hypersongs

Paul McCartney

The Liverpool bassist, singer and songwriter of the Beatles and Wings, whose home-made solo debut McCartney (1970) holds "Junk", a song first written in India in 1968.

From the Quarrymen to Wings

Sir James Paul McCartney was born on June 18, 1942 at Walton Hospital in Liverpool. He met John Lennon on July 6, 1957 and joined the Quarrymen, and George Harrison joined in 1958. The group took the name the Beatles in August 1960; McCartney became bassist after Stuart Sutcliffe left in 1961, and Ringo Starr replaced Pete Best in August 1962. "Love Me Do" came out in October 1962 and "Yesterday" in 1965; Abbey Road was the last Beatles album recorded. He announced his departure on April 10, 1970 and the Beatles' partnership was legally dissolved on January 9, 1975. He formed Wings in 1971, with Denny Laine, and made Band on the Run (1973), Venus and Mars (1975), Wings at the Speed of Sound (1976), London Town (1978) and Back to the Egg (1979) before Wings was discontinued in April 1981.

Solo albums include McCartney (1970), Ram (1971), McCartney II (1980), Tug of War (1982), Flowers in the Dirt (1989), Flaming Pie (1997), Chaos and Creation in the Backyard (2005) and Memory Almost Full (2007). With Youth he is the Fireman, and he has written classical works including Liverpool Oratorio (1991), Standing Stone (1997) and Ecce Cor Meum (2006). Honors include an MBE in 1965, a knighthood in 1997, and two Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions, in 1988 with the Beatles and in 1999 solo. His 1990 concert at the Maracana in Rio drew a record paying audience of 184,000. The Paul McCartney Project holds about 2,700 concert entries.

McCartney

McCartney was released on April 17, 1970 in the UK, produced by McCartney, 34:22. He recorded much of it between December 1, 1969 and February 25, 1970 at his home in St John's Wood on a four-track Studer with no mixing desk, playing every instrument himself, then moved the tapes to eight-track at Morgan Studios in Willesden under the pseudonym Billy Martin and finished at EMI. It reached 2 in the UK, 1 on the Billboard chart for three weeks, and went double platinum in the US; it had no singles.

Rolling Stone's Langdon Winner called the songs distinctly second rate but the record very good on its own terms, while Melody Maker's Richard Williams found sheer banality outside "Maybe I'm Amazed"; Paste's Brent Day later called it one of the first big lo-fi records. It was reissued in 2011 in the Paul McCartney Archive Collection with seven bonus tracks, as a 50th anniversary half-speed vinyl in 2020, and in the 2022 box set McCartney I II III.

Albums

  • McCartney 1970 · Apple

    His first solo album: thirteen tracks, recorded largely at home and played entirely by him.

Songs

  • Junk McCartney · 1970

    A song first written in India in 1968, demoed with the Beatles, and finished at home in 1970.

Sources

  1. Paul McCartney, Wikipedia
  2. McCartney (album), Wikipedia
  3. Junk (song), Wikipedia
  4. Junk, The Paul McCartney Project