He effectively led the making of the Magical Mystery Tour film and album, and in 1969 tried to persuade the group to take to the stage once more. When Brian Epstein died in 1967, McCartney made efforts to keep the group together.
McCartney reluctantly agreed to the other members’ wishes to stop touring, which they did in August 1966. It later won an Ivor Novello award for Best Instrumental Theme.īy this time The Beatles had long since tired of touring, having become unable to hear their own voices and instruments above the screams of the audience. The first to take on a non-Beatles musical commitment, in 1966 McCartney wrote the score for the film The Family Way. In the mid 1960s McCartney became interested in experimental music, and made tape loops and avant-garde recordings, both with The Beatles and alone. He lived for some years at 7 Cavendish Avenue in St John’s Wood, near to EMI’s Abbey Road Studios. McCartney, however, remained in central London, enjoying the various artistic and cultural benefits of the capital. As well as penning the bulk of the band’s recorded output, they also wrote for artists including Cilla Black, Billy J Kramer, and Peter and Gordon.Īs they became a worldwide phenomenon The Beatles relocated from Liverpool to London, but Lennon, Harrison and Ringo Starr eventually moved away from the city. He later bought a left-handed 1962 Hofner bass, which became part of The Beatles’ iconography during the 1960s.Īfter The Beatles signed to Parlophone in 1962 and began releasing records, the songwriting partnership of Lennon-McCartney became celebrated. After Stuart Sutcliffe left the band, McCartney reluctantly took over his role as bass guitarist. The Beatles, as they became, gradually grew in popularity after performing many times in and around Liverpool and Hamburg, Germany. McCartney later persuaded Lennon to allow George Harrison into the band as lead guitarist in 1958.
They became friends and began writing and performing songs together. Paul McCartney met John Lennon at the Woolton fete on 6 July 1957, between performances by The Quarrymen. Paul also began playing piano, and wrote ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ while still living at Forthlin Road. He took music lessons for a while, but preferred instead to learn by ear. He later learned to restring it, and wrote his first song on the guitar, ‘I Lost My Little Girl’. When skiffle became a national craze, however, Paul swapped the instrument for a £15 Framus Zenith acoustic guitar.īeing left-handed, Paul initially had trouble playing the instrument. Jim encouraged Paul and his brother Mike to be musical, and gave Paul a trumpet following the death of his mother. There was an upright piano in the front room at 20 Forthlin Road, which Jim bought from Harry Epstein’s NEMS store, which Beatles manager Brian Epstein would later take over. Jim McCartney was a keen musician who had been leader of Jim Mac’s Jazz Band in the 1920s. The death shook the McCartney family, and later led to a bond between Paul and John Lennon, who lost his mother in 1958. She was a heavy smoker who had been suffering from breast cancer. On 31 October 1956, Mary McCartney died of an embolism following a mastectomy. Back then, though, it was an unassuming terraced house built by the local authority in the 1920s. The house was bought by the National Trust in 1995, and today is a popular tourist destination. It cost them one pound and six shillings a week to live there.
In 1955 the McCartneys moved to 20 Forthlin Road, a council house in the Allerton district of Liverpool. The following year, while travelling on a bus to the Institute, he met George Harrison, who was also a student there.
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Paul attended the Stockton Wood Road primary school, then went on to the Joseph Williams junior school before passing his 11 Plus in 1953 and gaining a place at the Liverpool Institute. His father Jim worked in the cotton trade and played trumpet and piano in jazz and ragtime bands, and his mother Mary worked as a midwife. James Paul McCartney was born in Liverpool’s Walton Hospital on 18 June 1942. John Lennon, 1980 All We Are Saying, David Sheff The early years