance in the refinement and profundity of the band’s music and lyrics.[40] Considered a high point in the Beatles catalogue, both Lennon and McCartney said they had written the music for the song “In My Life”.[41] McCartney said of the album, “we’d had our cute period, and now it was time to expand.”[42] 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.”[43]

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.[44] The first of three consecutive McCartney A-sides, the single “Paperback Writer” preceded the LP’s release.[45] 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.[46] 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”.[47] Except for some backing vocals, the song included only McCartney’s lead vocal and the strings arranged by producer George Martin.

The band gave their final commercial concert at the end of their 1966 US tour.[50] Later that year, McCartney completed his first musical project independently of 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.[51]

Upon the end of the Beatles’ 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.[52] McCartney was 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. He invented the fictional band of the album’s title track.[53] As McCartney explained, “We were fed up with being the Beatles. We really hated that f*cking four little mop-top approach. We were not boys we were men … and [we] thought of ourselves as artists rather than just performers.”[54]

Starting in November 1966, the band adopted an experimental attitude during recording sessions for the album.[55] Their recording of “A Day in the Life” required a forty-piece orchestra, which Martin and McCartney took turns conducting.[56] The sessions produced the double A-side single “Strawberry Fields Forever”/”Penny Lane” in February 1967, and the LP followed in June.[35][nb 4] 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.[58] The cover piqued a frenzy of analysis.Epstein’s death in August 1967 created a void, which left the Beatles perplexed and concerned about their future.[61] McCartney stepped in to fill that void and gradually became the de facto leader and business manager of the group that Lennon had once led.[62][dubious – discuss] In his first creative suggestion after this change of leadership, McCartney proposed that the band move forward on their plans to produce a film for television, which was to become Magical Mystery Tour. According to Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn, the project was “an administrative nightmare throughout”.[63] McCartney largely directed the film, which brought the group their first unfavourable critical response.[64] However, the film’s soundtrack was more successful. It was 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 songs from the band’s recent singles.[35] 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 its release, higher initial sales than any other Capitol LP up to that point.

The Beatles’ animated film Yellow Submarine, loosely based on the imaginary world evoked by McCartney’s 1966 composition, premiered in July 1968. Though critics admired the film for its visual style, humour and music, the soundtrack album issued six months later received a less enthusiastic response.[66] By late 1968, relations within the band were deteriorating. The tension grew during the recording of their eponymous double album, also known as the “White Album”.[67][nb 5] 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”.[69]

In March 1969, McCartney married his first wife, Linda Eastman, and in August, the couple had their first child, Mary, named after his late mother.[70] Abbey Road was the band’s last recorded album, and Martin suggested “a continuously moving piece of music”, urging the group to think symphonically.[71] 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 two.[71] In October 1969, a rumour surfaced that McCartney had died in a car crash in 1966 and was replaced by a lookalike, but this was quickly refuted when a November Life magazine cover featured him and his family, accompanied by the caption “Paul is still with us”.[72]

McCartney was in the midst of business disagreements with his bandmates when he announced his departure from the group on 10 April 1970.[73] He filed a suit for the band’s formal dissolution on 31 December 1970, and in March 1971 the court appointed a receiver to oversee Apple’s finances. An English court legally dissolved the Beatles’ partnership on 9 January 1975, though sporadic lawsuits against their record company EMI, Klein, and each other persisted until 1989.

1970–1981: Wings

As the Beatles were breaking up in 1969–70, McCartney fell into a depression. His wife helped him pull out of that condition by praising his work as a songwriter and convincing him to continue writing and recording. In her honour, he wrote “Maybe I’m Amazed”, explaining that with the Beatles breaking up, “that was my feeling: Maybe I’m amazed at what’s going on … Maybe I’m a man and maybe you’re the only woman who could ever help me; Baby won’t you help me understand … Maybe I’m amazed at the way you pulled me out of time, hung me on the line, Maybe I’m amazed at the way I really need you.” He added that “every love song I write is for Linda.”[79][80]

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 McCartney providing compositions, instrumentation and vocals.[81][nb 8] 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”.[83] 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 group’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.”[84][nb 9] In September 1971, the McCartneys’ daughter Stella was born, named in honour of Linda’s grandmothers, both of whom were named Stella.[86]

Following the addition of guitarist Henry McCullough, Wings’ first concert tour began in 1972 with a debut performance in front of an audience of seven hundred at the University of Nottingham. Ten more gigs 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.[87] McCartney later 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.”[88] During the seven-week, 25-show Wings Over Europe Tour, the band played almost solely Wings and McCartney solo material: the Little Richard cover “Long Tall Sally” was the only song 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.[89]

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.[90][nb 10] McCartney’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.[91] 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.[94] 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 one of the Best Albums of the Year for 1973, and in 1975, Paul McCartney and Wings won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Performance for the song “Band on the Run” and Geoff Emerick won the Grammy for Best Engineered Recording for the album.[95][nb 12] In 1974, Wings achieved a second US number-one single with the title track.[97] 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.[98][nb 13]

Wings followed Band on the Run with the chart-topping albums Venus and Mars (1975) and Wings at the Speed of Sound (1976).[100][nb 14] 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”.[102] 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.[103]

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.[104] 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 continued Wings’ string of commercial successes, making the top five in both the US and the UK. Critical reception was unfavourable, and McCartney expressed disappointment with the album.[107][nb 16] Back to the Egg (1979) featured McCartney’s a*semblage of a rock supergroup dubbed “Rockestra” on two tracks. The band included Wings along with Pete Townshend, David Gilmour, Gary Brooker, John Paul Jones, John Bonham and others. Though certified platinum, critics panned the album.[109] Wings completed their final concert tour in 1979, with twenty shows in the UK that included the live debut of the Beatles songs “Got to Get You into My Life”, “The Fool on the Hill” and “Let it Be”.[110]

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.[111] 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.[112] By 1981, McCartney felt he had accomplished all he could creatively with Wings and decided he needed a change. The group discontinued in April 1981 after Laine quit 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.[117][nb 19] “Ebony and Ivory” was McCartney’s record 28th single to hit number one on the Billboard 100.[119] The following year, he and Jackson worked on “Say Say Say”, McCartney’s most recent US number one as of 2014. McCartney earned his latest UK number one as of 2014 with the title track of his LP release that year, “Pipes of Peace”.[120][nb 20]

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. It was disparaged by critics: Variety described the film as “characterless, bloodless, and pointless”;[122] while Roger Ebert awarded it a single star, writing, “you can safely skip the movie and proceed directly to the soundtrack”.[123] 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.[124] 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.[125][nb 21] 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.[127]

McCartney collaborated with Eric Stewart on Press to Play (1986), with Stewart co-writing more than half the songs on the LP.[128][nb 22] In 1988, McCartney released Снова в СССР, initially available only in the Soviet Union, which contained eighteen covers; recorded over the course of two days.[130] 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.[131][nb 23] That same year, he released Flowers in the Dirt; a collaborative effort with Elvis Costello that included musical contributions from Gilmour and Nicky Hopkins.[133][nb 24] 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.[135] In September 1989, they launched the Paul McCartney World Tour, his first in over a decade. During the tour, McCartney 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.[136] That year, he released the triple album Tripping the Live Fantastic, which contained selected performances from the tour.

1991–1999

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.[140] 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”.[141] The paper published a letter McCartney submitted in response in which he noted several of the work’s faster tempos and added, “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.”[141] 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”.[142] Performed around the world after its London premiere, the Liverpool Oratorio reached number one on the UK classical chart, Music Week.[143]

In 1991, McCartney performed a selection of acoustic-only songs on MTV Unplugged and released a live album of the performance titled Unplugged (The Official Bootleg).[144][nb 27] 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.[146] McCartney released the rock album Off the Ground in 1993.[147][nb 28] The subsequent New World Tour followed, which led to the release of the Paul Is Live album later that year.[149][nb 29][nb 30]

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”.[153] 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.[154]

In 1997, McCartney released the rock album Flaming Pie. Starr appeared on drums and backing vocals in “Beautiful Night”.[155][nb 31] Later that year, he released the classical work Standing Stone, which topped the UK and US classical charts.[157] In 1998, he released Rushes, the second electronica album by the Fireman.[158] In 1999, McCartney released Run Devil Run.[159][nb 32] 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.[160]

McCartney did an unannounced performance at the benefit tribute, “Concert for Linda,” his wife of 29 years who died a year earlier. It was held at the Royal Albert Hall in London on 10 April 1999, and was organised by two of her close friends, Chrissie Hynde and Carla Lane. Also during 1999, he continued his experimentation with orchestral music on Working Classical.

2000–2009

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.[162] He contributed the song “Nova” to a tribute album of classical, choral music called A Garland for Linda (2000), dedicated to his late wife.[163]

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.[164][nb 33] The following year, McCartney went out on tour with a band that included guitarists Rusty Anderson and Brian Ray, accompanied by Paul “Wix” Wickens on keyboards and Abe Laboriel Jr. on drums.[166] They began the Driving World Tour in April 2002, which included stops in the US, Mexico and Japan. The tour resulted in the double live album Back in the US, released internationally in 2003 as Back in the World.[167][nb 34][nb 35] 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.[169] The group continues to play together; McCartney has played live with Brian Ray, Rusty Anderson, Abe Laboriel Jr. and Wix Wickens longer than he played live with the Beatles.[170]

In July 2002, McCartney married Heather Mills. In November, on the first anniversary of George Harrison’s death, McCartney performed at the Concert for George.[171] 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.[172] 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”.[173] In 2003, the McCartneys had a child, Beatrice Milly.

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” (with U2) and closing it with “Drive My Car” (with George Michael), “Helter Skelter”, and “The Long and Winding Road”.[175][nb 36] In September, he released the rock album Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, for which he provided most of the instrumentation.[177][nb 37][nb 38] In 2006, McCartney released the classical work Ecce Cor Meum.[180][nb 39] The rock album Memory Almost Full followed in 2007.[181][nb 40] In 2008, he released his third Fireman album, Electric Arguments.[183][nb 41] 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.[185] 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.[186] 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.[187]

McCartney’s enduring fame has made him a popular choice to open new venues. In 2009, he played to 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.

2010–present

In 2010, McCartney opened the Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; it was his first concert in Pittsburgh since 1990 due to the old Civic Arena being deemed unsuitable for McCartney’s logistical needs.[189][nb 42] In July 2011, McCartney performed at 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”.[191] McCartney was commissioned by the New York City Ballet, and in September 2011, he released his first score for dance, a collaboration with Peter Martins called Ocean’s Kingdom.[192] Also in 2011, McCartney married Nancy Shevell.[193] He released Kisses on the Bottom, a collection of standards, in February 2012, the same month that 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 Annual Grammy Awards.[194]

McCartney remains one of the world’s top draws. He played to over 100,000 people during two performances in Mexico City in May, with the shows grossing nearly $6 million.[195][nb 43] 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”.[197] 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.[198] Having donated his time, he received £1 from the Olympic organisers.[199]

On 12 December 2012, McCartney performed with three former members of Nirvana (Krist Novoselic, Dave Grohl, and Pat Smear) during the closing act of 12-12-12: The Concert for Sandy Relief, seen by approximately two billion people worldwide.[200] On 28 August 2013, McCartney released the title track of his upcoming studio album New, which came out in October 2013.[201] A primetime entertainment special was taped on 27 January 2014 at the Ed Sullivan Theater with a 9 February 2014 CBS airing. The show featured McCartney and Ringo Starr, and celebrated the legacy of the Beatles and their groundbreaking 1964 performance on The Ed Sullivan Show. The show, titled The Night That Changed America: A Grammy Salute to The Beatles, featured 22 classic Beatles songs as performed by various artists, including McCartney and Starr.[202]

On 19 May 2014, it was reported that McCartney was bedridden on doctor’s orders due to an unspecified virus, which forced him to cancel a sold-out concert tour of Japan that was scheduled to begin later in the week. The tour would have included a stop at the famed Budokan Hall. McCartney also had to move his June US dates to October, as part of his doctor’s order to rest to make a full recovery.[203] However, he resumed the tour with a high-energy three hour appearance in Albany, New York on 5 July 2014.[204] On 14 August 2014, McCartney performed in the final concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, California before its demolition. It was the same venue that the Beatles played their final concert in 1966.[205] In 2014, McCartney wrote and performed “Hope for the Future,” the ending song for the video game Destiny.[206][207] In November 2014, a 42-song tribute album titled The Art of McCartney was released, which features a wide range of artists covering McCartney’s solo and Beatles work.[208] Also that year, McCartney collaborated with American recording artist Kanye West on the single “Only One”, released on 31 December.[209] In January 2015, McCartney collaborated with West and Barbadian singer Rihanna on the single “FourFiveSeconds”.[210] They released a music video for the song in January[211] and performed it live at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards on 8 February 2015.[212] McCartney is a featured guest on West’s 2015 single “All Day”, which also features Theophilus London and Allan Kingdom.

In February 2015, McCartney appeared and performed with Paul Simon for the Saturday Night Live 40th Anniversary Special. McCartney and Simon performed the first verse of “I’ve Just Seen a Face” on acoustic guitars, and McCartney later performed “Maybe I’m Amazed”.[214] McCartney shared lead vocals on the Alice Cooper-led Hollywood Vampires supergroup’s cover of his song “Come and Get It”, which appears on their debut album, released on 11 September 2015.[215] On 10 June 2016, McCartney released the career-spanning collection Pure McCartney.[216] The set includes songs from throughout McCartney’s solo career and his work with Wings and the Fireman, and is available in three different formats (2-CD, 4-CD, 4-LP and Digital). The 4-CD version includes 67 tracks, the majority of which were top 40 hits.[217][218] McCartney appeared in the adventure film Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, which was released in 2017.[219]

In January 2017, McCartney filed a suit in United States district court against Sony/ATV Music Publishing seeking to reclaim ownership of his share of the Lennon–McCartney song catalogue beginning in 2018. Under US copyright law, for works published before 1978 the author can reclaim copyrights a*signed to a publisher after 56 years.[220][221] McCartney and Sony agreed to a confidential settlement in June 2017.[222][223] On 20 June 2018, McCartney released two songs, “I Don’t Know” and “Come On to Me”, from his album Egypt Station, which was released on 7 September through Capitol Records.[224] Egypt Station became McCartney’s first album in 36 years to top the Billboard 200, and his first to debut at number one.[225]

In October 2020, McCartney announced his new album McCartney III, which is set to be released on 11 December via Capitol Records.

Musicianship

McCartney was largely a self-taught musician, and his approach was described by musicologist Ian MacDonald 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.”

Early influences

McCartney’s earliest musical influences include Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins, and Chuck Berry.[230] When asked why the Beatles did not include Presley on the Sgt. Pepper cover, McCartney replied, “Elvis was too important and too far above the rest even to mention … so we didn’t put him on the list because he was more than merely a … pop singer, he was Elvis the King.”[231] McCartney stated that for his bassline for “I Saw Her Standing There”, he directly quoted Berry’s “I’m Talking About You”.[232]

McCartney called Little Richard an idol, whose falsetto vocalisations inspired McCartney’s own vocal technique.[233] McCartney said he wrote “I’m Down” as a vehicle for his Little Richard impersonation.[234] In 1971, McCartney bought the publishing rights to Holly’s catalogue, and in 1976, on the fortieth anniversary of Holly’s birth, McCartney inaugurated the annual “Buddy Holly Week” in England. The festival has included guest performances by famous musicians, songwriting competitions, drawing contests and special events featuring performances by the Crickets.

Bass guitar

Best known for primarily using a plectrum or pick, McCartney occasionally plays fingerstyle.[236] He does not use slapping techniques.[237] He was strongly influenced by Motown artists, in particular James Jamerson, whom McCartney called a hero for his melodic style. He was also influenced by Brian Wilson, as he commented: “because he went to very unusual places”.[238] Another favourite bassist of his is Stanley Clarke.[239] McCartney’s skill as a bass player has been acknowledged by bassists including Sting, Dr. Dre bassist Mike Elizondo, and Colin Moulding of XTC.

During McCartney’s early years with the Beatles, he primarily used a Höfner 500/1 bass, although from 1965, he favoured his Rickenbacker 4001S for recording. While typically using Vox amplifiers, by 1967, he had also begun using a Fender Bassman for amplification.[242] 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.[237] He changed back to the Höfner around 1990 for that reason.[237] He uses Mesa Boogie bass amplifiers while performing live.[243]

MacDonald identified “She’s a Woman” as the turning 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”.[244] 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.”[245] MacDonald inferred the influence of James Brown’s “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” and Wilson 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”.[246]

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.”[247] MacDonald identified the influence of Indian classical music in “exotic melismas in the bass part” on “Rain” and described the playing as “so inventive that it threatens to overwhelm the track”.[248] By contrast, he recognised McCartney’s bass part on the Harrison-composed “Something” as creative but overly busy and “too fussily extemporised”.[249] 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

McCartney primarily flatpicks while playing acoustic guitar, though he also uses elements of fingerpicking.[251] 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”.[252] 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.”[251] He employed a similar technique for “Jenny Wren”.[253] He played an Epiphone Texan on many of his acoustic recordings, but also used a Martin D-28.

Electric guitar

McCartney played lead 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.”[256] 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”.[257] McCartney also played lead guitar on “Another Girl”.[258]

During his years with Wings, McCartney tended to leave electric guitar work to other group members,[259] though he played most of the lead guitar on Band on the Run.[260] 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”.[251] He has primarily used a Gibson Les Paul for electric work, particularly during live performances.

Vocals

McCartney is known for his belting power, versatility and wide tenor vocal range, spanning over four octaves.[261][262] He was ranked the 11th greatest singer of all time by Rolling Stone,[263] voted the 8th greatest singer ever by NME readers[264] and number 10 by Music Radar readers in the list of “the 30 greatest lead singers of all time”.[265] Over the years, McCartney has been named a significant vocal influence by Chris Cornell,[266] Billy Joel,[267] Steven Tyler,[268] Brad Delp,[269] and Axl Rose.[270]

McCartney’s vocals have crossed several music genres throughout his career. 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”.[271] 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”.[272] 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.[273] 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.”[274] 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.[275]

McCartney also teasingly tried out classical singing, namely singing various renditions of “Besame Mucho” with the Beatles. He continued experimenting with various musical and vocal styles throughout his post-Beatles career.[276][277][278][text–source integrity?] “Monkberry Moon Delight” was described by Pitchfork’s Jayson Greene as “an absolutely unhinged vocal take, Paul gulping and sobbing right next to your inner ear”, adding that “it could be a latter-day Tom Waits performance”.

Keyboards

McCartney played piano on several Beatles songs, including “She’s a Woman”, “For No One”, “A Day in the Life”, “Hello, Goodbye”, “Lady Madonna”, “Hey Jude”, “Martha My Dear”, “Let It Be” and “The Long and Winding Road”.[280] MacDonald considered the piano part in “Lady Madonna” as reminiscent of Fats Domino, and “Let It Be” as having a gospel rhythm.[281] MacDonald called McCartney’s Mellotron intro on “Strawberry Fields Forever” an integral feature of the song’s character.[282] McCartney played a Moog synthesizer on the Beatles song “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” and the Wings track “Loup (1st Indian on the Moon)”.[283] Ingham described the Wings songs “With a Little Luck” and “London Town” as being “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”.[285] 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.[286] His other drumming contributions include Paul Jones’ rendition of “And the Sun Will Shine” (1968),[287] Steve Miller Band’s 1969 tracks “Celebration Song” and “My Dark Hour”,[288][289] and “Sunday Rain” from the Foo Fighters’ 2017 album Concrete and Gold.

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.[291] 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”.[292] He reversed the tapes, sped them up, and slowed them down to create the desired effects, some of which the Beatles later used on the songs “Tomorrow Never Knows” and “The Fool on the Hill”.

Personal life

Creative outlets

While at school during the 1950s, McCartney thrived at art a*signments, often earning top accolades for his visual work. However, his lack of discipline negatively affected his academic grades, preventing him from earning admission to art college.[294] During the 1960s, he delved into the visual arts, explored experimental cinema, and regularly attended film, theatrical and classical music performances. His first contact with the London avant-garde scene was through artist John Dunbar, who introduced McCartney to art dealer Robert Fraser.[295] At Fraser’s flat he first learned about art appreciation and met Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, Peter Blake, and Richard Hamilton.[296] McCartney later purchased works by Magritte, whose painting of an apple had inspired the Apple Records logo.[297] McCartney became involved in the renovation and publicising of the Indica Gallery in Mason’s Yard, London, which Barry Miles had co-founded and where Lennon first met Yoko Ono. Miles also co-founded International Times, an underground paper that McCartney helped to start with direct financial support and by providing interviews to attract advertiser income. Miles later wrote McCartney’s official biography, Many Years from Now (1997).[298]

McCartney became interested in painting after watching artist Willem de Kooning work in de Kooning’s Long Island studio.[299] McCartney took up painting in 1983, and he first exhibited his work in Siegen, Germany, in 1999. The 70-painting show featured portraits of Lennon, Andy Warhol and David Bowie.[300] Though initially reluctant to display his paintings publicly, McCartney chose the gallery because events organiser Wolfgang Suttner showed genuine interest in McCartney’s art.[301] In September 2000, the first UK exhibition of McCartney’s paintings opened, featuring 500 canvases at the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol, England.[302] In October 2000, McCartney’s art debuted in his hometown of Liverpool. McCartney said, “I’ve been offered an exhibition of my paintings at the Walker Art Gallery … where John and I used to spend many a pleasant afternoon. So I’m really excited about it. I didn’t tell anybody I painted for 15 years but now I’m out of the closet”.[303] McCartney is lead patron of the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, a school in the building formerly occupied by the Liverpool Institute for Boys.[304]

When McCartney was a child, his mother read him poems and encouraged him to read books. His father invited Paul and his brother Michael to solve crosswords with him, to increase their “word power”, as McCartney said.[305] In 2001, McCartney published Blackbird Singing, a volume of poems and lyrics to his songs for which he gave readings in Liverpool and New York City.[306] In the foreword of the book, he explains: “When I was a teenager … I had an overwhelming desire to have a poem published in the school magazine. I wrote something deep and meaningful—which was promptly rejected—and I suppose I have been trying to get my own back ever since”.[307] His first children’s book was published by Faber & Faber in 2005, High in the Clouds: An Urban Furry Tail, a collaboration with writer Philip Ardagh and animator Geoff Dunbar. Featuring a squirrel whose woodland home is razed by developers, it had been scripted and sketched by McCartney and Dunbar over several years, as an animated film. The Observer labelled it an “anti-capitalist children’s book”.[308] In 2018, he wrote the children’s book Hey Grandude! together with illustrator Kathryn Durst, which was published by Random House Books in September 2019. The book is about a grandpa and his three grandchildren with a magic compass on an adventure.

In 1981, McCartney asked Geoff Dunbar to direct a short animated film called Rupert and the Frog Song; McCartney was the writer and producer, and he also added some of the character voices.[311] His song “We All Stand Together” from the film’s soundtrack reached No. 3 in the UK Singles Chart. In 1992, he worked with Dunbar on an animated film about the work of French artist Honoré Daumier, which won them a BAFTA award.[312] In 2004, they worked together on the animated short film Tropic Island Hum.[313] The accompanying single, “Tropic Island Hum”/”We All Stand Together”, reached number 21 in the UK.[314]

McCartney also produced and hosted The Real Buddy Holly Story, a 1985 documentary featuring interviews with Keith Richards, Phil and Don Everly, the Holly family, and others.[315] In 1995, he made a guest appearance on the Simpsons episode “Lisa the Vegetarian” and directed a short documentary about the Grateful Dead.

Business

Since the Rich List began in 1989, McCartney has been the UK’s wealthiest musician, with an estimated fortune of £730 million in 2015.[317] In addition to an interest in Apple Corps and MPL Communications, an umbrella company for his business interests, he owns a significant music publishing catalogue, with access to over 25,000 copyrights, including the publishing rights to the musicals Guys and Dolls, A Chorus Line, Annie and Grease.[318] He earned £40 million in 2003, the highest income that year within media professions in the UK.[319] This rose to £48.5 million by 2005.[320] McCartney’s 18-date On the Run Tour grossed £37 million in 2012.[321]

McCartney signed his first recording contract, as a member of the Beatles, with Parlophone Records, an EMI subsidiary, in June 1962. In the United States, the Beatles recordings were distributed by EMI subsidiary Capitol Records. The Beatles re-signed with EMI for another nine years in 1967. After forming their own record label, Apple Records, in 1968, the Beatles’ recordings would be released through Apple although the masters were still owned by EMI.[35] Following the break-up of the Beatles, McCartney’s music continued to be released by Apple Records under the Beatles’ 1967 recording contract with EMI which ran until 1976. Following the formal dissolution of the Beatles’ partnership in 1975, McCartney re-signed with EMI worldwide and Capitol in the US, Canada and Japan, acquiring ownership of his solo catalogue from EMI as part of the deal. In 1979, McCartney signed with Columbia Records in the US and Canada—reportedly receiving the industry’s most lucrative recording contract to date, while remaining with EMI for distribution throughout the rest of the world.[322] As part of the deal, CBS offered McCartney ownership of Frank Music, publisher of the catalogue of American songwriter Frank Loesser. McCartney’s album sales were below CBS’ expectations and reportedly the company lost at least $9 million on the contract.[323] McCartney returned to Capitol in the US in 1985, remaining with EMI until 2006.[324] In 2007, McCartney signed with Hear Music, becoming the label’s first artist. He remains there as of 2012’s Kisses on the Bottom.[325]

In 1963, Dick James established Northern Songs to publish the songs of Lennon–McCartney.[326] McCartney initially owned 20% of Northern Songs, which became 15% after a public stock offering in 1965. In 1969, James sold a controlling interest in Northern Songs to Lew Grade’s Associated Television (ATV) after which McCartney and John Lennon sold their remaining shares although they remained under contract to ATV until 1973. In 1972, McCartney re-signed with ATV for seven years in a joint publishing agreement between ATV and McCartney Music. Since 1979, MPL Communications has published McCartney’s songs.

McCartney and Yoko Ono attempted to purchase the Northern Songs catalogue in 1981, but Grade declined their offer. Soon afterward, ATV Music’s parent company, Associated Communications Corp., was acquired in a takeover by businessman Robert Holmes à Court, who later sold ATV Music to Michael Jackson in 1985. McCartney has criticised Jackson’s purchase and handling of Northern Songs over the years. In 1995, Jackson merged his catalogue with Sony for a reported £59,052,000 ($95 million), establishing Sony/ATV Music Publishing, in which he retained half-ownership.[327] Northern Songs was formally dissolved in 1995, and absorbed into the Sony/ATV catalogue.[328] McCartney receives writers’ royalties which together are 33⅓ percent of total commercial proceeds in the US, and which vary elsewhere between 50 and 55 percent.[329] Two of the Beatles’ earliest songs—”Love Me Do” and “P.S. I Love You”—were published by an EMI subsidiary, Ardmore & Beechwood, before signing with James. McCartney acquired their publishing rights from Ardmore in 1978, and they are the only two Beatles songs owned by MPL Communications.

Drugs

McCartney first used drugs in the Beatles’ Hamburg days when they often used Preludin to maintain their energy while performing for long periods.[331] Bob Dylan introduced them to marijuana in a New York hotel room in 1964; McCartney recalls getting “very high” and “giggling uncontrollably”.[332] His use of the drug soon became habitual, and according to Miles, McCartney wrote the lyrics “another kind of mind” in “Got to Get You into My Life” specifically as a reference to cannabis.[333] During the filming of Help!, McCartney occasionally smoked a joint in the car on the way to the studio during filming, and often forgot his lines.[334] Director Richard Lester overheard two physically attractive women trying to persuade McCartney to use heroin, but he refused.[334] Introduced to cocaine by Robert Fraser, McCartney used the drug regularly during the recording of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and for about a year in total but stopped because of his dislike of the unpleasant melancholy he felt afterwards.[335]

Initially reluctant to try LSD, McCartney eventually did so in late 1966, and took his second “acid trip” in March 1967 with Lennon after a Sgt. Pepper studio session.[336] He later became the first Beatle to discuss the drug publicly, declaring: “It opened my eyes … [and] made me a better, more honest, more tolerant member of society.”[337] He made his attitude about cannabis public in 1967, when he, along with the other Beatles and Epstein, added his name to a July advertisement in The Times, which called for its legalisation, the release of those imprisoned for possession, and research into marijuana’s medical uses.[338]

In 1972, a Swedish court fined McCartney £1,000 for cannabis possession. Soon after, Scottish police found marijuana plants growing on his farm, leading to his 1973 conviction for illegal cultivation and a £100 fine. As a result of his drug convictions, the US government repeatedly denied him a visa until December 1973.[339] Arrested again for marijuana possession in 1975 in Los Angeles, Linda took the blame, and the court soon dismissed the charges. In January 1980, when Wings flew to Tokyo for a tour of Japan, customs officials found approximately 8 ounces (200 g) of cannabis in his luggage. They arrested McCartney and brought him to a local jail while the Japanese government decided what to do. After ten days, they released and deported him without charge.[340] In 1984, while McCartney was on holiday in Barbados, authorities arrested him for possession of marijuana and fined him $200.[341] Upon his return to England, he stated: “cannabis is … less harmful than rum punch, whiskey, nicotine and glue, all of which are perfectly legal … I don’t think … I was doing anyone any harm whatsoever.”[342] In 1997, he spoke out in support of decriminalisation of the drug: “People are smoking pot anyway and to make them criminals is wrong.”[295] He did, however, decide to quit cannabis in 2015, citing a desire to set a good example for his grandchildren.

Vegetarianism and activism

Since 1975, McCartney has been a vegetarian.[344][345] He and his wife Linda were vegetarians for most of their 29-year marriage. They decided to stop consuming meat after Paul saw lambs in a field as they were eating a meal of lamb. Soon after, the couple became outspoken animal rights activists.[346] In his first interview after Linda’s death, he promised to continue working for animal rights, and in 1999, he spent £3,000,000 to ensure Linda McCartney Foods remained free of genetically engineered ingredients.[347] In 1995, he narrated the documentary Devour the Earth, written by Tony Wardle.[348] McCartney is a supporter of the animal-rights organisation People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. He has appeared in the group’s campaigns, and in 2009, McCartney narrated a video for them titled “Glass Walls”, which was harshly critical of slaughterhouses, the meat industry, and their effect on animal welfare.[349][350][351] McCartney has also supported campaigns headed by the Humane Society of the United States, Humane Society International, World Animal Protection, and the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation.[352][353]

Following McCartney’s marriage to Mills, he joined her in a campaign against land mines, becoming a patron of Adopt-A-Minefield.[354] In a 2003 meeting at the Kremlin with Vladimir Putin, ahead of a concert in Red Square, McCartney and Mills urged Russia to join the anti-landmine campaign.[355] In 2006, the McCartneys travelled to Prince Edward Island to raise international awareness of seal hunting. The couple debated with Danny Williams, Newfoundland’s then Premier, on Larry King Live, stating that fishermen should stop hunting seals and start seal-watching businesses instead.[356] McCartney also supports the Make Poverty History campaign.[357]

McCartney has participated in several charity recordings and performances, including the Concerts for the People of Kampuchea, Ferry Aid, Band Aid, Live Aid, Live 8, and the recording of “Ferry Cross the Mersey”.[358] In 2004, he donated a song to an album to aid the “US Campaign for Burma”, in support of Burmese Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. In 2008, he donated a song to Aid Still Required’s CD, organised as an effort to raise funds to a*sist with the recovery from the devastation caused in Southeast Asia by the 2004 tsunami.[359]

In 2009, McCartney wrote to Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, asking him why he was not a vegetarian. As McCartney explained, “He wrote back very kindly, saying, ‘my doctors tell me that I must eat meat’. And I wrote back again, saying, you know, I don’t think that’s right … I think he’s now being told … that he can get his protein somewhere else … It just doesn’t seem right—the Dalai Lama, on the one hand, saying, ‘Hey guys, don’t harm sentient beings … Oh, and by the way, I’m having a steak.’”[360] In 2012, McCartney joined the anti-fracking campaign Artists Against Fracking.[361]

Save the Arctic is a campaign to protect the Arctic and an international outcry and a renewed focus concern on oil development in the Arctic, attracting the support of more than five million people. This includes McCartney, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and 11 Nobel Peace Prize winners.[362][363] In 2015, following British prime minister David Cameron’s decision to give Members of Parliament a free vote on amending the law against fox hunting, McCartney was quoted: “The people of Britain are behind this Tory government on many things but the vast majority of us will be against them if hunting is reintroduced. It is cruel and unnecessary and will lose them support from ordinary people and animal lovers like myself.”[364] During the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic, McCartney called for Chinese wet markets (which sell live animals including wild ones) to be banned. He expressed concern over both the health impacts of the practice as well as its cruelty to animals.

Meditation

In August 1967, McCartney met Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at the London Hilton and later went to Bangor in North Wales to attend a weekend initiation conference, where he and the other Beatles learned the basics of Transcendental Meditation.[366] He said, “The whole meditation experience was very good and I still use the mantra … I find it soothing.”[367] In 2009, McCartney and Starr headlined a benefit concert at Radio City Music Hall, raising three million dollars for the David Lynch Foundation to fund instruction in Transcendental Meditation for at-risk youth.

Football

McCartney has publicly professed support for Everton and has also shown favour for Liverpool.[369] In 2008, he ended speculation about his allegiance when he said: “Here’s the deal: my father was born in Everton, my family are officially Evertonians, so if it comes down to a derby match or an FA Cup final between the two, I would have to support Everton. But after a concert at Wembley Arena I got a bit of a friendship with Kenny Dalglish, who had been to the gig and I thought ‘You know what? I am just going to support them both because it’s all Liverpool.’”[

Relationships

Girlfriends

Dot Rhone

McCartney’s first serious girlfriend in Liverpool was Dot Rhone, whom he met at the Casbah club in 1959.[371] According to Spitz, Rhone felt that McCartney had a compulsion to control situations. He often chose clothes and makeup for her, encouraging her to grow her hair out like Brigitte Bardot’s, and at least once insisting she have it restyled, to disappointing effect.[372] When McCartney first went to Hamburg with the Beatles, he wrote to Rhone regularly, and she accompanied Cynthia Lennon to Hamburg when they played there again in 1962.[373] The couple had a two-and-a-half-year relationship, and were due to marry until Rhone’s miscarriage. According to Spitz, McCartney, now “free of obligation”, ended the engagement.

Jane Asher

McCartney first met British actress Jane Asher on 18 April 1963 when a photographer asked them to pose at a Beatles performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London.[375] The two began a relationship, and in November of that year he took up residence with Asher at her parents’ home at 57 Wimpole Street, London.[376] They had lived there for more than two years before the couple moved to McCartney’s own home in St. John’s Wood in March 1966.[377] He wrote several songs while living at the Ashers’, including “Yesterday”, “And I Love Her”, “You Won’t See Me” and “I’m Looking Through You”, the latter three having been inspired by their romance.[378] They had a five-year relationship and planned to marry, but Asher broke off the engagement after she discovered he had become involved with Francie Schwartz,[379] an American screenwriter who moved to London at age 23 thinking she could sell a script to the Beatles. She met McCartney and he invited her to move into his London house, where events ensued that possibly broke up him and Asher.

Wives

Linda Eastman

Linda Eastman was a music fan who once commented, “all my teen years were spent with an ear to the radio.”[381] At times, she played hooky to see artists such as Fabian, Bobby Darin and Chuck Berry.[381] She became a popular photographer with several rock groups, including the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Grateful Dead, the Doors and the Beatles, whom she first met at Shea Stadium in 1966. She commented, “It was John who interested me at the start. He was my Beatle hero. But when I met him the fascination faded fast, and I found it was Paul I liked.”[382] The pair first met properly in 1967 at a Georgie Fame concert at The Bag O’Nails club, during her UK a*signment to photograph rock musicians in London. As Paul remembers, “The night Linda and I met, I spotted her across a crowded club, and although I would normally have been nervous chatting her up, I realised I had to … Pushiness worked for me that night!”[383] Linda said this about their meeting: “I was quite shameless really. I was with somebody else [that night] … and I saw Paul at the other side of the room. He looked so beautiful that I made up my mind I would have to pick him up.”[382] The pair married in March 1969. About their relationship, Paul said, “We had a lot of fun together … just the nature of how we aren’t, our favourite thing really is to just hang, to have fun. And Linda’s very big on just following the moment.”[384] He added, “We were crazy. We had a big argument the night before we got married, and it was nearly called off … [it’s] miraculous that we made it. But we did.”[385]

After the break-up of the Beatles, the two collaborated musically and formed Wings in 1971.[386] They faced derision from some fans and critics, who questioned her inclusion. She was nervous about performing with Paul, who explained, “she conquered those nerves, got on with it and was really gutsy.”[387] Paul defended her musical ability: “I taught Linda the basics of the keyboard … She took a couple of lessons and learned some bluesy things … she did very well and made it look easier than it was … The critics would say, ‘She’s not really playing’ or ‘Look at her—she’s playing with one finger.’ But what they didn’t know is that sometimes she was playing a thing called a Minimoog, which could only be played with one finger. It was monophonic.”[387] He went on to say, “We thought we were in it for the fun … it was just something we wanted to do, so if we got it wrong—big deal. We didn’t have to justify ourselves.”[387] Former Wings guitarist McCullough said of collaborating with Linda, “trying to get things together with a learner in the group didn’t work as far as I was concerned.”[388]

They had four children—Linda’s daughter Heather (legally adopted by Paul), Mary, Stella and James—and remained married until Linda’s death from breast cancer at age 56 in 1998.[389] After Linda died, Paul said, “I got a counsellor because I knew that I would need some help. He was great, particularly in helping me get rid of my guilt [about wishing I’d been] perfect all the time … a real bugger. But then I thought, hang on a minute. We’re just human. That was the beautiful thing about our marriage. We were just a boyfriend and girlfriend having babies.”

Heather Mills

In 2002, McCartney married Heather Mills, a former model and anti-landmine campaigner.[391] In 2003, the couple had a child, Beatrice Milly, named in honour of Mills’s late mother and one of McCartney’s aunts.[174] They separated in April 2006 and divorced acrimoniously in March 2008.[392] In 2004, he commented on media animosity toward his partners: “[the British public] didn’t like me giving up on Jane Asher … I married [Linda], a New York divorcee with a child, and at the time they didn’t like that”.

Nancy Shevell

McCartney married New Yorker Nancy Shevell in a civil ceremony at Marylebone Town Hall, London, on 9 October 2011. The wedding was a modest event attended by a group of about 30 relatives and friends.[193] The couple had been together since November 2007.[394] Shevell is vice president of a family-owned transportation conglomerate which owns New England Motor Freight.[395] She is a former member of the board of the New York area’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority.[396] Shevell is about 18 years younger than McCartney.[397] They had known each other for about 20 years prior to marrying, having met because both had homes in the Hamptons.

Beatles

John Lennon

Though McCartney had a strained relationship with Lennon, they briefly became close again in early 1974, and played music together on one occasion.[398] In later years, the two grew apart.[399] McCartney often phoned Lennon, but was apprehensive about the reception he would receive. During one call, Lennon told him, “You’re all pizza and fairytales!”[400] In an effort to avoid talking only about business, they often spoke of cats, babies, or baking bread.[401]

On 24 April 1976, McCartney and Lennon were watching an episode of Saturday Night Live at Lennon’s home in the Dakota when Lorne Michaels made a $3,000 cash offer for the Beatles to reunite. While they seriously considered going to the SNL studio a few blocks away, they decided it was too late. This was their last time together.[402] VH1 fictionalised this event in the 2000 television film Two of Us.[403] McCartney’s last telephone call to Lennon, days before Lennon and Ono released Double Fantasy, was friendly: “[It is] a consoling factor for me, because I do feel it was sad that we never actually sat down and straightened our differences out. But fortunately for me, the last phone conversation I ever had with him was really great, and we didn’t have any kind of blow-up”, he said.

Reaction to Lennon’s murder

On 9 December 1980, McCartney followed the news that Lennon had been murdered the previous night; Lennon’s death created a media frenzy around the surviving members of the band.[406] McCartney was leaving an Oxford Street recording studio that evening when he was surrounded by reporters who asked him for his reaction; he responded: “It’s a drag”. The press quickly criticised him for what appeared to be a superficial response.[407] He later explained, “When John was killed somebody stuck a microphone at me and said: ‘What do you think about it?’ I said, ‘It’s a dra-a-ag’ and meant it with every inch of melancholy I could muster. When you put that in print it says, ‘McCartney in London today when asked for a comment on his dead friend said, “It’s a drag”.’ It seemed a very flippant comment to make.”[407] He described his first exchange with Ono after the murder, and his last conversation with Lennon:

I talked to Yoko the day after he was killed, and the first thing she said was, “John was really fond of you.” The last telephone conversation I had with him we were still the best of mates. He was always a very warm guy, John. His bluff was all on the surface. He used to take his glasses down, those granny glasses, and say, “it’s only me.” They were like a wall you know? A shield. Those are the moments I treasure.

In 1983, McCartney said: “I would not have been as typically human and standoffish as I was if I knew John was going to die. I would have made more of an effort to try and get behind his ‘mask’ and have a better relationship with him.”[407] He said that he went home that night, watched the news on television with his children and cried most of the evening. In 1997, he said that Lennon’s death made the remaining ex-Beatles nervous that they might also be murdered.[408] He told Mojo magazine in 2002 that Lennon was his greatest hero.[409] In 1981, McCartney sang backup on Harrison’s tribute to Lennon, “All Those Years Ago”, which featured Starr on drums.[410] McCartney released “Here Today” in 1982, a song Everett described as “a haunting tribute” to McCartney’s friendship with Lennon

George Harrison

Discussing his relationship with McCartney, Harrison said: “Paul would always help along when you’d done his ten songs—then when he got ’round to doing one of my songs, he would help. It was silly. It was very selfish, actually … There were a lot of tracks, though, where I played bass … because what Paul would do—if he’d written a song, he’d learn all the parts for Paul and then come in the studio and say (sometimes he was very difficult): ‘Do this’. He’d never give you the opportunity to come out with something.”[412]

After Harrison’s death in November 2001, McCartney said he was “a lovely guy and a very brave man who had a wonderful sense of humour”. He went on to say: “We grew up together and we just had so many beautiful times together – that’s what I am going to remember. I’ll always love him, he’s my baby brother.”[413] On the first anniversary of his death, McCartney played Harrison’s “Something” on a ukulele at the Concert for George; he would perform this rendition of the song on many subsequent solo tours.[414] He also performed “For You Blue” and “All Things Must Pass”, and played the piano on Eric Clapton’s rendition of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”.

Ringo Starr

During a recording session for The Beatles in 1968, the two got into an argument over McCartney’s critique of Starr’s drum part for “Back in the U.S.S.R.”, which contributed to Starr temporarily leaving the band.[416] Starr later commented on working with McCartney: “Paul is the greatest bass player in the world. But he is also very determined … [to] get his own way … [thus] musical disagreements inevitably arose from time to time.”[417]

McCartney and Starr collaborated on several post-Beatles projects, starting in 1973 when McCartney contributed instrumentation and backing vocals for “Six O’Clock”, a song McCartney wrote for Starr’s album Ringo.[418] McCartney played a kazoo solo on “You’re Sixteen” from the same album.[419] Starr appeared (as a fictional version of himself) in McCartney’s 1984 film Give My Regards to Broad Street, and played drums on most tracks of the soundtrack album, which includes re-recordings of several McCartney-penned Beatles songs. Starr played drums and sang backing vocals on “Beautiful Night” from McCartney’s 1997 album Flaming Pie. The pair collaborated again in 1998, on Starr’s Vertical Man, which featured McCartney’s backing vocals on three songs, and instrumentation on one.[420] In 2009, the pair performed “With a Little Help from My Friends” at a benefit concert for the David Lynch Foundation.[421] They collaborated on Starr’s album Y Not in 2010. McCartney played bass on “Peace Dream”, and sang a duet with Starr on “Walk with You”.[422] On 7 July 2010, Starr was performing at Radio City Music Hall in New York with his All-Starr Band in a concert celebrating his seventieth birthday. After the encores, McCartney made a surprise appearance, performing the Beatles’ song “Birthday” with Starr’s band.[423] On 26 January 2014, McCartney and Starr performed “Queenie Eye” from McCartney’s new album New at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards.[424] McCartney inducted Starr into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in April 2015, and played bass on his 2017 album Give More Love. On 16 December 2018, Starr and Ronnie Wood joined McCartney onstage to perform “Get Back” at his concert at London’s O2 Arena. Starr also made an appearance on the final day of McCartney’s Freshen Up tour in July 2019, performing “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)” and “Helter Skelter”.

Legacy

Achievements

McCartney was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 as a member of the Beatles and again as a solo artist in 1999. In 1979, the Guinness Book of World Records recognised McCartney as the “most honored composer and performer in music”, with 60 gold discs (43 with the Beatles, 17 with Wings) and, as a member of the Beatles, sales of over 100 million singles and 100 million albums, and as the “most successful song writer”, he wrote jointly or solo 43 songs which sold one million or more records between 1962 and 1978.[426] In 2009, Guinness World Records again recognised McCartney as the “most successful songwriter” having written or co-written 188 charted records in the United Kingdom, of which 91 reached the top 10 and 33 made it to number one.

McCartney has written, or co-written, 32 number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100: twenty with the Beatles; seven solo 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”; one as a co-writer on Stars on 45’s “Medley”; one as a co-writer with Michael Jackson on “Say Say Say”; and one as writer on “Ebony and Ivory” performed with Stevie Wonder.[428] As of 2009, he has 15.5 million RIAA certified units in the United States as a solo artist plus another 10 million with Wings.[429]

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.”[430][nb 44] 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).[432]

“Yesterday” is one of the most covered songs 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”.[433] His 1968 Beatles composition “Hey Jude” achieved the highest sales in the UK that year and topped the US charts for nine weeks, which is longer than any other Beatles single. It was also the longest single released by the band and, at seven minutes eleven seconds, was at that time the longest number one.[434] “Hey Jude” is the best-selling Beatles single, achieving sales of over five million copies soon after its release.[435][nb 45]

In July 2005, McCartney’s 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 and honours

• 1971: Academy Award winner (as a member of the Beatles)
• 18-time Grammy Award winner:
  • Nine as a member of the Beatles
  • Six as a solo artist
  • Two as a member of Wings
  • One as part of a joint collaboration
• Two-time inductee – Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:
  • Class of 1988 as a member of the Beatles
  • Class of 1999 as a solo artist
• 1965: Member of the Order of the British Empire
• 1988: Honorary Doctor of the University degree from University of Sussex
• 1997: Knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to music
• 2000: Fellowship into the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors
• 2008: BRIT Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music
• 2008: Honorary Doctor of Music degree from Yale University
• 2010: Gershwin Prize for his contributions to popular music
• 2010: Kennedy Center Honors
• 2012: Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
• 2012: Légion d’Honneur for his services to music
• 2012: MusiCares Person of the Year
• 2015: 4148 McCartney, asteroid named after him by the (International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center)
• 2017: Appointed Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in the 2017 Birthday Honours for services to music

Julia Ward Howe (/haʊ/;[1] May 27, 1819 – October 17, 1910) was an American poet and author, known for writing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and the original 1870 pacifist Mother’s Day Proclamation. She was also an advocate for abolitionism and a social activist, particularly for women’s suffrage.

Early life and education

Howe was born in New York City. She was the fourth of seven children. Her father Samuel Ward III was a Wall Street stockbroker, banker, and strict Calvinist. Her mother was the poet Julia Rush Cutler,[2] related to Francis Marion, the “Swamp Fox” of the American Revolution. She died during childbirth when Howe was five.

Howe was educated by private tutors and schools for young ladies until she was sixteen. Her eldest brother, Samuel Cutler Ward, traveled in Europe and brought home a private library. She had access to these books, many contradicting the Calvinistic view.[3] She became well-read,[4][5] though social as well as scholarly. She met, because of her father’s status as a successful banker, Charles Dickens, Charles Sumner, and Margaret Fuller.[4]

Her brother, Sam, married into the Astor family,[6] allowing him great social freedom that he shared with his sister. The siblings were cast into mourning with the death of their father in 1839, the death of their brother, Henry, and the deaths of Samuel’s wife, Emily, and their newborn child.

Personal life

Though raised an Episcopalian, Julia became a Unitarian by 1841.[7] In Boston, Ward met Samuel Gridley Howe, a physician and reformer who had founded the Perkins School for the Blind.[2][8] Howe had courted her, but he had shown an interest in her sister Louisa.[9] In 1843, they married despite their eighteen-year age difference.[2] She gave birth to their first child while honeymooning in Europe. She bore their last child in December 1859 at the age of forty. They had six children: Julia Romana Howe (1844–1886), Florence Marion Howe (1845–1922), Henry Marion Howe (1848–1922), Laura Elizabeth Howe (1850–1943), Maud Howe (1855–1948), and Samuel Gridley Howe, Jr. (1859–1863). Howe was an aunt of novelist Francis Marion Crawford.

Howe raised her children in South Boston, while her husband pursued his advocacy work. She hid her unhappiness with their marriage, earning the nickname “the family champagne” from her children.[10] She made frequent visits to Gardiner, Maine, where she stayed at “The Yellow House,” a home built originally in 1814 and later home to her daughter Laura.[11]

In 1852, the Howes bought a “country home” with 4.7 acres of land in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, which they called “Oak Glen.”[12] They continued to maintain homes in Boston and Newport, but spent several months each year at Oak Glen.

Career

Writing

She attended lectures, studied foreign languages, and wrote plays and dramas. Howe had published essays on Goethe, Schiller and Lamartine before her marriage in the New York Review and Theological Review.[2] Passion-Flowers was published anonymously in 1853. The book collected personal poems and was written without the knowledge of her husband, who was then editing the Free Soil newspaper The Commonwealth.[13] Her second anonymous collection, Words for the Hour, appeared in 1857.[2] She went on to write plays such as Leonora, The World’s Own, and Hippolytus. These works all contained allusions to her stultifying marriage.[2]

She went on trips including several for missions. In 1860, she published A Trip to Cuba, which told of her 1859 trip. It had generated outrage from William Lloyd Garrison, an abolitionist, for its derogatory view of Blacks. Howe believed it was right to free the slaves but did not believe in racial equality.[14] Several letters on High Newport society were published in the New York Tribune in 1860, as well.[2]

Howe’s being a published author troubled her husband greatly, especially due to the fact that her poems many times had to do with critiques of women’s roles as wives, her own marriage, and women’s place in society.[15][16] Their marriage problems escalated to the point where they separated in 1852. Samuel, when he became her husband, had also taken complete control of her estate income. Upon her husband’s death in 1876, she had found that through a series of bad investments, most of her money had been lost.[4]

Howe’s writing and social activism were greatly shaped by her upbringing and married life. Much study has gone into her difficult marriage and how it influenced her work, both written and active.

Social activism

She was inspired to write “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” after she and her husband visited Washington, D.C., and met Abraham Lincoln at the White House in November 1861. During the trip, her friend James Freeman Clarke suggested she write new words to the song “John Brown’s Body”, which she did on November 19.[18] The song was set to William Steffe’s already existing music and Howe’s version was first published in the Atlantic Monthly in February 1862. It quickly became one of the most popular songs of the Union during the American Civil War.

Now that Howe was in the public eye, she produced eleven issues of the literary magazine, Northern Lights, in 1867. That same year she wrote about her travels to Europe in From the Oak to the Olive. After the war, she focused her activities on the causes of pacifism and women’s suffrage. By 1868, Julia’s husband no longer opposed her involvement in public life, so Julia decided to become active in reform.[2] She helped found the New England Women’s Club and the New England Woman Suffrage Association. She served as president for nine years beginning in 1868.[19] In 1869, she became co-leader with Lucy Stone of the American Woman Suffrage Association. Then, in 1870, she became president of the New England Women’s Club. After her husband’s death in 1876, she focused more on her interests in reform. In 1877 Howe was one of the founders of the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union in Boston.[20] She was the founder and from 1876 to 1897 president of the Association of American Women, which advocated for women’s education.[21]

In 1872, she became the editor of Woman’s Journal, a widely-read suffragist magazine founded in 1870 by Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell.[22] She contributed to it for twenty years.[2] That same year, she wrote her “Appeal to womanhood throughout the world”, later known as the Mother’s Day Proclamation,[23] which asked women around the world to join for world peace. (See Category:Pacifist feminism.) She authored it soon after she evolved into a pacifist and an anti-war activist. In 1872, she asked that “Mother’s Day” be celebrated on the 2nd of June.[24][25][26][27] Her efforts were not successful, and by 1893 she was wondering if the 4th of July could be remade into “Mother’s Day”.[24] In 1874, she edited a coeducational defense titled Sex and Education.[19] She wrote a collection about the places she lived in 1880 called Modern Society. In 1883, Howe published a biography of Margaret Fuller. Then, in 1885 she published another collection of lectures called Is Polite Society Polite? (“Polite society” is a euphemism for the upper class.) In 1899 she published her popular memoirs, Reminiscences.[2] She continued to write until her death.

In 1881, Howe was elected president of the Association for the Advancement of Women. Around the same time, Howe went on a speaking tour of the Pacific coast and founded the Century Club of San Francisco. In 1890, she helped found the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, to reaffirm the Christian values of frugality and moderation.[2] From 1891 to 1893, she served as president for the second time of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association. Until her death, she was president of the New England Woman Suffrage Association. From 1893 to 1898 she directed the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, and headed the Massachusetts Federation of Women’s Clubs.[2] Howe spoke at the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago reflecting on the question, What is Religion?.[28] In 1908 Julia was the first woman to be elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a society; its goal is to “foster, a*sist, and sustain excellence” in American literature, music, and art.

Death and legacy

Howe died of pneumonia October 17, 1910, at her Portsmouth home, Oak Glen at the age of 91.[30] She is buried in the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.[31] At her memorial service approximately 4,000 people sang “Battle Hymn of the Republic” as a sign of respect as it was the custom to sing that song at each of Julia’s speaking engagements.[32]

After her death, her children collaborated on a biography,[33] published in 1916. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography.[34]

In 1987, she was honored by the U.S. Postal Service with a 14¢ Great Americans series postage stamp issued in 1987.[35]

Several buildings are a*sociated with her name:

• The Julia Ward Howe School of Excellence in Chicago’s Austin community is named in her honor.
• The Howe neighborhood in Minneapolis, MN was named for her.
• The Julia Ward Howe Academics Plus Elementary School in Philadelphia was named in her honor in 1913.
• Her Rhode Island home, Oak Glen, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.
• Her Boston home is a stop on the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail.