Paul McCartney's Solo Career

After The Beatles breakup in 1970, McCartney immediately launched a solo career with his album McCartney, which featured him playing all the instruments and singing all vocals apart from some support from wife Linda McCartney. While many found this record underwhelming (including Lennon in an interview), it did contain the superlative "Maybe I'm Amazed", which has remained a centerpiece of McCartney's concerts ever since. Another successful track was "Every Night", which was later a hit for singer Phoebe Snow.

McCartney followed this in 1971 with the stand-alone single "Another Day/Oh Woman, Oh Why", the former of which to some recalled the observational style of his mid-period Beatles work. The album Ram, later in 1971, was credited to both Paul and Linda, and featured back-up from, for the most part, studio musicians. While both single and album were commercially popular, many detractors viewed them as largely insubstantial.

The album also contained some apparent negative references towards Lennon, notably in the song "Too Many People" ("Too many people preaching practices, don't let 'em tell you what you wanna be"); later that year, Lennon responded with the famously scathing "How Do You Sleep?", to which McCartney responded to with the pleading "Dear Friend", on Wild Life, the first album released by Wings.

McCartney famously insisted that his wife should be involved with his music — and later tour in his bands so they did not have to be apart while he travelled — in spite of her protests that she was not talented enough. After hearing Linda sing, many seconded her opinion, but Paul's move was clearly a deliberate act, intended to help dispel some of the lingering Beatles mystique and prove his assertion that "anyone can do it". Despite persistent attacks on her ability (including one notorious 1990s bootleg concert tape in which her out-of-tune vocals were deliberately mixed to the fore), Linda became a valuable member of McCartney's bands and an inspiring musician throughout the remainder of her life. (In many ways this paralleled the role that Yoko Ono played in Lennon's post-Beatles musical life, just as there would be organizational similarities between Wings and Lennon's Plastic Ono Band).

After many personnel changes, Wings became one of the most successful 1970s rock bands, hitting its artistic apex in late 1973 with the Band on the Run album and its commercial apex in 1976 with a wildly popular world tour.

McCartney's Later Solo Career

In 1980, as Wings came to an end, McCartney made international headlines when he was arrested for possession of marijuana in Japan and he spent nine days in prison there before being deported. Since that time he has reportedly stopped using all drugs, although it is generally believed that he used marijuana consistently throughout the late Sixties and Seventies.

Despite the devastating blow of the murder of John Lennon later that year, McCartney enjoyed continued success in the early 80s. His 1982 album Tug Of War was a major success and in the same year he scored two huge hits with duet singles—"Ebony and Ivory", recorded with soul legend Stevie Wonder, and "The Girl Is Mine", recorded with emerging pop megastar Michael Jackson. Another successful McCartney-Jackson duet, "Say, Say, Say" was released in 1983. He also wrote and starred in the 1984 film "Give My Regards To Broad Street". The film and sountrack featured the US & UK top ten hit "No More Lonely Nights".

McCartney's friendship with Jackson was shortlived, however. Not long afterwards, Jackson paid a huge sum to acquire the Northern Songs catalogue, which included the publishing rights to most of the Beatles' songs. Although McCartney subsequently approached Jackson hoping to negotiate an increase in his royalty rate, he was turned down.

In the mid-1980s, while making a home movie reminiscing about his days as a schoolboy, McCartney discovered the 1825 building which had once been his old school was derelict. He purchased it, and pursued a dream he had always had of helping his home town of Liverpool in some way. January 1996 saw the dedication of the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, of which Paul is the lead patron. On June 7th 1996 Her Majesty the Queen officially opened the building.

In the late 1980s McCartney began a songwriting partnership with Elvis Costello, with the resulting songs appearing on several albums by both artists. The best known of these is McCartney's modest 1989 hit "My Brave Face", from his album Flowers in the Dirt.

During 1989-1990 McCartney staged a major, year-long world tour, in which for the first time he included a substantial number of Beatles songs in the set list. The tour was a big success, filling arenas and stadiums at each stop. A similarly-scaled tour took place in 1993.

In the 1990s McCartney was involved in a feud with John Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono. Their dispute centred around the writing credits for a number of Beatles songs. He had wanted to change the credits from the traditional 'Lennon-McCartney' to 'Paul McCartney and John Lennon' for songs McCartney had primarily composed. Yoko Ono was personally offended by this move which she felt broke an agreement that the two had made while Lennon was still alive to credit songs as a team. However, McCartney himself has stated that no such agreement ever existed. The two other Beatles agreed that the credits should remain as they always had been and McCartney withdrew his request.

McCartney and his wife became outspoken vegetarians and animal-rights activists. McCartney tells the story of how their vegeterian instincts were realized when they happened to see lambs frolicking in a field as they ate a meal of lamb. In 1991, Linda introduced her own line of vegetarian meals to the general market. After Linda's death in 1998, Paul pledged to continue her line of food and keep it free from genetically modified organisms.

In 1991 McCartney made his first complete foray into classical music, collaborating with Carl Davis to compose the quasi-autobiographical Liverpool Oratorio. This was received well in general, although many commented that the music lacked the complexity normally associated with the genre. Liverpool Oratorio had its North American premiere in Carnegie Hall in New York on 18 November 1991 with Davis conducting and both McCartneys in attendance.

In 1994, McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr reunited to release the first of the Beatles' Anthology albums, consisting of alternative takes and live recordings of Beatles songs; volumes two and three were released the next year. They also created two new Beatles songs by layering new music around unfinished tracks Lennon had made before his death fourteen years earlier.

On March 11, 1997, McCartney was created a Knight by Queen Elizabeth II, and was subsequently known as Sir Paul McCartney. In 1999 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist (he was inducted with the rest of the Beatles in 1988).

In 1997 he made his second venture into classical music with Standing Stone, a work that received a mixed response. In 1999 he released Working Classical, a collection of his pop songs redone for string quartet or orchestra.

McCartney is also a very talented visual artist. For more than seventeen years Paul McCartney has been a committed painter, finding in his work on canvas both a respite from the world and another outlet for his drive to create. His painting, like much of his life, has been a very private endeavor. In April 1999 he exhibited his work for the first time in Siegen, Germany, where it met with critical acclaim, which led to his decision to share the work in galleries across the UK. He is also a big fan of animation, having released Tropic Island Hum, a CD compilation of various animation music that he has done over the years.

McCartney then decided to give another genre a try, and in 2001 he published Blackbird Singing, a volume of poetry. Some of these were lyrics to past songs, while some were strictly poems. He gave readings of these works in Liverpool and New York; the selections were both serious (Here Today, about John Lennon) and humourous (Maxwell's Silver Hammer).

On 20 October 2001 McCartney took a lead role in organising the Concert for New York City, a celebration of the strength, resilience, and pride of New York and America in response to the September 11 terrorist attacks. The concert was held at Madison Square Garden and featured performances by The Who, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, David Bowie, Billy Joel, Destiny's Child, Eric Clapton, Adam Sandler, Bon Jovi, Elton John, James Taylor and many more. McCartney was the final performer and debuted his song "Freedom", which advocates taking forceful measures against terrorism.

In June 2002 McCartney married Heather Mills, a former model and anti-landmines campaigner, in a highly elaborate ceremony at Castle Leslie in Glaslough, County Monaghan, Ireland. Under her influence, he has campaigned against landmines himself, and donated substantial sums to the cause. In early 2003, for example, he held a personal concert for the wife of banker Ralph Whitworth and donated one million dollars to Adopt-a-Landmine. Mills and McCartney had their first child, Beatrice Millie, on October 28, 2003.

McCartney continues to release pop albums (Run Devil Run, Wingspan, Flaming Pie, Driving Rain), as well as campaign for the groups Greenpeace and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, among others. Paul and Linda had three children: Mary (named after Paul's late mother), Stella, and James (after Paul's late father). He also adopted Heather, Linda's daughter from her previous marriage. James (born 1977) can be heard playing guitar in McCartney's latest albums. Mary is the baby inside McCartney's jacket in the back cover photograph of his first solo album. Heather is a designer, and can be seen as a young girl in the Let it be film. Stella McCartney is an award-winning fashion designer and animal rights activist.

In 2002 McCartney launched another major American tour, garnering strong notices for an energetic and tight supporting band and an evocative and varied show that appealed to fans of all generations. This leg became the top-grossing U.S. tour of the year, taking in over $126 million. The tour has subsequently continued around the rest of the world in 2003 and 2004.

McCartney performed during the pre-game ceremonies at the NFL's Super Bowl XXXVI on 3 February 2002 and was the halftime performer at Super Bowl XXXIX on 6 February 2005. Unlike in many previous years, he was the only performer in the entire halftime show. His set consisted of "Drive My Car", "Get Back", "Live and Let Die" and "Hey Jude", and featured interesting stage design, fireworks, and fan-held placards.

McCartney, currently 63, says he hopes to keep playing even after he is 64, a reference to the Beatles song, "When I'm Sixty-Four".

McCartney's new album, tentatively titled Timelines, is due to be released in September 2005, coinciding with his U.S. tour. Among the songs most likely to see inclusion are "Comfort of Love", "Hometown Papers" (an answer to the media criticism of his wife Heather) and "Bushie-Tushie Jelly Jam" (which criticizes U.S. president George W. Bush for refusing to sign a treaty banning landmines). Long time Radiohead collaborator Nigel Godrich is producing the album. McCartney was to use a backing band in the studio but later decided to play almost all the instruments himself; most of this is speculative.