Paul McCartney (born 18 June 1942) is an English singer / songwriter and a key member of the Beatles. After the Beatles split up in 1970, he pursued his own successful solo career, recording with a variety of artists, including his group The Wings. According to the Guinness Book of Records he is the best selling artist of all time.
Paul McCartney was born in Liverpool, 1942, and became interested in music from an early age. As a teenager he was a budding singer song writer and became good friends with John Lennonand later George Harrison – this was to prove the nucleus for the Beatles. In the early 1960s, The Beatles began by playing gigs in clubs in Germany and Liverpool. It was at the Cavern club in Liverpool where they were spotted by manager Brian Epstein. He secured them their first major recording contract with Parlophone (after many other record companies like Decca had turned them down)
It was playing at the Cavern club than Paul and John Lennon realised most groups were just doing cover versions, this inspired them to write their own music and this was a feature of the Beatles recordings for the next ten years.
Early life
See also: Jim and Mary McCartney
Exterior of a two-story brick building, with a hedge in front of it. Six windows are visible, three on each level, as are two doorways on the lower level.
McCartney's home at 20 Forthlin Road in Allerton. The McCartney family moved into this residence in 1955.[3]
James Paul McCartney was born on 18 June 1942 in Walton Hospital, Liverpool, England, 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.[4] McCartney has one younger brother named Michael. Though the children were baptised in their mother's Catholic faith, their father was a former Protestant turned agnostic, and religion was not emphasised in the household.[5]
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.[6] In 1953, with only three others out of ninety examinees, he passed the 11-Plus exam, meaning he could attend the Liverpool Institute, a grammar school rather than a secondary modern school.[7] 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 younge