Paul McCartney

1970–1981: Wings

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. 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". 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." In September 1971, the McCartneys' daughter Stella was born, named in honour of Linda's grandmothers, both of whom were named Stella.

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. 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." 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 the Beatles had previously recorded. McCartney wanted the tour to avoid large venues; most of the small halls they played had capacities of fewer than 3,000 people.

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. 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. 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. 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 the Billboard charts on three 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. In 1974, Wings achieved a second US number-one single with the title track. The album also included the top-ten hits "Jet" and "Helen Wheels", and earned the 418th spot on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. In 1974, McCartney hired guitarist Jimmy McCulloch and drummer Geoff Britton to replace McCullough and Seiwell. Britton subsequently quit during recording sessions in 1975 and was replaced by Joe English.

Wings followed Band on the Run with the chart-topping albums Venus and Mars (1975) and Wings at the Speed of Sound (1976). 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". 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.

In September 1977, the McCartneys' third child was born, 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. 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. Back to the Egg (1979) featured McCartney's assemblage 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. 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".

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. 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. 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. "Ebony and Ivory" was McCartney's record 28th single to hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100. 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".

In 1984, McCartney starred in Give My Regards to Broad Street, a feature film he also wrote and produced and which included Starr in an acting role. It was disparaged by critics: Variety described the film as "characterless, bloodless, and pointless"; while Roger Ebert awarded it a single star, writing, "you can safely skip the movie and proceed directly to the soundtrack". 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. 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. 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.

McCartney collaborated with Eric Stewart on Press to Play (1986), with Stewart co-writing more than half the songs on the LP. 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. 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. That same year, he released Flowers in the Dirt; a collaborative effort with Elvis Costello that included musical contributions from Gilmour and Nicky Hopkins. 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. 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. 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. 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". 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." 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". Performed around the world after its London premiere, the Liverpool Oratorio reached number one on the UK classical chart, Music Week.

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). 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. McCartney released the rock album Off the Ground in 1993. The subsequent New World Tour followed, which led to the release of the Paul Is Live album later that year.

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. He contributed the song "Nova" to a tribute album of classical, choral music called A Garland for Linda (2000), dedicated to his late wife. In 2001, McCartney recorded a version of "That's All Right" with Elvis Presley's original guitarist Scotty Moore and original

Business

Since the Rich List began in 1989, McCartney has been the UK's wealthiest musician, with an estimated fortune of £1 billion in 2024. 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. He earned £40 million in 2003, the highest income that year within media professions in the UK. This rose to £48.5 million by 2005. McCartney's 18-date On the Run Tour grossed £37 million in 2012.

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. 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. 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. McCartney returned to Capitol in the US in 1985, remaining with EMI until 2006. In 2007, McCartney signed with Hear Music, becoming the label's first artist. He returned to Capitol for 2018's Egypt Station.

In 1963, Dick James established Northern Songs to publish the songs of Lennon–McCartney. 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. Northern Songs was formally dissolved in 1995, and absorbed into the Sony/ATV catalogue. McCartney receives writers' royalties which together are 33+1⁄3 per cent of total commercial proceeds in the US, and which vary elsewhere between 50 and 55 per cent. 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. Bob Dylan introduced them to cannabis in a New York hotel room in 1964; McCartney recalls getting "very high" and "giggling uncontrollably". 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. During the filming of Help!, McCartney occasionally smoked a joint in the car on the way to the studio, and often forgot his lines. Director Richard Lester overheard two physically attractive women trying to persuade McCartney to use heroin, but he refused. 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.

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. 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." McCartney 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. 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 at Campbeltown Sheriff Court.

As a result of his drug convictions, the US government repeatedly denied him a visa until December 1973. 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 (230 g) of cannabis in his luggage. Years later, McCartney said, "I don't know what possessed me to just stick this bloody great bag of grass in my suitcase. Thinking back on it, it almost makes me shudder." 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.

In 1984, while McCartney was on holiday in Barbados, authorities arrested him for possession of marijuana and fined him $200. Upon his return to England, he stated that cannabis was less harmful than the legal substances alcohol, tobacco and glue, and that he had done no harm to anyone. In 1997, he spoke out in support of decriminalisation of cannabis: "People are smoking pot anyway and to make them criminals is wrong." McCartney quit cannabis in 2015, citing a desire to set a good example for his grandchildren.

Football

McCartney has publicly professed support for Everton F.C. and has also shown favour for Liverpool F.C. 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 and wives

McCartney's first serious girlfriend in Liverpool was Dorothy "Dot" Rhone, whom he met at the Casbah club in 1959. The couple had a two-and-a-half-year relationship, and were due to marry until Rhone's miscarriage, after which McCartney ended the engagement. McCartney began dating British actress Jane Asher in 1963. The two resided at Asher's parents' home in Marylebone, central London, for more than two years before moving to McCartney's own home in St John's Wood in March 1966. He wrote several songs while living with 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. They had a five-year relationship and planned to marry, but Asher broke off the engagement after she discovered that McCartney had become involved with an American screenwriter named Francie Schwartz.

McCartney's first wife was New Yorker Linda Eastman, whom he married in March 1969. She had first met the Beatles in 1966 as a photographer. 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." The pair first became properly acquainted in May 1967 at a Georgie Fame concert at The Bag O'Nails club, during her UK assignment to photograph rock musicians in London. 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." After the break-up of the Beatles, the McCartneys collaborated musically and formed Wings in 1971. They faced derision from some fans and critics, who questioned her inclusion. 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."

Paul and Linda 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. 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."

In 2002, McCartney married Heather Mills, a former model and anti-landmine campaigner. In 2003, the couple had a child, Beatrice Milly, named in honour of Mills's late mother and one of McCartney's aunts. They separated in April 2006 and divorced acrimoniously in May 2008. 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".

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. The couple had been together since November 2007. Shevell is vice-president of a family-owned transportation conglomerate which owned the defunct New England Motor Freight company, which entered bankruptcy in 2019. She was a former member of the board of the New York area's Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Shevell is about 18 years younger than McCartney. They had known each other for about 20 years prior to marrying, having met because both had homes in the Hamptons.

Former Beatles

John Lennon

Following the Beatles' break-up, McCartney initially had a strained relationship with Lennon, although they briefly became close again in early 1974, and played music together on one occasion. In later years, the two grew apart. McCartney often phoned Lennon, but was apprehensive about the reception he would receive. 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.

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. 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. In 2025 Sean Ono Lennon said: “I always notice the look in his eyes and the tone of his voice. Really felt like someone who was unable to process what was going on. He just seemed almost robotic, which I think some people took possibly as coldness, but I never took it as that, ’cause I understood even then what it was like when something that terrible happens". 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." He told Mojo in 2002 that Lennon was his greatest hero. McCartney sang backing vocals on Harrison's 1981 tribute to Lennon, "All Those Years Ago", which featured Starr on drums. He also released his own tribute to Lennon, "Here Today", in 1982.

In 2010, Yoko Ono referred to John and Paul as brothers. "Sure, they were two macho, very talented guys who had strong opinions, arguments, like most brothers. But when it came to the crux of the matter, when Paul thought John was in dire straights, he helped".

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." In 1988, Harrison said: "Actually, I love Paul, he's my mate, and it doesn't matter what they say in the papers, they're not gonna get much mileage out of that one." 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."

Ringo Starr

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. McCartney played a kazoo solo on "You're Sixteen" from the same album. 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. Since Harrison's death in 2001, McCartney has contributed to several of Starr's albums and the two have performed together on stage on several occasions.

Political views

McCartney campaigned against the United Kingdom's continued membership of the European Economic Community in the 1975 referendum. In September 2019, McCartney stated that the 2016 Brexit referendum was "probably a mistake," saying that the situation at the time was "a mess." He also said that the 2016 campaign had consisted of "all crazy promises". He did not vote due to his ongoing tour at the time of the referendum and stated that he would likely not have voted due to his confusion on the matter.

McCartney refused to perform his song "Freedom" in The 'US' Tour as he felt the song had become "hijacked" and acquired a militaristic meaning due to the George W. Bush administration's war on terror.

In June 2016, following the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, McCartney signed an open letter published in Billboard urging the United States Congress to impose stricter gun control. In 2018, McCartney attended a March for Our Lives rally in New York City. McCartney cited the murder of John Lennon as motivation for joining the protests when he told a CNN journalist, "One of my best friends was killed in gun violence, so it's important to me."