Liverpool-born Beatles legend Sir Paul McCartney celebrates his 80th birthday today.
Born in Walton on June 18, 1942, the singer-songwriter joined The Quarrymen in 1957 – a band which, together with John Lennon, Ringo Starr and George Harrison, evolved into The Beatles. Throughout the 1960s they toured the world, made films and broke records with their chart-topping music.
And Sir Paul is still performing with the same vigour he had during The Beatles’ peak in the 1960s. This year, only a week after he turns 80, he will become Glastonbury festival's oldest ever headline act.
READ MORE: Bingo hall renamed to mark Sir Paul McCartney's birthday
In addition to being a leading force in The Beatles, McCartney has enjoyed a glittering solo career since 1970, when he released his first solo album “McCartney”.
But did you also know that Paul McCartney was once deported, was only paid £1 for his performance at the opening ceremony of the Olympics and was in the Pirates of the Caribbean?
Paul isn't even his actual first name!
In honour of Sir Paul’s 80th birthday and his massive contribution to the Liverpool music scene, the ECHO has rounded up one fact to celebrate each year of his life.
Here’s 80 facts about the former member of the Fab Four - some well-known, and others that may surprise even the most dedicated of Beatles fans.
1. Paul met his future bandmate, George Harrison, on the school bus. They went to the Liverpool Institute on Mount Street, a boy’s grammar school, in the 1950s. They became close friends but Paul admitted: “I tended to talk down to him because he was a year younger.” Later, when the school risked being neglected, McCartney helped save it and turn it into the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts.
2. He was paid just £1 for performing at the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics , singing “The End” and “Hey Jude”.
3. He was widely rumoured to have died and been replaced by the winner of a lookalike competition. The “Paul is Dead” urban legend began in October 1969 with the rumour that he had died in a car crash on the M1 in 1966. Some members of the public began to believe that The Beatles had replaced him with a lookalike to save them mourning the music legend. To dispel the rumours, McCartney and his family featured on the cover of Life magazine with the caption “Paul is still with us” in November 1969.
4. His first name isn’t actually Paul. His first name is actually James, after his father but his parents called him by his middle name, Paul, to prevent confusion - and the name stuck.
5. He supports both Liverpool and Everton football clubs. There was speculation for many years about whether McCartney was a Red or a Blue. He said he would choose Everton if it came down to a derby match between the two: "Here's the deal: my father was born in Everton, my family are officially Evertonians, so if it comes down to a derby match or an FA Cup final between the two, I would have to support Everton. But after a concert at Wembley Arena I got a bit of a friendship with Kenny Dalglish, who had been to the gig and I thought 'You know what? I am just going to support them both because it's all Liverpool.'"
6. The lyrics for “Let it Be” came to him in a dream. The song’s reference to “Mother Mary” is taken by many to be a religious one. But the song is actually inspired by Paul’s mother, Mary, who died when he was 14 from complications from breast cancer surgery. He said: “I fell asleep exhausted one day and had a dream in which my mum did, in fact, come to me.”
7. Paul featured in an episode of The Simpsons. He made a guest appearance in an episode called “Lisa the Vegetarian” in 1995 as himself, alongside his wife Linda. Their condition for appearing was that Lisa should remain vegetarian for the rest of the series and the episode shows the McCartneys helping Lisa to commit to vegetarianism. The episode references McCartney’s musical career and his song “Maybe I’m Amazed” plays during the closing credits.
8. He has been a vegetarian since 1975 , when he and Linda saw lambs in a field as they were eating it. In 2009 he wrote to the Dalai Lama to ask him why he wasn’t a vegetarian.
9. Billy Joel hid all the salami in his house when Paul McCartney visited. McCartney came over so they could share what they’d been working on. Billy Joel remembered his strict vegetarian diet and took all the meat out of his fridge to hide around his house. He forgot about it until he noticed a strange smell a few days later.
10. He first met John Lennon at a church fete in July 1957 . John was performing with his first band, The Quarrymen. Paul impressed him by grabbing a guitar and performing and John asked him to join the band. This would eventually morph into the Beatles.
11. McCartney can faintly be heard saying “Oh, f****** hell” in Hey Jude. At 2.58 you can hear him swear as he made a mistake during recording of the hit song.
12. His voice kept cracking in his first performance on stage with the Quarrymen in October 1957, which John Lennon found very funny.
13. McCartney will become Glastonbury Festival’s oldest ever headliner when he performs on June 25, a week after his 80th birthday.
14. He got deported from Hamburg, Germany for setting a condom on fire with the group’s original drummer, Pete Best, in the early 1960s. The owner of the place they were staying in told authorities they were trying to burn it to the ground.
15. Paul plays his guitar left-handed by reversing the order of the strings. In the early days of practising, this meant his guitar would clash with John’s and make lots of noise.
16. He was nearly jailed in Japan for possessing cannabis… In 1980 McCartney was found with nearly half a pound of cannabis in his luggage. He spent nine days in a narcotics detention centre and could have faced seven years in jail. He said “this stuff was too good to flush down the toilet.”
17. … but avoided it because he was so popular! He was released because jailmates kept singing his songs and fans outside yelled for him to be released.
18. In 2015 he quit smoking pot to set a good example for his grandchildren.
19. Paul and John wrote down initial ideas for songs in school exercise books in the parlour of 20 Forthlin Road. These included ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ and ‘Love Me Do’.
20. Eleanor Rigby is an actual person and is buried in Woolton Cemetery. Paul had often walked past the gravestone as a young boy but said he didn’t recollect seeing it and the coincidence must have been down to his subconscious. The actual inspiration for the song was Eleanor Bron, an actress in The Beatles’ 1965 film “Help!”.
21. They wrote many songs, including Eleanor Rigby, while high. Paul described the process of writing Eleanor Rigby as taking the tune and rough lyrics to John’s house where “we sat around laughing, got stoned and finished it off”.
22. His daughter, Stella Nina McCartney, is a renowned fashion designer. Her clients have included Beyoncé, Meghan Markle and Rihanna.
23. Paul wrote the song “Yesterday” in a dream. He was at his girlfriend Jane Asher’s family home at the time and started to play it on the piano before he could forget it.
24. The original lyrics for “Yesterday” were: “Scrambled eggs / Oh my baby, how I love your legs / Not as much as I love scrambled eggs.” Paul said he added the first words that came to mind to the tune to help him remember it.
25. "Yesterday" is the most covered song in history , according to the Guinness Book of World Records. It has amassed around 2,200 versions since its release in 1966.
26. Paul’s first instrument was the trumpet. Paul’s father, Jim McCartney, taught him to play the trumpet and piano. He himself played in a jazz band. The trumpet was a gift for Paul's 14th birthday.
27. He has written, or co-written, 32 number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100.
28. His father bought the family piano from a shop that would turn out to be owned by Brian Epstein – the Beatles’ future manager .
29. Paul didn’t invite any of the other Beatles to his wedding to Linda in 1969. He said: “Maybe it was because the group was breaking up. We were all p****d off with each other.”
30. Paul was the only Beatle wearing a beard during the recording and filming of “Let it Be” . He was also the only one without a beard on the cover of “Abbey Road”, which was recorded in the same year.
31. The Beatles song ‘Helter Skelter’ is credited by music historians as being one of the earliest examples of heavy metal music. The song was released on their 1968 self-titled record, also known as “The White Album”.
32. McCartney wrote the James Bond theme tune "Live and Let Die" with his wife Linda and former Beatles producer George Martin.
33. He played the fifth highest-attended concert by a single artist in history. On April 20, 1990 McCartney played the Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro to an audience of 184,000 people.
34. He used a fake name to get into the studio when recording his first solo album. He checked into EMI studios under the name Billy Martin, who was a baseball player in the US, to avoid the other Beatles. The album was recorded at the time of the Beatles’ break-up and the rest tried to delay its release.
35. McCartney wrote “Maybe I’m Amazed” for Linda and all the support she had given him while the band was breaking up.
36. McCartney was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice – once as a member of the Beatles in 1988 and again as a solo artist in 1999.
37. The historic show at Shea Stadium in 1965 had Paul’s future wife, Linda, in the audience (they married in 1969), actress Barbara Bach who would marry Ringo Starr and 16-year-old Meryl Streep.
38. One of the Rolling Stones’ first major hits was written by the Beatles . They wrote “I Wanna Be Your Man” for the Stones, which reached number 12 on the UK chart. The Beatles released their own version three weeks later.
39. Rocket Raccoon in Guardians of the Galaxy was inspired by a Beatles song. Rocket has been a part of the Marvel universe for 45 years and he was inspired by the song “Rocky Raccoon” on the 1968 “White Album”.
40. He took inspiration from a Picasso painting to write a song for Kanye West. He used an old guitar riff inspired by “The Old Guitarist” for Kanye’s hit single “All Day”.
41. He bought a racehorse for his dad called Drakes Drum.
42. Paul had a moped accident, chipping his front tooth and cutting his lip while visiting his family in Liverpool on December 26, 1965. Paul grew a moustache to cover it up and the rest of the Beatles followed suit. He appeared in the “Rain” music video with his front tooth missing.
43. Paul is a talented artist. He earned top accolades at school but his lack of discipline negatively affected his grades and stopped him going to art college. He has had his paintings on display, for example in the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol and in Liverpool, despite initial reluctance to show his paintings publicly. He said: “I didn’t tell anybody I painted for 15 years but now I’m out of the closet.”
44. He witnessed the 9/11 attacks from his private jet while at JFK airport. He organised the "all-star concert" a month later, which included Elton John and Destiny’s Child.
45. He was made an honorary detective for the NYPD after giving the charity concert for 9/11.
46. He has been the UK’s wealthiest musician since the Sunday Times Rich List began in 1989. As of 2022, he has an estimated fortune of £865m.
47. Paul made a cameo in Pirates of the Caribbean as Captain Jack Sparrow’s uncle.
48. He earns between $400,000 and $600,000 in royalties each year from “Wonderful Christmas Time” . The 1979 song was written and produced entirely by McCartney.
49. He had a feud with Michael Jackson when he bought all the rights to the Beatles’ songs , outbidding Paul himself. It was Paul who advised him to invest some of his wealth in music publishing in the first place.
50. Paul finally secured the rights to the Beatles’ catalogue of music in 2017.
51. 2022 marks Sir Paul McCartney’s 80th birthday, 60 years since ‘Love Me Do’ was released as their first single and 65 years since Paul met John Lennon.
52. New artists can now perform at 20 Forthlin Road , the birthplace of the Beatles. Four unsigned music acts have been chosen to write a song inspired by the Beatles and to perform it in the McCartneys’ front room.
53. Paul echoes Shakespeare’s Hamlet in “Let It Be” : “O, I could tell you – but let it be. Horatio, I am dead.”
54. McCartney responded to news of John Lennon’s murder in 1980 with “It's a drag, isn’t it?”. He later said he regretted saying this.
55. In 1979 the Guinness Book of World Records recognised him as the “most honoured composer and performer in music” with 60 gold discs and, with the Beatles, sales of over 100 million singles and 100 million albums.
56. In 2009 Guinness World Records again recognised McCartney as the “most successful songwriter”, having written or co-written 188 charted records in the United Kingdom, of which 91 reached the top 10 and 33 made it to number one.
57. In 2021 he featured on his own set of Royal Mail postage stamps. The stamps included eight images from post-Beatles albums and four shots of him in the recording studio. Royal Mail called them “a fitting tribute to one of the UK’s much loved and revered musical icons”.
58. Paul was sometimes known as “The Cute Beatle” by the press and became a teen heartthrob.
59. He has written children’s books , among them ‘High in the Clouds’ and ‘Hey Grandude!”
60. He was voted the 11th greatest singer of all time by Rolling Stone, which cited his wide tenor vocal range, spanning over four octaves.
61. His childhood home – 20 Forthlin Road – was less than a mile from Mendips, where John Lennon came to live in 1946 with his aunt and uncle after his parents separated. The two spent hours composing songs on John’s bed in Mendips, such as “Please Please Me”, “I Call Your Name” and “I’ll Get You”.
62. Paul wrote the Beatles’ shortest song , “Her Majesty”, which was only 23 seconds long.
63. His company MPL Communications owns the copyright to more than 3,000 songs , including those from the musical ‘Grease’.
64. He has collaborated with artists such as Stevie Wonder (“Ebony and Ivory”), Michael Jackson (“The Girl is Mine”), Kanye West and Rihanna.
65. Paul reunited Nirvana in 2012 in a concert in New York to help those affected by Hurricane Sandy. He performed onstage with the surviving members of the band, including drummer Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic, the bass player.
66. In 2015 he had an asteroid named after him (4148 McCartney) by the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Centre.
67. Paul wears a black carnation in “Your Mother Should Know” while the other Beatles wear red – fans took this as a clue for the “Paul is Dead” legend.
68. When Scottish police found marijuana plants growing on his farm, McCartney claimed he was given the seeds by a fan and didn’t know what they would grow.
69. He sued Steve Jobs three times. The Beatles formed their own record label, Apple Corps Ltd and in 1977 they discovered a new tech company called Apple Computer, Inc, leading to a 30-year legal battle.
70. Paul said his “perfect sandwich” includes Marmite, hummus, cheese and lettuce on a honey mustard bagel. He revealed this unusual choice in an interview with British comedian Romesh Ranganathan to promote his late wife Linda’s cookbook “Family Kitchen”.
71. Paul once said “every love song I write is for Linda” , referring to his first wife, who he was married to for 29 years before her death in 1998, aged 56.
72. Bob Dylan got The Beatles into smoking marijuana. They met him on their 1964 tour of the States and he offered them some cannabis to smoke.
73. Paul now limits himself to one glass of wine per week after his wild lifestyle in The Beatles.
74. Paul’s favourite Beatles song is “You Know My Name” – on the B-side for Let It Be. He said this is because he had so much fun recording it.
75. Paul wrote his first song when he was only 14 years old . In a Twitter Q&A in 2014 he said he wrote “I Lost My Little Girl” in Liverpool.
76. “Blackbird” was the only song sung alone by Paul when he was part of The Beatles.
77. The Beatles earned $90,000 in 35 minutes for their Minneapolis show in August 1965.
78. The Beatles once bought a private island in Greece. They hoped to live there away from the fans but later sold it when they broke up.
79. Paul filed a lawsuit against his fellow Beatles for the dissolution of The Beatles’ contractual partnership. The final dissolution of the band was on January 9, 1975.
80. The Beatles wanted to make their own Lord of the Rings adaptation in 1968, but were denied rights to the book by author J.R.R. Tolkien.
