James Paul McCartney was born on June 18, 1942 at Walton General Hospital in Liverpool, England to James and Mary McCartney. His brother, Michael, who's full name is Peter Michael McCartney, was born eighteen months later. His family moved a few times but when he was 13 they moved to 20 Forthlin Road in Allerton, just across a golf course and a little over one mile away from where John lived with his Aunt Mimi.
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Music was always a part of the McCartney household. Before the war, Paul's father was a Cotton salesman during the day, and a jazz musician with Jim Mac's Jazz Band by night. Both Paul and his brother received piano lessons. His mother Mary died of breast cancer when he was fourteen, while the two brothers were away at Boy Scout camp. The antithesis of John Lennon as a school boy, Paul did very well in school.
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When Lonnie Donnegan appeared in Liverpool and the Skiffle craze hit, Jim McCartney scraped together £15 for a guitar for Paul. Paul's friend Ivan Vaughan invited Paul to Woolton to see the Quarry Men play in Woolton on July 6, 1957, but not really to hear the Quarry Men. Vaughan had promised Paul it would be a great place to pick up girls, which Paul was already very interested in at the age of 14. Later in the afternoon, after hearing the Quarry Men play, Paul borrowed a guitar and impressed the boys with all the chords and the words to "Twenty Flight Rock". Paul's first impression of John was that he was drunk. But Paul wrote down the words for "Twenty Flight Rock" and "Be Bop a Lula" for him so that John could learn them. A few days later Pete Shotten told Paul the others wanted him to join the band.
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Paul switched to the Bass when the Beatles' bass player Stu Sutcliffe left the group in 1961. When all of the Beatles moved to London in 1963, Paul began to see actress Jane Asher on a steady basis.
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Paul is responsible for some of the best Beatles songs, Back in the USSR, Hey Jude, Let It Be, Get Back as well as ballads like Yesterday and Michelle. Paul also was mainly responsible for all the songs on Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Abbey Road. In 1970 the group split and Paul began his solo career.
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Paul never did as well even though he has recorded 26 albums and 56 singles since leaving The Beatles. Paul's first album after the Beatles was a low key effort. The 1970 McCartney is a collection of songs all written and performed by Paul. The album contained some potential hits especially "Maybe I'm Amazed" but no singles were released. None the less, McCartney rose to #1 on the album charts. Paul himself played most of the instruments and to some people he is a perfectionist knowing exactly how things should be played. Telling the others how to play was a factor in the Beatles split.
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His next album, Ram, was a full-out production with outside musicians and the result was a record full of harmonies and melodies sounding reminiscent of Abbey Road Beatles. It includes his first #1 single "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey". After this record Paul decided to form a band, which he called Wings. The first version included Paul and Linda, with Denny Laine on guitar, and Denny Seiwell on drums. An album was quickly thrown together and the result was the loose Wings Wild Life. The cover of Wings Wild Life contained no mention of Paul McCartney on the group Wings and the record sales were a bit disappointing. This album was followed by Red Rose Speedway which was a heavily produced record. The album sold well but was panned by critics. In 1973 Paul composed the theme song to the James Bond movie Live and Let Die.  The song was big hit rising to #1 on the charts and garnered him a Academy Award nomination for best song.
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The group fell apart and with only Paul, Linda and Denny Laine left, continued and produced the aptly named Band On The Run, a record many critics considered a classic. It was the Rolling Stone Album of the year and won a Grammy for Best Group & Best Engineered Recording.
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After the album, Paul went to New Orleans to record the 1975 follow-up album Venus and Mars. They went on to record another record, Wings At the Speed of Sound. The album was included the hit singles Silly Love Songs (#1)and Let 'Em In (#3).
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During the recording of the next record, London Town, Wings was again reduced to Paul, Linda, and Denny. The next incantation of Wings added Laurence Juber on guitar and Steve Holly on drums and recorded the 1979 album Back To the Egg. The album was followed by a World Tour which was cut short when Paul was arrested for marijuana possession in Japan. After reconciling that the band concept wasn't working for him, Paul again withdrew with another completely solo album, McCartney II. The album was very experimental and consisted largely of home demos and relied heavily on synthesizers.
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Paul didn't release his next album until 1982. He teamed up with producer George Martin for the album, Tug Of War. The record was a huge critical and commercial success, and included many guest musicians including Ringo Starr, Stevie Wonder, and Carl Perkins . The album was followed in 1983 by Pipes of Peace, which consisted manly of tracks leftover from the Tug of War sessions and a few new collaborations with Michael Jackson, including "Say, Say, Say". His next project  was the 1984 film Give My Regards To Broad Street which was panned by critics and was only a mild success at the box office. The soundtrack album consisted mostly of remakes and a few new originals, notably the #6 hit "No More Lonely Nights."
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In 1986 he released the album Press to Play which was another critical and commercial  disappointment, even though he took a more modern and innovative approach to the record. Paul  went back to the music of his teenage years and recorded an album for the Soviet Union CHOBA BCCCP, or "Back in the USSR." This album consisted only of covers but found Paul with a renewed voice which he took into his next project Flowers In the Dirt. The album which included four tracks co-written with Elvis Costello was received quite well critically but only moderately at the record shops. This album was followed with a mammoth world tour and the formation of the Paul McCartney Band. The Tour was a huge success and spawned the album Tripping the Live Fantastic.
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His next project was a collaboration with composer Carl Davis for the ambitious classical music piece Liverpool Oratorio, a composition about his childhood in Liverpool. This was followed by the 1993 album "Off the Ground" with the Paul McCartney Band. and another world tour and the concert album and video, Paul is Live.
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In 1995, Paul reunited with former Beatles George Harrison, Ringo Starr, and John Lennon (via an old cassette tape demo), and along with producer George Martin recorded the first new Beatles song in 25 years.  "Free As A Bird" featured the use of the latest technology and it allowed the others to be united with John Lennon.  This was also the start of the Beatles Anthology project which consisted of a television documentary (later released on video) and three double-disc CD sets that included outtakes and unreleased songs of The Beatles.  The albums all debut on the charts at #1, and went on to become the highest selling double-CDs in history.  The Anthology project also gave life to another "new" Beatles song, "Real Love," which was also an incomplete Lennon demo that the group finished.
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After the Anthology project, and what many called the rebirth of Beatlemania, Paul started work on his new studio album in four years. Inspired by many of the Beatles early songs, and the diagnosis of Linda having breast cancer, Paul set out to write some of the best songs he had written since leaving The Beatles.  The end result was Flaming Pie, an album that got its name from an old John Lennon joke, and Paul's biggest success since the mid-1970s.  The album made its debut at #2 on the Billboard chart and was his highest debut since 1970.
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On the heels of the Flaming Pie success, Paul debuted his latest classical music piece, Standing Stone, and the recording of it was released in October, 1997 where it topped the classical music charts.
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