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May 2007 (Page 1)

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May 20, 2007 -- The Mirror

DIVORCE DELAYS TOUR FOR MACCA

Sir Paul McCartney has delayed his world tour until his divorce is finalised to look after his three-year-old daughter Beatrice.

The Beatles legend, 64, had hoped to mount the huge tour to back his album Memory Almost Full, which is due out June 4.

But lawyers told him he needs to wait until the divorce with Heather Mills is over.

Macca hopes to tour next year, if his legal battle is finished. It would be his first live tour since 2005.

Sir Paul said: "I'm going to do bits and pieces to support the album, but it won't be a major tour until possibly next year, and that's down to personal circumstances."

One of Paul's friends said: "He shares custody of Beatrice. If he went on tour it would be impossible to look after a kid.

"And if the divorce is not finalised Heather could argue she should get some of the profits because the album was inspired by Paul's time with her."

Sir Paul says the divorce has brought him closer to his family. He said: "In difficult moments like this, it's when a loving family shines through.

He added: "The real positive out of it is my beautiful baby daughter."

McCartney and his second wife, Heather Mills McCartney, are in the middle of divorce proceedings. The former Beatle told the Guardian's Weekend magazine that the situation has brought him closer to his grown children from his marriage to Linda McCartney.

"I'm going through great struggles, but I'm feeling pretty good," McCartney was quoted as saying.

McCartney said it is difficult to see his private life exposed.

"There's only one real answer to the massive press coverage -- don't look," he said. "So I don't read it."

It is estimated that the divorce will cost McCartney $200 million, reducing his fortune to $1.4 billion, according to The Sunday Times' annual Rich List.

"There is a tunnel and there is a light and I will get there. In the meantime I really enjoy my work and my family. I see people worse off than me, so I can put it in perspective," McCartney said.

Sir Paul McCartney has revealed how his divorce battle with Heather Mills has brought him CLOSER to his kids.

The ex-Beatle said: "I'm going through great struggles but have a lot of support. It is in difficult moments like thiswhen a loving family shines through."

Macca, 64, has grownup children Mary, Stella and James by tragic first wife Linda.

He said a "real positive" from his marriage to Heather, 39, is "my beautiful baby daughter" Beatrice, three.

The star spoke as hunt supporters dumped decapitated foxes and deer in a forest planted in memory of Linda, an animal rights activist.

A pal of Macca said: "He is really upset over this sick act." Paul Tillsley, who runs the woods in Devon, said: "There was blood everywhere."

Linda, 56 when she died of breast cancer in 1998, loathed hunting.

For the very first time, McCartney and Wings albums will be made available across all digital platforms on May 22nd on Parlophone.

This amazing catalogue stretches from Paul's first solo album 'McCartney' through his releases with Wings to his latest critically-acclaimed studio album 'Chaos And Creation In The Backyard'. Within these albums lies a breathtaking list of singles including 'Band On The Run', 'My Love', 'Let 'Em In', and 'Jet'.

Paul McCartney recently received the Album of the Year award at the Classical Brit Awards for his classical album 'Ecce Cor Meum' and releases his next studio album "Memory Almost Full" on 4th June (UK) June 5 (US) 2007.

May 20, 2007 -- News of the World (Photos)

We can work it out

His is the astonishing picture you thought you'd never see in the Macca vs Mucca divorce war.

It's a case of I Thaw Her Standing There as Sir Paul gets an ice-breaking SMILE from Heather.

He lifts daughter Bea into the air to wave goodbye to Mummy after a friendly meeting at a restaurant.

And today we can reveal the pair have secretly hammered out a TRUCE in their bitter multi-million-pound battle-because they are WORRIED about the effect it's having on their three-year-old.

At their ten-minute summit on Friday at a London bistro they chatted amicably while Bea played-a far cry from past scenes. Just a few months ago nannies were sent to do the handovers because the child's parents couldn't stand the sight of each other.

The details of their We Can Work It Out settlement include:

# A PLEDGE from Paul that his lawyers will push through a divorce deal in the next year that will leave Heather happy.

# A PLAN to celebrate his 65th birthday next month TOGETHER at a special party with Bea.

# A PROMISE from Heather, 39, that she'll ditch plans to forge a new career in America, easing Macca's fears she might fight to take Bea with her.

A source close to the couple told us: "It's an amazing about-turn but they've both looked at their behaviour and vowed to get along for Bea's sake. They were becoming really worried that their rows and the tension between them would have an emotional effect on her.

This week Sir Paul said he felt there was light at the end of the tunnel over his divorce. "I'm going through great struggles, but I'm feeling pretty good. I have a lot of good support, particularly from my family," he said.

"In difficult moments like this, it's when a loving family shines through. We're pretty close anyway, but when you go into something difficult, it does actually bring you closer together."

He revealed how their shared love of Bea was ensuring he and Heather were giving peace a chance. "I've talked to a lot of people and everyone says you want to look at the positive ...my beautiful baby daughter," he said. "Both parents know there is something great that came out of our marriage even though it didn't work."

That was evident at Friday's rendezvous in St John's Wood. An onlooker said: "They sat there chatting away-everyone was astonished, especially considering how bitterly they've fought over their divorce. When they left they were side by side and seemed very friendly."

It was in sharp contrast to their last public meeting in October where the sour-faced pair barely spoke to each other at Bea's third birthday party.

Our source told us: "Paul has promised he'll settle the divorce by next spring and he's given her a £1 million ($2 million) interim payment. That's a huge relief for Heather who had debts to clear and was afraid that it would rumble on for years.

Chilled

"Now she wants to do a family thing for Paul's birthday with Bea. When this was suggested a few weeks ago, Paul had a really negative view on it. But he's chilled out about things now, and is considering it.

"He does feel that as a dad it would be the right thing to do for Bea."

Heather has also set his mind at rest about moving to the US where she appeared on reality show Dancing With The Stars. "He was worried she'd try to settle there and take Bea," said our source. "But she's assured him she'll stay here."

So at last it seems the McCartneys are coming together, right now, over Bea.

Streaming: http://www.zdf.de/ZDFmediathek/inhalt/17/0,4070,5514545-5,00.html

High speed DSL/Cable: http://wstreaming.zdf.de/zdf/300/070518_cartney_hjo.asx

T1/LAN: http://wstreaming.zdf.de/zdf/veryhigh/070518_cartney_hjo.asx

Thanks to Macca Reporter Evelyn Schwarz.

Although the release date isn't until June 5th, CDs will be available that evening. Free lithographs will be given to the first 250 guests and exciting giveaways will be handed out the entire event!

New York
Be the first to hear Paul McCartney's new solo album "Memory Almost Full" on Saturday, June 2nd, 12 noon. Free lithograph to the first 250 people and special giveaways through the event. B.B. King Blues Club and Grill (237 W 42nd St in NY).

Strawberry Fields (Beatles Tribute Band) will perform at the brunch, listening party to follow...

Date and Time: Wednesday 30th May at 11.50pm

Look out for news of the worldwide online exclusive very soon!

He is going through the most public and bitter divorce since Charles and Diana's, but Paul McCartney is determinedly upbeat. As he releases his most personal album yet, he talks to Simon Hattenstone about getting to grips with his troubles.

The first thing you see on entering Paul McCartney's Soho office is a beautiful old Wurlitzer jukebox. Seven years ago, in this same room, McCartney was ecstatic, a middle-aged man flushed on love and flaunting his second youth. "Here, listen to this," he said to me at the time. "This is my favourite song - I'm In Love, I'm In Love, I'm in Love Again," and as he played the Fats Domino song he sang along to it. He had just got together with Heather Mills, and he wanted to shout about it. So much has happened since then.

Today, he is more restrained. His hair is dyed a respectable brown, not the shocking maroon-black of yesteryear. He looks gaunt and pale. I ask what songs are on the Wurlitzer. "A bit of Glenn Miller, Hound Dog, All Shook Up, I'm In Love Again by Fats Domino, Friendly Persuasion by Pat Boone - a nice one, that." He doesn't play the Fats Domino song today.

McCartney is about to release his most personal album, and the rumour mill has been buzzing - it's his revenge on Mills, it's all about their split, and everything he's endured. In fact, the album is about everything but Heather. On Memory Almost Full, he revisits his childhood, his family, John, George and Ringo, Linda, he anticipates his own death and talks about how he would like to be remembered. If Memory Almost Full were a short film, it would feature a contented old man rocking in a chair on his porch, contemplating the past and the future.

He is sitting on his sofa, all chinos, bare feet and Make Poverty History bracelets, explaining the title. "The phrase Memory Almost Full came into mind, then I realised I'd seen it on a phone - you know, you must delete something." Is that how he's feeling about life? "Yeah, yeah, yeah," he almost sings, like a refrain from an old Beatles song. "You've put too much information in, so delete something and I can handle it. I thought that was quite symbolic of life." It was only when the album was coming together that he recognised there was a leitmotif. "It is like looking back through a photo album, but there's more, because when I'm looking at the snapshots, I'm saying, 'Did that really happen?' There's a sense of pinching myself that went through quite a few of the songs."

At times, he appears to argue with himself about how autobiographical the songs are. Take Mr Bellamy, which is about a man in a desperate situation - refusing to come down from the roof of his house because he's happier up there with "nobody here to spoil the view, interfere with my plans ... I like it up here without you" - newspapers have suggested this is about his state of mind. But that's too easy, he says - for starters, he began writing this album when he and Mills were happily married, and anyway, this is a character-led vignette, a Beatles-esque short story. A second later, he concedes that however impersonal a song appears to be, on a subconscious level there is always something of him in it. "The common denominator is me. Even if I try and write, 'Desmond and Molly had a barrow in the market place', inevitably I come through the song."

Titles are always the last things he thinks of, he says. He pauses. Except for Sgt Pepper - in that instance, the concept came before the songs. He says it so casually. At times you forget just what McCartney has achieved in his 64 years. It's hard to know where to start - he is in the Guinness Book Of Records as the most successful composer in popular music, with the most number one hits in the UK as a performer (21), and the most number ones in America as a writer (32); Yesterday is the most covered song in history, with more than 2,000 recorded versions; Mull Of Kintyre, recorded by Wings, the group he formed with his wife, Linda, after the Beatles, was Britain's biggest-selling single until it was overtaken by Band Aid's charity record (which also featured him). Then there is McCartney the businessman - his company, MPL Communications, owns the rights to more than 3,000 songs, including the entire Buddy Holly catalogue and musicals such as Guys & Dolls and Grease. In 2005, he earned £48.5 million ($95.5 million). Finally, there is McCartney the tabloid sensation - he is in the process of going through the most public and bitter divorce since Charles and Diana. Media gossips recently suggested that he had embarked on another relationship, with Sabrina Guinness, but the rumour was scotched by both parties.

His divorce will cost him tens, possibly hundreds of millions of pounds, and has already cost him his place in this year's Sunday Times rich list - with £725 million ($1.4 billion), he fell from 65th richest person in the UK to 102nd. It has been estimated that Mills could get as much as £200 million ($400 million).

What has most often come through McCartney's music is his relentless positivity. Whenever faced by adversity, he has given the trademark Macca grin and said that everything's fine. Never more so than on Memory Almost Full. Where we might expect bile and regret, we have love and gratitude and an embracing of all things past - or, at least, most things past.

"I was just thinking, you know, it's so easy to moan when you're going through problems, but at the same time it's good to stop and think of the great stuff. So I'm still grateful for this, that and the other." One of the things he's most grateful for, he says, is having been loved.

Memory Almost Full, McCartney's 21st solo album, is the first record to be released on the new Starbucks label, Hear Music. While it will be available through all the traditional outlets, it will also be sold at Starbucks cafes - which means that on the first day of release it will be heard by the chain's 45 million daily customers. Another example of McCartney's business nous.

Despite the chaos of his domestic life, McCartney appears at peace with himself on this album, finally ready to embrace his achievements. "As time goes on, I get more and more comfortable about my past. When the Beatles finished, there was a very difficult time with Wings when I wanted to shun my past in order to get on with my future, and then, when Wings finished, I wanted to put that behind me. As time went on, I started to become much more comfortable, because it was like, 'Oh God, it's going to be really boring if I can't bathe in memories of the Beatles or of Wings or of knowing John when I was teenager, meeting George on a bus, meeting Linda for the first time."

It's strange that a man with such an easygoing image has tortured himself so often over his past. There have always been two distinct sides to McCartney, and the sweet sentimentalist has often been at odds with the ruthless winner.

I tell him it seemed crazy that he was too busy worrying about whether the songs were written by McCartney-Lennon rather than Lennon-McCartney actually to enjoy them. "No, that's all gone," he answers. But it was there, wasn't it? "It was there, but like everything, they get wildly exaggerated. I can wake up one morning and have a particular bee in my bonnet about something, but because you have such a media presence, it goes round the world as a massively important statement." Although this particular bee did buzz around his bonnet for decades.

If he's so worried about media distortion, why not keep his thoughts to himself? "Why? I don't see why I should." He likes saying what he thinks - even if that means he's stuck with it for ever. Talk, discovery, self-awareness, he says, it's all part of one's personal evolution. "At least, I am evolving, thank God. Peter Ustinov once said he enjoyed doing interviews because it let him know what he was thinking. It's like a therapy session."

Nowadays, when he tours, he feels at ease with his audience. "It's funny, a couple of American tours ago, I was singing Blackbird and I started to chat to the audience much more. I'm very confident like that now. I remembered stuff that I'd forgotten for 30 years in explaining it. I get a therapy session with the audience, and I go, 'Hold on, I remember what that came from, it was a Bach thing that George and I used to play'."

He gets up to fetch a guitar from beside the Wurlitzer and starts playing the Bach. "Is this in tune? Yes. So that's the Bach. See, that's the bastardisation of it, and then this is how it evolves into Blackbird." He plays beautifully to demonstrate the transition. It's easy to forget how much the latter-day Beatles were influenced by classical music. Since the 90s, McCartney has released four classical albums including Liverpool Oratorio, his collaboration with Carl Davis, and the beautiful Oratorio Ecce Cor Meum, for which he has just won a Brit award.

When he thinks of the Beatles today, he feels privileged. "Gratitude. See, there's that word again: 'Gratitude'," he says in self-conscious Liverpool-LA fusion. "There's only three other people that happened to in the history of the universe. And so that's pretty good going, y'know? We had some fantastic times, some rough times, but listening to it now, or singing it as I do, I look back on it and think it's pretty sh*t-hot. Pretty good stuff. I sing it so I get to review the lyric and the melody, and I think, 'Ooh, that was clever. That was pretty good for a 24-year-old, for a bunch of...' " He trails off.

Yes, he knows how fiercely they fought in the studio and out of it, and, yes, he knows how important that was to the creative process ("We didn't always agree, and you get the best work by not agreeing"), but somehow it now seems so idyllic. "I just have the fondest memories. It's a huge part of my life, the Beatles. It was what happened to me that made me different. When you look back on it, it's a very warm, rich experience. It was not all roses, but that's the funny thing about time - it becomes all roses."

McCartney once said he was scared of forgetting the faces of loved ones. His mother died when he was 14, and 10 years later he started to have trouble picturing her face. "I would think of her and I couldn't conjure up her face as easily, so I'd have to go to a photograph. And it's a weird feeling, you go, 'Oh God, time is marching on, time's healing, but I don't want it to heal that much.' You feel guilt."

Two years after Linda died in 1998, he told me that he still talked to her. And now? He looks embarrassed, and says that comment was misinterpreted. "I remember it got retranslated and reprinted and people used to say, 'Is it true you talk to Linda and John Lennon - I also mentioned talking to John. It's not really talking to them in a sense, but you think about people you loved. I think about my mum, my dad, about Linda, about John. I think about George now."

He grins. "Actually, that's just broken a dream I had last night. I dreamed about my cousin, Bert. He was great, he was young and vibrant, and I remember thinking in the dream this is amazing, I know you're no longer with us, Bert, but I was so happy in the dream to see him again. So in that way I'm revisiting, I'm talking to my loved ones, and meeting them again."

But there are things he doesn't want to revisit. His divorce from Mills has not only been horribly public and extended, it has also involved a series of leaked allegations about McCartney's behaviour. The model family man has been portrayed by Mills as selfish, self-obsessed and violent - she has alleged that he refused to allow her to use a bedpan to save her crawling to the lavatory on her one leg, that he discouraged her from breastfeeding their daughter, Beatrice, because he wanted her breasts to himself, that he was a drunken pot addict who had hit her in an alcoholic rage. Throughout, McCartney has not responded, except with a statement from his lawyers saying that he would be "defending these allegations vigorously and appropriately" in the divorce proceedings.

I keep thinking of something he said shortly after they became an item, when I asked him if he thought Linda and Heather would have got on. "I know they'd like each other because they have a lot of things in common, not on the surface so much. A spirit, a toughness of spirit. No person would ever put them down. Put them down at your risk."

Today, he looks so vulnerable, so traumatised by the break-up. I ask how he's feeling. The question feels euphemistic, and he knows it. "Pretty good. I'm going through great struggles, but I'm feeling pretty good. I have a lot of good support, particularly from my family. In difficult moments like this, it's when a loving family shines through." His children never liked Mills, and his marriage to her caused a family rift. Has the divorce brought them closer? "Yes, it has. We're pretty close, anyway, but when you go into something difficult, it does actually bring you closer together."

You know what people want to do to you at the moment, I say. No, he replies. And I reach over and give him a big hug. McCartney smiles. "People actually do that. I get a lorra that off people. I get people I don't even know saying, 'Look, mate'," and he gives himself a sympathetic pat on the arm. "A lot of people come up to you and offer their support. A lot of people have been through similar circumstances and feel they have to communicate it to you."

And he's not quite out of it yet?

"Oh no. Noooooooh." It is the longest, most painful "no". "I'm not at all. But, you know ... there is a tunnel and there is a light and I will get there, and meantime I really enjoy my work and my family. I see people worse off than me, so I can put it in perspective. There's a thing we always used to quote in the 60s when things were rough: 'I walked down a street and I cried because I had no shoes, then I saw a man with no feet.' " It was an Indian parable, and that is one of the lines I live by."

For a man who has prided himself on his ability to live a normal, private life, it must have been hard to see himself splashed over the front pages for all the wrong reasons. "There's only really one answer to the problem of massive press coverage - don't look. So I don't read it. It comes to me occasionally, it leaks through the cracks - people say to me, 'Oh, I'm sorry about that, mate', and you're thinking, 'About what?' I know there's all sorts of shit going on, but if I don't look at it, then it's better. It's like going through Disneyland and not looking."

He looks at me as if I'm going to cite every accusation. "Don't tell me. What I don't know won't hurt me."

Has any good come of his relationship with Mills? "I've talked to a lot of people about it - you do - and the great thing that everyone says is you want to look at the positive that's come out of it, and the real positive is my beautiful baby daughter. Both parents know that that is something great that came out of our marriage, even though the marriage didn't work out. I don't want to say any more than that in order to keep some dignity about the situation." Their daughter, Beatrice, is now three, and McCartney wants joint custody.

Is it true that he's now dating Sabrina Guinness? "There is absolutely no truth to any of the stories that have been printed. It's difficult to know what to do about it. In a few months I guess people will see for sure it was all just unfounded speculation."

He has prided himself on the way he has conducted his life openly, as part of the people. He sent his children to the local comprehensive, and he will always talk to fans. But if he's with family or not in the mood, he refuses photos and autographs. Often, he says, friends find that puzzling. "They say you spend more time chatting, you should just do their photos. I say, no, at least I'm in control when I'm chatting." And that hasn't changed over the past year? "No, people have been cool. I have a lot of faith in people.

"It's funny, today I was in the park having a coffee with my daughter [Stella] and her boy, having a great time feeding the ducks. It was lovely because there was no one around, no paparazzi, we were actually having a family private moment, and then there were a party of German student kids, and I could see a couple had spotted me, and they asked, 'Können wir ein Foto machen?' [Can we take a photo?] I said, 'Well, actually, this is a very private moment,' so I said hopefully you understand, and people always do, so they back off."

As I leave, he takes one of Beatrice's doodles from his trouser pocket. "Look at this," he says, every bit the proud father.

The week after we meet, McCartney's private family lunch in the park is featured in Hello! magazine - the paparazzi were out in force, after all. Around the same time, McCartney websites go crazy as it emerges that Memory Almost Full is an anagram of For My Soulmate LLM - the initials of Linda Louise McCartney. I call McCartney to ask him if it was intentional. "Some things are best left a mystery," he says.

A German prosecutor says Sir Paul McCartney is being investigated for allegedly faking a paternity test he took more than two decades ago to prove he was not the father of an illegitimate German girl.

Bettina Hubers, 46, has always claimed the former Beatle is her father, following an affair with her mother Erika, now 64, in the days when the band played in the Starlight club in Hamburg.

Erica, a nightclub waitress who claimed she had a three-year affair with him, gave birth to Bettina in December 1962.

She filed a lawsuit seeking alimony, claiming he had asked her to have an abortion. Sir Paul denied parenthood but paid Erica the equivalent of £10,000 ($20,000) at today's rates.

He later said: "It was 1966 and we were due to do a European tour. I was told that if the maintenance question wasn't settled we couldn't go to Germany."

Lawsuits followed after Ms Hubers turned 18 and in 1983 the Hubers went to court in Berlin asking for maintenance of about £375 ($750) per month and a declaration from Sir Paul that he was the father.

He took a blood test which indicated he was not, but the court rejected the evidence and ordered him to pay full maintenance.

Bettina Hubers then posed naked for High Society magazine for £600 ($1,200), saying she had to do it because of delays in maintenance payments.

However, by the time she was 22 and settled in Berlin as a hairdresser, she lost her court cases on appeal and was liable for legal costs of £60,000 ($120,000).

Sir Paul's lawyer Dr Klaus Wachs advised him to pay the money.

Ms Hubers now claims Sir Paul sent a double along to take the 1983 paternity test.

She said: "The signature on the documents he signed at the time were false. We found that the signature is from a right-handed person and he is not.

"I want a new paternity test. It is my right. It has taken so long because we have been fighting to find out the truth."

Michael Grunwald, a spokesman for the public prosecutor's office in Berlin, confirmed case Az.: 61 Js 1160/2007 concerned Sir Paul and the fatherhood issue adding: "Yes, there is a complaint of fraud against him that we are investigating."

If the prosecutor finds there is a case to answer Sir Paul could be arrested the next time he sets foot in Germany.

Macca spoke to Billboard and touched upon why he left EMI Records his home for 45 years, for the new Starbucks co-owned Hear Music label. He explained that he felt he needed to make the change to keep current in the music world, saying that, "It's a different world now, and you've got to be with people who are in that world and stay up to speed. I've got nothing against record (company) people; they're my family. I think many of them will tell you themselves they've been rather overtaken (by the online revolution)."

Contrary to reports that McCartney's new work would only be sold in Starbucks retail outfits, McCartney and Hear Music plan to get the album out to all the usual markets as well: "We will work with all the normal retail people. I didn't want to knock anyone out of the frame. I'll be considerate of all the normal outlets."

He added that he was amazed by how far-reaching the Starbucks chain is on a global level: "It may seem stupid, but the fact that (Starbucks) had 400 stores in China interested me. I don't know why, but it did. Because it's different, I suppose." McCartney went on to joke: "It doesn't take much to amuse me."

Memory Almost Full features some of Macca's most up-front bass playing since his Wings days. Wings co-founder Denny Laine thought that among McCartney's many musical strengths, his bass work was always inventive: "He was a very tuneful bass player and that's an art in itself. You know, it's even harder to play bass and sing than it is, than playing chords on a guitar and singing, you know?"

Memory Almost Full reunites McCartney with David Kahne who produced his 2001 album Driving Rain. Although McCartney plays most of the instruments on the new set, his touring band pop up on a handful of tracks.

Paul McCartney has declared Elvis Presley as one of significant influences behind The Beatles 'Sgt Pepper' album.

The 1967 record saw the band invention the concept album, allowing them to stay at home at tour, and McCartney explained they got the idea from The King.

"We had this idea that we'd make a record, and the record itself would go on tour for us," McCartney told Rolling Stone. "That came from a story we'd heard about Elvis' Cadillac going on tour. We though that was an amazing idea: He doesn't go on tour, he just sends his Cadillac out. Fantastic!"

The record has since been hailed as an influential classic, responsible for helping to develop the album as an artistic format rather than just a collection of songs, although it didn't impress The Beatles drummer Ringo Starr enough to be his personal favourite.

"You cannot put down 'Sgt. Pepper'," Starr admitted, "but as a musician, I preferred 'Revolver', and I preferred 'The White Album', because we were back to being musicians. It was like everybody got the madness out on 'Sgt. Pepper', so it served that purpose."

British copyright laws should be extended to prevent aging artists such as Paul McCartney and Cliff Richard from missing out on royalties later in life, an influential committee of British lawmakers said Wednesday.

McCartney, 64, and Richard, 66, are among some 7,000 people, including backing singers, who are on the verge of losing royalties for their early music releases because of a 50-year limit on copyright for sound recordings.

They want Britain to match the 95-year copyright period granted for recorded music in the United States, which would allow them to benefit financially from an Internet-driven revival of back catalogs.

The House of Commons culture committee, which is made up of lawmakers from all political parties, struck a middle ground, proposing that the copyright be extended to at least 70 years.

"We strongly believe that copyright represents a moral right of a creator to choose to retain ownership and control of their own intellectual property," the committee said.

"We have not heard a convincing reason why a composer and his or her heirs should benefit from a term of copyright which extends for lifetime and beyond, but a performer should not," they added, referring to contrasting laws that allow families of composers and songwriters to keep the copyright to their compositions for 70 years after they die.

The committee's report clashes with an earlier government-commissioned review, which backed the present 50-year rule because it believed extending copyright could hurt Britain's trade balance and provide little benefit to performers or consumers.

The so-called Gowers report was heavily criticized within the industry for focusing on the economic effects rather than the moral rights of artists.

"The Gowers report was far too long on economic theory and far too short on fairness to British copyright holders," said John Kennedy, chairman of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. "The committee ... has backed two simple principles - that U.K. performers must get a term of copyright protection comparable to composers, and that Britain must not be left with weaker copyright protection than its international partners."

This week we are highlighting the candidates you voted to be in the running to be named Greatest Living Briton. Julie Andrews, Paul McCartney, Robbie Williams, Margaret Thatcher and the Queen made the final five.

The winner will be decided by a live vote and announced at a star-studded bash on ITV1 next Monday. Here, chart-topping pop star Ricky Wilson puts the case for songsmith Paul McCartney.

For those among you who are unaware, Paul McCartney used to be in a band called The Beatles, who played out of Liverpool.

During his time with the group they changed the face of popular music, wrote some of the world's most recognisable tunes and inspired generations of kids to form bands and make music.

To be a critic of The Beatles and what they achieved is to be a knob-head.

I have met people who claim not to like the band. Most of them do this purely for effect (and will usually try to convince you that their favourite, obscure Sixties band Snake-legs were far superior).

For me this only helps to solidify the truth. The Beatles were, and are, the greatest band ever.

Other critics of Paul McCartney often try to belittle the role he had in The Beatles. To have one great songwriter in a band is a good thing, to have two is lucky, to have more than that is phenomenal.

And a group full of great musicians and songwriters can only help to make a better band.

You would think that when The Beatles came to a close Paul McCartney would want to put his feet up. But, like all great musicians, it seems that making music is just something he HAS to do, and something he has done ever since.

Whether it be with his post-Beatles band Wings, or as a solo artist, he has continued to write fantastic tunes.

The nomination of any other musician in the Greatest Living Briton category is nothing but a joke.

I tried to think of anyone else non-musical deserving of the label and I honestly can't think of anyone who doesn't sound silly next to Paul McCartney.

I believe that to be Greatest Living Briton you should be self-made, but at the same time not do what you do simply for personal gain. I know that his music has made him a very rich man, but it certainly isn't the reason he gets up in the morning.

Outside music Paul McCartney has been able to use the fame and respect he has earned for many noteworthy causes.

He is well known for his animal rights work and anti-landmine campaign, as well as for putting his weight behind the Make Poverty History campaign, Live Aid, Band Aid and many, many others.

You also get the feeling that everything he does is genuine, not to increase his popularity or sales.

He continues to make music not to fulfil any contracts or prove he's still the best. He simply does it because he wants to - always the best reason.

I suggest you give Paul McCartney a double thumbs-up and vote him the Greatest Living Briton.

After all, the choice will reflect on you. I can't think of anyone else I would rather see represent us.

The Greatest Britons 2007, in association with Marks & Spencer, is on ITV1 this Monday at 9pm.

When Paul McCartney sat down with producer David Kahne to record his latest album, Memory Almost Full, which comes out June 5th, the ex-Beatle said he wanted it to compare to everything he'd ever done. "I said 'Everything?'" Kahne recalls. "He said 'Everything.' He was looking to make something great."

We've had a chance to listen to the new disc, McCartney's first since 2005's Grammy-nominated Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, and while it's not quite Sgt. Pepper's, it's pretty great. The album has a retrospective feel, with nods to McCartney's discography: "Nod Your Head" sounds like "Come Together" and "Only Mama Knows" feels like a more metal version of "Helter Skelter."

The second half includes a five-song medley that recalls side two of Abbey Road. The medley revisits different eras of the musician's life ­ from childhood summers by the sea to the experience of getting old and looking back ­ but it never sounds nostalgic or especially sad. On the contrary, Macca seems to embrace the future, in both the lyrics and music: On "Vintage Clothes," he sings "Don't live in the past/Don't hold on to something that's changing fast," before Trent Reznor-ish industrial effects drop in, giving the song an eminently modern veneer.

McCartney has also made several moves leading up to the release that signal his embrace of change. He left Capitol Records last year and signed with Starbucks' new label Hear Music, which will release Memory Almost Full. He has also agreed for the first time to release all of his solo music digitally and just shot a video for album opener "Dance Tonight," directed by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind director Michel Gondry, and starring Natalie Portman.

"'Memory Almost Full' is a phrase that seemed to embrace modern life," McCartney, in a letter released to the public, said of the album title, which came to him after the message popped up on his cell phone. "In modern life, our brains can get a bit overloaded."

-- Evan Serpick

Paul McCartney will reportedly snub 40th anniversary celebrations for The Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - to promote his new solo album instead. The music legend would rather promote Memory Almost Full than appear on TV and radio to mark the anniversary of the famous album's release on June 1, according to industry insiders.

A source tells British newspaper the Daily Express, "While it would have been nice to see Paul and Ringo Starr do something to mark the occasion this time around, Paul is simply going to be too busy promoting his new album to make a big deal out of it.

"While he is obviously extremely proud of Sgt. Pepper's, it's more rewarding for him to be concentrating on making sure his new album's a commercial success."

Meanwhile, contemporary rockers Oasis and The Kaiser Chiefs are to record a new version of the song to mark the anniversary.

Starbucks has estimated that globally, more than six million people will hear at least part of the album on that day.

Memory Almost Full will also be positioned prominently in its stores at the point of sale and other areas.

A limited edition Paul McCartney Starbucks card will also be offered. The first time Starbucks has done anything like this was for the late Ray Cahrles album Genius Loves Company.

The album will also be supported with in-store signage and satellite radio play via Starbucks' XM channel and a special dedicated McCartney channel. Special tie-ins with in-store Wi-Fi partner T-Mobile will also be held.

Memory Almost Full will also be available for digital download via online retailers, with Starbucks planning to provide prime positioning to the album via its area in Apple's iTunes store.

Elsewhere, the album will be marketed by hand-picked teams within Universal Music Group International companies.

May 15, 2007 -- Beatlefan.com

iTunes Offering Macca Preview

Apple Computer made Paul McCartney's new album, "Memory Almost Full", available for digital pre-order beginning today exclusively at the iTunes Store (http://www.itunes.com).

iTunes customers pre-ordering the 13-track album in the U.S. will receive the "Dance Tonight" music video when the album is delivered and the single "Ever Present Past" immediately upon pre-ordering the new album.

Additionally, McCartney's full catalog of 25 solo albums will be available for the first time digitally on iTunes later this month. iTunes customers in the U.S. participating in the pre-sale will receive the free download of the music video for "Dance Tonight," which stars Natalie Portman and was directed by Michel Gondry. Outside North America, iTunes customers who pre-order the album will get an exclusive acoustic version of the single "Dance Tonight".

Paul McCartney's entire catalogue is set to be available online for the first time, his record label EMI has announced.

All of the former Beatles star's albums, including his solo work and releases with Wings, will be available via download.

The news heightens anticipation that The Beatles' back catalogue will also be available as legal downloads for the first time, and as previously reported on NME.COM it has been suggested that the deal is "virtually settled".

A date for the online release of McCartney's solo work is yet to be confirmed, though EMI indicated that there would be physical re-releases too.

Meanwhile, McCartney's next new release will be 'Memory Almost Full', which is out on June 4 (UK), June 5 (US).

Hello friends and countrymen and women,

What kind of year is this shaping up to be?

I'm here at the Atlantis Resort in Nassau, Bahamas.. Here's the story..It was wild..
I had just finished the last day of recording Chris Cornell's new CD, "Carried Away" and I'm heading home when the phone rings... it's Russ Irwin, from Aerosmith.. and he says, "Hey, Steven [Tyler] wants you to call him!" So, I did and Steven invited me to come play with him at the grand opening weekend party for the new Towers at Atlantis!! So, here I am. It's such a blast! We rehearsed yesterday and we're ready to play tonight. Somebody pinch me.

Last night was Stevie Wonder's birthday bash here and he played along with a gazillion other amazing artists.. the place is packed with people we all know and love.. We went inner-tubing yesterday.. today, lunch w/Steven and family then party till we drop tonight.

Then I'm heading to London to get together with Paul McC to plan out our not-so-distant futures together.

So... lots going on.. and I wanted to say hi to you all.

Oh, Also.. I'm working on Gavn DeGraw's new CD too.

Miss ya.. hope you all are well,

Brian x

May 13, 2007 -- New York Daily News

Paul to break new grounds in hot release by Starbucks

Paul McCartney's first album in two years is set to drop - with a little help from his friends at Starbucks.

The coffee giant is putting "Memory Almost Full" on a continuous loop in 10,000 stores in 29 countries.

The June 5 global listening day marks the end of McCartney's almost 45-year association with Capitol/EMI, and his new deal with Starbucks' own record label, Hear Music.

It's also the ex-Beatle's first album to be available online - and he hinted the Fab Four's vast back catalogue could follow.

The lack of the band's tunes has been a major hole for online music services because of a long-running trademark feud between iTunes owner Apple Inc. and the Beatles' label, Apple Corps.

But McCartney told Billboard magazine, "It's virtually settled and, in a virtual world, that's something. I don't want to preempt anything, but we're well on the way to something happening there, which is very exciting."

He said the global listen day will help keep the record release from being a dull affair.

He said he told his producer, "I'm kind of dreading releasing it, because there comes this sort of wall you hit ... and everyone sits around in suits and rather glumly listens to it, then gives you a nice smile and says, 'Nice album.'

"Somehow it doesn't capture the spirit you had when you were making it."

That pastoral shot would grace the back cover of McCartney's first solo album, in 1970.

"It's a bit funny that it has become such an iconic shot and favorite photo for so many people, because it was just a casual family picture," says the 37-year old Mary McCartney, speaking by phone from London, where she lives. "It was just natural that my father would zip me up in his jacket when they went on their horse rides together and my mom would take that quick photograph."

McCartney's sentimental reminiscence is an unexpected digression from the task at hand: promoting her photography exhibit, "Playing Dress Up," at Dallas' Goss Gallery, her first show in an American gallery. Significant, but maybe not quite as big as her dad's U.S. debut, 43 years ago -- when America first met the Beatles.

"Yeah, it's my first show in America, and I'm very excited and flattered. I now know I'm a proper grownup," says McCartney, in a lilting British accent that bears little resemblance to Sir Paul's lingering Liverpudlian brogue.

A professional photographer since her early 20s, Mary McCartney creates color-saturated, gauzy-lit high-fashion work that has been shown in Harpers, Elle and The New York Times Magazine. A few of her works are in the permanent collection of London's National Portrait Gallery.

"Playing Dress Up" is McCartney's highly personal photo diary of backstage life, both tedious and madcap, in the performance subcultures of fashion shows and ballet. She confesses to a fascination with life behind the scrim, where sweat, grime and paint-drying drudgery prevail, at least before the curtain goes up.

"Whenever I watch a performance, I find myself fantasizing what the people -- especially if they are modeling, dancing, or singing -- are like in real life," McCartney says.

And so, in the exhibit's "Off Pointe"series, she captures Royal Ballet dancers who project none of the tutued perfection they display onstage.

"I was able to record them when they weren't being 'fabulous ballet dancers,'" she says. "They were just being themselves, quirky-looking but still quite beautiful."

"Fashion" comprises the show's other main section, where her lens reveals a mildly dystopic view of the glossy runway world -- one inhabited by pouty blondes whose only accessory is a smirk.

"I'm too familiar with the world of modeling, of getting your hair and makeup and perfect clothes, so now I'm finding the less-formally posed kind of shots to be to my liking," she says.

The show's final section takes advantage of McCartney's standing among London's bold-faced set as she trains her camera on pal Kate Moss -- looking far removed from the varnished and tweezed Moss that most are familiar with.

McCartney is quick to trace her interest in photography to her late mother -- one of the photographers who helped mythologize monumental '60s acts such as the Rolling Stones, the Doors, Bob Dylan and, of course, the Beatles.

"One of my mom's biggest talents," McCartney recalls, "was making her subjects completely relaxed. I remember one picture she took of Jimi Hendrix yawning. Here is this rock god, just hanging out and yawning. And that was the kind of moment she would get -- intimate and flattering."

Sir Paul, whose recent foray into painting has landed him in the visual arts universe, also has offered some subtle guidance to his daughter.

"Frankly, he has come from the same standpoint as my mom," his daughter says. "Which is to try and keep the creative pressure as low as possible in order to keep the creativity as high as possible."

So, is having one of the world's most recognizable surnames a help or hindrance to this accomplished photographer?

"Clearly, there isn't as big a pressure on me as there is on my dad," McCartney says. "I just have never looked at him and his name in the way everyone else does. I distinctly remember when we were kids, and he'd play his guitar and we would say, 'Dad, can you shut up, we are trying to watch television.' And he would then say: 'Do you kids know how many people out there actually appreciate my playing?'

"Naturally, he's not Sir Paul McCartney to me, but just my dad who makes me laugh and smile."

Playing Dress Up

May 17-June 15 at Goss Gallery, 2500 Cedar Springs Road in Dallas

Free

10-6 p.m. Tuesday-Friday; 11-4 p.m. Saturday

214-696-0555, www.gossgallery.com

He telephoned Sir Paul and told him that if he ever wanted his help he needed only to ask.

As for Paul's response, Geoff smiles: "We hadn't spoken for about 18 months but he didn't tell me to f*** off. We had a really good chat. I've made my peace with him - that means a lot."

And little wonder.

Geoff, a former pop journalist, had been Paul's publicist for 15 years - devoted to looking after the former Beatle's interests - before an acrimonious split.

On the road or at home, pushing his music or championing environmental causes, it was Geoff who acted as spokesman between Macca and "the planet".

He also became a friend of his first wife Linda and, until she died of breast cancer in 1998, his place in the McCartneys' inner circle was secure.

But Geoff didn't get on with Heather and it was this personality clash that was blamed when he lost his job in 2004.

Ever the publicist, he claims that he quit. Paul issued a statement saying he was fired.

The one thing of which there was no doubt was that the end of their relationship was messy, chaotic and regrettable, so much so that Geoff has never spoken about it - until now.

Speaking exclusively to The Mail on Sunday, Geoff, 51, tells of his years with Paul and the torrid final 12 months that took him to the brink of a breakdown.

He says: "I had one of the top jobs in the industry for one of the biggest stars on the planet and one of the nicest.

"The reason I ended up befriending Paul is simply because he's a likeable guy, and I think that regardless of what happened at the end.

"Linda was something else and she and Paul showed me great kindness. She was just a fabulously wonderful, perceptive and thoughtful woman."

They are not attributes often ascribed to her successor and Geoff admits: "I don't like Heather. She knows that, although she was always pleasant enough to me to my face."

He adds: "I'm sure she'll be a huge act in America. She doesn't have a particular talent but she doesn't need one.

"Fame isn't predicated on talent anymore. To some extent I do admire her. But I don't like her."

Certainly Linda's death and Heather's subsequent arrival one year later cast a very different light on the court of Paul. And it coincided with Geoff becoming increasingly dependent on drink and drugs.

He says: "I would have died if I had stayed. There was a lot of drinking, I was taking a lot of cocaine and cannabis. It wasn't recreational. It wasn't fun.

"It's difficult for me to talk about it. By the time I emailed my resignation I'd been diagnosed as severely depressed.

"I was so hacked off with the music industry. It's full of some of the most loathsome, despicable people there are.

"For a while I enjoyed it and it paid very well and it was fun. But by the time I left it was like Dante's Inferno to me."

At the time, Geoff vowed never to work in it again. But two-and-a-half years on, with not a drop of alcohol, he's back and launching a new band.

Purplemelon - an unsigned foursome - could hardly be more different to his intentionally lauded former employer. But they have, Geoff insists, reignited an enthusiasm he thought long gone.

Geoff had been the showbusiness editor of the Daily Star and was working as a freelance journalist when he was introduced to Paul.

He explains: "It was 1989 and Paul was about to do his first international tour for 13 years. But his PR, Bernard Doherty, didn't want to go so they decided to get a journalist out there to handle the journalists on tour while Bernard was the king pin steering it all from London.

"I was the scuzzy little hack Bernard contacted. I went along to one of their rehearsals at Elstree Studios.

"It was a big tour - ten months, 34 songs - and they were running through the whole set. Paul's manager took me in and said, 'Watch this, then you'll meet Paul.'

"I remember thinking that I really didn't care about getting the job. I was standing in the middle of this vast hall, bopping around, an audience of one to this amazing Paul McCartney gig.

"He came over to me after and introduced himself. I said, 'You're going to tear their f***ing heads off with that show.'

"Paul just laughed and said, 'Right. I'll see you around.' That was my interview. A few weeks later we were on tour.

"Because I knew the business so well I was flying kites all over the place.

"One of the first stories I concocted was that some French promoter had been approached by a business who wanted to can Macca's sweat and sell it to fans because the show was so energetic.

"It was complete rubbish of course but it was harmless and the point was to get across that it was a rocking show.

"I wouldn't discuss these things with Paul, I just did it. He doesn't condone telling fibs but he doesn't get uptight about it. It was fun."

But less than a month into the tour life became far less "fun" for Geoff when his wife, Mandy, called to say she was leaving him for another man and started divorce proceedings.

"I was 32 years old, I had a wife, two children, a quarter-of-a-million-pound house and I was working for Paul McCartney. Then my life just completely and absolutely fell apart.

"It mattered not a jot to me whether I lived or died at that point. Paul and Linda saved my life.

"That was when our relationship changed. These two very good people looked after me when I was up for jumping out of hotel windows at any opportunity.

"My behaviour was appalling. I smashed up hotel rooms and they didn't fire me. They were kind to me and so I stayed alive. I spent the next 15 years trying to repay that."

Geoff was always, he admits, particularly protective of Linda with whom he shared a similar outlook on life: "I'd been a vegetarian since I was 21 and it made us a bit like-minded."

As far as he was concerned nobody mattered more than Paul and Linda and during his time working for Paul, he was on call 24 hours a day. The years of touring, promoting albums and championing environmental causes were intense.

Then when Linda was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1995, Geoff worked to shield the family from the worldwide interest while knowing that information had to be relayed not only to journalists but to concerned fans.

"It was the nature of the beast that it had to be played out publicly," he says.

But not entirely truthfully.

When Linda died in April 1998, Geoff chose to lie for his employer, claiming that the family were in Santa Barbara, California, when they were really in Tuscon, Arizona.

"I lied to the Press. Absolutely. A columnist in New York wrote that I should be hanged for it, but I'd do it again.

"I can't talk about that period, I'm not allowed to. There's nothing you can say that can possibly capture how bleak and just totally unfair that whole time was."

Nothing would ever be the same again.

Geoff says: "Basically you take Linda McCartney out of any equation and it will change. The situation will change."

But after a decade with Paul the world of celebrity held less and less appeal, particularly after he met Heather.

Geoff and Heather clashed over various deeply held beliefs.

He admits: "Heather and I didn't get on. We come from totally different backgrounds, saw things differently.

"I remember Heather went on some TV programme and said she thought the people who smoked cannabis should be jailed and I thought that was ludicrous. That's the sort of thing we clashed over. It's just stupid. The logic is ludicrous. How could I be expected to get on with her?"

Disillusioned, Geoff's behaviour became ever more outlandish.

In September 2003, after a meal with Paul and his band, Geoff and Paul took a stroll by the Thames to see American illusionist David Blaine, who at the time was performing a stunt which saw him suspended in a glass box by the river.

Geoff says: "I was drunk and stoned and nobody seemed to be paying much attention to us. I thought, 'Hang on the real star's here - never mind that prat in the box.'

"I didn't run it by Paul, I saw a snapper and I pulled him over."

Geoff was fired the following day but didn't take it seriously.

"I just thought, 'Oh f*** off. You can't fire me for getting a photographer, you're a bloody star!'"

And his instinct was right: Paul did not sack him.

But over the next 12 months Geoff histrionically "quit" many times until the partnership finally came to an end in September 2004.

Eighteen months later, Geoff could only watch from the sidelines as Paul's marriage to Heather imploded.

Since his resignation he has "vented his spleen" by writing a very bitter novel, so far unpublished, featuring a rock star and a publicist.

It is not, he insists, about him and Paul. Instead he wanted to show the corrosive nature of showbusiness.

But after more than a decade representing a star worth £760 million, the business still has some attraction.

Geoff, who bears more than a passing resemblance to Dillon from the Magic Roundabout - with his sparse cloud of grey hair and liberal views on (and use of) cannabis - says: "The time I've spent in the industry has allowed me to see potential in Purplemelon that others might not see yet.

"These guys are really good. They're going to be huge."

In a rather cheeky footnote, among the "admirers" listed by Geoff on Purplemelon's biography is one Sir Paul McCartney.

It seems a generous gesture from Paul. "Well, that's a bit of embellishment," Geoff smiles.

And as for the fact that the release date for Purplemelon's first song - June 5 - coincides with the release of Paul's forthcoming album, well that's just "sheer coincidence".

Geoff hasn't spoken to Paul since he called him to offer his help and enjoyed their first chat in 18 months.

But if he's disappointed he doesn't show it: after 15 years as the former Beatle's publicist, finding a positive spin is second nature.

"Some people have said, 'Oh you were treated badly.' But I don't agree with that. I don't harbour any ill feelings," Geoff says.

"Actually I hope he doesn't call me because he'd have to be in real trouble to do that and I wouldn't wish that on him."

Purplemelon will perform at The Troubadour Club in London on Thursday, May 31.

Paul McCartney's new album, "Memory Almost Full," ends his near-45-year association with Capitol/EMI and begins a new dawn for the former Beatle.

Due June 5, the set is the first release on Hear Music, the label formed by Starbucks Entertainment and Concord Music Group.

McCartney's 21st solo album is a spirited set with occasional echoes of his '70s work with Wings. It's also his first to be available digitally -- and, as he revealed to Billboard, there are signs of a settlement in the long-running digital-distribution saga involving EMI, Apple and his former band.

In North America, the lead song from the new set is the upbeat "Ever Present Past," one of several tracks with an autobiographical, sometimes retrospective lyrical flavor. "It's quite personal," McCartney said, "but that often happens unless you set out to write an 'arm's length' album, which I hardly ever do."

In a first, Starbucks is creating a special global listening event on June 5 in which more than 10,000 locations in 29 countries around the world will play "Memory" throughout the day. Starbucks estimates that, globally, more than 6 million people will hear at least some of the new album that day.

In another first, the new album will be available for digital download via online retailers.

McCartney spoke to Billboard about "Memory Almost Full," other upcoming work and the fresh challenge of working with a new label as he approaches his 65th birthday on June 18.

Q: You must be aware that in current circumstances you're under greater scrutiny than ever with the lyrics on this album?

PAUL: Yeah, well -- what else is new? Remember "How many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall" (from the Beatles' "A Day in the Life")? I got a question on that last week at a football match. It was just some mate. He happened to be from Blackburn. So they're still asking questions, still examining the lyrics ... I don't mind. It's when they stop examining them that you've got a problem, I suppose.

Q: People will think about your personal life and say, "Oh, he's throwing himself into his work," but haven't you always done that?

PAUL: I don't mind work. I don't work that much. I'm never in any office before 11, I don't work every day of the week and most of what I do is playing music. I often point that out to people. It's something I love, and I always say, if I didn't do it for a living, I'd do it as a hobby.

Q: Was the Starbucks deal in the works for a long time?

PAUL: About a year ago, I was talking to my producer David Kahne. We were in the throes of the excitement of making an album and loving it.

I said, "The only thing is, I'm kind of dreading releasing it." Because there comes this sort of wall you hit -- a bit like the marathon -- and everyone sits around in suits and rather glumly listens to it, then gives you a half-smile and says, "Nice album." And you go, "Oh, thank you." Somehow it doesn't capture the spirit you had when you were making it.

So I said, "We've got to try and do something to keep it exciting." When we first released records, every single little thing about it was exciting, even doing the photo session. David himself knew (Starbucks Entertainment VP of content development) Alan Mintz, who had just been appointed head of the music division at Starbucks.

So he introduced me to Alan, who started having some real bright ideas and had a nice twinkle in his eye. He's a bass player, after all, so I said, "We've got to definitely stick together." So he started to outline the Starbucks thing, and then I met with (Starbucks chairman) Howard Schultz and the boys when we were finishing the album in New York. They've got a lot of passion.

Q: You started "Memory Almost Full" in 2003, so was there a period when you had three albums in the works, including your 2006 classical piece "Ecce Cor Meum?"

PAUL: Yes. I've always got a few things on the (go). I like to be able to work that way, because if suddenly your producer's not available or whatever, it's nice to be able to pick up another thread. Now, even though I've got all this happening, I've got a guitar piece in the works -- an orchestral guitar concerto? I never know what to call it. And I've got a photographic project I've been working on for a while. It's nice to have a bit of variety.

Q: Was there any bleed-through of songs from "Chaos" to the new album?

PAUL: It was the same pool of songs. Some of them crossed over. Some of them we nearly did on "Chaos," but mainly it was pretty separate. Anything we'd started, I didn't want to remake for "Chaos," so I kept what we'd started, then wrote new stuff for it as we went along. That was one of the fun things we used to do with the Beatles. John and I would have seven or eight things ready by the time we went into the studio, and then we'd try and write the other six or seven.

Q: Is the discussion about the Beatles' catalog going online anywhere nearer to being settled?

PAUL: Oh, yeah, very much so. It's virtually settled. And in a virtual world, that's something.

Q: So we should expect an announcement soon?

PAUL: Hopefully, yeah. I don't want to pre-empt anything, but we're well on the way to something happening there, which is very exciting.

Q: And are you planning to go back on the road?

PAUL: I'm going to do some little bits and pieces to support the album, but it won't be a major tour until possibly next year, and that's basically down to personal circumstances -- "he said" (laughs).

Q: Touring is obviously something you still enjoy.

PAUL: I do love it, and while the audience seems to love it, I will. All that singing and playing -- it's good for you.

Memory Almost Full comes out June 5th, and in addition to a retail release, it will also be his first to be available online. According to Billboard, the Starbucks label Hear Music, which is putting out the album, will prominently feature Memory Almost Full in its iTunes store. McCartney also said that arrangements to sell Beatles music online are "virtually settled."

In related news, music from Memory Almost Full has been made available in Japan via mobile phones. Monstersandcritics.com reported that yesterday, (Thursday, May 10th) a master ringtone version of the overseas single "Dance Tonight" was released, with additional mobile-based full-song downloads of the entire album to follow on June 6th.

Meanwhile, Macca has been spotted out and about in London, dining out with his adult children, and last week sat next to frequent collaborator David Gilmour of Pink Floyd at a London concert by good friend James Taylor. (see Macca Report News)

McCartney is expected to hit the road in support of the new album sometime this fall.

As part of its digital marketing strategy, Starbucks plans to give "Memory Almost Full" prime positioning in its Hear Music area in the Apple iTunes Store. The digital distribution deal for McCartney is believed to pertain solely to the new album and not back catalog.

However, the pact signals increased willingness on the part of the former Beatles to make music available for consumption online. Music from the Beatles and the band's former members has been conspicuously missing from digital distribution offerings, and a glaring content hole for operators of music download and subscription services.

Available material has been limited to a handful of McCartney collaborations with the likes of Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder, select solo records from Ringo Starr and John Lennon & Yoko Ono's "Double Fantasy."

Efforts to clear the Beatles-related music for digital distribution have been previously held up by a long-running trademark feud between iPod/iTunes-owner Apple Inc. and Apple Corps., the Beatles label. The two sides finally settled the dispute in February, opening the door to clear the catalogs for distribution via iTunes and other digital retailers.

Read the exclusive Billboard Q&A with Paul McCartney in the May 19 issue of Billboard, on newsstands and online tomorrow.

Japan is set to be the first territory in which Paul McCartney's music will be available via mobile phone, says Universal Music Japan.

UMJ will release a master ringtone version of the single "Dance Tonight" on May 10. All the other tracks from McCartney`s new album, 'Memory Almost Full,' will be released as master ringtones and mobile-based full-song downloads (including "Dance Tonight") on June 6, the same day as the physical CD`s release.

The album will be available as PC-based digital downloads on June 4.

'Memory Almost Full' is the first album to be released by the former Beatle under his recently-signed deal with the Hear Music label set up by Starbucks Entertainment and the Concord Music Group. Universal Music Group International has a distribution deal with Hear Music.

For rock legend Sir Paul McCartney, so it seems, all the world's a stage.

After the wine flowed during a night out with his daughter Mary at London's XO restaurant, he treated fellow diners to an impromptu performance as he began singing at his table.

But the well-refreshed singer's good mood took a nose-dive as he left the venue.

Macca hurled expletives at photographers as he made his way home.

He was not too impressed to be greeted by photographers after emerging from the family dinner.

Although Mary, his daughter to late wife Linda, is a photographer she seemed to have little empathy for the snappers as she put her hand over her head to stop them getting a decent photo.

McCartney was more forthcoming, yelling to the lensmen: "F*** off, you bastards."

Last week, McCartney had only sweet words as accepted an award Album of the Year at the Classical Brit Awards for his record Ecce Cor Meum.

The album, which he described as "a labour of love", was inspired Linda, who died in 1998.

Macca stated in a press release that, "I think it's a good idea to let people know about the Casbah. They know about the Cavern, they know about some of those things, but the Casbah was the place where all that started."

The commercial will premiere on Friday (May 11th), and will be shown at various places in and around Liverpool. In addition to McCartney and Best, the spot also features appearances by John Lennon's first wife Cynthia Lennon, and the Beatles' recently retired right-hand man and Apple Corps Managing Director Neil Aspinall.

The Quarrymen, featuring John Lennon, George Harrison and McCartney, performed at the opening night of the Casbah on August 29th, 1959.

Although McCartney and Best have had no real contact since his firing from the Beatles, he and the Beatles did stay tied to the Bests, due to Neil Aspinall fathering a child with Best's mother Mona. Their son, Roag Best, now drums with half-brother Pete in the Pete Best Band.

Macca allowed himself to be filmed for a recent Pete Best documentary, titled Best Of The Beatles, but his sequences were left on the cutting room floor after he demanded script approval for the Best family produced-film.

Pete Best first got to know the Beatles prior to joining them, when they would hang out at the Casbah. Best says that the Casbah was the place where everybody bonded with each other: "You know we identified with each other. They had their friends down there; there was Cynthia (Lennon) down there, there was Stu Sutcliffe down there. You know John (Lennon), George (Harrison), Paul (McCartney), Pete Harrison -- George's brother -- it was like one big family."

The Casbah periodically holds performances, and is open to the public for tours. The venue now also features a fully functioning recording studio. For more information, log on to casbahcoffeeclub.com

The Pete Best Band are currently adding shows to their U.S. summer tour. They'll next perform on June 8th in Marlborough, Massachusetts at Dante's Firefly.

Macca recalled that, "I've asked myself, 'Why was that pot in the suitcase... and so much of it?' I mean, there was not one hint of discretion. And if you see the film of the arrest, the guy is embarrassed to find it. He almost puts it back and closes the suitcase." McCartney ended up spending nine days in a Tokyo jail before being deported. Wings' sold out series of Japanese dates were canceled, which cost McCartney over $350,000 to cover some of the expenses lost by his Japanese promoters.

Macca scrapped any future Wings dates, including a prospective U.S. tour being penciled in for the spring, and quit touring for nine years. It wouldn't be until 1990 that McCartney would return to perform in Japan.

Author Christopher Sanford, who wrote the recent biography McCartney, says that the Japan bust essentially ended Wings' live career: "He did some thinking in that jail cell. And I know Linda had a tepid reaction, at best, to going out on the road. And I suspect that she probably sat down with him when they got home after that ordeal, and said 'What the hell are we doing here? We don't need the money, the kids don't need to do this, and let's go back to the farm.'"

McCartney's 1980 Japanese pot bust wasn't his last run-in with the law. In 1984, Macca was arrested for marijuana possession in his Barbados resort villa after buying pot on the beach. It was McCartney's fourth pot-related arrest, having been arrested twice for possession in 1972: once while tour in Sweden, and again later that year for growing the illegal weed on his Scottish farm.

In 1975, while driving in Los Angeles, the McCartneys were busted for possession of pot after running a red light. Linda McCartney, who was a U.S. citizen, told police that the pot was hers, and was arrested and later fined.

Here are a couple of other thoughts about a song called "The End of the End," the penultimate track on the album. I think McCartney's written a lyric here that stands up to anything during his time with The Beatles or since. It's a sad song, for sure, maybe a result of Paul's bad year and marriage break-up.

But it's also so lovely that I think people are going to be using it as an elegy for years to come. Here's a verse:

"On the day that I die
I'd like jokes to be told
And stories of old
To be rolled out like carpets
That children have played on
And laid on while listening
To stories of old."

There's really nothing like "Memory Almost Full" available right now from a contemporary singer-songwriter. It's quite amazing that we're depending on artists in their late 50s and early 60s to fill an artistic void. Amazing, and sad.

Last year, Paul Simon's wonderful "Surprise" album was totally ignored, however, even though it was the best CD of the year by miles. I hope that doesn't happen this time around to McCartney. "Memory Almost Full" is too good.

Last week the New York Sunday Times had a large ad from Bergdorf Goodman announcing a meet and greet Stella McCartney event on Thursday, May 3rd between 4-6 pm. Since I am in the fashion business and work just a few blocks away from the store, I decided to go.

I got to the store at 4 pm and Stella's clothes were displayed in a small area. When you got off the elevator there was a tiny bar where they served scones, tea, champagne and sparkling water along with a little bucket containing candies and lollipops.

At the other end of the area there was a small desk set up - also with a little bucket of candy and a stack of brochures showing Stella's fall '07 line. People were milling about looking at the clothes and waiting for Stella to show up. I would estimate there were 30 plus people attending - hard to tell as people who had no idea what was going on were wandering in and out of the area.

Several people asked store employees when Stella would show up and we were told she was running late. She finally showed up at around 4:45 wearing a short, billowing silk navy or black dress of her own design and a pair of impossibly high heeled sandals.

She stopped to greet several people and pose for photographs and then walked towards the signing desk. It was very informal and people came up to talk to her and she obligingly signed autographs.

I had grabbed one of her brochures beforehand and approached her. I told her I had gotten a sample kit of her new skin care line. She asked me if I liked it and told me that the kit didn't contain the full line. Stella was pleased that I liked the products and told me she had worked very hard for three years developing the line.

I walked away to give others a chance to talk to her and took more photos. Then I asked a friendly looking woman if she would mind taking a picture of me and Stella and she said "yes". So I approached Stella again and asked if she would mind posing with me. She said she would and put her arm around my waist and I put my arm around her and the picture was taken.

I stood around for a few minutes watching Stella and finishing up my roll of film. She was absolutely lovely and gracious to everyone. She has certainly learned her PR smarts from her dad.

-- Susan Cohen (Macca Reporter)
© 2007 copyright The Macca Report - Exclusive news may not be used, copied or paraphrased, without crediting The Macca Report)

8.30am

I'm at my desk with a cup of tea and toast in time to check my e-mails before 9am. I got married this year and we've just moved into our house in High Wycombe. We're still living out of boxes and it took ages for BT to get our internet connection up and running, but we're just about there now.

There's some good news this morning - we've obtained the rights to use the BBC cult cartoon character Mr Benn in the video to "Anything is Possible", one of the tracks from the debut album by my band, Public Symphony and it's been uploaded today. In each episode Mr Benn tried on a costume and exited the shop by a magic door into the appropriate world. It seemed fitting for our song which is all about belief in the opportunities you can create.

James Reynolds - the other member of Public Symphony - and I always use animation in our videos. I find the cult of personality in pop overbearing and not very artistic. I like the existential and metaphysical; things of beauty. We've got some great animators whose goodwill goes a long way to helping us to keep costs down, too.

11am

I have an online meeting with our management people and James to discuss when we can meet with the press company for the strategy on Mr Benn. We also discuss whether to put a B-side on the "Anything is Possible" single.

I see James a bit less now I've moved a bit further down the A40 from Shepherd's Bush, but we talk a couple of times a day and meet at least once a week. We record our music in his studio as he is better at the mix engineering and has nicer gear! He monopolises the mouse - I only get on it when he goes to the loo! It took us three years to make the album and it's available in HMV and Virgin, but we mainly rely on the internet and digital downloads. His wife deals with sending out orders for the CD from publicsymphony.com.

James and I go back a while. We met when I was managing him and his female vocalist, who was poached. We started writing together and instead of taking on one of the new singers he auditioned, I ended up doing the vocals. It's taken about three years to finish the album, but it's had some really positive reviews and was Unsigned Music Magazine's album of the year in 2005.

1pm

I grab some lunch and watch the news. My wife, Natasha Marsh, is an opera singer and she's working from home today. I got her a deal with EMI last year and she is about to release an album so you could say she's leapfrogged me.

We met about three years ago when she came as a singer for some TV work I was doing. It was one of those "that's the one" moments.

I'm usually glued to the computer after lunch, responding to postings on My Space, sourcing websites for our videos and seeking champions online or in the media. The internet is fantastic because it's all free advertising and there are oodles of people willing to help you. Eddie Temple Morris on XFM is one of our offline champions. We've been selected out of 500 tracks for the Adam and Joe podcast, which is great. We've got big decisions to make as to whether to carry on doing what we can ourselves or to seek outside funding which means a big chunk of the profits being taken.

3.30pm

I spend the afternoon working on television music, which is how my company Adage Music came into being. We released our album under the label just out of convenience really. At the moment I'm working on the sounds for a BBC children's programme called Whizz Whizz Bang Bang. Usually I get a story board, a pilot episode and a brief and then it's down to me to generate the music. My first show was The O-Zone on BBC 2 and since then I've generated theme music for Sky News and various kids' shows.

I was really into music as a kid and ended up working for an artist management company, 7pm. I was seeing it all happening in the studio and I was envious of the artists. I wanted to learn the tools myself so I wrote a business plan and it seemed easier to approach a different industry, hence television. It's a great way to make a living and it always leads somewhere.

5pm

I liaise with an animator in Canada, Theodore Ushev, who produced the video to our track, "Stronger". Another of our tracks, "Rise and Shine", is on the virtual 3-D world, cafesonique.com so I touch base there. I'm the acting receptionist and artist in residence in the media building.

I do try to have some meetings away from the internet as it can get a bit much!

7pm

I spend the evening doing DIY on the house. There's so much to do! I spent a lot of time over Christmas going to my wife's shows. She did one with Jose Carreras at the Royal Albert Hall which was fantastic. In the future Public Symphony will be playing live more often. James and I are meeting this week to devise how to reduce our line-up to make it suitable for gigs. We're planning on having a combined audio-visual set. We had a brilliant reception when we played at the Bush Hall a while back so I hope 2007 will bring more of the same!

MACCA MINE A DOUBLE - Paul takes a shine to Heather lookalike

You'd think Sir Paul McCartney would be sick of the sight of his ex-missus - but he's been bowled over by someone who's the spitting image of her.

The former Beatle has been smitten by the ample charms of opera singer Natasha Marsh.

He couldn't take his eyes off 31-year-old Natasha - who bears a striking resemblance to Heather Mills - at the Classical Brit Awards on Thursday night.

As she sashayed past his table at London's Royal Albert Hall, 64-year-old Macca was overheard telling a pal: "She is very sexy." And he sat enthralled as soprano Natasha, wearing a long, figure-hugging gown with a daringly plunging neckline, took to the stage for her duet with British tenor Alfie Boe - even swaying his head in time to the music as she sang.

Clearly her uncanny likeness to Heather - with whom he is locked in a bitter divorce battle over his £800 million ($1.5 billion) fortune - didn't dampen his ardour.

Macca, whose new CD, Memory Almost Full, is out next month, asked to meet her backstage.

Our spy reports: "Macca's jaw hit the floor when Natasha walked past in her slinky dress. He sort of nodded as if to show his approval and whispered to his friend that she was very sexy. He couldn't take his eyes off her and was smiling when she went up to perform. He looked smitten."

Sir Paul, who won Best Album for Ecce Cor Meum, his "labour of love" for late wife Linda, was in a great mood all night - cracking jokes and posing for pictures. He even rubbed Myleene Klass's baby bump, telling her: "It's a good luck thing!"

I'm A Celebrity star Myleene, who is due this autumn, said: "I can't believe Sir Paul McCartney just felt my baby kick. He must be a very good father, he is so gentle."

Natasha's spokeswoman, Alexa Pentecost at EMI Classics, confirmed yesterday: "Sir Paul asked to be introduced to Natasha afterwards, he was very impressed by her.

"They met in the dressing room area and talked for ages. He took away a copy of her album, Amour."

But did he take her phone number, too?

McCartney band member Brian Ray told MaccaReport.com that during the early part of the album's sessions, McCartney and the group recorded at London's legendary Abbey Road studio where the Beatles recorded the majority of their work together, with the "Fabs'" longtime engineer Geoff Emerick.

Ray, who began working with McCartney in 2002, recalled McCartney taking him aside during the sessions and telling him, "Brian, I want you to play bass on the tracking sessions but I'm sorry to say, I will probably end up overdubbing my own bass on the songs... I feel bad, because you play great!'" Ray went on to tell him, "Paul, if I went out to buy the new Paul McCartney CD and someone else was playing bass, I'd be angry! I completely understand."

A homemade videoclip to the song "Mr. Bellamy" from the new album can be accessed through McCartney's website myeyesight.com.

"Memory Almost Full" will be released on June 5th.

May 4, 2007 -- Macca Report Exclusive!!!

Macca fan observes Paul at the RAH

I didn't see Paul come in via the red carpet at the Royal Albert Hall. When we got inside around 7:45 pm he was already sitting at his table between two unidentified white-haired elderly gentleman. There were round dining tables on the arena floor and Paul's was the centre table in the front of the stage.

He was chatting A LOT. Waitresses were desperately trying to serve him food and he had to wave several away. I didn't see him eat a thing. He was drinking lots of water though.

At the interval, he stayed near his table while masses of people retired to the bar. He talked to many people, but when he was talking to one person in particular, he gestured putting his fingers down his throat and pretended to be sick (several times). We decided he was talking about Heather Mills!

Paul was wearing a lovely suit and no trainers (tennis shoes). No sign of personal assistant John Hammel, Paul's kids or Sabrina Guinness. And no sign of bodyguards who were no doubt there trying to inconspicuous.

His award was the last of the night and when he left the stage he didn't go back to his table afterwards.

Paul sings opera

When Paul finished his acceptance speech at the Classical Brit Awards, he said, "I just like to leave on this note"... and belted out a mock opera vocalization.

May 4, 2007 -- Daily Stab

A Cheerful Paul McCartney

Paul McCartney looks to be in good spirits as he strolls through town (London) with a handful of silver balloons. (notice he has his fingers crossed on his left hand as he gestures to someone off camera)

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May 4, 2007 -- Getty Images (photos 1 photos 2)

Reception for Stella in New York

Stella McCartney attended a cocktail party in her honor that was hosted by Liv Tyler, Helena Christensen and Jessica Seinfeld at Bergdorf Goodman on Thursday, May 3 in New York City.

Purists have mocked it as "easy listening soup", but Sir Paul McCartney's modern choral oratorio emerged triumphant from the classical music industry's most prestigious awards ceremony last night.

The former Beatle's musical change of direction paid off when Ecce Cor Meum (Behold My Heart), partly sung in Latin and recorded with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, earned him the Album of the Year accolade at the Classical Brit awards, which will be televised on ITV1 a week on Sunday. He had been up against Sting, who has recently crossed over into classical terrain with his album of 16th-century lute music, Songs from the Labyrinth, featuring the music of John Dowland, a melancholic Elizabethan-era composer, and accompaniment from the Bosnian lute player Edin Karamazov.

Picking up his award, Sir Paul said: "It's such a huge honour for me to get this. If you'd told me as a kid in Liverpool that I would be at the Royal Albert Hall picking up an award I would not have believed you. How proud would my mum and dad have been if they had known this could happen?''

Sir Paul's album, released last year and written, in part, as a tribute to his late wife, Linda, gained some harsh reviews from the critics, but others have praised it for reviving the flagging sales of classical music and adding a touch of glamour to the genre.

The idea for the album came to Sir Paul about eight years ago, but it was only cemented after hearing choirboys at Magdalen chapel in Oxford and at a Tavener concert in a church where, beneath a crucifix, he spotted the words "Ecce Cor Meum".

The Album of the Year was chosen by listeners of Classic FM. Sir Paul was also up against the Welsh singer Katherine Jenkins, who has won the category twice before, and the 19-year-old violinist Nicola Benedetti.

The only previous instances of a non-classical artist being nominated for a Classical Brit were when the Pink Floyd guitarist Roger Waters was included on the shortlist last year, and when the techno-classicist William Orbit was included in 2001.

Heiress Sabrina Guinness is taking action against a British magazine for wrongfully reporting she's been on dates with Beatle legend Sir Paul McCartney.

Hello! magazine claimed the pair have been sharing a number of dinner dates and have a "deepening friendship", but Guinness barely knows the singer and is taking the weekly glossy to the Press Complaints Commission.

She says, "I've only met him twice and I've never gone out with him. How could they get it so wrong?"

May 3, 2007 -- BBC News

McCartney scoops Classical Brit

Sir Paul McCartney has won the best album award at the Classical Brits for his fourth classical album Ecce Cor Meum (Behold My Heart).

The former Beatle beat off competition from artists including Sting, Katherine Jenkins, Alfie Boe and Bryn Terfel.

The award was voted for by listeners of Classic FM and readers of Classic FM's magazine.

The Berlin Philharmonic and its conductor Sir Simon Rattle won the classical recording of the year award.

They received the honour for Holst's The Planets at the ceremony at the at the Royal Albert Hall in London on Thursday.

Album of the year was the only award voted for by the public, with all the other awards chosen by classical music experts and critics.

Sting had been shortlisted for his lute album Songs From the Labyrinth.

But he was beaten by Sir Paul, who began writing Ecce Cor Meum in 1997 but had to halt work after the death of his first wife Linda the following year.

The oratorio in four movements with English and Latin lyrics was recorded last year at Abbey Road Studios in London and premiered at the Royal Albert Hall in November.

But it received lukewarm reviews from classical critics. BBC Music Magazine described the work as "agreeably inoffensive but in no way sharply distinctive".

Gramophone Magazine said it was a "pseudo-classical project... the result is a creakily Victorian four-parter, both short-winded and constipated, hopping disconcertingly from one episode to the next in shades of grey".

Sir Paul's next pop album, Memory Almost Full, is out in June.

The Classical Brits ceremony was hosted by Fern Britton, with performances from several artists including nominees Jenkins, Sting and Boe.

The awards will be broadcast at on ITV1 at 11pm BST on May 13.

Since the Company's purchase of the iconic meat-free Linda McCartney brand a year ago, the brand has undergone a strategic review with new and improved products and contemporary packaging. Through convenience and healthy ingredients, the Linda McCartney brand of products provides meal solutions inspired by the recipes of Linda McCartney.

The Linda McCartney vegetarian food range of products available in the United Kingdom includes:

-- Macaroni Cheese -- Aubergine and Courgette Bake -- Creamy Vegetable Pies -- Cornish Pasties -- Cheese, Leek and Red Onion Plaits -- Spicy Three Bean Bakes -- Quarter Pounders -- Vegetarian Sausages -- Chilli Non-Carne -- Country Pies -- Lasagna

David Arrow, Managing Director, Hain Celestial UK Ltd., commented, "Hain Celestial is delighted with the new product range and its incredibly positive reaction from the UK consumer. The range has been developed in close consultation with the McCartney Family to ensure the brand remains true to Linda's original vision and reflects the food values she believed in."

The McCartney Family added, "We are incredibly excited to be launching the new range of products. We feel that now is time to bring Linda's real food to a new generation."

Hain Celestial's long-term commitment to the brand includes the Linda McCartney "Taste the Change" UK tour this summer, including a national sampling campaign focusing on music and family festival events.

The Company plans to expand the product launch in the United Kingdom and to roll out the brand in Europe and North America within the next two to three years.

"As we said when we entered the UK market, the Linda McCartney range of vegetarian products is the premier meat-free brand to further support our expansion of natural and organic products in this marketplace," said Irwin Simon, President and Chief Executive of Hain Celestial. "We are excited to be working with the McCartney Family in developing the Linda McCartney brand into a global presence in the meat-free category."

You know, he's 64 years old. On June 1, he celebrates the 40th anniversary of the Beatles' landmark album "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." Four days later he will release his newest album "Memory Almost Full." This is a landmark of sorts, too. It's his first album release on Starbucks' Hear Music label. Paul McCartney, the most successful pop performer/singer/writer in history, has left the mainstream music business.

The good news is that "Memory Almost Full" is excellent, just as good as his Grammy-nominated "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard." But McCartney, sources say, felt that Capitol Records did nothing to promote "Chaos" despite its four nominations. The album, like most of Capitol's releases, went nowhere. So the pop star is gone, and his departure is a blow to a record company on the ropes.

McCartney took his entire back catalogue with him when he left, too. This includes all his solo albums, and Wings releases, everything from McCartney to "Ram" to "Band on the Run" and "Chaos."

It's not like CDs still really sell or that many people are busy looking for "Red Rose Speedway" or "Flowers in the Dirt," but still: McCartney as a solo artist is one of the great success stories in the now nearly dead music business.

Whether taking "Memory Almost Full" to Starbucks is a smart move remains to be seen. The coffee chain has had a lot of hits with other company's releases, but also some duds. Can you say Antigone Rising? And, of course, Starbucks also sells CDs at high prices. I have personally resisted James Morrison's album while waiting for cappuccino because it's $14.99. I could download it for five bucks less.

On the other hand, outside of Amazon.com, Starbucks is one of the few places people my age will buy a CD at all. Tower Records is gone, and the remaining "record" stores are multitask disasters with thunderous hip-hop music making the visit very unpleasant. Like most everything else in the music business, the era of contemplative record hunting through bins is over.

Even so, buying "Memory Almost Full" in Starbucks should prove to be a rewarding experience. McCartney is true to form on this CD, offering lush ballads and jangling rockers with as much gusto and unembarrassed gushing as ever. From the opening track, a mandolin-powered ebullient "Dance Tonight" to the closing sort power surge of "Nod Your Head," he's still got it.

Of course, nowadays you listen to a Paul McCartney record more closely than ever for the lyrics. Is "Dance Tonight" some kind of comment on his gold-digging ex-wife's stint on "Dancing with the Stars"? Is the beautifully wistful "You Tell Me" sung to his late, beloved wife, Linda? What about "Ever Present Past" and "Vintage Clothes"? Aren't they nostalgic reminisces of that first, now much-missed marriage? It would seem so.

My favorite track, "That Was Me," a rockabilly shuffle, is disarmingly reflective for McCartney. For years, until his excellent "Flaming Pie" album, he eschewed real emotion for a veneer of flashed peace signs.

"That Was Me," as it is, inaugurates a five-song medley that finishes off "Memory." "Feet in the Clouds," "House of Wax" and "The End of the End" comprise the bulk of the medley. Some of the publicity compares this to the suite on "Abbey Road." Not really.

The medley really reminded me of a similar one on "Red Rose Speedway" and on some of the other solo albums. Paul McCartney loves a medley, you know. He loves stringing together short bits with different melodies.

Luckily, he's good at it. His medleys usually contain at least one gem. Back on "Red Rose," it was "Hands of Love." On this album, it's "Feet in the Clouds," a tour de force where McCartney - who has absolutely improved 100 percent as a lyricist - insists he has his "head on the ground" in a Beatle-esque counterpoint that even John Lennon would admire.

What will happen when "Memory" joins the ventis and the grandes and the chocolate-covered graham crackers on the Starbucks shelves? Already, McCartney says he has made a video for "Dance Tonight" with director Michel Gondry. Natalie Portman is featured in it. But neither MTV nor VH-1 plays many videos, and none by rock stars who will turn 65 three weeks after his album is released.

But no one writes or sings like Paul McCartney. After a roller coaster career of tremendous highs and curious lows, he has acquitted himself brilliantly on "Memory Almost Full."

House of Wax

Lightning hits the house of wax
Poets spill out on the street
To set alight the incomplete
Remainders of the future

Hidden in the yard. Hidden in the yard.

Thunder drowns the trumpets blast
Poets scatter through the night
But they can only dream of flight
Away from their confusion

Hidden in the yard. Undemeath the wall
Buried deep below a thousand layers lay
the answer to it all

Lightning hits the house of wax
Woman scream and run around
To dance upon the battleground
Like wild demented horses

Hidden in the yard. Undemeath the wall
Buried deep below a thousand layers lay
Lightning hits the house of wax
Poets spill out on the street
To set alight the incomplete
Remainders of the future

Hidden in the yard. Hidden in the yard.

Thunder drowns the trumpets blast
Poets scatter through the night
But they can only dream of flight
Away from their confusion

Hidden in the yard. Undemeath the wall
Buried deep below a thousand layers lay
the answer to it all

Lightning hits the house of wax
Woman scream and run around
To dance upon the battleground
Like wild demented horses

Hidden in the yard. Undemeath the wall
Buried deep below a thousand layers lay
the answer to it all...

The album, his first since 2005's Grammy-nominated "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard," is due for worldwide release in the week beginning June 4; he turns 65 on June 18.

"In places it's a very personal record, and a lot of it is retrospective, drawing from memory, like memories from being a kid, from Liverpool and from summers gone," McCartney said in a statement. "The album is evocative, emotional, rocking, but I can't really sum it up in one sentence."

McCartney pondered the past in such Beatles tunes as "Penny Lane" and "Eleanor Rigby," and returns to similar territory in such new songs as "That Was Me," in which he recalls "playing conkers at the bus stop" and "Merseybeatin' with the band."

But tunes such as "My Ever Present Past" and "Vintage Clothes" warn against spending too much time looking back.

Fans looking for commentary on McCartney's highly publicised and increasingly nasty divorce from Heather Mills might find a conciliatory line in the song "Gratitude," in which he sings, "I should stop loving you, think what you put me through, but I don't want to lock my heart away."

"Gratitude," in which he sings, "I should stop loving you, think what you put me through, but I don't want to lock my heart away."

A spokesman said he did not know if this lyric was directed at Mills, who separated from McCartney last year and has been portrayed in tabloid newspapers as gold-digger seeking to cash in on the beloved former Beatle's fortune.

In his statement, McCartney noted, "I know people are going to look at some of the songs and interpret them in different ways, but this has always been
the case."

"Memory Almost Full" marks his first release for coffee retailer Starbucks's nascent Hear Music label, following a career spent mostly at EMI Group.

The pair are said to be enjoying a "deepening friendship" with the former Beatle spending more time at Ms. Guinness's Notting Hill home.

The musician, embroiled in messy divorce proceedings with second wife Heather Mills, is described as having "got his life back together" thanks to the 52-year-old brewery heiress.

Hello! magazine quotes a source close to the couple saying: "Sabrina's a great lady and they share many great interests. She's been a supportive friend and I hope things work out for him this time. They are still seeing each other and spending time together as Sir Paul clearly enjoys her company."

Sir Paul, 64, has denied that the two are anything but old friends, despite several sightings of them having dinner together in recent weeks.

He said last month: "I realise everyone wants to see me with a new bird right now, and that's very flattering. It's not really a big thing. We have known each other a long time."

Ms. Guinness, who has dated Prince Charles, Mick Jagger and Bryan Ferry, recently stated that, contrary to speculation, she was not Sir Paul's girlfriend.

She said they had been "friends for a long time".

However, several sources have suggested Ms. Guinness is exactly Sir Paul's type - "a strong, spirited" woman who champions causes close to her heart.

She set up Youth Cable TV, which gives disadvantaged young people an opportunity to work in the media. Ms. Mills has supported disability and anti-landmine charities, while Sir Paul's first wife Linda was a staunch vegan and animal rights supporter.

Sir Paul is working on his next studio album, Memory Almost Full.

Ms. Mills, 39, recently suggested she might move to the U.S. after appearing in American TV show Dancing With The Stars.

On Paul's new http://www.meyesight.com/ page, a new behind-the-scenes video of "Dance Tonight" has just been posted. Paul plays drums in one of the scenes!

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Macca Report news continues with May 2007 page 2

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Jorie Gracen