McCartney taught himself piano and guitar as a Liverpool teen
Born 18 June 1942 at Walton Hospital, Sir Paul McCartney became the Beatles' bassist, keyboardist, and co-lead songwriter before a solo and Wings career. Estimated sales near 100 million records place him among history's top-selling artists.
English musician and songwriter James Paul McCartney rose to global fame with the Beatles, then launched the 1970 solo album McCartney and formed Wings with first wife Linda and Denny Laine. Liverpool roots mattered: his father's jazz playing and rock-and-roll records pushed a teenager to teach himself piano, guitar, and song craft. After the Beatles split he kept writing hits across decades of touring and recording.
Mary Patricia Mohin McCartney had trained as a nurse at the hospital where she delivered him; Jim had worked cotton sales before wartime disruption. The family's modest musical home became rehearsal for a partnership with John Lennon that rewrote pop song form. Later tallies put his sales around 100 million, with rare multi-category chart domination shared by only a few peers.
His mother, a midwife whose pay moved the family to 20 Forthlin Road in Allerton, died of an embolism on 31 October 1956, when he was 14. His father, who had led Jim Mac's Jazz Band in the 1920s, kept an upright piano in the front room, but Paul preferred learning by ear to lessons. On 6 July 1957, at a church fête in Woolton, he met Lennon's Quarrymen and joined as rhythm guitarist; he took over bass in 1961 after Stuart Sutcliffe left. In August 1965 his Yesterday, backed by a string quartet, became the band's first recording featuring only one Beatle and one of the most covered songs ever. He is one of just three artists, with Phil Collins and Michael Jackson, to pass 100 million sales both solo and in a band.
Source: Paul McCartney
