Paul McCartney celebrates his 80th birthday on June 18.
The rock legend has spent six decades in the spotlight, after forming The Beatles with John Lennon and George Harrison in 1960. The Fab Four rocketed to worldwide fame through the 1960s, meaning life for the lad from Liverpool would never be the same.
Despite the very public and heavily discussed break up of the band, Macca launched a successful solo career and continues to perform to this day. As he prepares to mark his milestone birthday, the ECHO has taken a look back at Paul McCartney's life and career.
READ MORE: Life in the decade Beatlemania took over the world
Growing up on
Forthlin Road, Liverpool, Paul had a difficult start to life, losing his mum to cancer at a young age. Having met John Lennon at Woolton Village Fete in 1957, he joined Lennon's band, The Quarrymen. When John's own mum was killed in 1958, Paul was able to empathise.
Paul's brother, Mike McCartney said the world may have been without the Liverpool quartet if their mother had lived. Speaking to the ECHO, Mike explained how the guidance from their mother may have meant he and brother Paul would have followed more educational routes. He joked: "You'd be speaking to Dr McCartney now, or she was a Catholic so maybe it would be Father McCartney."
Having recruited George Harrison and Ringo Starr, The Beatles enjoyed an extraordinarily quick rise to fame in the early 1960s, with Beatlemania sweeping the world. The Fab Four would go on to sell more than 600 million albums worldwide. However, personality clashes within the band led to tensions and an eventual break up in 1970 after just eight years of releasing music together.
Other members of the band would cite Paul's domineering presence as a reason for the split, but just months after The Beatles parted ways in 1970, Paul released the first of two solo albums, McCartney (April 1970) and Ram (May 1971), before forming the band Wings with wife Linda, an American photographer and musician who he had married in 1969. Wings would become the best selling pop act of the 1970s, edging out Elton John.
John Lennon would tragically be murdered in 1980, which devastated Paul. In 1984 he said he "hadn't come to terms" with the death of his childhood friend and former bandmate. Security concerns prevented McCartney from touring for a decade, and he concentrated instead on studio recording and on writing and starring in the 1984 film Give My Regards to Broad Street, which was poorly received.
While visiting Japan in the 1980s, McCartney got himself into a spot of bother with Tokyo authorities. 219 grams of cannabis were found in Paul's suitcase during a search. The penalty for possession in Japan was much harsher than in the USA at the time, seven years of hard labour. However, McCartney was deported after spending ten days in a Japanese jail, he believes his 'celebrity' helped him get away so leniently.
In 1997, Paul was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II “for services to music.” The next year wife Linda tragically died of cancer. In July 2002, McCartney married Heather Mills. In November of the same year, on the first anniversary of George Harrison's death from cancer, Sir Paul performed at the Concert for George.
It was announced in March that Paul would headline Glastonbury Festival, a week after his 80th birthday on June 18. Performing on the Pyramid Stage on June 25, 2022, he will be the oldest participant in the festival's history.
