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November 30, 2004 -- BBC News
Has the landmine issue been neglected? How much of a difference would it make if the non-signatory countries were to sign up to the treaty banning landmines? Have you been affected by the landmine issue?We will be discussing these issues on the Talking Point phone-in program on Sunday, 5th December at 1400GMT (9am ET). The guest will be Heather Mills McCartney, patron of Adopt-A-Minefield and a UN Goodwill Ambassador, who has campaigned to raise funds and awareness to rid the world of landmines. If you would like to take part, please include a phone number on the form, it will not appear on the page. Click to fill out form
Call: +44 20 8749 5353
E-mail: talkingpoint@bbc.co.uk
SMS: send to +44 7736 100 100
November 30, 2004 -- Times Online (UK)Investigation: The girl can't help it
Her courage, gritty determination and undoubted commitment to charity work is held in high regard throughout the world. Now marriage to Sir Paul McCartney has given her a world stage. So why does Heather Mills still need to embroider her past? Russell Miller investigates.
Everyone agreed it was the hottest ticket in town. As a gloriously pink Hollywood sunset settled over LA, one limousine after another swept up to the Century-Plaza hotel. Liveried flunkies rushed forward to open the doors, TV lights flared, cameras flashed and the crowd cheered as Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas stepped into the blinding glare. Then came Jack Nicholson,then Rosanna Arquette, then Kiefer Sutherland, then Daryl Hannah, then Andy Garcia... There was no question that this invitation-only gala evening had attracted the cream of Hollywood. But few of the people gathered would have recognized the real star of the show: a lassie from Washington, Tyne and Wear, formerly known as plain Heather Mills, now Lady McCartney.
Heather and Paul McCartney were co-hosting the fourth annual Adopt-A-Minefield Gala, a $1,000-a-head dinner and concert at the Century-Plaza. The McCartneys are patrons of the charity, which aims to publicise the global landmine crisis and collect funds for mine-clearing; the concert would raise $2 million for landmine victims. For most of the 1,500 guests the highlight of the evening was the concert, featuring McCartney and Neil Young. But before the music began it was Heather's show - from the moment she emerged in a strapless Valentino gown, hand in hand with her husband, and walked through the ballroom with applause ringing in her ears.
All the early speakers paid tribute to her undoubted courage and spirit. The 2004 "honorees" were called up to receive awards for their work on behalf of Adopt-A-Minefield. "Calling her my friend is a great honor," gushed the honoree Wendy Walker Whitworth, producer of Larry King Live. "I am totally awed by her kindness and love." MORE
November 29, 2004 -- UPDATE!Confirmed Macca Sighting in Washington, Tyne and Wear
Paul was seen Saturday night guarded by his security in a back room reportedly having a drink with his father-in-law Mark Mills 63, and locals at the North Biddick Social Club in Fatfield.
Paul and Heather brought daughter, Beatrice for the weekend to meet her grandfather. It was Paul's first meeting with Heather's father.
On Sunday Heather, Paul and Bea went to the Wildfowl Park (a retreat for wild birds) in Washington.
November 29, 2004Fran Healy of the band Travis was on a UK chat show this morning talking about the recording session for "Do They Know It's Christmas?" He mentioned that Paul sent him a note after the session mentioning the pain he had from playing bass.
"I got a wee note from Paul after we did it, just the other day, and he said that his thumb and forefinger were throbbing for three days!"
See new Band Aid 20 promo clip with Paul in it. Click here
November 29, 2004 -- Sunderland Echo
Macca mine a pint please
POP legend Sir Paul McCartney surprised regulars at a Wearside club by popping in, unannounced, for a pint.
The ex-Beatles and Wings star, who married Washington-born model Heather Mills two years ago, spent two hours at North Biddick Social Club, in Fatfield, on Saturday.
And his visit was the talk of the town within minutes of ordering his drink, a pint of Smooth Beer, punters from neighboring bars piled into the club to meet the music legend.
Club stewardess Monica Graham said: "Everyone had a fantastic night. We knew he (McCartney )was coming, but had been sworn to secrecy. When he arrived people drinking here started ringing their pals in other pubs to tell them who they were sitting with. He stayed for two hours, sat in the lounge and had one pint.
"He shook everyone who came to see him by the hand and spoke to them. He was such a nice lad and acted just like he was someone from the village. It was amazing how well he fitted in. At the end of the night he came up and gave me a kiss on the cheek. It made my night."
Mrs. McCartney didn't go to the club, but was in the region over the weekend visiting relations and friends the Echo understands.
November 29, 2004 -- Contact Music
THE BEATLES' LOST LOVE CHILDRENA British TV documentary will shock Beatles fans with claims the Fab Four fathered a string of children before they married.
The Channel Five network alleges the group's manager Brian Epstein provided prostitutes for John Lennon, Sir Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr before his untimely death in 1967 of a drug overdose.
Tony Barrow, the publicist for the band between 1963 and 1966, reveals, "There are women in Liverpool who had children fathered by Beatles. They just never kissed and told."
The documentary claims Epstein paid off the mothers to keep them quiet after their brief affairs with the rockers.
November 29, 2004 -- InquirerA tour in the life
Maybe he thinks he missed his calling. Maybe he's amazed at how much work it takes to do one. But Paul McCartney wants to talk books.
Specifically, "Each One Believing: Paul McCartney, On Stage, Off Stage, and Backstage" (Chronicle Books, $35), an insider's coffee-table tome, an on-the-road eavesdropper's delight, that takes fans behind the scenes of his huge 2002-03 World Tour.
Produced with a little help from his friends, it arrives just in time for folks to carry it back this holiday season.
Sir Paul has directed his publicists to skip the pop music regulars on this go-around. He wants to be interviewed by literary journalists.
Hey, no problem. All you need is - to ask. Beyoncé isn't exactly on the other line, offering a one-on-one.
So listen to what the man said. It all began with the tour, which mushroomed into 91 dates, 36 songs a night, in 16 countries, and ended up as Billboard magazine's Tour of the Year.
"It was post-9/11," McCartney says, on the phone from London, "we'd done the Concert for New York, and we'd seen firsthand what it meant to the American people... . I was going to do it just to sort of dip my toe in the touring waters, and decide whether I liked it or not."
Turns out, he felt fine: "Some of this post-9/11 feeling, a lot of it in fact, was coming off our American audiences, they were really sort of giving us the thumbs up."
"That communicated itself to the band in particular," he continues, "and then sort of filtered through to all the people backstage... . We'd say, 'Yeah, I don't know what it is about this tour. It just feels really cool. So we said, you know, let's get a film camera."
Official photographer Bill Bernstein did the stills. Others conducted mini-interviews: "We thought, we should record this, if only for ourselves." The result for others is entree to Rome, Moscow and elsewhere, lots of photos, and plenty of first-person thoughts from the man in the middle.
"I was involved in the whole process," McCartney says. The aim was that "it read well, like a good book. It had to run across the page, to lead you on." And so it does. Though rock royalty did encounter that odd fetish: editing. "Of all the stuff we put together," he recalls, "there were only one or two little things that were pulled... the layout design girl would say, 'Oh, they don't really want that paragraph, they don't think that's very good, or whatever.' "If pop songs were books, some bright editor way back might have grabbed Sir Paul and complained, "Look, you don't need that line 'She didn't say' after 'Why she had to go, I don't know... . ' Obviously, if she had said why she had to go, you'd know!"
At this stage, now that he's 62, Sir Paul understands he's part of history. He intimidates. That's compounded by his successful post-Beatles career, his dignity through the death of his first wife, Linda, his romantic rebirth with activist and second wife Heather. All lend him a stature not enjoyed by rock elders still pretending to be wild and 25.
"Because the Beatles stuff was legendary," he explains, "people might sometimes not be as free in telling you no. That's a danger that you have to watch out for. I have to encourage people to have their own opinions." The good part is that people still want to know every little thing.
Why, for instance, is a billionaire associated with more ringing phrases in the English language than anyone since Shakespeare still happy just to play for fans?
Because.
"You know," he says, "with the Beatles, we probably used to play about 30 minutes... . Now, I sing for three hours. Well, there isn't an opera singer on Earth who sings nonstop for three hours - there's always a soprano to help him out!"
And yet: "I came off the end of the tour more energized than at the beginning... . People would say, 'You look well!' And I'd say, 'You know, it's actually kind of good exercise, good cardiovascular, what I'm doing. Every night, it's like going to the gym, only more fun."
OK. So it's good for him. But is he as good a musician as he used to be? Sir Paul laughs.
He thinks he's getting better all the time, "just cause I've sort of done more, learned a few more things, learned what not to do... singing isn't the sweat it used to be... I still do the songs in the original keys... . "
Another reason he likes touring is that he's still learning things about old songs such as "Yesterday." Earlier in the day, he'd listened to the original. "I don't sing it like that anymore," he admits. "I think I sing it OK. I probably sing it quite well. But there's just a boyishness to that recording. There's no way I can be a 24-year-old boy anymore."
In the book, McCartney says songs like "Yesterday" mean more to him now. "How did a 24-year-old kid write that?" he asks of his most famous ballad. "How did he know that? I now know it just because of life... . I suppose you'd also have to say, 'How did such and such a novelist write such an apparently mature thing when he was only 19?' I think you do have a sort of imagined maturity that kicks in."
It sounds as though he no longer feels the immensity of the Beatles phenomenon hanging over him. "That's a sort of true statement," he remarks.
"It's all sort of melted into one thing. So now it's not really a weight, it's not like, 'Oh, will you stop asking me Beatles questions!' It's like, 'Yeah, I'll talk about the Beatles.' "
He considers that a happy change. "It really is, particularly having lost two of the guys. It's nice to talk about them, because it sort of brings them back for those few seconds."
Actually, there's nothing better for reliving the old days than writing a real memoir. Ask Bill Clinton. Will Sir Paul ever give it a shot?
"It's one of those things that I've been putting off forever," he replies. "Because it didn't seem like it's time yet. I always feel like it's 80-year-old retired generals... . "
"I suppose it's such a daunting task. I would need time. I would really need to not do as much as I do... . I'd probably have to sit with someone and say, 'Right, what have I done? Give me some clues. Remind me.' " Yes, he really said that.
"But I agree with you, I would probably find it interesting... . it would be for my family and my kids and my loved ones, to have some sort of accurate idea of who I am, and what I think about what I've done... . It may be something I'll do when I'm an 80-year-old general!"
Many years from now.
November 29, 2004 -- Contact Music
DJ DANGERMOUSE PLAYS WITH THE BEATLES AGAIN
Cheeky New York DJ Dangermouse is incurring the wrath of the Beatles again by incorporating samples from the Fab Four's "Glass Onion" in his new remix of JAY-Z's ENCORE.The underground mixmaster upset Beatle Paul McCartney last year when he 'mashed' the group's White Album together with Jay-Z's Black Album to create The Grey Album without permission.
The accompanying video, which Dangermouse insists he had no part of, incorporates clips of the Beatles' "A Hard Day's Night." This appeared on Internet sites for 24 hours last week before it was deactivated.
November 28, 2004 -- Boston Globe
The In and Out ListWhat's In
Religious foods (the Virgin Mary grilled cheese), U2, Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney will be headlining the Super Bowl half-time show this season. We have no idea what the former Beatle has planned for us, but let's hope Justin Timberlake is not involved.What's Out
Rolling Stone Magazine, Ron Artest (Basketball player caught up in last week's huge brawl), and Alexander (the movie).
November 28, 2004 -- The Morning CallLinda McCartney photo exhibit keeps a musical age alive
In 1966 Linda Eastman, a secretary at a society magazine based in Manhattan, intercepted an invitation to join a boat party for the Rolling Stones. Figuring that no one else at Town and Country wanted to mingle with a bunch of wild long hairs, she took her camera to a yacht moored in the Hudson River. Her good fortune continued when she became the only photographer allowed on board.
Eastman's Rolling Stones scoop led to a gig as Rolling Stone magazine's first staff photographer. Impressed by her portrait of Brian Jones, the Stones' enigmatic, tragic genius, Beatles manager Brian Epstein invited her to a 1967 press party for the album ''Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.'' There Eastman met Paul McCartney for the first time, launching a romance that led to marriage, children, a band called Wings, campaigns for animal rights and vegetarianism and a career as a photographer of cultural movers and earthquakers.
Beatles, Stones and Doors star in ''Linda McCartney's Sixties: Portrait of an Era,'' an exhibition of 51 photos that will run from May 29 to Aug. 21 at the Allentown Art Museum. Allentown is the first Pennsylvania site for the only McCartney retrospective to tour museums in her native U.S. since she died in 1998.
Organized by the Estate of Linda McCartney with the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Conn., the exhibit chronicles a period of communal charisma. McCartney photographed the Who in quirky clothes and poses behind the Fillmore East, the funky, fabled Manhattan hall where she served as house photographer. She shot the Youngbloods in trees and the Grateful Dead as a playful tribe on the stoop of a Victorian house they shared in Haight Ashbury.
McCartney's photographic role models were Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, who specialized in portraits that looked formal but felt informal. She relaxed her subjects by shooting naturally, without flash, and spontaneously. This casual attitude enabled her to infiltrate inner circles; indeed, she considered herself ''a band member whose chosen instrument was the camera.''
Armed with intimacy, McCartney witnessed the catastrophe of success. She captured Janis Joplin as a hurricane onstage, a shy victim offstage. One of her images of the Beatles, taken during the making of their final album, ''Abbey Road,'' illustrates the growing gulf between a onetime band of brothers. It's titled ''Four Strangers.''
The show contains one of McCartney's most endearing, enduring shots of her husband, Paul, holding their first child, Mary, inside his jacket. Non-rockers include soul diva Aretha Franklin; among the non-musicians is actor Michael J. Pollard, a goofy sidekick in the film ''Bonnie and Clyde.'' Three platinum prints demonstrate McCartney's passion for quieter scenes outside of the '60s. ''Stallion and Standing Stone'' hung in her last gallery exhibition, which opened shortly after her death from cancer at age 56.
McCartney was highly honored during her lifetime. In 1987 Women in Photography named her its top U.S. representative. In 1995 Bulfinch Press published ''Linda McCartney's Sixties: Portrait of an Era,'' one of five books of her photography. The Victoria & Albert Museum exhibited her images of popular culture, and the National Portrait Gallery in London acquired her pictures of Paul McCartney and John Lennon.
''Linda McCartney's Sixties'' bookends last year's Allentown Art Museum exhibit of Allen Ginsberg's photos of William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady and other Beats, those literary rock 'n' rollers. David Brigham, the museum's executive director, says it was chosen for its broad appeal. He calls it a sort of sequel to the museum's recent display of inventive, historic clothes and jewelry designed by Mary McFadden, who began dressing fashionable people around the time McCartney began photographing fashionable people.
More than 350,000 have viewed the McCartney exhibit since it opened in March 1999. The next year Brigham shared the show's success as a director/curator at the Worcester (Mass.) Art Museum.
''Linda McCartney's generation alone doesn't own this music and these images,'' says Brigham. ''Every subsequent generation claims this work as their own. What makes it so compelling is that it's all about youth culture.''
November 28, 2004 -- The Spectrum
Suddenly, Beatles don't look so radicalImagine, if you can, a time when long-haired, dope-smoking hippies who preached peace love and understanding walked the Earth.
Flowing hair, colorful clothes, loud rock 'n' roll music and an innate distrust of the status quo marked this band of outlaws who questioned authority and the traditional world.
Now, those baby-booming rockers have evolved into a hip, older generation and, of all things, have suddenly become respectable, which is why Paul McCartney has been tabbed by the National Football League to entertain during halftime of the Super Bowl on Feb. 6 in Jacksonville, Fla.
Last year, of course, America was shocked at the sight of a bare breast -- a costume malfunction that was supposed to have been an accident.
The year before? We saw a very scantily clad pop singer who somehow made it in the world of country music being lifted high into the air aboard a crane that left very little to the imagination of those seated at the lower levels.
To save face, or at least not worry about other exposed body parts, enter Paul McCartney.
Forty-something years ago, when Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play, he taught them to play hard -- and we're not just talking music.
The Beatles, for all their gentlemanly suits, boyish charm and musical wizardry, were a raucous bunch who lived life in the fast lane while the members of the Eagles were still in junior high school.
The lads were ridiculed for haircuts that today would be modest, and they had political views that by today's standards would be fairly moderate.
When the counter-culture sprung up around guitar gurus and decided to inhale -- except for former President Clinton, that is -- it was The Beatles who were heaped with disdain for heading a cultural revolution.
"We weren't leaders, we were just a reflection of what was going on around us," George Harrison once said.
Ah, but being a Beatle wasn't easy, especially when they were honest.
More popular than Jesus? "Yes," John Lennon said. Drugs? "Yes," Paul McCartney said. Alternative spirituality? "Yes," Harrison said. Wine, women and song? "Yes ... yes ... yes," Ringo Starr said.
The revolution ended for Lennon 24 years ago, Harrison transcended this Earth three years ago, and Starr is still one of the most beloved figures in rock 'n' roll.
Sir Paul, however, has ascended to a level of rock royalty, and this one-time rebel with a million noble causes has become an icon of such proportions that those who once mocked his long locks, freewheeling lifestyle and politics are asking him to rescue the National Football League's premier showcase: The Super Bowl halftime show.
Imagewise, it's been a long and winding road for the former mop top to establish his credibility with the straight world.
For many of us, however, that happened yesterday.
November 27, 2004 -- More Macca album rumors
From an unconfirmed source:
"The song was originally called 'Testimony,' then was changed to 'I'll Testify' (To the Power of Love). It has a great classic R&B melody and most soulful. The song is Paul's testimony to how love has lifted him up and out of life's ups and downs. Very inspirational, moving stuff.
The album's working title is "Timelines."
November 27, 2004 -- Daily Mail
Hard Day's Night? Sir Paul on daddy duty looks ready for 40 winks.The day had barely begun. But it looked as if Sir Paul McCartney was already anticipating a morning nap. The dark shadows under his eyes suggested it was way past his bedtime.
Out for a morning stroll with his baby daughter, Sir Paul looked like the responsibilities of fatherhood were at 62 catching up to him. Or perhaps the standard-issue sleep deprivation that arrives with most new babies was simply kicking in.
At one point, the former Beatle started pulling the most alarming faces in his attempts to wake himself up.
His little girl Beatrice, who turned one last month, dozed blissfully in her stroller.
Sir Paul took her out for breakfast at a cafe near the London home he shares with her mother Heather Mills-McCartney. On the way home they stopped off to browse in a toy shop, emerging empty-handed. As they continued on their journey, Sir Paul huff and puffed with the exertion of it all.
"Paul often takes Beatrice out for walks and this time decided to get a bit of breakfast on the way," an onlooker said. "It would be fair to say that Paul didn't exactly look his best. He looked a bit haggard and kept yawning - perhaps Beatrice has been keeping him and Heather up at night. To try and stay awake he started pulling faces although they definitely were not for the benefit of his daughter who couldn't see what he was doing. Although the walk was taken at a slow pace, it appeared at times to be a bit much for Paul, who appeared to be huffing and puffing at certain points."
Sir Paul and his 36-year-old wife only recently returned to London from California, where Miss Mills-McCartney is hoping to land a television presenting job.
He is bracing himself for the patter of little feet again. His 33-year-old daughter Stella, the fashion designer, is expecting her first child with husband Alasdhair Willis in April.
November 26, 2004 -- Rocky Mountain News
RUMORS AND HEARSAY
Watch for Paul McCartney to use his Super Bowl halftime appearance to announce his 2005 tour dates.
November 25, 2004 -- The Sun
We can Macca Million
Sir Paul McCartney and wife Heather are to star on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? (UK Television) It is thought they will try to raise cash for Heather's landmine charity.The couple will be in a star pairs Christmas Day special hosted by Chris Tarrant.
Others taking part include Man Utd boss Sir Alex Ferguson with fan GMTV host Eamonn Holmes and TV couple Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan.
Sir Paul, 62, and Heather, 36, are said to be "really excited" about going on the ITV1 quiz, filmed later this month.
November 24, 2004 -- The MirrorMacca to perform at Superbowl
There's no danger of a "nipplegate"-style incident at next year's Superbowl - old safe-hands Sir Paul McCartney is taking center stage.
The former Beatle will perform for a global audience of millions during half-time at the American football season's big event.
Sir Paul was picked as a reliable act following last February's fiasco, when Justin Timberlake exposed Janet Jackson's breast during the prime-time show.
November 24, 2004 -- BBC News
McCartney backs UK conservation
Sir Paul McCartney is adding his voice to The Conservation Awards by signing a deal to sponsor the them until 2009. The awards set out to honor excellence and innovation in preserving the UK's cultural heritage.Sir Paul, 62, agreed to fund the awards after meeting 2002 winner Ian Clark and hailed conservationists' work. The singer stressed the importance of conserving our cultural heritage "for us, and our children after us, to learn from and enjoy".
"People don't realize how lucky we are to have such brilliant conservation specialists in this country," said Sir Paul. "I've seen them in action. The Conservation Awards draw attention to those wonderful skills, and I'm delighted to help ensure they continue."
The awards are open to organizations across the heritage field, in museums, libraries, historic buildings and on private conservation projects.
Winners of the top prize receive £15,000 ($28,000).
David Leigh, director of the UK Institute for Conservation, welcomed Sir Paul's involvement with the awards, which are in their eighth year.
"The Awards have recognized the triumphs of conservation over the past decade, and Sir Paul's generous support will help us celebrate many more," said Leigh.
November 24, 2004 -- Oxford Uniton
Heather Mills-McCartney discussed her life and work at the Oxford Union in England on Monday, November 22.
The Union is the world's foremost debating society, with a deserved reputation for bringing international guests and speakers to Oxford. It has been established for 175 years, aiming to promote debate and discussion not just in Oxford University, but across the globe.
November 23, 2004 -- Guitar weekly News
THE PAUL McCARTNEY TEXANSGuitar aficionados everywhere are anxiously awaiting the release of the new Epiphone Paul McCartney Texans! The limited run of 40 hand-built Epiphones will be produced in the United States by Gibson under the supervision and direction of Sir Paul McCartney himself and will be hand-aged to replicate the playing wear on McCartney's Texan. The second run of Texans will be limited to 250 guitars, which will be mirror-images of McCartney's guitar. His is a right-handed instrument that he plays left-handed, reversing the strings; the new guitars will be lefty guitars set up for right-handed players. A third run of 1,964 Texans will be hand-crafted in Japan.
Epiphone has been a part of the Gibson family of brands since 1957, and McCartney's original guitar was made in the Gibson factory in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in 1964. He played it in the recording studio and on his famous performance of the Beatles hit "Yesterday" on the Ed Sullivan TV show on August 14, 1965. The guitar, serial number 194959, was officially a model FT-79N (N for natural finish), that had left the Gibson factory on May 23, 1964. McCartney bought it in New York in 1965. List price at the time was $175, and the case was extra.
It's exciting to have my old guitar reproduced by Gibson," said McCartney. "It's exact and what's more it sounds great."
November 22, 2004 -- thebeatles.com
THE BLUE MEANIE TO MARCH IN MACY'S THANKSGIVING DAY PARADE
The Blue Meanie, the Beatle's infamous arch enemy who first came to fame in their much-loved magical animation adventure The Yellow Submarine, is surfacing again -- this time to promote "his" picture book, the Yellow Submarine in America's biggest parade, Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.Mr. Meanie has been on a one-Meanie march since the book's September publication. He first reappeared in London, later arriving in Liverpool aboard Cunards' QE2 (his spokesperson told the awaiting press corps: "Mr. Meanie considers arriving on a Yellow Submarine beneath him, so he quite rightly booked a cabin on one of the world's greatest liners instead, hoping Cunard would rename the ship The Blue Queenie in his honor.") Cunard declined the opportunity.
Now he has brought his campaign to the US -- to join America in giving thanks by marching in Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. ("I'd be thankful if they wouldn't play any music and buy my book!" he was recently overheard saying at one of his promotional appearances).
The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade will be broadcast 'nationally' Thursday, November 25, 2004 on NBC from 9:00 am- 12:00 pm in all time zones. The Yellow Submarine is Apple Corps' first picture book. Apple's only other publishing venture was the best-selling Beatles Anthology, which has sold more than two million copies worldwide since it was published in 1999.
Mr. Meanie is available for appearances in New York prior to the Parade.
November 21, 2004 -- The Guardian
Danny Goffey, Supergrass drummer recalls working with Paul McCartney on the new Band Aid charity single"We had a lot of fun recording it, and I got to jam with Paul McCartney! I had to ring my gran and tell her all about it. We recorded the music on a different day to all the singers but Thom [Yorke] and Jonny [Greenwood] from Radiohead were there as well as Fran Healy from Travis. I'd met a lot of them before but we'd never played together. It was such a great feeling playing drums along to Paul McCartney's bass.
"I did my Paul impression in front of him, although I'm not sure it went down too well. I don't think he minded too much though - he's a big kid at heart. And he kept us entertained with lots of anecdotes that I couldn't possibly reveal to a journalist. "
November 21, 2004 -- Sports Network
Paul McCartney to perform at Super Bowl halftimeLegendary music star Paul McCartney will perform at halftime of this year's Super Bowl in Jacksonville. This will be McCartney's second Super Bowl appearance.
"There's nothing bigger than being asked to perform at the Super Bowl," said McCartney. "We're looking forward to rocking the millions at home and in the stadium."
McCartney is one of the world's most recognized rock and roll artists, starting his career with The Beatles in the 1960s and continuing with the band Wings and as a solo performer from the 1970s through the present.
"We are extremely pleased to work again with Paul McCartney, one of the greatest musicians of our time, to create a memorable show," said Steve Bornstein, the NFL's executive vice president of media.
The NFL had a memorable Super Bowl halftime show last year when Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" revealed one of her breasts and created a widespread debate over decency on television.
November 21, 2004 -- PRN Newswire
NFL Scores Paul Mccartney for Ameriquest Mortgage Super Bowl XXXIX Halftime Show on FOX
Legendary rocker Paul McCartney will perform in the Ameriquest Mortgage Super Bowl XXXIX Halftime Show on FOX at Alltel Stadium in Jacksonville, Florida on Sunday, February 6, the NFL announced today."We are extremely pleased to work again with Paul McCartney, one of the greatest musicians of our time, to create a memorable show," said Steve Bornstein, the NFL's executive vice president of media.
Added Bornstein, who will oversee the show for the NFL, "As one of the world's most beloved artists and incomparable live entertainers, Paul McCartney will deliver an inspirational performance."
"There's nothing bigger then being asked to perform at the Super Bowl," said McCartney. "We're looking forward to rocking the millions at home and in the stadium."
"We're thrilled Sir Paul McCartney has agreed to perform at halftime of Super Bowl XXXIX," said FOX Sports Chairman David Hill. "He is the world's most influential rock artist, and his music will forever be a part of our culture. He, more than any other musician, lives up to this year's Super Bowl theme of Building Bridges. His music bridges generations, countries, cultures and musical genres. I'm also sure that the duet Paul performed with Terry Bradshaw at Super Bowl XXXVI was such a major event, that he couldn't wait to reunite with Terry in Jacksonville."
This will be McCartney's second Super Bowl appearance. He provided a memorable pregame performance at Super Bowl XXXVI in New Orleans in 2002, the first Super Bowl after the tragic events of September 11.
As the climax to the pregame show and immediately prior to the singing of the two traditional anthems "America The Beautiful" and "The Star-Spangled Banner", McCartney performed "Freedom," a new anthem reflecting the spirit of freedom.
Watched by a record 144.4 million viewers in the U.S. last year, the Super Bowl is annually the nation's highest-rated TV program and the most-watched single-day sporting event. The game also will be broadcast in more than 200 countries worldwide. Game time is 6 p.m. ET.
Emmy-Award winning Don Mischer Productions will produce the Ameriquest Mortgage Super Bowl XXXIX Halftime Show starring Paul McCartney.
November 21, 2004
Heather's new cause?
Heather was on ITV's "This Morning" (UK) live on Friday November 19. She spoke about amputees and a new cause she is supporting, the banning of animals used for fur in clothing: specifically dogs and cats. The animals are kept cold to allow their fur to thicken and then they are skinned alive! She showed some horrific photos of the animals being tortured in China. Read more about this cruelty on Heather's website,
She was asked how Paul enjoyed the new Band Aid single.
"You know what, he was just over the moon about it. He works with a guy called Nigel Godrich, a producer and he's working on an album - he's taking his time just so as to get it great and Nigel was asked to produce the new Band Aid record. So he said you know, 'would you play bass or sing or whatever?' He said, 'Yeah, fine, do whatever you like.' So he's singing and playing bass on it and it's obviously for a great cause."
When asked if Paul was perfectly happy to take a bit of a back seat on the recording she said, "Yeah, he totally insisted because the whole point is that the new song is different and new, otherwise you might just as well.......... he's the thread. He started if off with the bass and the whole song was based round that. So, yeah, he's fantastic".
She talked about Beatrice, "She's gorgeous. I'd love to say more about her, but it just gives everyone carte blanche to sort of invade her privacy and I've got to give her a chance. But she's delicious. I'm a very happy mummy."
November 20, 2004 -- Timesonline
Has Macca had a lift?
"I believe that Paul McCartney, instead of looking young, looks simply startled," Dr. Z. Paul Lorenc (plastic surgeon to the stars) says of the former Beatle, another one of the targets in his new book" A Little Work: Behind the Doors of a Park Avenue Plastic Surgeon."
"He looks like he possibly had some surgery in the past. His face is very recognizable but if you look at the progression, it is not necessarily a natural one. Look at the position of the earlobes, for instance, they're too low, it's a giveaway sign. And I think his brow is too high, making him look surprised."
November 20, 2004 -- The Mirror
VID THE WORLDThe new Band Aid video was seen for the first time with Madonna urging fans to "feed the world". It was shown on more than 29 (UK) TV channels in one of the nation's biggest simultaneous broadcasts on Thursday.
Millions tuned in to hear "Do They Know It's Christmas?", due for release on November 29. They saw stars moved to tears by images of starving children.
Midge Ure and Bono shared a hug while Paul McCartney stayed in the background playing his guitar.
Most of the stars managed to sing the lyrics without help, although the Sugababes needed a prompt sheet.
Bono, who won the battle with Justin Hawkins to sing "Well tonight, thank God, it's them instead of you", was seen in a darkened studio after flying in at the 11th hour. The track is widely expected to be the Christmas number one despite lukewarm reviews.
Meanwhile, Geldof blasted music cheats thought to have stolen the single from the radio after it received its first airplay earlier this week.
Macca's appearance in the promo video
The ex-Beatle happily strums his guitar in a low-key appearance.
November 19, 2004 -- www.brian-ray.com
Brian Ray is busy working in the studio on his new CD on Who Ray! Records.Tracks have been recorded with Davey Faragher on bass from Elvis Costello's band and L.A. drummer, Matt Laug. Brian is recording at Ollywood Studios with Oliver Leiber adding some drums.
Abe, from Paul's band will be writing and playing with Brian on a song which will also feature Scott Shriner, of Weezer on bass.Some surprises to come, guests to be announced later.
November 19, 2004 -- New York Post
We hear that...
Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg threw Lorne Michaels a 60th birthday party at her apartment with Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger and many present and former "Saturday Night Live" stars.
November 19, 2004 -- Contact Music
McCARTNEY SNORTS SALTWATERSir Paul McCartney has developed a disgusting new way to warm up for live shows - he snorts saltwater up his nose.
The former Beatle picked up the odd habit from opera stars after seeking advice to keep his voice in top form, but he's not sure the nightly shock to the system is doing him any good.
He says, "I read somewhere that opera singers have a sort of saltwater gargle, and I thought that might be good to try.
"And then I thought I'd snort it up my nose. It was not that pleasant; it was like drowning before each show."
NOTE: Bill Bernstein describes just how Paul does this in part two of Jorie Gracen's interview.
November 19, 2004 -- BBC News
TV debut for Band Aid 20 singleThe video for Band Aid 20's single "Do They Know It's Christmas?" was shown on TV for the first time on Thursday. Pop queen Madonna told fans to "feed the world" before the video got its premiere at 1755 GMT.
Madonna does not appear on the single itself - which is due to hit the shops in on 29 November - but recorded an introduction to its video instead.
It was shown simultaneously on BBC One, BBC Two, ITV1, Channel 4, Five, Sky One and other digital channels.
The video began with Coldplay's Chris Martin in the main hall of Air Studios, north London, where the song was recorded at the weekend.It also featured some stars whose voices did not appear on the song - including Sir Paul McCartney playing bass, Radiohead's Thom Yorke on piano and Blur's Damon Albarn, who served tea.
And it included footage of organiser Bob Geldof in the studio playing the stars a video of an emaciated young girl in the 1984 Ethiopian famine.
The girl, now a young woman, was then introduced to the singers, many of whom were moved to tears.
Madonna's introduction began: "Twenty years ago, I performed at Live Aid and the world watched. You saw me and my generation demanding a change.
"Once again, here we are 20 years later," she said, over images of starving African children. "More people die of hunger in Africa than war and Aids put together.
"In a world of plenty, it is hard to imagine that most African children will go to bed tonight hungry.
"Bob Geldof and his friends are here to remind you that we can never forget. Not ever. Feed the world. I am honored to introduce Band Aid 20."
The song, a remake of the 1984 original, was recorded on Friday, Saturday and Sunday by more than 50 artists including Joss Stone, Dizzee Rascal and The Darkness.
It is tipped to be the Christmas number one, but bookmakers have shortened the odds on the track's long-term success after it received lukewarm reviews.
The single, which also features Bono, Sugababes and Will Young, was made available to download from the internet on Thursday from a number of music services that will donate proceeds to the cause.
It is also being launched as a charity mobile phone ringtone with proceeds going to the Band Aid Trust, which is supporting food aid to the Sudan's troubled Darfur region.
November 18, 2004 -- The Star-LedgerHungerthon, around the dial
Guitars signed by Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Johnny Cash, Peter Frampton and members of the Allman Brothers Band, The Police, The Who and R.E.M. will be up for auction during the World Hunger Year organization's 29th annual Hungerthon. These items and others, most related to the worlds of rock 'n' roll and sports, will be auctioned off on six radio stations between Saturday and Wednesday.
Participating stations include WXRK (92.3 FM), WFAN (660 AM), WNEW (102.7 FM), WINS (1010 AM), WCBS-FM (101.1 FM) and WCBS-AM (880).
WPLJ (95.5 FM) and Sirius Satellite Radio will broadcast Hungerthon information all week, and another station, WAXQ (104.3 FM), will continue the Hungerthon from Dec. 13 to 17.
Hungerthon is both a fundraiser for WHY's anti-hunger efforts, and an attempt to educate the public on hunger-related issues. For information, visit www.worldhungeryear.org
November 18, 2004 -- NME.com
EXCLUSIVE - MACCA TALKS BAND AID!Paul McCartney has spoken to NME.COM about his participation in the surefire future Xmas number one "Do They Know Itg's Christmas?"
The former Beatle, Bono, Thom Yorke and Chris Martin were among a host of stars who laid down the historic Band Aid 20 version of "Do They Know It's Christmas?" last weekend (November 13-14) at George Martin's Air Studios in London.
NME.COM was there and spoke to McCartney just after he finished recording the bass part. He said that despite tabloid pressure to record vocals for the song, which is released on November 29, he was only asked to provide bass.
He said, "We're keeping away from the hullabaloo while we try and get a backing track. I play bass on it, that's really all I was really asked to do and that's what I fancied doing. It's kind of nice to do that. And then the national, wonderful press got into 'Why aren't you singing? Oh he's too old!' and did all that sh*t. I was like 'Oh, f*k off!' So I've just done what my producer asked me to do, he's producing it."
McCartney has been working on his new album with Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, who also produced the new version of "Do They Know It's Christmas?"
Playing his Hofner 'Beatle bass', McCartney was joined at Air by Radiohead's Thom Yorke, who plays piano and Supergrass' Danny Goffey, who plays drums. Also present in the studio were Jonny Greenwood and Fran Healy from Travis, although Darkness guitarists Justin and Dan Hawkins waited until Saturday (November 13) to record what Justin called some "very Eighties, twin harmony guitars."
For more on Band Aid, see this week's NME, out now.
November 17, 2004 -- The GuardianRumor has it that the McCartneys have bought a mansion in Pasadena, California. It's a "craftsman"-style structure, cost a cool $9 million, and is in an exclusive part of town.
Why would Sir Paul, owning half of Scotland and rich enough to buy the other half, choose sleepy Pasadena? It's true he and Lady M like the place. Mijares, a local Mexican restaurant, boasts that the couple eat there. But $9 million seems a lot to pay for your favorite burrito.
November 17, 2004 -- Daily Mail
Station bans 'Bland Aid' song after complaintsA radio station banned the new version of Do They Know It's Christmas today after being inundated by listeners claiming it was "rubbish".
Minutes after the updated Band Aid classic was broadcast for the first time the station switchboard was jammed with listeners calling for it to be axed.
Bosses at Pembrokeshire Radio, based in Narbeth, quickly bowed to listener-power and pulled the plug on the new festive single.
They pledged to continue backing the single's charitable aim and are advising listeners to buy it anyway - even if it is never played.
The new version mirrors the 20-year-old original with a line-up of current top recording stars including Rachel Stevens, Jamelia and Daniel Bedingfield.
While the original was a 3.5 million single-selling-phenomenon, the new version is raising passions for all the wrong reasons.
MORE
The first public broadcast of the Band Aid 20 single yesterday met with a cool reception.
Listeners e-mailing Radio 1's website after the premiere called the re-recording of Do They Know It's Christmas? "drivel", "incoherent", and "a pale imitation". Nevertheless, most said they would still buy it.
The original Band Aid single met with a similarly mixed reception on release. The Smiths singer Morrissey famously remarked that "one can have a great concern for the people of Ethiopia, but it's another thing to inflict daily torture on the people of England".
The most widespread complaint from listeners appeared to be that the new recording had desecrated a "classic".
One listener said it would not be "able to live up to the original with the likes of Phil Collins, Bananarama and the Quo involved".
Rock's post-Britpop obsession with referencing the musical past is enshrined in a Queen-pastiche guitar solo from The Darkness's Dan Hawkins and a climax featuring a burst of slightly self-congratulatory applause, which, knowingly or not, echoes the finale of The Beatles' Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill.
The record acknowledges the ongoing passion for unobtrusive "nu-easy listening" via Dido, whose vocal style, as ever, recalls a woman distractedly singing to herself while trying to remember where she parked her car.
The cumulative effect is nobody's idea of a great record, but provides a neat end of year review, in much the same way as the original, heavy on the tinny synthesizers and booming stadium rock drums, summed up the sound of pop music in 1984.
The recording was marked by an apparent squabble over the song's key line: "Tonight thank God it's them instead of you."
Initially given to Justin Hawkins, lead vocalist of The Darkness, it was later re-recorded by U2's Bono, who sang the line on the original 1984 single, as producers apparently felt Hawkins' comical public image and falsetto vocals inappropriate.
Hawkins said later: "I did it better than him."
November 16, 2004 -- Contact Music
McCARTNEY COLLAPSES AFTER BAND AID RECORDINGFormer Beatle Sir Paul McCartney was so exhausted after recording bass for the latest Band Aid charity single he dramatically collapsed on the floor.
The veteran rocker joined stars including Dido, Robbie Williams And Sir Bob Geldof on Friday, November 12 to record the 20th anniversary re-recording of "Do They Know It's Christmas?"
But after two hours in the studio, he fell to the floor shouting, "Enough. No More. Finish."
The shocking moment was captured on film and may be included at the end of the single's video, which will be introduced by Madonna on Thursday, November 18 at 6:05pm on the UK's five main TV channels.
November 16, 2004 -- The Hindu
Adopt a lab monkeyBeing somewhat hard to wrap, it is not the sort of gift usually found under the Christmas tree. It is, however, one of the few animal presents to come with a celebrity endorsement.
For an annual fee of £24 ($44), you can give someone close to you the Christmas present which the former Beatle, Sir Paul McCartney, is most keen to find under his Nordman fir this year : a rescued laboratory monkey.
The scheme
Thankfully, it does not have to be housed - or wrapped - but is adopted. Under a scheme being run by the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV), it is possible to adopt a macaque monkey rescued from a Thai laboratory.
Sir Paul, who is endorsing the scheme, and appears in advertisements for it, has adopted one of them. He said: "I was delighted to be able to adopt a BUAV ex-laboratory monkey and wholeheartedly support the BUAV's important work, campaigning to end all experiments on primates.''
BUAV says its scheme is the first to allow the public to adopt an animal rescued from an experimental lab.
The adoptive parent does not receive the monkey, but does get a photo, a certificate and a monkey toy. BUAV rescued 50 macaque monkeys from a research laboratory in Thailand while a delegation was in the country to make a presentation on testing without animals. They were found in barren cages, but are now in a sanctuary with access to trees and ponds.
Karen Ruskin, director of fundraising at the BUAV, said: "We are thrilled that these monkeys will have the chance to live the rest of their lives in as natural surroundings as possible. However, cruel and unnecessary experiments on animals don't just happen abroad - the U.K. remains the largest user of primates in experiments in the European Union, with more being used each year.''
November 15, 2004 -- Daily Mail
IT WAS 20 YEARS AGO TODAYMadonna will spearhead the launch of the new Band Aid single "Do They Know It's Christmas," 20 years after the original rocked the world.
The Material Girl will introduce the new version of the 1984 charity hit when it is played on all five main TV channels(in the UK) at 6.05pm on Thursday.
Recording of the new song was completed at a studio in Hampstead, North London, yesterday.
Among the stars who performed were Sir Paul McCartney, Coldplay's Chris Martin, U2 frontman Bono, Jamelia, Miss Dynamite, Darkness star Justin Hawkins and boy band Busted.
The backing tracks were recorded by Radiohead's Thom Yorke on piano and Johnny Greenwood on electric guitar, with Dan Gaffney from Supergrass on drums, Travis's Fran Healey on acoustic guitar and Sir Paul McCartney on bass. Sir Bob said: "Paul played it on his Beatles guitar."
Former Ultravox frontman Ure, who produced the new single, said: "Macca was bloody brilliant."
The Band Aid single will be played for the first time on Radio One tomorrow and will be in the shops on Monday, November 29.
Sir Bob said: "It's a different arrangement. It simply doesn't sound like the first one, although all the melodies and harmonies are there.
"It really does have a representative from all parts of British music from Paul McCartney to Bono and then all the new lot."
November 12, 2004 -- AT&T News Service
Macca Reporter In McCartney's New Book
by Tom AustinTrini Schultz, long-time Macca Reporter (of the Macca Report), has discovered that a photo of her has been published in Sir Paul McCartneys new book "Each One Believing".
When this reporter was contacted by Trini she could hardly contain her excitement.
"I'm on page 133! That's me with one of those twirly light thingies I bought at Disneyland."She goes on to say, "I remember when Bill Bernstein took that pic too. Paul was singing 'Let It Be.' If you look closely you can see the drool on the side of my mouth."
Her initial reaction is best summed up in her own words, "Boy what a surprise this is! I'M IN PAUL'S BOOK! Woohoo!"
NOTE: Trini by the way is a professional photographer and is working on her own photo book.
November 12, 2004 -- The Guardian
Sir Paul McCartney has come up with a radical way to tackle the crisis faced by many an ageing rocker.
"I've decided that all young people should be done away with," the 62-year-old told Pendennis at the opening of Each One Believing, an exhibition of photographs of his latest world tour at Proud Galleries in Camden.
"Anyone under the age of 28. I've had enough of them," the former mop top snorted. Heather Mills McCartney is 36.
November 12, 2004 -- NME.com
Robbie Williams, Madonna, U2 and Queen were among the stars who turned up to be inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame at a glittering ceremony in east London last night (November 11).One act had been chosen by TV viewers of a Channel 4 program to represent each decade since the 1950s.
The '90s were represented by Robbie Williams, the '80s by Michael Jackson, the '70s by Queen, the '60s by The Rolling Stones and the '50s by Cliff Richard.
U2 frontman Bono and Madonna were at the ceremony at the Hackney Empire to pick up honorary awards, which were also awarded to The Beatles, Bob Marley and Elvis
Presley.Madonna was presented with her award by artist Tracey Emin Actress Gwyneth Paltrow and designer Stella McCartney put together a video tribute to the 46-year-old performer which saw them wear some of her most famous outfits, reports the BBC.
Paltrow wore a gold conical bodice and had her hair scooped to the top of her head, while McCartney donned a raspberry pink dress.
The pair sat on a bed with bare-chested men perched at the end, with Paltrow saying: "She's made it okay to be sexual as a woman."
Madonna said, "It means a lot to me that so many nice things have been said about me and that I have been voted into the UK Hall of Fame."
Bono was there to pick up U2's award from Dennis Hopper, while Elvis Presley's ex-wife Priscilla picked up his gong. Queen pair Brian May and Roger Taylor were presented with their award by the band's number one fan The Darkness's Justin Hawkins.
Also on hand to accept awards were Bob Marley's widow Rita and The Rolling Stones's Ronnie Wood. Ironically, although they were the nomination for the 60s, Wood didn't join the band until 1975."
MORE
November 12, 2004 -- Sky News/AOLNews
Gwyn & Stella's Video Show
Madonna has been inducted into the first UK Music Hall Of Fame - and received a hilarious message from close pals Stella McCartney and Gwyneth Paltrow.
Hollywood actress Gwyneth and designer Stella put together a video tribute to the Material Girl by wearing some of her outlandish outfits.
Gwyneth Paltrow modeled a gold conical bodice and scooped her hair to the top of her head, while Stella McCartney sported a raspberry pink " Like a Virgin" dress all in a filmed tribute to honoree Madonna.
Sitting on a bed framed with bare-chested men and McCartney at her side, Paltrow, 32, said, "She's made it okay to be sexual as a woman."
Meanwhile, McCartney said her pal " doesn't compromise that's why she's had such staying power." The designer also said about the get-up, "And you look a lot better in this than we do."Madge gasped as they appeared on a big screen at London's Hackney Empire.
Wearing a Remembrance Day poppy, Madge gushed, "If someone had told me while I was a little girl growing up in mid-west America that one day I'd be married to a Brit, living in England and inducted into the UK Hall Of Fame, I would have said: `b******s to that'."
November 11, 2004 -- The Mirror
STELLA IS MAD FOR ITAnd there we were thinking that Stella McCartney and Gwyneth Paltrow didn't have a funny bone in their bodies.
But the pair are set to honour pal Madonna at tonight's launch of the UK Hall Of Fame in Hackney, East London, by doing a parody of one her gigs and dressing up as her.
A source says: "Gwyneth and Stella wear outrageous Madonna costumes. It's a scream."
The show will feature a performance by Robbie Williams who will pick up a gong for Artist of the 90s.
November 11, 2004 -- Popbitch.com
TV's Hall of Fame program is secretly filming a gig at the Hackney Empire, featuring the likes of U2, David Bowie, Paul McCartney and Ringo, Robbie Williams and Elton "Lillian Lollipop" John. The organisers are also in frantic negotiations to get Michael Jackson to turn up, though there are problems with him being allowed to leave the US. Madonna is said to be miffed that so far she hasn't been invited.
If you can't penetrate the Empire's security cordon, the after-party is being held at the Ocean over the road.
November 11, 2004 -- Seattle Post
A 'sense of wonder' keeps Paul McCartney goingThere were times when he was onstage alone, doing those tribute songs to late wife Linda or to his departed bandmates, John Lennon and George Harrison, and Paul McCartney would teeter on the edge of losing all control of his own emotions, as he had feared before the 2002-03 world tour began.
"I remember certain occasions when I was dangerously close to losing it," McCartney said from London in a one-on-one telephone interview with the Post-Intelligencer. "The song to John was liable to set me off, since I'm talking about someone you love and someone you lost and baring your self in front of all those people in the audience, some of whom I couldn't help but zone in on. And I'd be thinking 'Jesus Christ, this woman or that man, and it was worse with a man, is weeping and I'm doing this to them.' If you're human at all, you can't help but go all to bloody hell. So I'd tell myself I've got to hold it ...
"But I made a decision before the tour: If I'm doing 'Something' for George or 'My Love' for Linda or 'Here Today' for John, then this might happen. I could have yanked those numbers, but I just made a decision to not be ashamed by tears now. At 18, a man crying onstage, I would have thought 'Jesus!' But not now."
Many things were different with that memorable McCartney world tour. The knighted musician was traveling with a new band, young players little known to each other, and McCartney was energized by their enthusiasm and their talent. And long gone were those Wings prohibitions about playing Beatles songs, lest that McCartney-led ensemble seem a Fab Four cover band.
Now McCartney felt at ease with performing songs from throughout his remarkable career and the tour set list grew to a staggering 36 tunes that consumed 2 1/2 hours onstage, to the great delight of both fans and critics. The tour's segments may have been called "Back in the U.S. 2002" and "Back in the World 2003" but the entire odyssey probably should have been called the "All You Need Is Love Tour," given the unbridled outpouring of sentiment and affection.
"In Mexico City, the crowd was so loud and so loving, it was like they were shouting vibrations onto the stage," McCartney remembered. "I was trying to sing, "You say yes, I say no,' and I was like Sally Field blubbering, 'You love me, you really love me!' That staggering emotion was coming off the crowd and it was all descending on me, one little person standing there onstage. It was like being submerged in their love ions."
The positive vibe continued this past summer when McCartney and the band resumed touring in Europe. They likely will continue late next year in the United States, where venues are being scouted. No formal announcement is expected soon on the next American tour, but McCartney stressed that he is "keen on doing it."
McCartney's enthusiasms were much on display during the upbeat interview. Questions about his work and that of the Beatles prompted expansive comments from the 62-year-old luminary. And his wit, that cheekiness so familiar since the Beatles' first tour of America in 1964, also was in evidence.
"You will certainly be remembered for 'Yesterday,' " McCartney was told, "but what song do you yourself want to be remembered for?"
" 'Why Don't We Do It in the Road!' " he responded without pause. "I keep waiting for 2,000 other artists to cover that song, but it never seems to happen. Maybe some Icelandic group will finally do their version, 'Why Don't We Do it in the Fjord!' "
"But 'Yesterday' (the most recorded song of all time) will always be a magical thing for me, since I woke up from a dream with that song in my head. Personally, I think I have written better songs -- 'Here, There and Everywhere' is well-constructed. And I wouldn't be ashamed to be remembered for 'Yesterday' or 'Hey, Jude' or "Let It Be.' I'm just lucky that there is some of my stuff that people remember and like. I mean, how lucky is that? I do have to sort of pinch myself that I was the guy who wrote 'Yesterday' and I was a guy who was one of only four Beatles."
McCartney was always seen as the cheery Beatle, the cute Beatle, the one who just might be all right for a sister to meet. That image stuck despite a few bumps on the long and winding road: McCartney's 1970 solo album and his comments then that the Beatles were no more, followed that same year by the lawsuit against his bandmates that signaled the group's demise; the 1980 discovery of a smidgen of marijuana in his suitcase during a trip to Japan and his jailing for nine days that he later described as "hell."
The Beatles remained archetypes long after they stopped playing together on "Let It Be," their last public performance on the rooftop of Apple headquarters glimpsed mostly by a few startled gawkers on the sidewalk. George Harrison was the mystical one, Ringo Starr was the madcap one, John Lennon was the serious arty one, the recognized leader later elevated to something approaching sainthood after his murder in 1980.
Lennon and McCartney created most of the Beatles' songs, sometimes together, often not, their collaboration resulting in the widespread belief that Lennon's hard-rocker edge served as a crucial counterweight to McCartney's sweet melodies. The persistent simplification of the Beatles' group dynamics rankles McCartney to this day.
"The thing is we were all a mixture," he emphasized. "I have a harder side, John had a softer side. I wrote 'Helter, Skelter' and that's harder than people think I wrote. John wrote 'Good Night,' which is so sentimental that people would not think John would do that, but he had a beautiful sentimental side, too.
"We were all infected by each other. We were not one-dimensional. People often minimize the influence of George and Ringo, inferring that George just stood there with a pick waiting for a solo and Ringo did nothing but drum. That's just wrong; they had a massive influence. We were a great democracy, the Beatles; that was one of the sources of our troubles, but also one of our great blessings."
McCartney seems to have led a charmed life in comparison to the other three Beatles, with the steadiest family life, the most successful solo career, the most sustained visibility and fame, the readiest affection in the hearts of millions of fans. He considers himself to be "very lucky" in many ways, including how his enthusiasm for performing remains undiminished after more than 3,000 gigs through concerts at such dazzling sites as Red Square in Moscow and the Coliseum in Rome that are captured in a new book (see sidebar).
But McCartney has hardly skated through life unscathed. He is only too familiar with personal loss -- his mother died from breast cancer when he was just 14; fellow Beatles were cut down by gunfire and cancer, forever dooming any chance of a long-anticipated Beatles' reunion; his beloved wife, Linda, also his partner onstage with Wings, died from breast cancer after nearly 30 years of marriage in which they had been apart only a handful of nights.
"The thing that teaches me," McCartney related, "is to enjoy things as they happen. I look at something like our tour -- I look out at all those people and I wonder where they have driven from to come hear us -- and that sort of thing is uplifting to me. That is what is rewarding to me. My sense of wonder keeps me going."
McCartney emerged from a year of mourning after the loss of his wife and later began a relationship with Heather Mills, 26 years younger, a stunning former model who had lost half of one leg in a motorcycle accident and went on to become a tireless campaigner for other amputees and against the use of land mines around the globe. The couple married in 2003 and had their first child, Beatrice, a year ago.
McCartney's two decades of activism on behalf of vegetarianism and the ethical treatment of animals, shared with Linda McCartney, has now been supplemented by activism on behalf of a worldwide ban on the use of land mines, shared with Heather Mills McCartney. Concert appearances where he appears in T-shirts emblazoned with "No More Land Mines" are just one aspect of his activism for that cause, which also includes benefits, philanthropy and using his celebrity to lobby world leaders.
Those entreaties have fallen on the deaf ears of President George W. Bush, who continues to oppose the United States' approval of the international land mines treaty, much to McCartney's dismay. The activist says the campaign against land mines is "a long haul, a slow haul, but we've made amazing progress," and he continues to believe that the Bush administration's opposition to the land-mine ban only worsens America's standing in the world.
"Lord knows where Mr. Bush thinks he's going," McCartney stressed. "This is the pity now about the perception of America; I always say there are lots of cool Americans, but the perception is that Mr. Bush is acting like a big bully in the playground who does not care who he hits.
"I've written to him about land mines and asked why don't you do something, this is a really cool cause. The military knows that they do not need land mines anymore; it's a cowardly device, with mainly children and women who get blown up. It's terrible for the survivors: kids are playing ball someplace and then, boom, they've lost arms and legs. It's just very cowardly. So if America would take a lead, it would mean that a lot could be done. China won't approve the ban if America won't. It could make Mr. Bush look much better around the world. So we keep writing to him -- and we won't quit."
Land mines are just one of the dangers of this 21st-century world afflicted by terrorism, famine, genocide and war. Heightened fears and security have altered daily lives everywhere, butMcCartney continues to appear in vast outdoor venues where security is problematic and in public, too, more than two decades after the murder of Lennon by a crazed fan outside his apartment complex in New York City.
McCartney, a global celebrity with few equals, insists that he never fears for his life.
"I don't, I must say," he related, "although that is probably surprising. Some people worry about setting foot on the street, but to me, I always think, 'Oh yes, I'll be fine.' Perhaps I should have more concern, but I'm very lucky and I've always been that kind of person -- as a kid in Liverpool, I'd get on a bus by myself and ride to the end and get enjoyment out of being new places.
"I do know there are a lot of celebrities who have overriding concerns about their security and wouldn't go to the supermarket without a bodyguard. But Heather and I go to the movies all the time in London and people are always surprised to see us without bodyguards. I just decided a long time ago: When it's your turn to go, there's not much you can do about it."
McCartney's attitude toward his security mirrors his attitude toward his celebrity. He can reflect over four decades in the klieg-light glare, can look all the way back to an unknown mop top from Liverpool who was so hungry for recognition and fame, never expecting that his struggling musician dreams would be exceeded a million times over.
He is a grandfather now, just 19 months short of truthfully singing "When I'm 64," but he can readily recall those smoky dives in Liverpool and Hamburg where that striving, left-handed lad wielded a cheap Hofner bass.
"I'd tell him, 'Relax, kid,' " McCartney said. "... Don't make so much of fame. Take it with a grain of salt. Don't believe your own legends. Maintain some humility."
Sir Paul McCartney says he may perform The Beatles' classic When I'm 64 on his next tour.
McCartney, who will turn 64 on June 18, 2006, hasn't performed the song onstage before, but admits the getting time is near when it might be ready to "reactivate" the track which originally appeared on 1967's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album.
He told America's National Public Radio, "It's getting dangerously close I must say. If I still have the urge and the energy and the desire to be on tour then, I think that might be the year that I reactivate that song.
"Funny story with that was that I was talking to some lady and she said 'You know I play piano in an old person's home and I hope you will forgive me, but I play When I'm 64,' and I said, 'Oh, that's great, that's lovely, it's a great tribute.'
"And, she said, 'But, I hope you will forgive me because I have to change the lyrics because 64 is very young for these people. I have to do When I'm 84.'"
McCartney wrote When I'm 64 with its lyrics about spending summers in the Isle of Wight "if it's not too dear" with grandchildren "Vera, Chuck and Dave" while he was dating British actress Jane Asher.
November 10, 2004 -- Ananova
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da voted worst songThe Beatles' 1968 song Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da has been voted the worst song ever in an online poll.
The track was on the band's White Album - which is often regarded as one of the best albums ever made reports BBC online.
It was rated as being worse than former footballer Paul Gascoigne's Fog On The Tyne in a Mars survey of 1,000 people.
In third place was Meat Loaf's 1993 hit I'll Do Anything For Love, while 5ive, Cliff Richard, Vanilla Ice and Steps were also in the top 10.
Three of the songs on the list are sung by footballers, including the 1987 song Diamond Lights by Glenn Hoddle and Chris Waddle.
Liverpool's Anfield Rap, featuring John Barnes, also makes the top 10.
Ian Edwards, lecturer at the Academy of Contemporary Music, said, "Admit it or not, most of these are songs that we liked when they first came out.
"That is the nature of pop music as a part of fashion. Songs are popular at the time, but times change and often this results in embarrassing additions to your record collections. It is interesting to note that they were nearly all hits."
November 10, 2004 -- PRESS RELEASE
RARE BEATLES PERFORMANCE FOOTAGE TO AIR FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 40 YEARS ON U.S. TELEVISION ON THE 32ND ANNUAL "AMERICAN MUSIC AWARDS," NOVEMBER 14 ON ABC-TVOn November 15th, 1964, for the first and last time on U.S. television, a TV special entitled "Around The Beatles" aired on ABC-TV. One day short of exactly 40 years later, some of this rare performance footage will be seen on the 32nd annual "American Music Awards" airing on ABC-TV, Sunday, November 14. Introducing the footage will be ex-Beatles drummer Ringo Starr.
The Beatles first entered the American record charts in January of 1964 with "I Want To Hold Your Hand," which reached #1 and stayed in that lofty position for seven weeks. It was followed by "She Loves You," which shot to the top of the charts and remained there for two weeks. Performance footage of these two songs from the "Around The Beatles" UK special will be seen for the first time on U.S. TV in 40 years on the "American Music Awards," courtesy of EMI Music. On November 16th, Capitol Records' first 4 Beatles' U.S. albums will be released on CD for the first time ever, and these songs will be featured in the special 4-CD set.
Dick Clark, Executive Producer of the "American Music Awards" noted, "Just over 40 years ago, the Beatles changed the landscape of contemporary music in the United States. We are thrilled to have been given permission to air these two historical performances on this year's show."
November 10, 2004 -- Adopt-A-Minefield
Heather Mills McCartney and Phil Collins were honored with the inaugural "Children In Need" UNESCO Award at the organization's annual benefit gala in Dusseldorf, Germany Saturday, November 6.
Humanitarian charity campaigner Heather Mills McCartney was honored with the inaugural UNESCO CHILDREN IN NEED AWARD in recognition of her commitment to the struggle against landmines. Music legend Phil Collins also received the award in recognition of his work for his "Little Dreams" Foundation.
The awards were presented at an International Charity Gala Dinner hosted by UNESCO Special Ambassador Ute-Henriette Ohoven.
Most recently Heather Mills McCartney's charity work has been particularly focused on the Adopt-A-Minefield campaign to clear landmines and help landmine survivors. About a third of those who suffer landmine explosions are children. Heather is the founding patron of Adopt-A-Minefield UK, and ambassador for the global campaign. Adopt-A-Minefield has raised over £6.5 million ($11.8 million) to date, funding clearance of 18 million square metres of mined land and benefiting more than 400,000 people. Through her work, AAM is now the largest funder of landmine clearance in the world.
The UNESCO Children in Need Award was created by Lorenzo Quinn, son of the late actor Anthony Quinn. He personally presented the awards together with Dr Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, the German Federal Minister for Development. The award is given to people who work in the fields of humanity, tolerance and peace.
1,400 VIP guests from around the world working in every field attended this high profile event including Linda Evangelista, Vivienne Westwood, Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu and top model Bibi Russell from Bangladesh. Lisa Stansfield, Kool & the Gang, Prima Donna Assoluta Montserrat Cabelle and the young Israeli singer Liel all performed at the Gala, together with children from Israel and Palestine, a symbol for peace and tolerance in the Middle East and the world.
The Education for Children in Need program is entirely funded from private donations. Since 1992 Ute-Henriette Ohoven has helped raise some 25 million Euros for this programme, which directly supports some 207 projects in 75 countries, helping hundreds of thousands of children and adolescents. Vocational training, schools, food, shelters and diverse projects help to rescue the most vulnerable street children, victims of wars and disasters, sick and disabled youngsters from a miserable life and early death, and also give them the chance to help themselves.
190 independent nations are members of UNESCO. Their pledge is to actively pursue a policy for peace, respect for human rights and tolerance, independent of origin, language, culture, race or religion.
Heather Mills McCartney comments, "I am thrilled to have been given this award; I am a great admirer of UNESCO and the wonderful work the Education for Children in Need program does to help vulnerable children. We can all work together to help Adopt-A-Minefield in their struggle to rid the world of landmines by visiting http://www.landmines.org.uk even the smallest donation can make a difference."
November 8, 2004 -- PaulMcCartney.com
"Liverpool Oratorio" released on DVD!!
"Liverpool Oratorio" was Paul McCartney's first full-length work of classical music. It was first released on VHS and the double-CD album topped the classical charts in both the UK and the USA.
The Oratorio received its world premiere in Liverpool Cathedral in 1991 and this momentous event was both recorded and filmed by EMI Classics. Now available for the first time on DVD, this new version includes a particular highlight as Paul performs "In Liverpool," a song which has never previously been released.
The oratorio was co-written with conductor Carl Davis over two years, and Davis directs this performance joined by soloists Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Jerry Hadley, Willard White and Sally Burgess alongside The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir and the Liverpool Cathedral Choristers.
The work is written in eight movements and celebrates Paul's home town. Initially following Paul's childhood through the character 'Shanty' the text is chronological, opening with 'War' which describes the birth of a new life during a World War II air raid.
Subsequent movements are devoted to life within School, growing-up, a wedding, work and the oratorio finally concludes on a note of hope as Shanty and his wife sing a hymn to God, family life and peace.
The DVD now features 5.1 surround sound and the live recording of Liverpool Oratorio is coupled with the documentary "Ghosts of the Past," which provides an insight into the making of the work. This was broadcast by the BBC shortly after the release of the audio recording which is still available on CD.
Additional footage entitled "Echoes," features Paul taking a nostalgic visit around his old school which is now the Liverpool Institute of the Performing Arts.
November 8, 2004 -- Daily Mail
Will you still need me when I'm 62? Er, no Sir PaulSir Paul McCartney was dealt a humiliating snub last night when the man behind the new Band Aid single suggested he was too old to sing on it.
Sir Paul, 62, revealed last week that he had been invited to play bass on the latest version of "Do They Know It's Christmas," but said he was keen to sing on it too.
"If they want me to sing on it, if there is a spot for me, I'll do it," he said. "I have absolutely no intention of letting younger artists take over this time around."
But, in what will be an embarrassment to Sir Paul, organizer Midge Ure has said the former Beatle is unlikely to be asked to sing on the track because he is too old.
The former Ultravox frontman, who is 51, said, "Paul McCartney is reputedly going to play bass but I don't think he's going to turn up because he realizes it's all about the new kids on the block. He came on as the penultimate act at Live Aid so he's got every right to do it. But the emphasis is on youth. The only person we're talking about having back is (U2 singer) Bono because I'm not sure anyone could sing the line the way he sang it."
The song - first released in 1984 - will be rerecorded next Sunday at a studio (Air Studios) in Hampstead, North London, with contributions from many top acts including Robbie Williams, Dido and Jamelia.
Gordon Brown yesterday gave the project a boost when he announced that the Treasury would refund the VAT paid on purchases of the single and the Live Aid DVD.
The Chancellor's concession is likely to free up an estimated extra £4 million ($7.3 million) for charity.
November 8, 2004 -- BBC News
Sir Paul vies for festival award
Scissor Sisters, rapper 50 Cent and Sir Paul McCartney will compete in the first awards ceremony to honor UK music festival stars and organizers.Set up by music site Virtual Festivals, all 12 winners will be decided by online public vote from 15 November.
Sir Paul's Glastonbury appearance has been shortlisted in the "best live moment of the summer" category.
He competes with 50 Cent's hasty exit at Reading and Scissor Sister Jake Shears losing his T in the Park kilt.
"Well over two million music fans attend festivals in the UK alone every year, so the Festival Awards gives these people an opportunity to recognize and reward those artists and organizers who made the summer one to remember," a Virtual Festivals spokesman said.
November 7, 2004 -- The Mirror
HELP! A CHAIN REACTION AS PAUL BLOCKS THE BOGTalk about taking the pee... guests at Sir Paul McCartney's party had to ask permission to use the loo.
Hundreds of partygoers were hopping mad at the launch of an exhibition of pics from Macca's 2003 world tour on Thursday.
Staff at London's Proud gallery ushered guests into a back room so they wouldn't disturb the 62-year-old ex-Beatle as he and wife Heather Mills toured the show. But after a while desperate guests pleaded with stewards to leave.
One guest said, "We were stuck there an hour. Grown men had to beg to use the toilet. They didn't want Paul to be disturbed. There was almost a riot."
November 6, 2004 -- Times Online
Let him be
For four decades, Paul McCartney's fame has been marked by his portrayal as the relentlessly chirpy, cheeky one. But today, Alan Franks meets a very different man: proud, defiant, and raw with love and loss.He's not at all as you might have expected. He just happens to live in a world which still likes to see him as the cherubic one with the sweet voice and a guitar the wrong way round. He was, and never quite stopped being, the Beatle who was every mother's nomination for son-in-law (John too snarly, George not eating properly, and Ringo... please). The reality of him is sharp, restless, wary, defended, sardonic and, after everything that's happened to him these past few years, a little scuffed. In another age, the one which he and his universal music helped to end, you might even have used that hideous adjective "chippy", but this would have said more about you than him.
As if to rub in time's utter indifference to everything we hold dear, Sir Paul McCartney is now 62. To put it more tellingly, he is barely 18 months off The Age which he and Lennon created in that confoundedly catchy song about getting older. Far from contemplating a cottage holiday in the Isle of Wight, "if it's not too dear", he is drawing breath between two of the most enormous international rock tours ever seen. As for the hair, he's not losing it at all. Earlier this year, Uppercuts salon in Brighton, from which he was seen emerging apparently less grey than he went in, declared it a very fine head. Pension arrangements? Depends what you read, but the figure that keeps coming up in relation to his fortune is £1 billion ($1.8 billion).
I meet him at the Ocean Way studio on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, where he has come to work on a new album. It doesn't look much on the outside, but it's where a lot of the most celebrated musicians feel at home. Their photos and their high-selling albums line the corridors: Stones, Joe Cocker, Barry White, Michael Bolton, Bon Jovi, going back to Nat King Cole, one of McCartney's heroes, and to a young Paul of about half his present years. Seeping from one of the studios is the unmistakable sound of his voice, true and plangent, still able to sing the Beatles numbers in their original keys. Waiting for him to break, I get chatting with John Hammel, his personal assistant for 30 years. I remember him from nearly 20 years ago, when I'd interviewed McCartney at an odd little studio in Eastbourne, not far from where he lived with his first wife Linda and their children. John answers all my questions with "you'd better ask him that yourself", or "Paul will be able to answer that one". Then, in the silence, he adds that "a fish gets caught when its mouth is open".
McCartney appears in the doorway, casual and humming. He looks me up and down in a flash and then suddenly we're going up some narrow stairs and crouching our way through a sort of attic lined with cubby holes full of old studio components. He fingers them approvingly as we pass. Next, we're out on the roof, with no railings and a nasty little drop, sitting at a table under a big parasol. I want to say something about the Beatles' rooftop concert back in 1969, and how the police broke it up, but just then a cop car roars down Sunset with everything going. He stretches an arm out across the view. I'm surprised by his approval of it because it is an endless plain of low roofs like ours, all squared off and gridded by serious highways. Right at the back of all this is the sign saying Hollywood, and the faint trace of hills. No trees, no parks, no people. Think how Penny Lane, that fantastic little English place-hymn, just teemed.
I ask him if there is any truth in the rumour that he and his wife Heather are planning to settle in America. He rolls his eyes and goes into a long lament about the way rumours like this circulate and pick up strength until they acquire the status of a received truth, no matter how forcefully they are denied. He gives the sobering example of how his first wife was continually referred to as "the photography heiress Linda Eastman", when there was in fact no connection between her family and that of George Eastman, the founder of Eastman Kodak. There's plenty more where this came from, and some of it pretty angry. So I ask about late fatherhood. Has he found it difficult? Does he enjoy it? Would he like another baby?
"It's been great fun for me," he replies with enthusiasm. "I love it. She [Beatrice] is a delicious little baby. But I don't really want to talk about that. I want to give her the choice of a private life. If we were talking just as guys, I'd go on talking about her endlessly. But with the newspapers, no matter who it is, Heather and I have a rule that we don't really talk about it. But yeah, it's great. She's great."
And he's coping with it all OK? "It's fine. I love it. I just love it." To the last question, about another baby, he replies very firmly: "I don't want to answer that." Nor does he choose to talk about his life with Heather, let alone about the stress that re-marriage can impose on the existing family, as well as on the couple themselves. However, much later in the conversation, he comes back to the subject and mounts a heartfelt defence of his wife, passionate in its content and defiant in its tone.
In the course of his 2002/3 tour, McCartney played live to more than two million people at 90 packed concerts, from Madison Square Garden in New York to Red Square in Moscow. Now a book of that regal progress, Each One Believing, has been published, with photos by Bill Bernstein, a New York photographer whose 15-year association with the former Beatle secured him access to the offstage life of the tour. The result is relentlessly fizzy, professional and upbeat, just like the image of the man at the heart of the account. Here is Macca sharing a quiet moment with Heather in the sumptuous dressing room; Macca learning how to say "hi guys" to his Russian fans. "I was with Putin this afternoon; he invited me and Heather to the Kremlin. I was telling him I like to speak to the crowd"; Vladimir taking his seat at the Red Square gig, flanked by archetypal heavies; Macca in one of the band's private huddles before performing; Macca with guys who would love to consider themselves members of his peer group, if such a thing existed: Sting, Geldof, Stallone, Cage (Nicolas, not John), Spacey, Clinton (Bill). Some are openly delighted to be sharing a frame with the legend, others are still trying to wrestle humility into their smile as the shutter clicks.
The gallery goes on: Jay Leno, James Taylor, Ozzy Osbourne and Sir George Martin, the former Beatles producer and, some would say, fifth member of the band in the Abbey Road studio days. He is the only one whom McCartney seems overjoyed to see. Sir George - just like Sir Paul, and like Putin's companions, and like the expressions of almost tragic devotion on the girls' faces - seems unchanged. Tall, grey, decent, sober, the ultimate liberal uncle. Riffle through the book and the whole tour, the whole world that it encapsulates, becomes strangely glazed by a similar immutability. And the poses: Paul emerging from somewhere giving yet another thumbs-up or a victory V-sign; Paul and the guys doing some routine that makes him look as though he is levitating, always with the wide-eyed and winsome look which somehow kept innocence alive in an era apparently embarrassed by it. Words like looning, larking and goofing come to mind; postwar words of a Carry On England kind. Glance through the set lists and you find up to 23 Beatles numbers, two-thirds of the material. This is a heritage tour, never mind that many of the fans were not born when the songs were made. It is the very same heritage that so extraordinarily upstaged monarchy itself at the Queen's jubilee concert.
Now think of some of the Beatles songs that emerged between Love Me Do and Let It Be. Think of how they fused every kind of vernacular music from Liverpool/Irish folk, through the dance-hall jazz of the kind played by McCartney's father Jim, to the R 'n 'B arriving in boatloads from the States. Add to this the plain genius of the Lennon/McCartney collaboration - up there with Schubert, said Leonard Bernstein - and you come a little closer to explaining how the songs and their original singers became and remain monumental. The phenomenon brings problems, and McCartney knows this better than anyone. Though he makes the point that he became even bigger after the Beatles, "into another league of very famous", it would be hard to claim that his songs with Wings, or subsequently, reached the same heights as his work alone and with Lennon in the Sixties. His harshest critics say there's been hardly anything of note these past three decades, never mind that, in 1977, Mull of Kintyre became the best-selling single of all time in Britain, in the process winning its composer an Ivor Novello Award.
I wonder whether it is harder to write good pop songs when you are no longer young, and I ask him how he approaches the process these days. He replies "same as ever", and says repeatedly that he hates to analyse these things, much prefers to allow the presence of mystery. Almost at once he starts talking about Lennon. "I wrote Yesterday without John and he wrote Imagine without me, so we were very lucky that when the break-up came we weren't totally reliant on each other. We'd written a lot of stuff individually. But I miss him a lot, and any time you could bring him back I'd be grateful, so that I could sit him down and get him to sort out some of the problems with my songs. But, knowing that's not possible, I miss him, yeah, as you would miss any great collaborator. And he was the greatest. He and I, for each other, were it. Maybe that thing about both of our mothers having died gave us some kind of solidity. And we liked each other, we could take the piss out of each other, it worked on a million levels."
He says what he has said before, that he would have liked the Beatles to have gone on for longer. His face becomes ruminative, like I've never seen in the photos these past 40 years. He sighs and continues: "The way I look at it is, I'm a great optimist, but I do recognise that nobody gets out of this one alive. And so it's just very, very sad to think that these people won't be coming through that door again. You know, John, George, Linda, mum and dad. It's a hopelessly sad fact that we all have to live with. It's the nature of the beast, the nature of what we are all in. I've known that for an awfully long time. I remember saying to my dad, 'Will you die? Will I die?' As a kid, you do. It's very final, very horrible. I'd like everyone to go on for ever, but none of us is going to, and so you grieve. I just cry when I have to. It strikes me at odd moments. Sometimes, on stage, I'm singing the song I wrote for John [Here Today], and I just find myself going... [he makes a gasping noise], and not being able to handle it. If I'm doing a lot of emotional songs, I think, what if I blub, what if I start to lose it?"
The greatest loss of all has been Linda, who died six years ago of breast cancer. They had married in 1969, had three children, and had been virtually inseparable. As well as his wife, she had been a member of Wings, albeit much derided by the music press. As with John and George, so with Linda: you grieve, you get on with it, you count your blessings, which are considerable, and you lean on your music, which never lets you down. "When I was a teenager in Liverpool, no one expressed their grief. You just had to put your head down and carry on. You didn't talk to a psychiatrist because there weren't any. Today, I just think what an amazingly lucky person I am to have found Heather."
It was the year after Linda's death that he met the former model Heather Mills, whom he then married in 2002. Once more, hostility surrounded his choice of partner. There was reportedly a family crisis, with his eldest (sic) daughter, the fashion designer Stella, said to be at loggerheads both with her father and his intended bride of 34. The couple met at a charity awards dinner. "I just liked the look of her, same as had happened when I saw Linda. I was just physically attracted. Then we got together and found we had so much in common. And I was thinking, what if I hadn't seen her?"
They married in the small village of Glaslough in County Monahan, with an inevitably starry list of guests, and strangers travelling from as far as Zurich to line the narrow lanes and cheer. "The more we go on, the more we realise how lucky the pair of us are. But that's what I find all the time. My mum dies, and I find John. Linda dies, and I find Heather."
Jim McCartney also remarried after bringing up Paul and his younger brother Mike. The boys' mother, Mary, had also died of breast cancer. His second wife had been widowed and already had a five-year-old daughter. This girl, Ruth, is now 42 and, unbeknown to Paul, lives in California. By comparison with his father, who remarried eight years after being widowed, Paul's getting together with Heather was swift. And even though his own children were grown up, it must have caused some difficulties for everyone.
Paul nods ruefully and says: "I think these things are part and parcel. It can be difficult, you know. For them [the children], for Heather, for all of us. But, you know, luckily these things clear up. Time is a great healer. These things have healed - amazingly. I'd prefer not to go on about any difficulties. I like much more the fact that we get over these things, that people grow, and they get used to stuff and get through things. So we are doing very well as a family." At several points in this conversation, I find myself thinking how much nicer it would be if we were, in his words, just guys, rather than me being press and him being what he is.
Impossible, of course, with me asking what I think are legitimate questions about how he copes with the raw and ragged bits of life familiar to the ordinary and unfamous, and him guarding his privacy with the ferocity of a man who knows what it is like to lose it. So it's ironic. Someone like me would never have the chance to spend time with someone like him without the licence of belonging to the press. Yet it is that very belonging that blocks off certain avenues of discussion.From what I've heard two of his friends say, he is great company, witty and generous. If he doesn't much like the press, and he doesn't, it is surely in part because he dislikes the thought of losing control of his image. And yes, that image is definitely at odds with the man. I'd go further and say it doesn't really do him justice. At one point, when we are talking about the (false) rumour of him moving to America, he floats the following fantasy with me: "You and I have to write something for this bare page today. Look, it could be a lot of fun. How about... Stevie Wonder is moving to London to be near Paul, and the neighbours are up in arms. OK? That will run. Or else... Madonna has asked Paul to write the music for her new children's book. I could do better than that if I spent half an hour on it. But no, for the 50th time, I am not dead [a reference to the 1969 rumour that Paul had died and it was a stand-in on the Abbey Road cover], and no, we are not moving to America."
The posh papers (his word again) are not exempted. He goes into plummy-voice to imitate the reader of one such paper - not this one - learning that McCartney is to relocate. Perhaps it is my turn to be paranoid when I say there is a hint of aggression in it. But why has there been so much ill feeling towards his wives? And not just from the press. That would not be accurate. As he says: "Linda got a lot of flak when we married, and Heather has had similar types of experiences... I don't know why. Look, I was due to marry Jane [Asher]. The public appeared to like that." True enough. Jane came from an impeccably middle-class professional family. Because of their address and the girls' hair colour, they were known as the Carrotts of Wimpole Street. Paul lived there for a while, and the couple were a classier Posh and Becks of the Sixties. And so much more wholesome than Mick and Marianne. "She was a nice girl. A British girl. And then I realised that I wasn't in love with her. Which was a slight problem. Then I realised I was in love with Linda, and we got married and had a delicious romance. We met on the cusp of Jane and me breaking up. But number one, she was American. And we didn't like Americans. And she was divorced."
Wallis Simpson Syndrome. "That. And she had a child. These were all reasons for not liking someone. But like the Linda thing, it [the Heather thing] is clearing. People are realising who Heather is. We were at a stop-the-mines benefit the other evening. The simple perception of this was that Princess Diana dies and therefore anyone going into it is trying to be Diana. But Heather had been doing this a long time before. She gave a fantastic speech. She is a very intelligent girl, a very impressive woman. She left school at 13 with virtually no education. She's just written an article for The New Statesman. You should read it. It's in the Labour Party conference issue. A 90-year-old gent I met on holiday said [of the magazine]: 'Oh, that's a formidable book.' This is the side that people don't bother to find out about. She spends her days helping people."
And when people said it was too soon for a new partnership? "I never listened to gossips in the street in Liverpool. 'Ooo, look at 'im wairin' those those tight trowsers. Look at the length of 'er skairt. It's a bloody scandal!' It's just a variation on that."
At the time of this conversation there's a fortnight to go until the presidential election, so I ask him who he's rooting for. Kerry is the answer. "I've got the Bushisms book. 'Most of our imports are from overseas.' From a president, I'm not so sure this is good." Ever since Give Ireland Back to the Irish (banned by the BBC), I've had him down as a naïf. Or call it broad-brush. "Great Britain you are tremendous, And nobody knows like me, But really what are you doin' in the land across the sea?" Can the medium of song change the way that people think and vote? "Well, Give Peace a Chance was something that did make a difference. I remember seeing thousands of people chanting that on the White House lawn... They're not easy to write, those protest songs."
His American contemporary Bob Dylan, an equally durable musician, managed a few in his time. "He's a great guy. Great poet. I run into him every so often. I saw him in an anorak in the corner of some airport lounge. He's so courageous. A guy from his band said, 'Mr Tambourine Man went down well tonight,' so Bob said, 'OK, take it out of the set.' I'm not like that. I'd say keep it in."
Of course he would. This is not a man who got famous by being controversial, even if he was there at the heart of the biggest popular music revolution this country has ever known. The fact is that you could probably have set him down anywhere, any time, and his melodic brilliance would have propelled him to the top. Everyone sensed that in their own way, from George Martin right the way down to toddlers hearing those sounds coming down the hall from their parents' transistor.
John Hammel comes up to call time and we make our way back off the roof. Paul gathers up his lunch box, which had contained the veggie roll made for him by Heather. The box is actually a little blue plastic handbag in the shape of an old Roberts radio, with a photo of the new Mrs Macca occupying the whole of one side. Through the attic with the components, down the steep steps and into the studio. He bashes out a Lady Madonna riff on the Crown Upright, then has a quick go on his famous Hofner violin-shaped bass. He got this one for £30 ($55) more than 40 years ago because he couldn't afford £100 ($183) for a Fender solid. You wouldn't dare put a price on it now. Then he picks up his acoustic six-string and starts singing.
I say I must be the smallest audience he has played to since he used to practise in the bathroom, and he nods. His eyes have gone all distant, just like they always did, and instead of hearing just soulfulness in the voice, I find I'm picking up a great weight of downright sadness. It's that something in the throat, that compulsive catch that words, thankfully, can't describe. It's funny to think that, when it was a third as old as it is now, it only had to make itself heard on a stage to be instantly drowned by screaming girls. Even as it idles its way above the chords, with no one else about, it's as distinctive in its own way as Frank Sinatra or Billie Holiday. But oh so mournful.
Before leaving I ask him if the Beatles will ever re-form. I'm hardly the first. These days, sadly, it would only entail one phone call, from Paul to Ringo, or vice-versa. "I would if he asked me," says Paul. There was a time when this would have constituted a scoop. He goes on: "I thought I was going to play with him once, but he got a shoulder thing." The Who do it with just two of the originals. So if Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend were to join Paul and Ringo, you'd have the full line-up of vocals, bass, lead and drums. "Right," says McCartney. "The Whootles." Remember you read it here first.
November 6, 2004 -- The Sun
Watch out ... Beatle's about
Sir Paul McCartney won't be standing for any nonsense from whippersnapper Band Aid 20 stars.The Beatles legend, who played a big part in 1985's Live Aid show, joked last night: "I certainly have no intention of letting younger artists take over this time."
Macca has been lined-up to play bass on "Do They Know It's Christmas?" with the new charity supergroup.
November 5, 2004 -- Beatlefan Bulletin
McCartney confirms Band Aid role
Sir Paul McCartney has confirmed he will appear on the new Band Aid charity single to be recorded later this month. He told BBC Radio One he will play bass guitar on the track but would also be up for singing if asked.
"If they want me to sing on it and there's a spot for me, I'll probably do it," he told presenter Colin Murray.
Busted, Will Young and Ms. Dynamite have also confirmed they will appear on the new version of the 1984 hit "Do They Know It's Christmas?"
Sir Paul said the song's producer, Nigel Godrich, persuaded him to take part. "He just said 'Will you do us a favour and play bass?' and I said 'yes'."
The track will be released on 29 November, with all proceeds going to the Band Aid Trust, which will raise funds for famine in the Darfur region of Sudan.
November 5, 2004 -- Beatles in London.com
Paul at Proud Gallery photo exhibit and book launch
by Richard Porter
Paul got to the gallery at about 7:30 pm. He had done the Adopt-A-Minefield Webcast from MPL and was apparently upset with fans who were hanging out there.
A huge marquee (tent) was built at the back of the Proud Gallery and there must have been 500 people there. Paul spent lots of time in a roped off VIP area, but did mingle with the other guests. However because there were so many people there it was hard to to get near him - as of course everyone there wanted to talk to him.
He looked good, had on a black suit and had longer hair.
Disappointingly, there was no real stucture to the evening - I was hoping Paul might give a speech or something.
Free beer was handed out to most of the guests while free champagne was given to the VIPs. At one point Paul was drinking an orange coloured drink out of a large glass - don't know what that was!
Other VIPs there included: Heather Mills, Mark Hudson, Peter Blake and Bill Bernstein. None of the McCartney children were there.
Paul left from a back exit at around 9:15pm.
November 4, 2004 -- Ireland Online
McCartney launches tour photo exhibition PHOTOSEx-Beatle Sir Paul McCartney tonight launched an exhibition of photographs of his recent world tour.
Dozens of snaps were taken throughout the two-year tour by Sir Paul's photographer, Bill Bernstein.One shows Sir Paul, 62, snatching a kiss with his wife Heather, 36, in a corridor, while another captures the pair cuddling just before the legend goes on stage.
A total of 46 of the pictures in the London exhibition, which opened tonight, also show the singer performing.
Wearing a dark pin-striped suit, Sir Paul and his wife, in jeans and a slinky top, looked at the pictures and chatted to some of their fans about them.
Sir Paul's wife of two years, an anti-landmines campaigner, said: "Paul has known Bill for about 20 years, so it wasn't difficult. I didn't even notice him. They decided to do a book."
The book, featuring the intimate photograph, is called "Each One Believing: On Stage, Off Stage And Back Stage."
Bernstein said: "I got really close to Paul during the two years of the tour. He is one of the most fantastic people I have met in my life. He is dead funny. There are two people: the rock icon and the regular guy." He added: "They were a fun couple to be around. The are both very up. They have a tremendous amount of fun."
The Each One Believing exhibition at the Proud Gallery in Camden, north London ends on November 27.
Prints signed by Sir Paul and the photographer are being sold at the gallery to raise money for the Adopt A Minefield charity
November 4, 2004Paul and Heather hosted the reception tonight at London's Proud Camden Gallery to launch the "Each One Believing" photo exhibit and book.
November 4, 2004 -- Landmine Web Chat Transcript
Heather and Paul McCartney and Steve Sinnott, General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers and official Friend of Adopt-A-Minefield did a Webchat on November 4, 2004.
INTERVIEWER: OK WE ARE READY LETS GO
PAUL: Hi welcome to our chat we are looking forward to talking with you today... Heather & Paul
INTERVIEWER: Hi everybody, hi Paul and Heather. Can I really make a difference by only donating 2 Pounds a month? I mean, what happens with the money?
PAUL: Yes Neena every pound makes a difference. It costs about a pound to clear one square metre of minefield and £50 will fit a child out with a prosthetic limb and the training to be able to use it - thanks for your question.
HEATHER: In addition by donating £2 a month this money can be pooled together to make a big difference for many donors to clear a minefield.
INTERVIEWER: How long do you think it will take to rid the world of all landmines?
HEATHER: Hi Michelle - good question - the great news about this question is that it is actually possible to achieve a mine free world - the way to do that is obviously to raise funds, the more funds raised the quicker we will remove the mines already planted especially now that more and more countries are not laying down more landmines due mainly to the Mine Ban Treaty.
PAUL: If the money comes flooding in - maybe we could rid the world of landmines in 0 years - if the money comes in more slowly it could take much longer... it's up to you.
INTERVIEWER: Heather, thousands of civilians are affected by the Landmines every year. What kind of assistance and treatment does a Landmine Survivor need? FROM Danielle Gomes (27), Rio de Janerio, Brazil
HEATHER: Hi Danielle Landmine Survivor Assistance is the most important thing to me as care for an amputee is for life - so if you are lucky it's a lot more than 20 years - even once we reach the reality of a landmine free world, survivors will always need help - the good news is by giving them the independence and helping them to become self sufficient - we can minimise the help need and encourage them to go on and help others - around £50 can get these innocent survivors of the atrocious weapons back on their feet again.
INTERVIEWER: We're raising funds for landmine clearance at Sacred Heart Catholic College in Crosby, Merseyside. We've raised just short of £2000. FROM David Moor head, Head of RE
STEVE: You know this question makes me think of Paul's Liverpool Oratorio. Now i come from Liverpool as does Paul and everytime i hear this line - it makes me shiver "being born where i was born carries with it certain responsibilities" and i think that's exactly right. So i'd say to the teenagers of Merseyside - YOU know what's fair and what's right - and Landmines are the opposite of that. Getting rid of Landmines is absolutely fair and absolutely right and we should all work together to rid the world of this terrible scourge.
PAUL: My old school motto was in Latin but translated it meant 'not for ourselves - but for the whole world were we born' and i think that's an important thing to remember and i'm sure kids at Sacred Heart know this already - thanks for the question and your great donation.
INTERVIEWER: How many people die or get hurt every because of landmines?? FROM Elsa Rut Gylfad, Kopavogur
HEATHER: So Elsa - one person gets killed or maimed by a landmine every 20 mins that's about 18,000 a year - it used to be every 22 mins which made it 24,000. The improvement is based on organisations like AAM working to clear minefield or mine affected countries as quickly as possible and teaching local communities about mine awareness - interestingly enough - your country Iceland has one of the biggest prosthetic manufacturing company's in the world called Ossur and we are trying to work with them and your government to help amputees around the world who have been affected by Landmines.
INTERVIEWER: We are planning on having friends over for a bonfire in our yard this November. We will be serving hot soup, hot chocolate and, of course could beer. What is "The Night of 1000 Dinners" and would our little get together qualify? Love ya, FROM Lorri Hughes, Woodbury, Minnesota, USA
PAUL: Yes Lorri - your little get-together will definitely qualify - we don't mind how people organise these dinners as long as they take part in A Night of 1000 Dinners... the main thing is to have a good time, raise awareness about the Landmine problem and then raise some money to help clear them and to help survivors.
HEATHER: Maybe one of you is a good storyteller and can log on to our website and read up about a young survivor who has been helped with previous funds raised through Night of A 100 Dinners - this way you can motivate your guests by relaying this story around the fire and explaining what a huge difference - people like yourselves are making by giving their time and money contributing to this cause...
PAUL: More info about a Night OF 1000 Dinners and all our work can be found on www.landines.org.uk
INTERVIEWER: Hi Heather, Paul, and Steve! Thank you for all your work to help people and your effort to make more people and governments aware of this important issue. How many areas has Adopt-A-Minefield cleared since it began? Approximately how many landmines have been removed? FROM Tori in Texas
HEATHER: Hi Tori - Adopt A Minefield have cleared over 18,000,000 square metres of land - we don't have a total of how many landmines that is... as it costs nearly the same amount of money, to clear an area filled with mines as it does to clear an area of only a few, the reason being clearance is mainly done by hand for many reasons, and because of this every area has to be checked through inch by inch - so the costs works out the same.
INTERVIEWER: Will there be a No More Landmines Day next year? FROM Isabella, Lisa, Jess, Kate and Anna from St. Pardarn's Primary School, Aberystwyth
PAUL: Hi Isabella, Lisa, Jess, Kate and Anna - yes there will definitely be a No More Landmines day next year and we hope as the years go by - it will get bigger and better with more cool people like yourselves joining in to help us.
HEATHER: In addition to your generosity and continued support over the years to come we hope and pray - that one day No More Landmines Day will no longer be needed.
INTERVIEWER: As a primary school teacher I'd love to get my pupils involved in this campaign how can we help Paul? FROM Daniel Barratt, Hull, United Kingdom
STEVE: I think Paul is going to hand this one over to me. The first thing you can do is get on the Internet and download the free lesson plans the National Union of teachers has worked on with Adopt-A-Minefield at www.landines.org.uk and the thing i think is really important to say is that these lessons are based on real people's stories. Real stories of real kids affected by landmines - who kids in every school and every class will be able to identify with. Stories like the one about Lai, who was playing on the beach when he got blown up - i mean these are real kids. So raise awareness in class and assembly and the second thing and this is really important - is to raise funds.Schools are perfect places for fundraising aren't they? And the thing that's smashing - absolutely smashing about this campaign is that you'll get feedback sent to your school about exactly how the money is used and exactly who has benefitted from your hard work.
PAUL: Hey guys and girls thanks for being with us on this webchat, and mostly thanks for your enthusiasm for the subject and your energetic fund raising efforts to help us with this global problem that we are determined with your help to overcome.
Keep up the good work, keep in touch with us at Adopt-A-Minefield. Adopt-A-Minefield and let us know your progress... Thanks once again... Love from Paul and Heather
November 4, 2004 -- Times Online
Getting personalMary McCartney Donald: I wish I had a flat stomach
Born in London in 1969, the photographer Mary McCartney Donald inherited her passion for photography from her mother, Linda McCartney.
Despite her parentage, McCartney Donald enjoyed a distinctly unstarry upbringing. She became a photo editor for the music-book publisher Omnibus Press and 12 years ago began taking photographs professionally, specialising in portrait and fashion photography.
Her portrait subjects have included Sam Taylor-Wood, Ralph Fiennes, Jude Law and Cherie Blair with baby Leo soon after his birth in 2003. She has also been responsible for many magazine fashion shoots. She is now working on Keep The Faith, a collection of images of rockabilly fans. She lives in London.
What's in your make-up bag?
Dr Hauschka powder; No 7 mascara; Rosebud lip balm and Ren's jojoba body moisturiser.Name your desert-island essentials.
Sun hat, sun dress, iPod, book.Do you have a beauty secret?
Vegetarian eating and lots of sleep.What do you wear on a fat day?
The same as usual, I just don't look in the mirror.How would friends describe your style?
Eclectic.What's the most treasured item in your wardrobe and why?
A primrose-yellow Dior top that belonged to my mum.What do you never leave home without?
My keys and an Olympus camera.Hot date. What do you wear?
A dress and heels.And when you're home alone?
A T-shirt or pyjamas.What do you wear to bed?
My husband.You're the fashion police for the day. what do you ban?
Fur.Has your outfit ever embarrassed you?
Yes, often throughout the years.How old is too old for a micro-mini?
If you wear thick enough tights, then maybe never.If you could live in period of time for its fashion, when would you choose and why?
The Twenties; it was such a stylish and beautiful period, with all those beaded dresses and headpieces and fabulous accessories.What is your most recent purchase?
Superfly black cord trousers and a biker jacket that I bought in Selfridges.What qualities do you most admire in a person?
Friendship and trust.Can you judge a book by its cover?
It would be good if you could, but unfortunately not.What is your greatest extravagance?
Vintage black-and-white prints.What is your guilty pleasure?
Green and Black's chocolate.Any dirty habits?
I don't know if it's dirty but I have a bad habit of interrupting people in mid-sentence.Name a cheap thrill.
A roller coaster.What's the best advice that you've ever been given?
I suppose it's to follow your heart, but sometimes that is the most difficult thing to do.What's your favourite smell?
Lavender.Describe your best holiday.
In New Orleans when dating my husband, who was then my boyfriend.What are you most and least proud of?
Most proud of my kids and least proud, well, let's not go there.What's your idea of pure bliss?
Being in a quiet place of great natural beauty.As whom or what would you like to come back in your next life?
A cat, because they get to sleep all the time.What would you eat for your last supper and with whom, dead or alive, would you most like to share it?
I'd share it with my mum and we'd eat her tomato and rosemary soup, quiche and mixed salad, and ice-cream and chocolate.Yes or no to a nip 'n' tuck?
No, but only because I'm a coward.What part of your body would you change?
I'd have a flatter stomach.What would you like to achieve before you die?
Peace of mind.How would you like to be remembered?
As a great photographer, mother and friend.How good-looking are you on scale of 1-10?
7 on a good day, 4 on a bad one.The Olympus-sponsored Mary McCartney Donald Off Pointe exhibition is at the Royal Opera House until January 1, 2005. To view the photographs and find details of how to win Mary's E1 digital camera, go to www.olympus.co.uk or call 0800 0720070
November 3, 2004 -- The Celebrity CafePaul sighting in Hollywood (date unknown)
We were staying in a Condo near San Diego, but we met some friends at the Hard Rock Cafe at Universal Studios in Hollywood. We needed to get some coffee, so we stopped at Ralph's Market on Laurel Canyon on the way.We were in the check out line behind a guy with a lot of fruit. Well, he had a certain melon that the cashier couldn't identify. This gentleman turned to us and in a clear British accent, asked us if we knew what the name of the melon was.
My wife said to him, "you're buying a piece of fruit that you don't know the name of? Have you ever eaten that kind of melon before?"
He just laughed and said, "call me adventurous."
As we were paying next, I asked the cashier if he thought the man looked familiar. He popped right out with Paul McCartney. That was my thought, too.
As we were leaving, a black Caddy started to drive by us, and the back window rolled down. Paul said to us, "Thanks for the laugh" and drove off.
November 3, 2004 -- The Globe
Sir Paul, with LovePulling up to the Cinnabar studios in Burbank in a bright blue Corvette convertible was none other than Sir Paul McCartney who was there rehearsing for a benefit concert. Taking note of the swarms of people outside, the artist formerly known as the cute Beatle walked up to a few folks and asked what they were working on. When my source told him she was slaving away at CBS Studios, putting up with star trips and typical Hollywood harrassment, Sir Paul invited her into his rehearsal, in which he played piano and Neil Young played guitar.
"Paul McCartney was the coolest guy ever," says my source. "I was thrilled just to say hello to him, but to get to watch him play was absolutely unbelievable."
November 3, 2004 -- The Sun
Sir Paul McCartney for Band Aid
Sir Paul McCartney has added his name to the list of stars playing on the new Band Aid single!As revealed in The Sun, the ex-Beatle won't be singing on the track. Instead he will be playing bass guitar on the re-recording of the 1984 smash 'Do They Know It's Christmas?'
20 years on from his original appearance, U2 front man Bono will be returning to sing on the track. So far he's the only original member to be re-appearing, and is expected to sing his emotionally-charged original line.
The Sun has also confirmed some of the roles the stars will be taking - Chris Martin is taking up piano duties as well as singing, Fran Healy will appear in the guitar section, and Supergrass's Danny Goffey will play drums.
It is claimed that Robbie Williams has already recorded a version of the track, and Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich will pick which line will appear on the final version.
Dido will also record an entire version of the track as she's also unable to attend the recording session in London at the end of next week.
Other stars performing on the track are The Darkness, Snow Patrol, Keane, Jamelia and the Sugababes.
The track is a dead-cert to top the charts when it is released on November 29.
November 2, 2004 -- The Mirror
POACHERS HACK OFF STAG HEADPoachers cut off a stag's head to sell as a trophy near a forest owned by Sir Paul McCartney. It was shot on land he shares with the League Against Cruel Sports. Police hunting the killers said the head could fetch up to £600 ($1,100).
Estate manager Paul Tillesley, who found the carcass near Dulverton, Somerset, said, "It was awful. This is a sanctuary and stags come because it's out of the way."
Tom Yandle, of the Devon and Somerset Hunt, said, "This is no way to treat a proud animal."
The League have named part of their land Linda's Wood after Sir Paul's animal-loving wife who died of cancer in 1998.
November 2, 2004 -- ITV
McCartney's mini-book fetches £13,000
A charity auction organized by a lifestyle magazine raised a total of £125,000 ($228,750)last night at Sotheby's in London.Tatler magazine sent 24 miniature books to celebrities from the worlds of arts, sport and politics and asked them to fill the pages with whatever they liked.
Sir Paul McCartney's contribution, the handwritten lyrics to "Hey Jude," fetched £13,000 ($23,790). Tatler substituted the leather-bound book with a special acrylic-bound version for the vegetarian former Beatle.
November 1, 2004 -- Press Release
Adopt-A-Minefield successes to date:400,000 people have directly benefitted from your donations.
£6.5 million ($11 million) have been raised - funding clearance of over 18 million square metres (54 million square feet) of land in 126 villages in 7 of the world's most landmine-affected countries.
No More Landmines Day
November 4th is No More Landmines Day - schools across the UK, in almost every county, are taking part in one of the fastest growing Citizenship in Schools events of the year. The Adopt-A-Minefield schools campaign is run with the National Union of Teachers (NUT). For more info click the link at http://www.landmines.org.uk
In support of this event Paul and Heather McCartney will be taking part in a live webchat with Steve Sinnott the General Secretary of the NUT. For more info about the webchat visit http://www.landmines.org.uk/334
Christmas sale - in the Adopt-A-Minefield Shop
We've reduced our prices this Christmas to help you get the Adopt-A-Minefield message out there. New products include juggling balls, posters of Paul and Heather in No More Landmines t-shirts, and the film "A Quiet Earth" which was featured at the L.A. Benefit Gala this year.
Also for a limited period only we're offering one free Adopt-A-Minefield (white, small logo) t-shirt with every other t-shirt order we receive - while stocks last... so hurry! Visit the shop at http://www.landmines.org.uk/product_catalogue.asp
Why not an Adopt-A-Minefield gift voucher for a friend or relative this year. Details at http://www.landmines.org.uk/59
Bonfire Night of 1000 DinnersNight of 1000 Dinners is changing...
This year - why not make your bonfire celebrations a Night of 1000 Dinners event?
As you know Night of 1000 Dinners is on or around the 4th November...
...but from then on we will be proudly running the 1000 Dinners campaign throughout the year which means you can host your meal anytime you wish. You could even do one every week!! ;-)
Register your dinner with Adopt-A-Minefield at www.1000dinners.com.For more info, click the link at http://www.landmines.org.uk
News continues with December 2004
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