James Paul McCartney

Sir James Paul McCartney is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. McCartney gained worldwide fame as a member of The Beatles, alongside John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. McCartney and Lennon formed one of the most influential and successful songwriting partnerships and wrote some of the most popular songs in the history of rock music. After leaving The Beatles, McCartney launched a successful solo career and formed the band Wings with his first wife, Linda Eastman, and singer-songwriter Denny Laine. McCartney is listed i n Guinness World Records as the "most successful musician and composer in popular music history", with 60 gold discs and sales of 100 million singles in the UK.Pol McCartney was born in Walton Hospital in Liverpool on the 18^th of June 1942. He has one brother, Michael, born on the 7^th of January 1944. He attended Stockton Wood Road Primary School, the Joseph Williams Junior School and passed the 11-plus exam in 1953 with three others out of the 90 examinees, thus gaining admission to the Liverpool Institute. In 1954, on his way to the Institute, he met George Harrison, who lived nearby. Passing the exam meant that McCartney and Harrison could go to a Grammar school rather than a secondary modern school, which the majority of pupils attended. In 1955, the McCartney family moved to Allerton. On 31 October 1956, his mother-Mary McCartney died. The early loss of his mother later connected McCartney with John Lennon, whose mother Julia died after being struck by a car. McCartney's father was a trumpet player and pianist who had led Jim Mac's Jazz Band in the 1920s and encouraged his two sons to be musical. On his father's advice, he took music lessons, but since he preferred to learn 'by ear' he never paid much attention to them.At the age of 15, McCartney met John Lennon and they formed a close working relationship with him. Harrison joined the group in early 1958 as lead guitarist, followed in early 1960 by Lennon's art school friend, Stuart Sutcliffe on bass. By May 1960, they named their group "The Beatles" Later Sutcliffe left the band, so McCartney became The Beatles' bass player. The Beatles recorded their first published musical material in Hamburg, performing as the backing group for Tony Sheridan on the single "My Bonnie. This recording later brought the Beatles to the attention of a key figure in their commercial success, Brian Epstein, who became their next manager. After replacing Best with Ringo Starr on drum s, The Beatles became popular in the UK in 1963 and in the US in 1964. In 1965, they were each appointed Members of the Order of the British Empire After performing concerts, plays, and tours almost non-stop for a period of nearly four years, and giving more than one thousand four hundred live performances internationally, The Beatles gave their last commercial concert at the end of their 1966 US tour. They continued to work in the recording studio from 1966 until their break-up in 1970. In the eight years from 1962 to 1970, the group had released twenty-four UK singles and twelve studio albums.After the break-up of The Beatles, McCartney continued his musical career, in solo work as well as in collaborations with other musicians.