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October 31, 2005 -- Toledoblade.com

New beat for McCartney - Former Beatle talks about his first children's book

For decades, he's made his living by writing some of the world's most popular songs. But penning stories for children is a new role for former Beatle Paul McCartney, and he's thrilled with it.

"It's always nice to try projects like this," Mr. McCartney said in a telephone interview from Minneapolis, one of 37 stops on his nationwide musical tour promoting his new release "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard."

"It's a nice change, and a stretch for me and for my fans. It's nice to spread myself out a bit."

Mr. McCartney's children's book, High in the Clouds (Dutton, $19.99), has just been released, with a first run of 500,000 copies. Illustrated in a glossy animation style by Geoff Dunbar, the 98-page book tells the story of Wirral the Squirrel whose woodland home is destroyed by money-hungry developers.

Wirral, joined by his friend Froggo and a lovely girl squirrel named Wilhamina, set out through the nightmarish landscape of Megatropolis to find a new home in Animalia, a tropical island sanctuary for animals.

But finding Animalia isn't enough; Wirral and his friends must convince the island's peace-loving inhabitants to fight the evil Gretsch. The "most powerful player" in Megatropolis, Gretsch seeks to destroy Animalia and force all of those who live there to become slaves in her pollution-belching factories. Can Wirral and company find a way to save Animalia?

Mr. McCartney's fast-paced story crackles with an energy that will have readers racing through the pages. Sure, some of the characters are stock types, and the story sometimes gets a bit too busy. Some of Mr. Dunbar's illustrations also seem too small and dark.

But the book overall is superior to the volumes of mediocre, didactic children's books now being churned out by celebrities like Madonna, Katie Couric and Jay Leno, and there are a couple of good reasons for this.

First, Mr. McCartney, known for being a down-to-earth person, recognized that he may be world famous for his music, but he's a beginner when it comes to writing books for children. So he decided to hire a veteran children's book author, Philip Ardagh - author of books like the best-selling Eddie Dickens trilogy - to polish his story.

"I did OK on the storyline and characters, and artist Geoff (Dunbar) was great with illustrations. But we needed someone to help with bring some elegance to the prose," Mr. McCartney said.

"I'm happy to own up to that," he added. "Some people told me, 'Just put your name on it.' But he [Mr. Ardagh] gives it a style that we couldn't have brought to it."

Maybe even more important to the success of Mr. McCartney's book compared to the usual celebrity tomes is the fact that he didn't set out to use it to bring a "message" to his young readers.

Most celebrity authors seem to begin writing their books by deciding what message they want to sell to readers and then creating a story around that message. That's why their books are so preachy, and why many parents like them and kids generally loathe them.

But Mr. McCartney, like seasoned children's book writers, focused on telling a rollicking tale. If readers understand the "kindness to animals" message implicit in the story, so much the better, but that's not the main point, he said.

"I would like readers first of all to just enjoy the story and illustrations. If they enjoy the stories and sympathize with the characters, then they would be educating themselves about the underlying theme of kindness to animals," he added. "But we really wanted it to be a good read."

Mr. McCartney got the idea for High in the Clouds years ago when he and Mr. Dunbar worked on an animation film Tropic Island Hum. The two have collaborated on a number of animation shorts, including Rupert and the Frog Song, which won a British Academy of Film and Television Arts award for best animated short film.

"In discovering those characters for the animated short (Tropic Island Hum), we started to have the idea to do something more full-length with them. We were just going to do a mock-up of a book for that when our editor said it should be a real book."

Asked what age readers the book is aimed at, Mr. McCartney replied: "It's for any age if you're just looking at the pictures. The pictures are beautiful." (In fact, McCartney recently told a reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press that his two-year-old daughter Beatrice likes to look at the book's illustrations.)

He added: "But, as for reading it, it's a sophisticated tale, a story that's more for children over eight years old, who are used to that kind of emotional depth. I'd say the story is for anyone from eight to 80."

Some adult readers of High in the Clouds have wondered how children would be affected by the death of Wirral's mother, which occurs early in the story. Wirral's grief is highlighted, both in the story and in Mr. Dunbar's illustrations.

Mr. McCartney said he understands that the death adds a somber note to the story, but points to other popular tales like Bambi that also feature a parent's death.

"If I were reading it (High in the Clouds) to a little kid, I'd skip that part," Mr. McCartney said. "But I think that, for older kids, often something significant like this happens - it's an emotional thrust of the story that's very important.

"Yes, it is dark, but I think that a lot of good books have things like this to engage your emotions, to draw you in and make you care. And look at Grimm's Fairy Tales - now, they're really dark!"

A life-long Disney fan, Mr. McCartney said he decided on a squirrel for the main character because he wanted an animal, and the other obvious choices already were taken. "It couldn't be a bear because that's been done - Winnie the Pooh. And it couldn't be a mouse - we know who that would be. We couldn't think of any famous character who's a squirrel so we settled on that.''

Wirral, whose full name is actually William the squirrel, is named for "the place where my dad used to live, outside Liverpool," McCartney said. Gretsch started out as Gretchen, but then morphed into the "funky shorthand" of Gretsch, which also happens to be a make of guitar.

"There are all kinds of little cross-references like that in the book,'' he said.

Now that's he has published one children's book, Mr. McCartney said he'd think about doing another. "But I'd really like to see how this experience goes," he added. "If this goes well, it would be tempting to do another."

Asked what he thinks he does best - make music or write children's books - Mr. McCartney laughed and said: "I'll probably stick to my day job.

Playing with Paul 'amazing,' 'an honor'

Jamming onstage with Paul McCartney. It truly is a musician's dream gig.

And for Rusty Anderson and Brian Ray, it happens night after night, one packed arena after another.

As veteran session musicians, Anderson and Ray have worked with some of the best - Elton John, Etta James, Sinead O'Connor, Peter Frampton and Smokey Robinson, to name just a few.

But for guitarist Anderson and bassist-guitarist Ray, nothing compares to working with a legend like McCartney.

The two California natives are part of McCartney's four-member band, and they'll be in town jamming with the 63-year-old at his sold-out concert tonight at Qwest Center Omaha. The tour is in support of McCartney's new album, "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard."

"Paul is amazing. He's gracious," Anderson said by phone from a tour stop in Chicago. "And his audiences are always great."

Anderson, who formed his first band when he was 13, has been playing with McCartney for four years.

Producer David Kahne helped hook him up with McCartney. You can hear Anderson's guitar riffs on McCartney's 2001 album, "Driving Rain."

And you can hear McCartney's bass guitar and backing vocals on Anderson's song "Hurt Myself," from his solo debut album, "Undressing Underwater." It came out Sept. 27.

Ray, who also recently released his first solo album, "Mondo Magneto," began performing with McCartney three years ago after a successful audition. He was invited to play on McCartney's 2002 world tour.

"It's an incredible honor to be chosen to play with Paul. It's just huge for a musician," Ray said in a phone interview from Chicago. "This guy is still singing and performing the best songs of rock 'n' roll since rock 'n' roll was born."

In addition to Anderson and Ray, McCartney's band members are drummer Abe Laboriel Jr. and keyboardist Paul "Wix" Wickens. On stage, the former Beatle plays a little bit of every instrument.

Growing up, both Ray and Anderson were nuts about the Beatles.

As a boy, Ray watched the group on TV and saw how excited all the girls were. That's when he decided he wanted to be a rock musician.

Anderson said the Beatles were the reason he started playing music.

"I was 5 years old, and I flipped out on the Beatles," Anderson said. "They got me going in a musical direction."

Now Anderson is playing many of those same Beatles tunes that he loved as a child.

"There was so much charm and melodic beauty and energy," Anderson said. "It's sort of like eating a great-tasting food. It feels right and makes you want more. They're inarguably the largest force in rock music."

Ray - who co-wrote the Smokey Robinson hit "One Heartbeat" - said the current McCartney tour is especially exciting for him because the set list is heavy on Beatles songs and features about 20 tunes that weren't included on the 2002 tour.

Ray and the rest of the crew also are eager to make their first-time appearance in Omaha.

"It's always thrilling to come to a city that Paul's never been with the Beatles, with Wings and with his solo show," Ray said. "There's this exuberance in the crowd that extends beyond the usual roar. It makes it so special for us.

"Omaha, we're coming to rock you."

Sir Paul McCartney became a lovely hors d'oeuvres on my way to lunch at Trygg's.

Cameo Beauty Lounge co-owner Danielle Igbanugo and yours truly paired exercise with lunch Thursday in our quest to drop 20 pounds each. This was the strategy: We'd drive over to Paul Magers' old house on Lake of the Isles (which still looks for sale), park the car and walk to Trygg's on Lake Street.

We were walking by the lake as this whistling cyclist approached on the bike path, pedaling leisurely, looking more famous the closer he got. As he cruised by, we stopped, turned and yelled out, "Paul McCartney!"

"Hello there, ladies," he said in that familiar voice, and he pedaled on.

We were just kind of stunned to see the man who sang 37 songs at St. Paul's Xcel Energy Center Wednesday night out for a noon bike ride the next day. As we stood there, another cyclist with pronounced biceps and a cell phone rode toward us. When we asked whether he knew who was riding ahead of him, he indicated that he did. Bodyguard? He nodded.

We were giddy enough about our sighting to let Trygg's manager-exec chef, Philip Dorwart, sabotage our diet. (Yes, Philip, I'm blaming you for the cheese on my otherwise healthy beet salad and the homemade potato chips accompanying Igbanugo's BLT.) The good news is that we burned a lot more calories from seeing Sir Paul, the music icon, than I did getting excited about a recent tip from Igbanugo's Cameo partner, Ashleigh Moss. Moss tried to order this gossip to be on late-night alert for Cher, who was to dine at Manny's. Cher was a no show; Sir Paul an unexpected pleasure.

A flying feast for Paul

Word is that Cafe Brenda prepared a to-go order picked up promptly at 11:30 a.m. Thursday for Sir Paul & Co.

The mushroom pistachio terrine, roasted pepper dip, preserved lemon hummus, edamame, miso pate with a veggie platter, Japanese soba noodle salad, goat cheese and fig salad were scheduled to be consumed by 18 in the early afternoon aboard a private jet that was taking the crew to its next stop.

No dessert was included. Maybe they got it elsewhere -- or perhaps they figured fewer sweets means less bicycling.

The door opens and in walks McCartney who immediately goes to the woman with open arms and mwelcomes her with an exuberant "Hey, Baby. How ya doing? How's my girl?" His greeting to Louise Harrison, sister of the late George Harrison, is happily received along with the hug that she universally refers to as a bona fide "Harrison Hug." You could tell by the look on Paul's face that he was greeting someone important in his life, someone he respected, as if he were greeting his own big sister.

Paul then turns to the man who has been standing in awe-struck silence, looks him "up and down" and said "Who's he?" As Paul asks this question, he notices something familiar about this man he has never met.

Louise asked Paul if he remembered their meeting three years ago, when she introduced him to her "new adopted brother Marty" which Paul quickly recalled. "Well," said Louise, "this is Marty's best friend Kevin and he and Marty are in the band I manage."

"You manage a band?"

Yes, she does and Louise introduces Kevin Mantegna. Paul reaches out his hand; Kevin grasps the hand of than man he feels "has been an inspiration everyday of my life. I am a better person because of it." Paul smiles, winks and jokes with Kevin by saying, "Awe, knock it off manyou're too kind!"

Louise, the consummate manager, hands Paul the promotional DVD of her band, Liverpool Legends. Paul looks at it closely and points to the picture of Kevin Mantegna portraying John Lennon in what is fast becoming the international sensation of Beatles Tribute Shows. He then looks at Kevin and says, "Hey, that's you! I could spot John out anywhere." This is an amazing compliment but Paul goes further saying, "You make a great John!"

"I know no one can be like the real one but I try my best," says Kevin.

Paul stops the conversation and studies the DVD. He then turns to Louise and asks, "Do they make a bit of racket, then?" She proudly confirms what a wonderful band Liverpool Legends is and Kevin quickly adds, ah, you should hear Louise sing. Her vocals are getting better all the time!" prompting a round of laughter by everyone.

Kevin and Paul spend time talking about Paul's new album, "Chaos & Creation in the Backyard" and reminiscing with Louise until it was time for Paul to get ready to go on stage for his final concert in Chicago for this tour. As Paul said his goodbyes, he waves the DVD and states that he will "give this a look!" He hugs Louise, touches Kevin's shoulder and shakes his hand and leaves with, "Enjoy the show. Cheers!" As Paul leaves, Louise and Kevin are escorted to their seats that Paul reserved for them, right next to stage.

They enjoyed Paul's' playing to them during the show. Kevin enjoyed having some of the McCartney fans seated around him acknowledge the attention from Sir Paul by yelling, "Hey look, Paul is talking to the John Lennon Guy." Kevin is honored to have been referred to as the spitting-image of John and even more taken by the attention Paul gave him and, of course, Louise, during their time together. It was a lifelong dream come true.

So, back on the road with Liverpool Legends, Marty Scott as George Harrison and Kevin as John Lennon are joined by their hand-picked partners, Davey Justice (Paul McCartney) and Joe Bologna (Ringo Starr). Add Bob Dobro who provides live performance of studio orchestrations and effects integral to later Beatles' music and you have an amazing show to stun your senses.

And Louise credits a little help from George in putting this group together. She feels the presence of her brother George when she listens to Liverpool Legends honor some of the world's favorite musical memories. And the rapid success for Liverpool Legends comes as no surprise to Louise. It was expected of these accomplished musicians who perform the most difficult harmonies and intricate instrumentals of nearly any Beatles' song to flawless perfection.

"The goal was to recreate the band that George LOVED; a group of close friends sharing a passion for the music that made the Beatles the best known band in the world." It is no surprise that Liverpool Legends are quickly reaching the "Topper-most of the Popper-most", to use one of Louise's favorite phrases for describing her Fab Four Lads!

"Linda McCartney's Sixties: Portrait of an Era," a travelling collection of 50 photographs representing popular music's most transformative decade, will be shown at the Royal BC Museum in Victoria from Dec. 1 to Jan. 31.

The photographs capture the decade's famous and infamous cast of characters including Jim Morrison, Aretha Franklin, Twiggy, the Grateful Dead, Ray Charles, Janis Joplin, Cream, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix and B.B. King. During her professional career, McCartney used her exquisite eye to capture on film hundreds of famous musical personalities -- the best of which appear in this exhibit.

This photography exhibit is a unique choice for the Royal BC Museum that specializes in the human and natural history of B.C., but the museum plans to add its usual flair to the exhibit. Complementing the exhibit will be original '60s memorabilia from the Museum's collection including John Lennon's Rolls Royce, footage of a celebrated outdoor Beatles concert, events focusing on '60s and '70s music and educational programs developed by the museum to showcase the era.

For more information visit www.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca.October 28, 2005 -- Star Tribune

McCartney takes little lakeside mystery tour

After a hard day's night performing Wednesday at the Xcel Energy Center 10/26/05, Paul McCartney still had enough energy for a bike ride Thursday afternoon along Lake of the Isles.

The Cute Beatle had women buzzing as he pedaled leisurely along, wearing a blue jacket, whistling a tune and letting his full helmet-less head of hair waft in the breeze.

"Hello there, ladies," Sir Paul said to me and walking partner Danielle Igbanugo as he approached. Then gave us a wave and rolled on.

A few heartbeats later, along came a guy with really big muscles on a bike -- and a cell phone in his hand -- who acknowledged being McCartney's bodyguard.

McCartney's outing on the cool, sunny Minneapolis autumn day proved that the 63-year-old is still darling enough to stop traffic. At the curb stood a sport-utility vehicle, with a woman on her cell phone, who said to me, "Was that who I think it was?"

Paul McCartney Walks the Fine Line Between Chaos and Creation

When he left The Beatles, Paul McCartney retreated to a country house with his wife, kids and personal recording equipment to produce McCartney I-an album of odes to "home, family and love." No longer a Beatle, Paul was free to indulge his sweet tooth, which he did with saccharine classics like "My Love," and "Silly Love Songs."

By the mid '80s, Paul's sugar had turned to sap. A string of lackluster albums eroded his fan base to the point that his recent output-including the Beatlesque Flaming Pie and a fine collection of 1950s standards-has largely been ignored. Undeterred, McCartney has continued to explore, embarking on his ambitious Standing Stone concerto and releasing ambient techno mixes under his Fireman moniker.

Though they may not be as groundbreaking as Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band or have the same nostalgic appeal as Rubber Soul, McCartney insists these new records are all part of the same trip."It's like sort of stepping on a train,"he tells Paste. "I don't worry about other trains I've been on, just this new train, and that's exciting. You just have to realize that perhaps you can't always have as great a journey as you had in the past."

McCartney's 20th post-Beatles release, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard feels like an extension of the Flaming Pie sessions. Although he plays most of the instruments himself, the record has a very tight, live feel-like Mac's band has set up to jam in your living room. The music feels fresher than any recent McCartney release, especially the parts where this "one man band" loosens up for some unexpected freeform meandering-like on the coda of "How Kind of You" or the loose, instrumental rocker that closes the album.

When we caught up with Sir Paul, he was mixing a companion DVD to be included with the new Chaos and Creation release. "These days, the record company wants a DVD to go with the CD," he says. "So we've got a little digital editing suite set up downstairs and are cutting away."

PASTE: I'm hearing echoes of some of your earlier solo albums in a lot of bands now. Are you aware of some of the bands, like those in the Elephant Six Collective, who seem to have a bit of a Wings flair?

PAUL: Well when we did Live 8 the other day, Bono was chatting with me in the trailer and he said [switching to a thick Irish accent] 'you know, it's the hippest thing this year, man. Wings. All your early stuff. That's what the young bands are listening to.'

I am getting more and more feedback from people who I suspect were very young when those albums came out and remember them with the same sort of nostalgia I would remember an early Elvis record. It's always kind of a cool thing to find a whole area that's not picked over. We used to do that a lot when we would do covers. We'd look over every Bo Diddley b-side and find songs like "Crackin' Up" and stuff.

And so I think it's really gratifying to find that younger bands are looking back at those albums that weren't supposed to be any good, but now have something. There is a style to them, which is sort of a hippie simplicity. I don't know what you'd call it. But there is something that kind of resonates at this point in time, somehow.

PASTE: Well, I think that vibe could be called lo-fi. There's been a huge lo-fi movement, and it could be argued that your first post-Beatles album McCartney I-which was recorded and mixed at your house-was one of the first big lo-fi records of its day.

PAUL:Yeah, I knew what I was doing there was exciting. It's interesting now that people from this hi-tech perspective are looking back at something like that with some kind of respect. Now it's even more exciting to say 'you know I plugged my mic straight into the back of the Studer 4-track machine to make that recording. And then I just put my mic somewhere near the drums and drummed. And if the hi hat was too loud I moved the mic away from the hi hat. And that's how those things were made. Absolutely minimum fi.

PASTE:: One band you get compared to is XTC. "English Tea" from your new album, sounds almost like something Andy Partridge would've done. Do you listen to XTC, and are you influenced by their work?

PAUL:Yeah, I listen to XTC and did a little bit of work with one of the guys once, but I wouldn't see the connection. I don't know anything of theirs that's like "English Tea." To me, it's more like Noel Coward. Do you know Noel Coward?

PASTE: No.

PAUL: He's a very British film star, sort of a famous gay gentleman from the 1930s-a very old, black-and-white-film star. Anyway, he's who I was thinking of when I sort of wrote the song.

In England if we say 'do you want a cup of tea?' there's one kind of tea that everyone will give you, and we don't know what it is. We don't know if it's dodgy, it's just a cup of tea. But when you go abroad, they say 'what kind of tea do you want? Do you want Earl Grey tea? English Breakfast tea? Darjeeling tea? Lemon tea? Honey tea? Chamomile tea?' You go 'gosh stop! I just want a cup of tea!'

I was playing with this idea, which is kind of amusing for someone British, that there is such a thing as English tea, and it just made me think of English country gardens and people I know who are sort of upper class and who have a completely different vocabulary. Instead of saying 'do you want a cup of tea?' they'd say 'would you care to take a cup of tea?' It's a parody of upper class speech. Instead of saying 'usually the church bells chime,' I'd use a phrase like 'as a rule the church bells chime.'

And that's got to be the only song that anyone has ever worked in the word 'paraventure.' Nobody knows what that word means. I do because I've read a lot of Charles Dickens. I still read a lot of Dickens, actually. His language is very old-fashioned. 'Paraventure' means 'perhaps.' But it's a really fruity word that is not in usage any more. So I was sort of proud of myself for working that one in. There's got to be a Guinness book record in that. The award for the man with the most unknown word. Ever.

PASTE: I saw a recent interview on AOL where you cited the influence Bob Dylan and some of The Beatles' contemporaries had on you in the early days how they pushed you ahead to try new things. What artists fill that role for you today?

PAUL: There are certain people I kind of listen to, and I think I'm going to kind of move in that direction. What happened on the new album is the producer, Nigel Godrich, persuaded me not to do it. I was talking to him about people like Nitin Sawhney, who is kind of a British Asian guy with Indian family heritage, but he's bought up in Britain and influenced by hip-hop. So it's a great fusion thing that I'm influenced by. I like that sort of dance-groove thing. I like Indian music and vocalizing, but I also like soul and stuff. He kind of mixes it all. I did send one of those CDs to Nigel saying 'I think this stuff is really cool,' not knowing at the time quite who Nigel was, or what kind of person he was. And he resisted it. But it's a subliminal influence in my own mind. It doesn't actually find its way onto the record really, except maybe one or two tracks, but they're not actually on the album, except maybe as special b-sides.

In the end, Nigel had a fairly clear direction as to where he wanted to go. He wanted to keep it really simple, really straight, really direct and very me instead of 'let's get modern, let's get gimmicky' or 'let's do this because it's the latest groove.' He tended to resist all of that while he was producing and I went along with that, and I'm glad we did, in the end.

PASTE: Well, I'm glad. In the '80s it seemed like you maybe went too far tracking the hot trends, working with Michael Jackson and things like that, when what people really wanted to hear was you. They wanted less-slick production and more focus on songcraft.

PAUL:Yeah, that's right. That's exactly what Nigel said in the beginning before we even started working together and I said 'you know what? That could be true.'

I told him I wanted to make a great record and I then said 'scratch that. I'm going to make a great record,' and Nigel said 'that's exactly what I want to make.' I want to make an album that's you-that's what people want to hear.' That became the focus. So much so that I was actually considering recording this with my live band, whom I love, but Nigel felt that might get a bit safe. So he said 'no, I'd like to hear you play some drums on this, I'd like to hear you play a bit of little electric guitar here' jobs that would normally go to Abe and Rusty. So I said 'OK, OK. Let's try it.' I talked to the band and said, 'look, this is the way he wants to go guys,' and they were very understanding. They said 'whatever it takes to make the record, go make it. We'll play it live with you.' So that's how it turned out. It was really back to basics.

PASTE: This record takes almost the same approach you took with McCartney I and McCartney II. Why not just call it McCartney III?

PAUL: This was a surprise direction for us. None of us intended to go that way, I don't think even Nigel did. The first week we worked with the band, second week he said, "you try the drums, you try the tambourine." Halfway through that week he said "this is the way I want to go." And so it was, outside of a couple of other fine musicians like James Gadson on drums and Joey Waronker and Jason Falkner, it's pretty much all me. Except for the strings and specialized instruments.

We wanted to take an organic approach. On McCartney I and McCartney II, I knew exactly that I was going to play all the instruments because I just didn't ring anyone. This [new album] developed into that, so there was a slightly different approach. So it's an extension of that idea. It is interesting because it's always a different feel when I play drums and bass. I sort of know where the musicians are going because they're me!

PASTE: A lot of people say John Lennon's death jolted you to make the album that came just after McCartney II one that's widely regarded as one of your best post-Beatles albums, Tug of War. Is that true? And if so what jolted the brilliance of Flowers in the Dirt and Flaming Pie?

PAUL: I think that must have had a lot to do with it. It put me in a different place, obviously. It's one of those things. Like everyone else, you couldn't not think about it, no matter how hard you tried. It was a fact, and no matter how much you wanted to change it, you couldn't.

I'm never very conscious about what affects me. I'm not a great analyst of my stuff. It's only when someone asks a question like this. You know, Peter Ustinov used to say he loved to do interviews, because it helped him know what he was thinking. It is a bit like going to a psychiatrist. 'Did John's death... have an effect on my writing?' I'm sure it did. But I wasn't very conscious of it.

I did a song "Here Today," and that was very consciously thinking about John. That was kind of a conversation with John. I think the emotional depth of "Tug of War," the song itself, I'm sure it was related to John's death. [But] I didn't go, "Right, I'm going to sit down and write about this tragedy, and that's how this album will feel."

As for Flowers and Flaming Pie, who knows? I never know. I'd have to say in the case of those two working with Elvis Costello-that had a lot to do with Flowers in the Dirt. That was a great time for me, and I'd have to credit him for that. It was sort of a reawakening. And Jeff Lynne on Flaming Pie-I was working very closely with Jeff on that. That's very much part of it. If you're working with someone good, that really helps. Being with them and working with them put me in a better mind.

PASTE: Were you familiar with the work Nigel had done with Travis, Beck and Radiohead before he worked with you?

PAUL: I had the Radiohead albums. I knew Travis a bit from a show I did with them and the guys sent me The Invisible Band, so I knew those albums. And I'd heard some of the Beck stuff on radio and inquired as to who had made that record. I found out the factor in common was Nigel-and he's very common, believe me (laughs).

I think Radiohead is a great band, but the thing that struck me the most in the context of what I wanted to do with this record was the sound. I thought, 'this really sounds good. The instruments sound great. They're presented perfectly. There's not any gimmickry.' It sounds new, but when you examine it, it's actually pretty straightforward. Nigel's production style, I realized, was pretty straightforward.

Once I started talking to him I realized he'd come up as an engineer, so he was actually the guy who got the sounds on the deck, as well as being the production head, so that was pretty exciting to me, because I'm impressed if someone gets a great drum sound. It's not easy. We used to have great engineers with The Beatles, but if we ever worked with engineers we weren't familiar with, Ringo would set up a great sound on the drums and you'd go in the control room and it wouldn't sound anywhere near as impressive and you'd think, "what happened down that wire, between the drum kit and the control room?" A great engineer will make them sound even better. And not everyone can do that, so when I first heard his drum sound that he got, I thought, "OK, OK, this cat's good!"

PASTE: Did you ever listen to John, George or Ringo's solo records and think 'I wonder what that would've sounded like had it been a Beatles album?'

PAUL: Oh yeah. Of course. I think we all used to do that, from talking to them; it was kind of a natural thing. I would listen to the bass playing particularly and think, "I could have done that." And I hate to say, but the bass player who played it probably thought that as well-a little bit intimidating. And guitarists who would work with me, you know, would have to be thinking of John and George.

PASTE: On Flaming Pie, there's a track called "Calico Skies" in which you pray that you'll never be called to carry the weapons you despise, yet in "Freedom," which you put on your next album Driving Rain, you say you will fight for freedom. Some people see a disconnect with that. Is there?

PAUL: "Freedom" was written post-9/11. Immediately post-9/11. And I wasn't talking of a military response. I meant it like it's civil rights. I will fight for the right, I meant. I'll argue, I'll shout, I'll complain, I'll vote. I don't mean I'll punch you in the face but unfortunately that kind of meaning did get a little hijacked. I think President Bush had a lot to do with that. He talks about freedom, but it's not the same kind of freedom I'm talking about.

Actually, it's so unfortunate because it's like I'm not sure I'm going to do that song on my new tour, but I'd love to because I know what it means. But there is this doubt now as to how it will be taken. Is this just supporting any future military effort in Britain or the U.S.? That, I think, clouds the original meaning. When you sing "we shall overcome," you don't mean "we will overpower."

PASTE: How do you feel about what's happened since 9/11? I know you were very moved by the event, having been in New York City at the time of the attacks and organizing a charity concert afterward.

PAUL: I'm not a great supporter of what's happened. Like a lot of people I wanted someone to blame because it was such a horrendous happening, 9/11. What would have been perfect was someone to just find the perpetrators, bring them to justice and that's that. Unfortunately, nobody's been able to find the perpetrator, so I felt it was a little like standing in the middle of the playground and swinging out at whoever was nearest. 'Right, he looks a bit like him. Let's get him!' And I think you have to be a little bit cynical that it was an oil country. Man, are we that hooked on fossil fuels? There's a lot of subtext to this that I'm just not comfortable with.

Having said that, I have a young second cousin who's serving out there. And so, you know, he's not to blame. And so I support him because I love him. He's a great kid doing a great job. And, God-he's as brave as they come. But it's a difficult call.

PASTE: On the new album's opening track, you claim there's a 'fine line between chaos and creation'-is that a comment on the current world situation?

PAUL: No. It isn't, really. Like most of my stuff, it's kind of general. It's directed to anyone who doesn't know the difference between recklessness and courage. And there's a lot of people who don't, but it's not any one particular person. I might start off seeing someone who's being reckless and the thought will occur to me, 'You think you're courageous jumping off a cliff, but it's actually quite reckless.' So the thought will come into my mind and it just gives me a theme for a song. Then I just follow the whole idea so it's really an idea rather than a person. If you don't know the difference between chaos and creation or recklessness and courage, you're in trouble. It's really trying to suggest to people to be careful. Choose wisely.

The nice thing about songs is you can apply them to anything. If you play that song over a film of political leaders, that's exactly what it will seem like. If you play that song over a bunch of people who enjoy extreme sports, that will also apply. If you apply it to people who strap on wings and jump off bridges it applies to that. I like that. I like the fact that I write stuff that you can extract your own meaning [from]. It means that a lot of people get something from it, but not necessarily the same meaning.

PASTE: George Harrison passed away in 2002. I know it might be private, but how did his death affect you personally, and how did it affect your music?

PAUL: It is private but George's passing saddened us all, especially those of us who knew him for a long time. In my case, I knew him longer than any of the other Beatles because he was just the little guy who used to get on my bus the stop after me. What I find happens is, I stop and think, 'oh gosh ... from that day when he first got on my bus to everything we went through, to his passing, it's a complete cycle.' And unfortunately, it's a cycle that's ended, in this world, anyway. And it's very saddening.

His last moments were very George. Very sad, because obviously he was very ill, but true to form he still had his sense of humor. He was a funny guy, it was all still there. And, of course, he had huge spiritual beliefs, so I think that really helped him. It's sad not to have him here, [to] not be able to ring him, to be able to call him up. It's sad to know I'm not going to be able to walk into the same room as him, but at the same time, to looking back at our memories-my memories of him-it's just so warm and emotional. The time we hitchhiked to Wales together, the times we'd sit in cafes playing the jukebox together, the time we played Shea Stadium together.

PASTE: From Shea Stadium to Sgt. Pepper, you've accomplished much. Is there anything you haven't done that you'd like to?

PAUL: There's lots. I can never think of it to lay it out. At the moment I'm just finishing up something I'll record next year, which is a choral piece, and that's quite a lengthy piece-like 45 minutes. There's a lot of stuff like that. I've got an idea for a guitar concerto-another orchestral thing. But I don't know when I'm ever going to find time for all of this.

PASTE: What would you like your legacy to be?

PAUL: I'd like people to think I was sensational. And that I was a damn good bass player and that I was a damn good singer and a damn good writer, and I'd like them to wrap that all up in a little ball and swallow it.

It was the first time the ex-Beatle had played the raucous anthem since roughly 1968, when drummer Ringo Starr ad-libbed the most famous workplace complaint in recorded rock 'n' roll history: "I got blisters on my fingers!"

So does Laboriel get blisters on his fingers?

"He certainly does - and other places, too," McCartney said in a 20-minute phone interview before a show in Chicago. "It's one of those (songs) I just go for. As the tour goes on you kind of get used to it, but coming out of the starting blocks, it's pretty hard."

"I know exactly where I got it from," he said of "Helter Skelter." "I read in a British music paper something (The Who's Pete) Townshend had said: 'We've just recorded the heaviest, dirtiest, rawest, loudest song we've ever done.' And it kind of turned me on: 'Wow, heaviest, rawest, dirtiest - sounds good!' Without knowing to this day what song he was talking about, I thought, 'Yeah, I'm going to try to do that. I tried to write the heaviest, dirtiest, rawest song I could, and it turned out to be 'Helter Skelter.' Hence, Ringo's blisters."

Every new McCartney album and tour contains equal parts looking forward and looking back. In addition to "Helter Skelter," McCartney, who once avoided Beatles songs in concert, has loaded recent set lists with classics: "Let It Be," "Hey Jude," "Eleanor Rigby," "Yesterday" and the rest.

He also strategically slips in songs from his new "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard" album between the chestnuts, such as the sad, wispy "Jenny Wren" between "I Will" and "For No One."

"That's become one of the interesting things," McCartney says. "I can put together a set list that stretches through many decades and also comes right up to the minute."

Also looking both forward and back is "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard," a collaboration with Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, who challenged McCartney to dismiss his band and play more than two dozen instruments himself in the studio.

Some of the songs are more personal than anything McCartney has done in years: "A touch of wildness in her style haunts my memory," he sings in "A Certain Softness," a wistful recollection of an old friend, perhaps his wife Linda, who died in 1998. There's also the wounded "Riding to Vanity Fair," which questions a friend's betrayal: "And I was open to friendship/ But you didn't seem to have any to spare," McCartney sings, with unexpected bite in his voice.

McCartney has said the song is about spurned friendship in general - not, say, his acrimonious relationship with his late songwriting partner, John Lennon. (He recently has been trading public insults with Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono.)

He also says "Riding to Vanity Fair" was the hardest song to record on the new album. It seems Godrich was pushing McCartney to make it darker and more ominous - unusual territory for the man who wrote "Silly Love Songs."

"It got frustrating enough," McCartney recalled. "We'd sort of mentally come to blows over the song - 'Look, I just can't do this, I don't feel like doing it' - (and) I just kind of walked out.

"I came back the next day," he added. "We changed the tempo, the lyrics, the melody. We worked on it off and on right up to the last week of the album. Eventually we just went, 'Whoa, we've cracked it!' Suddenly the words all fit, the mood fit, and it's kind of an interesting piece. After that we started to understand each other a bit better. Sometimes you need that tension."

It helped to have a few strange instruments on hand.

"Nigel was playing some drums, and I'd say, 'Oh, yeah, I like thrashing around on the drums,' " said the longtime bassist. "And then he said, 'Will you play recorder?' I said, 'I don't know about "play," but I can wangle something out of it,' and, of course, he reminded me I played that stuff on 'Fool on the Hill.' There were affectionate nods to some of those things I'd done but haven't done in a long time. Eventually he said, 'You've got a fluegelhorn, haven't you?' He'd seen it in my equipment case."

All seats are at the top $176 price level, available at the arena box office, 11 metro Dahl's Food stores, at www.dahlstickets.com or by calling (866) 55-DAHLS.

As stage layout and the pool of tickets reserved by the artist are finalized in the days leading up a concert, it's routine for last-minute tickets to be released.

About 15,500 tickets were sold in a little over an hour on April 25 for McCartney's concert in Des Moines.

More than 80 percent of them were purchased online - a sign that fans who camp out for nights in advance to secure a prime spot in line are a dying breed, replaced by Internet geeks with high-speed hookups.

But some fans did line up for tickets, including Jeff Bappe, 30, of Ames who was No. 1 in line that day.

Bappe was a high school freshman in 1990 when McCartney performed at Cyclone (now Jack Trice) Stadium in Ames. The young Beatlemaniac had to play a baseball game instead of attend the concert that night in July, and just as Bappe was walking off the diamond he could hear McCartney's band fire up for the first song. It was that twinge of teenage regret that inspired Bappe to line up at 5:30 a.m. Saturday morning and camp out for two nights in the cold.

Erica Hegstrom of Bouton, who was second in line and walked away from the box office with a smile and two seats in the eighth row, said, "These last four hours have been the worst."

The singer's relationship with Klein deteriorated towards the end of the band's reign, and McCartney started getting signs he had to break away.

He says, "I used to have dreams in which Allen Klein was an evil dentist.

"That was a bad sign. I just wanted to be as far away from Apple as was possible."

The Wells Fargo Arena is urging ticket holders to get to the sold out Paul McCartney show early today. The show is slated to start at 8 p.m. sharp, and the doors open 90 minutes beforehand.

"This is the most anticipated concert in Wells Fargo Arena's brief history, and we want to make sure everyone has a truly memorable experience. Therefore, we want everyone to arrive earlier than usual, enjoy something to eat and drink from our concession stands or at our restaurant and be in their seats in time for the start of the performance," said Global Spectrum's Andy Long, general manager of Wells Fargo Arena, in a statement.

The McCartney concert is expected to be nearly three hours long. The playlist is slated to include tunes the Beatles, from the Wings and tracks off his latest release, Chaos & Creation In The Backyard, according to the news release.

Sir Paul signs a bus load of guitars - autographed Epiphone Texans to benefit Adopt-A-Minefield

Legendary musician Sir Paul McCartney recently spent time aboard the Gibson Guitar tour bus in Miami, Florida. Aboard the bus, he personally autographed 36 McCartney Signature Epiphone Texan guitars which will be sold for the benefit of the Adopt-A-Minefield charity which Sir Paul and his wife Heather Mills McCartney are patrons. Each autographed Epiphone guitar will be featured throughout McCartney's current U.S. tour.

A few decades ago, when a handful of designers controlled the direction of fashion, getting the message was as simple as looking at the clothes. Now there are more than 500 designers in New York, Milan and Paris alone, with as many different voices and stories to sell. It's a lot to sort through, even for the professionals. No wonder more people know Stella McCartney as the daughter of a Beatle than as a fashion designer. And those who know her work still may have difficulty, even after nine seasons, describing what her clothes are about.

"The name recognition is there for me, but people don't always know what I do," Ms. McCartney said candidly last week. "When you're caught up in the industry and all the glamour and parties, you assume that everyone knows what you do, but they don't, really."

Ms. McCartney is famous. That was enough for H&M, the Swedish retailer of fast fashion, to enlist her to design a one-time collection, which will arrive in 400 stores on Nov. 10. Clearly H&M hopes to repeat the success of a similar promotion with Karl Lagerfeld last year.

That event was a retail phenomenon, with lines forming outside stores in New York and throughout Europe and chaotic shopping scenes on the day the clothes arrived. But those customers knew very well that Karl Lagerfeld has designed expensive clothes for some 50 years, including Chanel and Fendi; they regarded the H&M collection as a deeply discounted sample sale.

After succeeding Mr. Lagerfeld as the designer at Chloé in 1997, Ms. McCartney started her own line with the Gucci Group in 2001. Her first collection was roundly drubbed, leading to industry sniping that Phoebe Philo, her assistant at Chloé who succeeded her, had done the heavy lifting.

Since then Ms. McCartney's shows have been uneven. She is perhaps more famous for browbeating Madonna out of wearing a fur coat and for her public disapproval of the marriage of her father, Paul McCartney, to Heather Mills. Mr. Lagerfeld, who has tangled with Ms. McCartney in the past over his fur designs, once dismissed her as "a T-shirt designer."

Ms. McCartney has since been the subject of complimentary comments by Mr. Lagerfeld after she demonstrated a more assertive point of view in her recent collections. This spring's gauzy white dresses trailing with ribbons and this fall's chunky sweaters that droop to the knees had waiting lists nearly as long at her store in the meatpacking district.

There is a cult of Stella, young women who relate to her rock-chick T-shirts worn under tailored pantsuits in men's wear fabric. Part of the appeal of those designs is that they are not widely recognized outside the fashion circuit.

"Stella is like the best girlfriend you imagine yourself to have," said Kristina O'Neill, the fashion features director of Harper's Bazaar. "That translates into the clothes. She put out a trademark and stuck to it: her skinny jeans, her blouson jackets, the wash-and-go silk dresses and dusty palette. Every season she goes back to her touchstones and then pushes further."

Whether lightning will strike twice for H&M is as much a gamble for Ms. McCartney as it is for the retailer. Robert Polet, who joined Gucci Group as chief executive last year after the tumultuous departures of Domenico De Sole and Tom Ford, set a profitability goal of 2007 for the company's smaller brands, which also include Balenciaga and Alexander McQueen. Ms. McCartney has been given a two-year deadline to turn a profit on her $39 million business, which has been growing quickly but operating at a loss because of expensive store openings in London, New York and Los Angeles. Luxury goods analysts have added pressure by recommending that those brands be sold off, as a report from HSBC suggested this spring, to focus on the much larger Gucci brand.

A reliable way to help achieve profitability is selective licensing. In one such license Ms. McCartney began designing sports apparel for Adidas. Now, with her H&M deal, she is approaching Lagerfeld territory in terms of prolificacy - and with valid motivation.

Some designers argue that designing for the masses, even on a limited scale or for a one-time event, dilutes the value of their signature brands. But that thinking seems so 1990's. Fashion today is one big exercise in celebrity marketing, and Ms. McCartney is using her name to get ahead.

The reported $1 million fee she received from H&M is going toward the bottom line of her company, and the multimillion-dollar advertising campaign H&M is financing to promote the collection will increase her exposure around the world. (Margareta van den Bosch, the head of design at H&M, would not discuss the company's payment to Ms. McCartney.)

"I would be lying if I didn't say this helped financially," Ms. McCartney said. "But I would never jeopardize my brand for any amount of money. We're asked to do things on a regular basis, and the majority of them have been turned down."

Little surprise, then, that Ms. McCartney is enthusiastic about promoting her work for H&M.

"The days of elitism in fashion are over," she said, recounting how customers had told her over the years that they would love to buy her clothes, if only they could afford them. Her chunky sweaters typically sell for about $1,000, and her narrow suits can cost thousands.

"It is a misconception of the luxury goods industry that the top end of ready-to-wear is not always accessible," she said. "I want people to understand what I do, instead of only seeing something in a glossy magazine."

As she talks about her work for Adidas - McCartney-esque in its loose sweatshirts with drawstrings at the neck and hem and jodhpurlike sweatpants configured with zippers at the ankles - she can sound as if she is the first designer to conceive of workout clothes with a stylish bent.

"I used to think there must be some technical reason why women's sports clothes were always pink and baby blue, as if they deflect heat or keep the sweat out," she said. The Adidas pieces are expensive for workout wear, but they have done so well since their introduction this spring that distribution has been expanded in Europe and Asia.

She described the H&M clothes as "the best of Stella McCartney," about 40 looks taken from her past collections and recreated at a fraction of the cost with basic fabrics and production in Romania. Her involvement lasted less than a week: two days selecting the designs and talking about fabrics and trims, maybe a day to work out the color scheme, and three fittings over two days. What is remarkable is that the samples, when they were shown in H&M's New York showroom last week and on a runway at a party in London on Tuesday, look very much like Stella McCartney.

An elongated double-zip chunky knit cardigan, with wide ribbing at the hem so that it can be scrunched up as a sweater or worn long as a short dress, will cost $79.90; a baggy brown trench coat with pink mesh lining is $69.90; skinny jeans are $69.90. A cropped gray plaid blazer with yellow trim on the pockets and at the buttonhole is $129, and matching skinny pants are $59.90.

There are also several T-shirts in the collection printed with graphic line drawings and embellished with chains, aged rhinestones and embroidery, a motif she uses in her signature line and on Adidas sweatshirts.

For Ms. McCartney there is more riding on such brand expansions than competitive bragging rights with Mr. Lagerfeld, should the introduction of her H&M line induce a frenzy similar to his. "If not, I'll be gutted, as they say in England," she said.

Inadvertently the line received considerable attention when the model Kate Moss, who had been photographed for an H&M advertising campaign, became the subject of an investigation for alleged drug use last month. H&M's awkward handling of the matter, first standing behind Ms. Moss, then abruptly dumping her from the campaign, reflected concerns among fashion companies that customers would be offended.

Ms. McCartney said she did not expect the controversy to affect the demand for her line. But even the complete absence of a model in an H&M ad that appeared in the latest issue of Paper magazine was fodder for followers of the Moss affair. (On Tuesday H&M announced that the model Mariacarla Boscono will appear in its television ads.) Ms. McCartney was typically outspoken on the subject.

"A lot of that was unfair for Kate," she said. "I think the majority of people felt she was unfairly treated by the media. The general public is not as stupid as the media thinks they are."

H&M, long a lightning rod for controversy among designers who complain that fast fashion, or cheap chic, has a negative impact on luxury sales, is beginning to resemble the retail version of designer Cliffs Notes. In a strange way that could benefit Ms. McCartney. Four years is not very long to develop a signature look, and her small collection for the store may be a clearer statement about her perspective on fashion than the collective work she has been selling in her own stores.

Mr. Lagerfeld's H&M collection was so in tune with his look that some customers bought his high-collar shirts, skinny ties, scrunched jeans and severe black jackets so they could dress as him this Halloween.

John Lennon's widow attacked the former Beatle for simple lyrics, saying her husband would not rhyme June with spoon.

But, in the little-known song "Mr. Hyde's Gone," Lennon wrote: "Won't be back till next full moon, so we can bill and spoon in June and croon."

Ono, 72, re-ignited her feud with Macca at last week's Q awards.

She said John complained "they always cover Paul's songs and never mine." She'd reassure him that "it's not June with spoon you write."

Macca, 63, hit back saying she is "not the brightest of buttons."

Today my new CD, "Mondo Magneto," will be released on CD Baby.com. Now you have a great online marketplace to find new music such as mine.

When you visit the site, there is a place where you can write reviews, comments and cryptic messages to your ancestors if you wish. Join me there and please...
Enjoy!

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/brianray

All the best,
Brian

CLICK COVER TO ORDER!

"MONDO MAGNETO" - A ROCK RECORD THAT POPS

When Brian Ray decided to record his first solo CD, he didn't have to look far for a supporting cast. The award winning songwriter for Smokey Robinson, guitarist and musical director for Etta James, now on tour as guitarist and bassist with Paul McCartney simply asked some of his mentors and friends to help him out.

When he asked the legendary blues singer Etta James if she would sing with him on the CD her answer was simple - and immediate - "I'll do anything for Brian." Not surprising considering the bond the two had developed over the years Brian had spent as her musical director and guitarist. "She's family to me, really," he explains. The rest of the players were a few more of his best friends - Scott Shriner from Weezer, Davey Faragher from Elvis Costello's band, Abe Laboriel, Jr., Wix Wickens and Rusty Anderson from Paul McCartney's band all appear on the album with Brian. The collaborators? Oliver Lieber, Adam Cohen, Tonio K.

The resulting album, Mondo Magneto, is filled with fresh, stylish songs, lyrics and catchy melodies that stay with you long after your first listening. It's a pop record that rocks and a rock record with pop radio sensibility. "What was really fun for me about making this album," Brian explains, "was that every person involved came into the studio and brought their own personality to the sessions. And that shows on the CD."

"Mondo Magneto" is available now on Whooray Records and at cdbaby.com

'Jenny Wren' is the second single to be taken from Paul McCartney's new highly acclaimed album 'Chaos And Creation In The Backyard'. Fast becoming a live favourite on Paul's 37-date sell-out 'US' tour of North America and Canada, 'Jenny Wren' is classic Paul McCartney. The press have described 'Jenny Wren' as, "his most poignant and affecting song in years" and "endearing and unexpectedly affecting."

'Jenny Wren' is both a soulful and mournful song with a simple and incredibly effective arrangement. It's difficult not to be moved by the heart tugging melody. It's an acoustic track in the style of much loved McCartney songs 'Mother Nature's Son', 'Calico Sky' and 'Blackbird'. McCartney in fact describes the track as "daughter of blackbird."

"I was in Los Angeles and I was in one of those moods. I wanted to go and play my guitar in the great outdoors. So I went into a spot in one of the canyons there, lovely nature spot, getting away from all the traffic and sat down and started playing. It's just that kind of genre that I love and I just had a lot of fun, wrote the basis of it there outdoors in the canyon, lovely day, went back home that night to where we were staying and sat around while dinner was getting made and made it up. But it's funny actually I was talking to someone about how much I love Dickens. And this person said 'Ah, Jenny Wren, our mutual friend,' which is this character in the Dickens book Our Mutual Friend. She is this really cool little girl who's sort of magical, who sees the good in things and I think subconsciously that reminded me that's where I got it from. But to me it was just something to do with Blackbird. A Wren is one of my favourite birds ­ a little English bird, the smallest English bird and I always feel very privileged to see a wren. So it's a combination of all of that."

In a rock n' roll first 'Jenny Wren' features a duduk solo. The duduk, an Armenian wind instrument, is one of the oldest wind instruments in the world.

'Chaos And Creation In The Backyard' was released in September to global critical acclaim. Upon its release it went straight into the Top 10 of the album charts in over 14 different countries across the world, including the UK and the US. It's Paul's 20th studio album since leaving The Beatles and was produced by Nigel Godrich. 'Chaos And Creation In The Backyard' is a return to the basics for McCartney. The album successfully fuses his undeniable song writing talents with his unparalleled musicianship. In fact, McCartney is credited with playing the majority of the instruments on the album, which is somewhat reminiscent of "McCartney" (1970) when he was credited with playing all of the instruments. They include the drums, guitar, bass, keyboards, as well as many of the less traditional instruments such as block flute, harmonium and flugelhorn.

Paul McCartney is currently on his fastest selling tour ever of the US. He plays 37 shows over three months. Winning rave reviews the shows have attracted high profile fans such as Tony Bennett, Steve Buscemi, Oasis and Lenny Kravitz. By the end of November Paul will have played to over half a million people across America.

'Chaos And Creation In The Backyard' is available in all record stores across the UK.

The "Jenny Wren" CD single features THREE NEW SONGS!

1) "Jenny Wren"  2) "I Want You To Fly"  3) "This Loving Game"  4) "Summer of 59"

CLICK TO ORDER CD single if you are ordering from the US (IMPORT)

CLICK TO ORDER CD single if you are ordering from the UK

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October 24, 2005 -- From Brian Ray

Hey friends!!!

What the heck is happenin'?

Well, I'm in the fabulous city of NY.. I was lucky enough to snag a few tix to see Cream play tonight at MSG!!

Yahoooooo! wonder what they'll open with? Strange Brew, peradventure?

We flew with Paul in the cover of night from our show in Milwaukee, to NYC from where I write to you at this moment.. Wow, Columbus is a town that knows how to rock!! we went out to "M" for dinner, then drinks.. Too cool, great people there.. we stayed til the end of the night.. Then some lovely locals offered Abe and I a ride back to the Hotel when our cab took too long.. "Always relying on the kindness of strangers!".. Thanks again, Megan and Heidi!

Milwaukee?? ok... you guys are the effin' kings of noise.

We had a very sleepy Sunday there in the rain, the streets were empty.... ZZZZZzzzz ZZZzzzz... Then the crowd surprised us with a crazy, great night .. Thanks, gang!

Chicago? what can I say.... Nice time there.. Wix and I went to the park and saw the new Frank Geary Amphitheater.. So amazing.. that would be a great place to play in the spring, right?? no, don't start rumours.. I'm jes' sayin'!!!

oh yeah... Some old geezers in the security departments at a few of the last shows have taken fan's signs away from them before the shows, leaving me with nothing to read while playing.. psshhhht!!!!

Well, lets' just say... THAT will not be happening ever again on THIS tour.. who loves ya, baby?

I'm Audi 2000..
[oh, that's O.G. gangsta for, "I'm out!"]

Brian

McCartney: Behind the legend

Paul McCartney winces every time he releases a new album or takes to the stage.

He steels himself for the criticism to come.

He may be a Beatle, but he says he's not "impervious" to slams - using one of many so-very-English words he's fond of dropping into conversation.

"Do you like that word, 'impervious'?" he asked.

McCartney was on the phone from the United Center in Chicago Wednesday night, shortly before the second concert of his two-night stand in the Windy City, and a week before his debut appearance on stage in Des Moines - with or without the Beatles.

It's a bit of a shock to hear that, at age 63, after selling 168.5 million Beatles albums and 14 million more under his own name in the United States alone, he can still be insecure about his own music.

His 2002 trek across America raked in more than $113 million, and the 37 dates on his current " US " arena tour sold out in an eye blink.

His new solo album in stores for the last month, "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard ," is his 20th post-Beatles studio album, and it showcases his chops on a wide variety of instruments, from his signature Hofner bass to cello, organ and Autoharp.

He's Macca. Sir Paul.

Shouldn't he be bulletproof, impervious by now to the slings and arrows cast by lesser mortals?

"I would think I would be," McCartney said in his familiar Liverpudlian lilt, "but you're not. You still, if you're lucky, you've still got a heart, you know, and it beats in the same way as it used to."

He's garnered some of his best reviews in years for the new album, but the arrows still do fly. The Chicago Tribune frowned upon McCartney and his four-piece band in an Oct. 18 performance as "lackluster."

"You get a little bit of a thicker skin, but you don't want to develop one so thick that you're impervious to criticism," McCartney said.

Maybe it's precisely his perviousness, that sort of comforting vulnerability that holds the key to McCartney's lasting, universal appeal as caretaker of the Beatles legacy. The more acerbic John Lennon was tragically gunned down in 1980. The more reclusive George Harrison succumbed to cancer in 2001. Ringo Starr always has seemed a jolly good chap, but he's not exactly packing arenas to the tune of "Yellow Submarine" or "Octopus' Garden."

McCartney, who retains his boyish grin despite sagging cheeks and dyed hair, more than ever seems willing to hold our collective hand, make it better, help us just let it be.

In other words, America has no better shoulder to cry on than McCartney's. The "cute Beatle" has matured into something like our national music-therapist laureate. McCartney's finest songs, particularly "Hey Jude" and "Let It Be," have evolved into nothing less than secular hymns.

As one of his two guitarists on tour, Brian Ray, put it, "The guy just keeps showing up when America needs him."

Beatlemania

As has been documented ad nauseam, American Beatlemania erupted in February 1964 courtesy of "I Want to Hold Your Hand," cheering up the nation after President Kennedy's assassination the previous November.

"Fate plays funny tricks, you know," McCartney said in Wednesday's interview. "He was a president who at the time was much loved by the world, and we were as horrified as many Americans were. . . . We felt it quite keenly, so I guess we could relate to the American people in that way."

Nearly 40 years later, fate struck again when McCartney and his second wife, Heather Mills McCartney, were grounded on the runway at Kennedy Airport in New York the morning of 9/11. They ended up helping to organize a charity concert.

"We were kind of again sharing this experience with the American people in a very direct way," McCartney said. "So when we put together 'The Concert for New York,' it was something that was very serious from our point of view, and then our tour after that, it really kicked this band into being a band. We've continued on that same pipe, I kind of think."

"If someone's gotta be there to help, I'm glad it's us, you know."

McCartney has indeed kept busy in recent years with his relatively young but now road-tested band.

He travels with a pair of guitarists from California, Rusty Anderson and Brian Ray (who doubles on bass, enabling McCartney to switch instruments). Drummer Abe Laboriel Jr. has an all-star resume to rival any sideman. Paul " Wix " Wickens fleshes out arrangements with keyboards.

This neo-fab five provided the family-friendly halftime entertainment at the Super Bowl in January, to help save face after last year's embarrassing Nipplegate.

They participated in this summer's "Live 8" African charity concerts.

They have performed in front of as many as 500,000 fans, at the Coliseum in Rome.

"It feels like a comfortable pair of jeans," Anderson said of the band. "It makes the feel of the music great. The trust factor is very high."

"(McCartney) hasn't lowered the key of a single song that we play, and he doesn't cheat on the melodies," Ray added. "Name me one other artist 40 years later who hasn't."
Inspiration

The Beatles defined how all rock bands henceforth were supposed to sound, dress, push the creative envelope - even how to bicker and break up.

That McCartney still wields the voice and stamina to carry fans back down his long and winding road without sounding like an over-the-hill nostalgia act is a key to his massive success on tour.

Whenever Des Moines native Linda Robbins (Congrats to Linda!) hears McCartney sing "Let It Be" in concert, she's transported back to the 1960s, when she was the "first student at Goodrell Junior High School to get a Beatles haircut - that's how nuts I was," she said.

Robbins, 54, is now an accountant in Boulder, Colo., who will return to Iowa Thursday for McCartney's concert - adding one more to her tally of more than 30 Macca shows thus far, two of them in Liverpool. She'll gather in Des Moines with a cluster of about 15 other fans who have networked through the forums on McCartney's official Web site (www.paulmccartney.com).

Robbins is one of millions of baby boomers who trace their Beatlemania back to the band's first performance on "The Ed Sullivan Show."

"When I saw Paul singing 'Till There Was You,' I fell. Like any 12-year-old I was totally in love, and it has continued to this day," she said.

Robbins has gone so far as to engrave the lyrics to "Let It Be" on the urn that one day will hold her ashes - something she did several years ago while battling a serious illness.

Contrast Robbins' first-generation Beatlemania with Patrick Fleming of Sibley, Ia., whose trigger was "seeing (the Matthew Broderick character) Ferris Bueller sing 'Twist and Shout' " in 1986 in the movie theater when he was still in elementary school.

"I was just blown away and thought it was the greatest song ever made," Fleming said.

Fleming, now 25, fronts the Ames pop band Poison Control Center and still returns to the Beatles and McCartney time and time again for musical inspiration.

"Just everything, from songwriting structures to trying to use seventh chords instead of just regular major chords," he said. "They were just the most experimental. It seems like music in the '60s didn't really have rules . . . and they seemed to be, for sure, the forerunners of that."

McCartney said that he wasn't sure what initially sparked his experimentalism.

"One of the big things on all the records that I've made, I'm always trying to not get bored," he said. "If you just use all the same instruments all the time it gets a little bit more difficult, so from the early days of the Beatles we would say to Ringo, 'Come on, man, you used that snare drum on the last song. Could we hear the packing case or something?' "

McCartney gets pegged as the purveyor of "Silly Love Songs," but through the years he has simultaneously released more experimental albums under such pseudonyms as the Fireman, "just to get a bit of freedom" and dabble in other genres such as electronica. "When you're making a record it's like you're under cover and nobody cares, there's only you and the producer and the guys involved," he said. "Once it kind of comes out and it has my name on it, suddenly I feel like I'm sittin' in exam, you know, and it's an uncomfortable feeling for me."

More proof that this former Beatle isn't impervious.

Vegetarian

It's all too easy to cast McCartney as the larger-than-life Beatle who exists only onstage or as a cultural icon for millions.

But he still attends to the details. On his current tour he even lent his support to a local cause in Chicago, expressing his concern over the welfare of elephants and other animals at Lincoln Park Zoo. McCartney has been a vegetarian for the past 30 years and a vocal supporter of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

His views on animal rights aren't exactly reflected in Iowa, the No. 1 pork producer in the nation, where 16.5 million hogs are slaughtered each year.

"I can walk past any animal with a clear conscience and kind of respect the animal as a fellow creature sharing this planet,"

McCartney said. "I think it possibly is the future, too. As the population explodes . . . you're going to need to think of more economic ways to feed people. . . . My philosophy would say you eat the sort of plants instead of passing them through an animal and then eating the animal."

Besides McCartney the staunch vegetarian, there's also McCartney the businessman. His songs will outlive him, and the decisions he makes in the next several years will in large part determine how they do so. The Beatles' catalog, for instance, isn't yet available on iTunes, the largest-volume online retailer for digital songs.

"For years now they've been trying to get us on iTunes, but they're offering too little," McCartney said. "With anybody else you might accept, but this is the Beatles, you know, so we've got to get a deal that works for the future. . . . I'd love my new album to be on (iTunes), but we're in kind of a conflict with the people, and it's just basically 'cause they're being cheesy, that's all."

If you think McCartney sounds a little testy about iTunes, that subject takes a back seat to Yoko Ono. Yes, John Lennon's widow and McCartney seem to have renewed their on-again, off-again feud over all things Beatles.

Ono reportedly launched the first broadside a couple weeks ago while accepting an award for Lennon in London. During the acceptance speech, Ono talked about her late husband's insecurities over how his songwriting measured up against McCartney's, and she described how she would reassure him.

"I said, 'You're a good songwriter, it's not 'June with Spoon' that you write,' " Ono was quoted as saying.

McCartney responded in one interview by calling Ono "not the brightest button."

"There's plenty more where that came from," he said from Chicago, "but I'm just trying to reserve a dignified silence on this one, because I guess I had a respect for John. . . . I think she does say some pretty funny things, though. . . . It's like, come off it, you know? What, you're telling me 'Eleanor Rigby' and 'Let It Be' and 'Hey Jude' and countless others are 'moon and June' songs? I think not.

"There you go. Now move back to my dignified silence."

McCartney: definitely not impervious, but refreshingly human behind the Beatle legend.

Ben Okuly thought he was ready to propose to his girlfriend, but first he needed Paul McCartney's approval.

Okuly was attending one of former Beatle's concerts in suburban Detroit when he held up a sign that caught the McCartney's eye: "CAN BEN ASK MELISSA TO MARRY HIM?"

During the concert last week, McCartney spotted it and read it out loud, The Detroit News reported Friday.

"Well, go on, get down on your knees and ask her, Ben!" Sir Paul ordered. Ben did, and Melissa said yes."

"Well, that's a first for me," McCartney quipped of the in-concert engagement. "And I hope it's a last for you, Ben."

Ben, a 26-year-old library employee, hatched the plan when he and his girlfriend, Melissa Steele, were driving from Ohio to the concert. "I was trying to think of a way to do this and make it a memorable occasion, really special," he said.

Later in the concert, McCartney even pointed to the couple to sing their own line of "Hey Jude" when he had different sections of the arena sing the song to him.

"To have Paul McCartney be there and start the proposal, I really don't have words to describe what that was like," Melissa, who works in a hospital emergency room, told The Detroit News for a story published Friday.

Read more details of the story and the Detroit concert - CLICK HERE

Vegetarian vroom vroom: It should come as no surprise that former Beatle Paul McCartney, who was here playing the United Center, got involved in a little Chicago politics while in town.

Translation: McCartney sent a letter to the City Council urging it to adopt Ald. Joe Moore's (49th) proposed foie gras ban. In case you are wondering, foie gras is goose liver; what you get when you stuff a goose senseless, make it so fat it can't run away from hungry rats, and must spend life in corpulent misery.

Background: McCartney is a longtime vegetarian and animal rights activist whose late wife, Linda, launched a line of frozen vegetarian meals.

Sneed hears ex-Beatle Paul McCartney was in desperate need of nail repair en route to his concert at the United Center Tuesday night.

The solution: An urgent call to the concierge at the Four Seasons hotel led McCartney to send for an acrylic specialist from Fingers & Toes Nail Spa . . . who jumped aboard McCartney's bus to the concert just in time to repair the middle finger nail on his right hand. The acrylic angel got a kiss on the cheek for her efforts. Nice.

STEVE INSKEEP, host:

Listen to Paul McCartney's latest recording, and you hear sounds a lot like the Paul McCartney you've heard for decades.

(Soundbite of song)

Mr. PAUL McCARTNEY: (Singing) I've been climbing up a slowly burning rope, but the flame is getting low.

INSKEEP: Listen to a little more, and you'll hear songs that seem different.

(Soundbite of "How Kind Of You")

Mr. McCARTNEY: (Singing) The thoughtfulness you showed has made a difference in my life.

INSKEEP: Paul McCartney has been unusually open and generous in describing the way that album was made. He says he invited in a producer who was not even born when The Beatles broke up, and that producer sharply criticized some of the tunes McCartney brought into the studio. For the man widely considered the most successful songwriter ever, it was a little hard to take.

Mr. McCARTNEY: You know, it was like being in school, I mean, your paper marked. It's so easy for me to say, `Look, I'm senior, I've got the senior position. I've got the status. I've done more than you're ever going to do.' But I thought, well, you know, there's no point in me working with him if I'm not going to listen to him.

(Soundbite of song)

Mr. McCARTNEY: (Singing) There is a fine line when your decision makes a difference. Get it wrong, you'd be making a big mistake.

INSKEEP: The album is called "Chaos and Creation in the Back Yard." McCartney talked about it just before a concert in Washington. He met his guests in a dressing room fancied up with Asian fabrics. And he gave a hint of the irony that sometimes slips into his lyrics. `Welcome to the Casbah,' he said.

(Soundbite of guitar)

INSKEEP: He sometimes fiddles with an out-of-tune guitar as he talked about the way he and that producer settled with McCartney's songs.

Mr. McCARTNEY: There's one song on the album that's called "Riding To Vanity Fair," which is the best example of this collaborative process, because I brought it in quite perky, quite fast, and he didn't really like it. It was about rejection of friendship, quite intense for it to be perky. Didn't suit it.

INSKEEP: Could I get you to demonstrate a few bars...

Mr. McCARTNEY: Yeah.

INSKEEP: ...of the difference?

Mr. McCARTNEY: Hang on. Yeah.

(Soundbite of guitar)

I think it was something like, you know, (singing) I bit my tongue

And we took it down to sort of...

(Soundbite of guitar)

much.

(Soundbite of song)

Mr. McCARTNEY: (Singing) I'd like to be so strong. I did my best. I used a gentle touch. I'd done it for so long.

INSKEEP: Paul McCartney is 63, on his way to 64. Just before he met us, he'd been on stage doing a sound-check for that night's concert. He'd played for a few dozen people as enthusiastically as if the arena was full. Back when he was recording his new songs, he was trying them out on an audience of one, that producer, Nigel Godrich.

Mr. NIGEL GODRICH (Producer): My job, from my perspective, is to make him make a record that I would want to listen to.

INSKEEP: Did you enjoy listening to his recent albums before this one?

Mr. GODRICH: No, not really.

INSKEEP: Godrich is better known for producing the likes of Radiohead.

(Soundbite of song)

Mr. McCARTNEY: (Singing) And I don't have time for you.

INSKEEP: He sides with some critics who thought that some of McCartney's recent work was not up to McCartney's own standards.

Mr. GODRICH: The problem is that you put people around him and they just wilt. What he needed was somebody just to remind him about the things that he's done, jog his memory a little bit or give him a little kick up the ass.

(Soundbite of "Chaos and Creation")

Mr. McCARTNEY: (Singing) Whatever's more important to be, that's the view that you've gotta see. There is a long way, between chaos and creation.

Mr. GODRICH: He was out there doing a piano take, and he made a mistake, and I made him work it into the song.

INSKEEP: If you can just tell us when you hear the thing that went wrong that became right.

(Soundbite of "Chaos and Creation")

Mr. McCARTNEY: (Singing) Everything is better when you come home and stay. Oooh.

Mr. GODRICH: There.

INSKEEP: It's that bass note, that low note.

Mr. GODRICH: Yeah. It's just got a nice--it's a chord with the changes.

INSKEEP: And that was a mistake the first time.

Mr. GODRICH: Yeah. It's my favorite moment in the song. I don't know. It suddenly--it makes you perk up your ears, you know.

(Soundbite of "Chaos and Creation")

INSKEEP: Was there an occasion where you had to say, `I wrote this song. I know what I meant and your suggestion is just wrong. And I've taken your other suggestions; I'm not going to take this one'?

Mr. McCARTNEY: Yeah. There did come a point when I thought, `Look, Nige, now I get to tell you, and I think that this is really good as it stands.' And he would then say, `OK.'

(Soundbite of song)

Mr. McCARTNEY: (Singing) How we spend our days casting love aside.

INSKEEP: Various music writers have both liked and disliked something else the two men agreed upon. They made sure that Paul McCartney's famous voice was right at the forefront of each recording.

Mr. McCARTNEY: I like to hear vocals. I'm a big fan of Nat "King" Cole and, you know, (singing) `When I fall in love.' He's right--he's in the room with you, you know.

INSKEEP: Very intimate.

Mr. McCARTNEY: It's 'cause you're very near the microphone like this, you know. There's not 20,000 people out there. If there's 20,000 people out there, you've got to get off the mike and, `Hey, how you doing!' So you know, I might write, you know, (singing quietly) `It's a fine between chaos and creation.' Or we go (singing loudly), `Fine between chaos and'--you just project more.

INSKEEP: Paul McCartney projected one of his new songs into our microphone...

(Soundbite of guitar)

INSKEEP: ...with that out-of-tune guitar.

Mr. McCARTNEY: OK. Let's try this.

(Singing) How kind of you to think of me, when I was out of sorts. It really meant a lot to be in someone else's thoughts, someone else's mind, someone else as kind as you.

So there you are. Pathetic rendition.

INSKEEP: (Laughs)

Mr. McCARTNEY: Cross-fade into the record, Ira(ph).

(Soundbite of laughter)

(Soundbite of song)

Mr. McCARTNEY: (Singing) I thought my time was up. I thought I'd never find...

INSKEEP: Cross-fade? Just for a moment, Paul McCartney was acting as a producer, producing us. To hear more of our interviews, as edited by our producer, go to npr.org.

NOTE: Obviously, Derogatis was not at the same Paul McCartney concert as the Macca Reporters. Reviews of the two shows (which were FABULOUS!!!) will be posted soon on this site. CLICK to read review of first Chicago concert.

McCartney's concert rests on his laurels

By Greg Kot
Tribune music critic

On his trip to the United Center in 2002, Paul McCartney let his audience have it right between the eyes. He had a young band and a terrific drummer in Abe Laboriel kicking his tail, and one sensed that McCartney was responding to them as much as to his fabled past. It was a thrilling concert.

But the songwriter's return to the same arena for the first of two sold-out shows Tuesday was a different story.

This time, it was a more self-satisfied McCartney who ambled onstage after 30 minutes of puffery: a deejay blasted remixed versions of the former Beatles bassist's hits, then a self-important video biography played on the big screens. Even when McCartney took the stage, the preening continued.

In '02, it was the music that spoke loudest, and the cheers were earned. On this night, the sense of urgency wasn't there. McCartney and his four-piece backing band played some wonderful music, but their performances were lackluster. Laboriel, the band's linchpin, played behind the beat instead of pushing it as he had in the past. This worked well on the mid-tempo soul numbers, especially "Let Me Roll It," but rockers such as "Jet" and "Back in the U.S.S.R." lagged.

McCartney was at his casual best when he played solo. His banter, though similar to previous tour stops, was ingratiating and conversational, his acoustic fingerpicking graceful. He described and then demonstrated how a classical Bach chord progression inspired the riff in "Blackbird." He dug back for an early pre-Beatles rockabilly number called "In Spite of All the Danger." From the elegant concision of the Beatles' "I Will" to the lovely meditation "Jenny Wren," he played the genial genius, the understated troubadour. Unexpected choices such as "Flaming Pie," a surging "Too Many People" and a shambling garage-rocker, "I've Got a Feeling," spackled the 37-song, 21/2 hour set. But "The Long and Winding Road" still sounded mawkish, particularly with the keyboard-triggered string arrangement. Why didn't McCartney perform the less ornate version he supposedly preferred, as heard on the recent "Let it Be Naked" album? And Meredith Wilson's "Till There Was You," which sounded cheesy when the Beatles performed it in the early '60s, has aged even less well.

McCartney offered plenty of hits spanning his Beatles and Wings careers, including uninspired takes on "Hey Jude," "Live and Let Die" and "Yesterday," and limited the choices from his latest album, "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard," to four songs. The audience ate it up. Fans who had paid as much as $250 plus service fees were clearly happy just to be in the same room with a legend. McCartney had nothing to prove, and for the most part, he played like it.

EMAIL:gregkot@aol.com

Music lives, through Paul McCartney

The man who is arguably the most famous musician on the planet had a lousy musical education in school.

"It was very bad," says Paul McCartney. "I don't think the teacher was interested remotely."

Growing up in working-class Liverpool, England, in the 1950s, he remembers, "we had a music class kind of once a week, but the guy used to just put on a record and leave us alone with the record. So I'm afraid that didn't do an awful lot. We turned it down and told jokes."

No wonder, then, that the former Beatle, who is in the thick of a sold-out U.S. tour, is promoting music education in schools. On Tuesday he kicks off a national campaign for Music Lives, his non-profit foundation.

At concert dates and online through musiclives.org, he is raising money by selling $40 pewter bracelets engraved with his signature. The entire $40 goes to children, McCartney says, in many cases covering the entire cost of putting a musical instrument into the hands of a child who would not otherwise be able to afford it.

The foundation is co-sponsored by Fidelity Investments, which is also co-sponsoring the tour. McCartney hopes to get kids excited about learning to play an instrument. "The thing that I always try and do is just to try and engage them - let them know what fun it is, how easy it is, how uplifting it is."

The effort comes as music programs in many cities fall victim to cash crunches and a national focus on math and reading. "School boards and other decision-makers are having to make some very hard choices," says Michael Blakeslee of the National Association for Music Education.

Though federal surveys show that about 90% of students get at least a minimal music education, only 43% get three or more classes a week.

In a telephone interview from Detroit, McCartney recalled that while his music education at school was "zero," he was lucky because his father played the piano and his childhood home was filled with music.

"He would point out things to me on the radio and stuff, you know, like the bass on a piece of music. He'd say, 'Hear that low noise? That's the bass.' So I was lucky that way."

Relatives shared their records. "Everyone would sing all the old songs. There was a lot of music around."

The man who would write Yesterday and Hey Jude still composes and plays by ear, without reading music. He actually took three cracks at formal piano lessons, once when he was still in primary school, but got "very bored with the five-finger exercises."

He tried again at age 16, "but then of course they took me back to the five-finger exercises again." By then he already had composed When I'm 64 and was playing in clubs with John Lennon and George Harrison.

Eventually he tried piano lessons a third time, at age 21. It was 1963.

"Again they took me back to the basics, and took me, really, too far back," he says, "because by then I'd written Eleanor Rigby."

How are WE today??

Wow.. Detroit.... YOU ROCK!!! I can't make up my mind which city

rocks harder. "MOTOWN!!!!.... I jes' can't quit yewwwww!!!" That's what I said when Paul introduced me in Detroit. Yes, inside humour from the band after a particularly funny film trailer we saw recently.

Never mind... whew!!

Ok, so.. we had 2 days off in the Hamptons after being in lovely Toronto.. It rained and rained but we had a blast. Paul and Heather took us out for bowling and dinner. We had way too much fun. It was Cosmic Bowling night and they played AC/DC all evening and we rocked that bowling hizzzzy! Wix had the best score, followed by yours truly.

Now I'm in Chicago for 4 days [look out!] and we love it here. A lot of the 'Back in the US' DVD was filmed and recorded here, back when we were a new band. We may have had only 5 shows total under our collective belts before we did Chicago (April 10-11, 2002).. So now we return to the scene of the crime to hit that shiz again. [What's up with the ghetto speak tonight?].

Oh, and my new CD was released to great fanfare and shrieks of joy and excellent exuberance on my site on tuesday!! We sold out of the first 50 [signed] copies in a few hours!! thanks to all of you, the coolest rockingest fans in this god forsaken land!

R_O_C_K!

Uhhhh.. and a BIG shout out to Philly!! awwww.. See, sometimes I skip a town in the blogosphere when it gets cloudy there and I can't see straight. I LOVED it .. Philadelphia is one killer city to play in. We met some great and fine fans and friends who gave us sweet gifts.. thank you!!
ok.. tired now... must sleep.. the poppies are making me ... ... ... .
zzzzz zzzzzz zzzzzz

XBrian

by Marianne Murciano (wife of Bob Sirott - both Chicago TV personalities)

"Just think how you'd feel if you got back on that plane knowing you missed an opportunity to see your idol, Paul McCartney, in person," my husband said.

And as he urged me to be assertive on our weekend getaway to Miami, I knew what I had to do. I strolled into the poolside terrace of our Key Biscayne hotel--the same hotel where Sir Paul and his entourage had been staying before kicking off his U.S. tour, which lands in Chicago this week.

I made the clandestine journey with my decoy, my 5-year-old daughter--on a mission to swim with Paul McCartney.

"Where are we going, Mommy?" my daughter asked, as if we had rehearsed, when we passed the bodyguard with the menacing glare.

"To the pool, baby," I said, clutching her hand naturally.

Alone (almost) with Paul

We soon arrived at the simple adult pool--no waterfalls, graded entrances or cool shapes, and empty save for an adult playing with a band of kids. The adult sported a young-looking, slim body and the same longish hair he made famous 40 years ago.

Paul McCartney came into my life in 1963 when I was my daughter's age. I was a Cuban refugee who had landed in Miami two years earlier and was terrified of school because I couldn't understand a word uttered by Mrs. Nash, my kindergarten teacher. I spoke no English. But I could sing in English even if I had no clue what the words meant.

It didn't take long for me to understand the lyrics and fall in love with the longhaired Beatles. I especially liked the "cute one," Paul. It was his boyish looks that beckoned me to learn a whole new language and to try to speak it perfectly. And that accent--could I ever sound like that? I learned a lot about happiness and angst in my new country through the lyrics of "If I Fell in Love With You," "Do You Want to Know a Secret" and other silly love songs.

Two Kennedys died, the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis took place while bomb-warning drill sirens blasted at 1 p.m. every Saturday in Miami . . . and the Beatles were a constant. I couldn't watch an episode of "Where the Action Is" without hearing a local television station ID using the instrumental portions of "And I Love Her."

I jumped into the pool with these memories flying through my head and I realized I was now swimming in the same water as Paul McCartney. On cue again my daughter yelled, "Mommy, let's go to the shallow side." (Where he was!)

Perfect.

"We can go there later, honey," I said, knowing her like the back of my hand.

"No! I wanna go over there now!" she pointed to where he was playing with five or six children surrounded by brightly colored floats. She swam in their direction and I slowly followed her. I saw he didn't notice anything around him because he was playing with the kids--alone. No nannies or other parents were there to help, and his attention was fixed on them.

He speaks!

And then it happened--the moment I never expected.

"Keep an eye on this one," he said to a nearby bodyguard, pointing to the one who is obviously his child, the youngest one there. "I'm going to swim."

Paul McCartney waded in the water right toward me. He stopped four feet away and looked directly into my eyes.

"How are you doing?" he asked.

My ear-to-ear smile gave me away. I couldn't string a thought together and everything I could have said was gone now. No "I've loved you all my life." No "Your Chicago concert was the best." No "I'll see you again in Chicago . . . and anywhere else you perform even if you're 80 years old."

Just "Fine, thanks. How are you?"

"OK," he smiled back, gave me thumbs up, sank his head in the water and swam across the pool.

For the next few minutes I watched him do a few laps. I marveled at his youthfulness. He did not look or act 63. I wondered what it must be like to be recognized by everyone in the world. I became nostalgic and remembered what he meant to me when I was 5 years old. I had a fantasy that my husband would walk in and find Paul McCartney rubbing suntan lotion on me. I prayed that I'd get one more chance to say something smart. But reality called.

"Mommy, I wanna go back to the other pool," my little girl yelled. Everyone heard her, but Paul's head was underwater so I whispered in her ear, "Let's stay here a little longer."

"No!" She yelled even louder. "I want to go right now!"

There was no choice. I followed her out of the pool. As we towel dried and found our shoes, I took one last look at what I was about to leave behind. He was back with the kids and very much enjoying them. I slowly walked away from the terrace, clutching my daughter's hand--this time, feeling lucky and wondering. . . how many people who were flying home to Chicago tonight would be able to say that earlier that day they swam with Paul McCartney?

Paul McCartney's new album gets personal

With a little help from his friends, Paul McCartney has released what he calls his most "publicly personal" album, and has just begun a US tour that will keep him in the public eye through the end of November.

While the former Beatle has been famous for most of his life and given hundreds of interviews, he has usually managed to stick to prepared sound bites, while maintaining a friendly facade complete with wide grin and thumbs aloft.

But in Chaos and Creation in the Backyard (Capitol), his 20th studio album since 1970, the year the Fab Four broke up, he broaches such topics as recovering from the death of his first wife, Linda, and finding a new love in second wife, Heather Mills McCartney.

In an interview, McCartney said it took a few years after Linda's death from cancer in 1998 to bring those kinds of emotions out publicly.

"It wasn't hard, privately. It's easy to experience it. But, you know, you have to think about how to write this stuff down. It took a little while to find its way into the songs, for the dust to settle. How to make it art."

McCartney's first venture after Linda's death, 1999's Run Devil Run, was anything but the emotion-laden, sad album the public was expecting. A tribute to the rockers of Paul's youth, the album was loaded with tunes by Little Richard, Gene Vincent, Chuck Berry and others.

"It was the only way I could go, really, to make that kind of record. And Linda had always said to me, 'You must do a rock and roll album,' which is what I did."

His 2001 follow-up, Driving Rain, got him back in the studio with a band of young players, leading to two American tours and one in Europe. But while fans got to connect with McCartney through live performances, they still yearned for a more personal connection in his music.

In Chaos, he sings about personal grief and recovery (Too Much Rain), the support of friends (How Kind of You), his relationship with Heather, an anti-landmine activist (A Certain Softness) and former friendships (Riding to Vanity Fair).

Some fans have speculated the latter track is a pre-emptive strike against former publicist Geoff Baker, who is reported to be writing a 'tell-all' book. Baker denies such a book is in the works.

Critics were generally effusive, with Rolling Stone dubbing it "the freshest-sounding McCartney album in years," while Entertainment Weekly praised his "quiet little hymns." But as the Rolling Stones are finding with their new album, critical acclaim does not convert into retail success for artists of a certain age. Chaos was down at No. 32 on the Billboard's US album charts in its fourth week of release.

McCartney, working with producer Nigel Godrich, noted for his work with English rock group Radiohead, recorded about 30 songs. Among those that didn't make the cut were Modern Dance, which McCartney describes as "more of a dancey tune, a really cool thing," while another, I Want You to Fly, has more of a Motown R & B sound.

The simplest of productions features McCartney on his acoustic guitar, such as on Jenny Wren, a track many have likened to Blackbird from The Beatles' so-called 1968 White Album. He credits his acoustic style to an unsuccessful attempt at emulating a favourite player or two.

"A lot of times, even in singing, we were just trying to do our favourite people, like me trying to do Little Richard or John trying to be Dylan, like on You've Got to Hide Your Love Away. And it ends up just becoming your style.

"So my acoustic playing sort of comes out of left field. I'm probably trying to emulate Chet Atkins and failing at the style I'm trying to achieve."

While live, McCartney switches back and forth from guitar to bass to piano. On the album, he ended up, with a few exceptions, playing all of the instruments himself, just as he did on his first solo album, McCartney, from 1970.

On the tour, which began on September 16 in Florida, McCartney offers a set that spans his entire career, boasting such Beatles nuggets as Magical Mystery Tour, Eleanor Rigby, and Let It Be, and Wings-era classics like Live and Let Die and Jet.

He also serves some rarities as the pre-Beatles In Spite of All The Danger, the wistful I Will from the so-called White Album and Please Please Me, the group's first No. 1 single.

So what's it like playing old tracks he hasn't played in 40 years - some since the day they were recorded?

"It's astounding, and very refreshing," he says. "You're transported back to then, just by the song. Just by the chords and arrangement, 'cause we keep it pretty faithful. What changes is that it's now a big, loud band playing."

Ono took a swipe at McCartney when she took to the stage at the London ceremony last week to collect a special award on behalf of her late husband John Lennon.

She told the gathering, "John... would say, 'They always cover Paul's songs, they never cover mine.' I said to him, 'You're a good songwriter, it's not June-with-spoon that you write."

But McCartney, who has repeatedly clashed with Ono since Lennon's death in 1980, is refusing to retaliate.

He says, "She's John's wife so I have to respect her for that, but I don't have to do any further. I don't think she's the brightest of buttons.

"I don't want to get in a bun fight but she's said some particularly daft things in her time.

"Yoko is something else. Her life is dedicated to putting me down, that's what she seems to do all the time.

"But she will notice that I attempt very strongly not to put her down, I have respect for her as my former comrades wife."

While there are certainly benefits -- the healthy bank accounts and the knighthood among them -- the down side of being Sir Paul McCartney, icon of a generation and the most celebrated surviving Beatle, is that almost anyone you collaborate with will be too intimidated to tell you when you've had a bad idea or are doing sub-par work.

With all too rare exceptions, a McCartney solo album usually has been a mixed bag, with the occasional glimpse of the brilliance he displayed in partnership with John Lennon ("Maybe I'm Amazed," "Every Night," "Band on the Run" or "Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five"), scattered full-scale disasters/flat-out embarrassments ("Monkberry Moon Delight," "Silly Love Songs," "Ebony and Ivory" or "Freedom") and a whole lot of plain old mediocrity.

Hailed by many fans and critics as one of his strongest efforts ever -- and my personal favorite since the fiery roots-rock cover album "Run Devil Run" (1999) -- "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard," McCartney's latest and the 20th studio solo album of his career, succeeds largely because the artist allowed himself to be challenged and to heed some much-needed criticism, in this case from producer and brave soul Nigel Godrich, who arrived on the job highly recommended by another of the queen's knights, Sir George Martin, and with a list of earlier credits including Radiohead, Beck and Travis.

The 63-year-old McCartney has said in several recent interviews that at one point during the recording sessions, he had to restrain himself from physically assaulting Godrich after the producer called one of the tunes he'd just tracked "crap."

"I was well-pissed," Macca told the European Web site www.breakingnews.ie. "It was like, 'You don't like my songs? How dare you? Who are you?' I thought: 'What will I do now? Punch him or just spit at him?' "

McCartney refrained from doing either, and after cooling down overnight, he accepted Godrich's critique and bagged the tune -- which had to be pretty awful if the producer considered it worse than "English Tea," the new disc's nadir.

"I realized he was looking for a vibe, so if one of my songs was a bit perky, maybe he didn't think we should do it this time around. It was good for me: It was like working with a great band member. It was similar to me and John, back to when we were just kids."

To be certain, nothing on "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard" comes close to approaching the Beatles at their best ("Revolver"), or even at their worst ("Let It Be"). But the good moments are very good indeed, including the irrepressible "Fine Line," the lilting "Jenny Wren," the George Harrison tribute "Friends to Go" and the majestic "Promise to You Girl."

The most pleasant surprise of all: a hidden track consisting of three unrelated musical snippets that Godrich surreptitiously recorded as McCartney tinkered at the piano. These improvised instrumental snippets alone boast a dozen melodies strong enough to make lesser composers green with envy.

"I love those, too," the always charming former cutest moptop told me during a brief interview Tuesday via cell phone from the back of his limousine after a sound check before a show in Toronto. He broke into that famous chuckle when I said I'd welcome an entire disc in this mode.

"But you are in the real world, and people expect songs from me. I'll goof around anytime, though, and you can have 90 minutes of that if you want."

Though Lennon was always much more outspoken about the burdens of being an ex-Beatle, McCartney also clearly feels the weight of his considerable history. Of the 38 songs in his current two-hour, 45-minute show, 22 of them hail from the Fab Four's catalog. While he's justifiably proud of his latest album, only four songs from "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard" made the set list, though he's pleased to report that fans -- many of whom are paying $250 plus Ticketmaster service fees per seat, or more than $7 per tune -- have been responding enthusiastically to his new material.

"It really is nice. One of the exciting things on a tour like this is that you start to tour, and people don't really know the numbers, and then as you get into the second and third week of the album's [release], people are singing along and holding up signs, and the numbers get better and better and better, so it's very gratifying."

Still, I asked, if you were so inclined, could you perform the new disc in its entirety, casting off the burden of history and eschewing those Wings and Beatles classics, or at least relying on them a little less?

"I think you could," McCartney said. "I'd say it's a beautiful burden, this business of having a history, but I know what you mean: I think what we'd have to do is to do a smaller venue and announce up front that we were just doing the new stuff, because people come with expectations to these big venues. We've got big families and stuff coming to these shows, and people obviously want hits.

"I'm a bit like that when I'm in the audience as well. I saw Coldplay recently, and it's a big moment when they do 'Yellow.' But it's a beautiful burden, and I'm happy with it, but sometimes it would be nice to just do unknown material for the people who would really like that."

In the same way that Godrich challenged McCartney in the studio, I mentioned that the band of young musicians that has joined him onstage for the last few years -- lead guitarist Rusty Anderson, guitarist and bassist Brian Ray, keyboardist Paul "Wix" Wickens and hard-hitting drummer Abe Laboriel Jr. -- seems to prod the legendary musician gently out of his comfort zone, inspiring him to try that little bit harder. McCartney readily agreed.

"That's one of the great things. In a way it's a bonus for me: I knew they were good from the word go, and it was always easy and fun to work with them. But now we are realizing that we have a few miles under our belt, and just like any band, if you have good players and then add mileage, real unexpected stuff starts to happen. It's really cool, and I have to say we are popping as a band right now."

In fact, one of the only disappointments of working with Godrich on the new album was the producer's insistence about a week into the project that McCartney dismiss the group and record most of the instruments himself, a la "McCartney" (1970).

"It was a personal disappointment in a way, but in another way it was a compliment," McCartney said. "[Godrich] basically said, 'I want to do something different. We can make the album straightforward, and the guys are great players, but I want to hear how it sounds like this and like this.' He had some things he wanted to do, so I thought, 'If I'm working with a guy like this, I'm either going to listen to him or I'm not.'

"He's a teammate, and I can overrule him if I want, but it was really more embarrassing than anything to have to tell the guys that he wanted me to come in over the next few days and try some stuff alone. He said, 'Blame me,' and I said, 'Oh, I will, don't worry.' [Laughs] But they are my guys, and they were great about it, and they know about making records. It's not easy to get a record nailed, so they said, 'Whatever it takes. You try it and see what happens.' And I think the way the album has worked out proves [Godrich's] point: It was worth stretching."

It always is, Paul -- in interviews as well as in creative endeavors. But although the Sun-Times had been promised 20 minutes to chat with the musical giant, this reporter wound up barely getting six before the limo arrived at the venue and Sir Paul bid a friendly "cheerio," leaving unaddressed a long list of questions small (What's up with dissing Ringo lately? And what do you think of the swipe Yoko Ono just took at you as the sort of songwriter who rhymes moon, June and spoon?) and large (Given the steep ticket prices, why did you feel the need to take even more money via an obnoxious sponsorship from a luxury car company? And how on earth could the same artist capable of writing a song as timeless and beautiful as "For No One" also pen something as dreadful as "Ode to a Koala Bear"?).

Alas, on McCartney's personal magical mystery tour, some things are destined to remain forever unexplained.

"When I was 5, I flipped out on the Beatles," said Anderson, who first toured with McCartney on 2002's "Driving USA" tour.

He wasn't the only American kid to fall prey to the Beatles' melodic magic. It was another three years before Anderson got his first guitar. Now he's playing solos made famous by George Harrison in front of arenas full of adoring fans as part of a gifted band that has energized McCartney's recent live shows.

"(With) the positive reaction this band has had doing all these gigs with Paul, it does have its own life force," Anderson said from New York, where McCartney's "US" tour in support of his acclaimed new "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard" CD had settled in for a few days.

Anderson is promoting his new record, "Undressing Underwater," an eclectic mix of Beatlesque harmonies, Mick Ronson-era Bowie and '60s surf and sci-fi rock.

He is a well-traveled singer, guitarist and songwriter who has worked with the Police's Stewart Copeland in Animal Logic (along with Stanley Clarke), played in nearly famous bands like Ednaswap and backed the likes of Elton John and Courtney Love.

He said making a solo record after all these years was something he had to do. McCartney and Copeland appear on his solo debut.

"I've worn a lot of hats, had my own bands, sung lead, backup, written with others. I've played on people's records. It's just sort of a natural thing that I aspired to do," he said.

Anderson says playing in McCartney's band - which includes guitarist Brian Ray, keyboardist Paul "Wx" Wickens and drummer Abe Laboriel Jr. - is "a high point for sure. Certainly, playing with Paul is high profile and fun and a different kind of experience."

It wasn't fun, Anderson admitted, when fussy "Chaos" producer Nigel Godrich persuaded McCartney to record the album without his band. Godrich, he said, "felt like Paul would use us to defend against his decisions ... Nigel didn't want to deal with a gang."

Anderson, who called it a "bad decision" while admitting it was a "good record," said McCartney and the band did record several songs at London's Abbey Road studios with producer David Kahne. It's unclear if that material will be released.

Playing some of the most famous songs - and solos - in the world puts Anderson in an interesting creative position. "I try not to rewrite the Bible," he said, "but I'll throw a little English on them."

Three days after declaring the limit of Sir Paul McCartney's musical talent to be his ability to rhyme the word 'spoon' with 'June', John Lennon's widow blamed others for her indiscretion yesterday and claimed her husband's one-time soulmate was not so bad after all.

"I was saying about how humble John was and how human John was and that was all I was saying," Ono declared as she unveiled a sculpture at Coventry Cathedral, which she and Lennon had started to construct in 1968.

Despite the clarity of her original statement, at the Q Awards, Ono claimed to have been misquoted. "It's amusing at best and it's the kind of thing that I've witnessed the press to do many times," she said. "I think Paul's a great songwriter."

Ono's words have gone down like a lead balloon in Liverpool, where many still blame her for permanently removing Lennon from the city.

She recalled how her husband's angst about his talent would lead to him to complain that "they always cover Paul's songs and never mine, and I don't know why". She said she would reply: "You're a good songwriter; it's not June with spoon that you write. You're a good singer, too, and most musicians are probably a little bit nervous about covering your songs."

Her mixed feelings for McCartney were also apparent in an interview with the Liverpool Echo this week in which she said: "Paul was the one who knew how to deal with the world and John was the poet. But when John was doing his individual work, I know he felt that people were not so much into his songs."

Yesterday's ceremony at Coventry did much for Ono's efforts to move things on at a time when Lennon would have been celebrating his 65th birthday. Ono, 72, had arrived in the city to dedicate two Japanese oak trees in celebration of her life and work with Lennon. The gesture was inspired by the couple's 1968 trip to Coventry to submit a piece to a British sculpture exhibition.

Consisting of two acorns planted in white pots in an east-west axis beneath a white wrought-iron bench, the work was subsequently targeted by souvenir hunters who dug up the nuts, leaving the work unfinished.

Primary school children joined the ceremony, reading words from Grow Old With Me, a song written by Lennon expressing his love for Yoko, and Let Me Count the Ways, written by Ono after Lennon was killed.

Ono's words about McCartney have served to revive one of Liverpool's oldest debates. The city seems to have concluded that McCartney deserves more respect, since he was the dominant creative force from the time of Sgt Pepper onwards. Lennon, it has been pointed out, wrote his fair share of sugary songs, too.

Ono limited herself to the subject of harmony, yesterday. "I hope that this ceremony will help the healing process of the world and that these trees standing next to each other will symbolise something that was intrinsic to the work that John and I did," she said. "We both had a desire for harmony, integration and peace."

Sir Paul McCartney and P!nk have joined PETA in supporting Chicago's landmark Elephant Protection Ordinance. The former Beatle has sent a letter to Chicago Alderman Mary Ann Smith thanking her for introducing the ordinance, and pop star P!nk has written to Chicago's Mayor Richard Daley urging him to support it.

"The three recent elephant deaths at Lincoln Park Zoo are troubling," says McCartney to Smith. "You're to be commended for determining that there are better, more humane ways to care for these exceptionally intelligent, sensitive, and very large animals."

"Elephants need many acres to roam and suffer a great deal when chained or kept in cramped spaces for extended periods," writes P!nk. "They should never be subjected to abusive training practices, including the use of bullhooks and electric prods."

One of the biggest thrills of this music scribe's career came in November 1989, when the invitation came to meet "the cute Beatle," Paul McCartney, during a press conference in Rosemont, Ill.

The Liverpool-born music legend was smiling and cordial as he met each media member with a strong and confident handshake before stepping to the podium to field questions.

Sadly, my hopes for an encore of that experience, during his return visit to Chicago this fall, were dashed by the official word that only an electronic "conference" was available as tour press for his current run across The Colonies.

The royally knighted former Beatle has been happily supplying the media with a plethora of great audio quotes via CD, responding to a collection of diverse questions duly submitted by journalists.

The format finds McCartney candidly sharing thoughts on songwriting, his Fab years, and of course, his latest solo album, "Chaos And Creation In The Backyard."

The album has been praised by the press and public alike since its release several weeks ago.

"(His) new disc is McCartney's 20th recording since the Beatles split 35 years ago. I feel it is the best work of his storied solo career and his most relevant work since the breakup up of the Fab Four," opined Brian Pearson, a Northwest Indiana freelance music writer and a former local radio personality for WLTH and WJJY.

McCartney agrees with all the positive sentiments and remarks being showered on "Chaos And Creation."

"(Personally), I am very pleased with it," he said.

"Normally, you say, 'I hope to make a good album' or 'I'd like to make a good album.' This time I actually put my foot in it and said to myself, 'I AM going to make a really good album!' because I knew there was a good prospect that I was going to tour and I wanted to go out with a really good album that I was very pleased with."

His aversion to following a formula style while recording and his feeling that every new album was a fresh starting point goes back to the 1960s and is what made each Beatles album so unique.

"Even with the Beatles. We would think, 'OK, we've made a big album like 'Revolver' or something, so we know how to make great albums,' until you go back in to make the next one and find yourself wondering, 'How do you do this?'" reflected McCartney. "You always have to get yourself up to speed again. I always would go back and play the last album just to see what we were up to at that point."

While creating a new body of work is always enjoyable for McCartney, he does not relish the promotion work and all the rest that comes after an album's release.

Yet after 40 years of enduring that aspect of the business, the veteran rocker said he understands that there is a certain amount of "chaff" that comes with each harvesting of new music.

"Releasing (an album) isn't my favorite bit, because that is letting your baby go and then suddenly all these people have all these opinions about what you've done, that you don't necessarily agree with," sighed McCartney.

"Someone said to me just the other day about the new album, 'One of these tracks, this is about so and so isn't it?' and I was like, 'Ummmm ... no!'"

"That was something that all the boys hated," said 76-year-old Louise Harrison, elder sister of the late Beatle George Harrison. "The boys didn't like that people always picked apart the songs and analyzed everything they did. They just wanted people to listen and enjoy them for what they were."

Harrison told of attending McCartney's 2002 concert in Chicago and popping backstage to say hello to her old friend and introduce Sir Paul to Marty Scott, who plays the part of "George" in the popular Chicago Beatles tribute band Harrison manages called, The Liverpool Legends (www.liverpoollegends.com).

"Wow, it was amazing! I was just hoping to shake his hand and maybe get an autograph, but he invited us to sit down and visit," recalled Scott during a long-distance call from Minnesota, where The Liverpool Legends were getting ready to perform. "It was just after George had passed away and it was the first time Paul had seen Louise since that happened, so it was very emotional and he was just a very classy and wonderful guy."

"Paul's performance that night was just fantastic of course," added Harrison. "It always is, because Paul is a very talented man who is very, very good at what he does."

McCartney is quite comfortable performing songs from the Fab Four years these days, though that was not always the case.

Though it was one of the most successful tours of the '70s, the much-lauded "Wings Over America Tour" of 1976 disappointed those fans hoping to hear classic Beatle songs mixed in with the hits of his then band, Wings.

"Even though people wanted to hear Beatle stuff on that ('76) tour, I wasn't wanting to do it because it was still too close to the divorce, which was very much what the Beatles breakup was like," he explained. "But enough time has passed and it feels good to do those old numbers again."

His past solo tours have included up to 15 Beatles chestnuts in the set, and this tour will likely do the same, along with a few choice Wings hits, a smattering of his post-Wings solo material, and plenty of new tunes from "Chaos And Creation In The Backyard."

"I've got my tickets and I'm going to see him in Chicago," noted Davey Justice, of The Liverpool Legends, who has been performing professionally as "Paul" for nearly seven years in various tribute acts.

"He can't do enough of the new songs in my opinion," gushed Justice. "I can't take the new CD out of my stereo. I listen to it every day on the road and it's just amazing. I think it is his best album in years. It's a little bit mellow, but some of Paul's best work has been the mellower stuff.

"What I love about this album is that the words are so deep and meaningful."

Justice said that he talks nightly with fellow McCartney fans during his band's post-show autograph signing.

"Everyone I talk to feels the same as I do," he continued. "I'm meeting a lot of young people in their 20s and even some in their teens who love this album and who are just discovering his solo music. I'm hoping that this album gives (Paul) some hits, because he is overdue."

McCartney said that his vocal delivery style has not changed too much over the years. "I listen to those old records and my voice sounds a little different, but I still sing the songs in the same key," he noted. "When I did 'Live 8' I did 'Helter Skelter' in the same key. I have a very simple view of singing that is 'Just do it and get on with it!' It's always been like that."

"I remember recording 'Kansas City' (early on with The Beatles) and having trouble with it. John (Lennon) came down at Abbey Road and he told me 'Do it from the top of your head,'" he continued.

McCartney stressed that the most important thing is to "keep it simple" and that he imagines a tube on the top of his head from which everything comes out.

"The Beatles album we did called 'Abbey Road' was originally going to be called 'Everest,' and suddenly it didn't seem like a very good idea, so we just called it 'Abbey Road' (after the studio where it was recorded)," noted McCartney.

He noted that sometimes picking the title is the hardest part of the entire process.

"In the song, 'Promise to You Girl,' there is a line that goes 'Looking through the backyard of my life' and I thought 'Backyard' would be a good title," McCartney concluded.

" So I rang up (producer) Nigel Godrich and said, 'What do you think?' He answered, 'It's kind of catchy, but it's not very intriguing.'"

Back to square one, the songwriter explained that he began looking at the words to other new tunes. "In the song 'Fine Line,' there is a lyric that goes 'There's a long line between chaos and creation' and I thought that might be a good title, only it sounded a little too monumental and posh."

In the end, the former Beatle opted to offset the balance by combining the two ideas and the rest is -- like all of McCartney's life -- history!

Sir Paul McCartney is being lined up to open Liverpool's Kings Dock arena.

City leaders want the Beatles legend to be the first act to play at the £146 million ($258 million) waterfront complex when it opens in just over two years time.

They believe Sir Paul, who has been in the music business for over 40 years, would be the perfect star to launch the 9,500-seater venue.

The 63-year-old was recently back in the charts with his new album Chaos And Creation In The Back Yard.

Cllr Mike Storey, leader of Liverpool council, said: "We are planning a huge event for the launch, and who would be better than Paul McCartney?

"The idea of Sir Paul and friends playing the first-ever concert at the new arena is simply fantastic.

"Knowing Sir Paul, I am sure he would want to be part of such an important event in his home city."

Construction work only started at Kings Dock yesterday - but arena bosses are already in talks with concert promoters to line up a string of big names for 2008.

Kings' chief executive Bob Prattey said: "Promoters welcome the new venue because by linking it with Liverpool's great musical and sporting heritage, they have a winning formula.

"They also know there is great potential support from the public, because people here enjoy going to big events - it is part of our culture..

"The success of the Summer Pops helps, because it has attracted headliners like Diana Ross and demonstrated that we can sell tickets for big acts.

"It makes it all the more bizarre that we have not had a facility capable of staging major events before."

Talks have also started with sport governing bodies about bringing events to Kings Dock in 2008.

The new arena will be able to host a range of indoor sports, such as boxing, tennis and gymnastics.

Mr Prattey added: "We have been in discussions with UK sports bodies to ask them about coming to Liverpool.

"Televised sport in particular would raise the profile of the arena and Liverpool as a city."

October 13, 2005 -- Hello Magazine

Having conquered the world with his musical talent, former Beatle Paul McCartney has marked a departure into pastures new with the launch of his debut children's book.

The music legend was clearly enthusiastic about his literary project, High In The Clouds, as he took time out from his 37-city US tour to ham it up for fans at the book's launch in a New York store. But then, with his daughter by wife Heather just turning two, the 63-year-old rocker - who also has a grown up family by first spouse Linda - is presumably getting in plenty of practice at reading bedtime stories.

"High in the Clouds," which stars Wirral the Squirrel and the hot-air ballooning frog Froggo, is inspired by a short animated film the singer made a few years ago called Tropic Island Hum. Unsurprisingly, in light of his, Heather's and late wife Linda's beliefs about animal rights, the kiddies tale takes as its theme the liberation of animals from enslavement.

A day after he rocked about 16,000 fans at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, Paul McCartney delivered a much smaller private concert for a fortunate group: Lexus dealers.

North American dealers of the luxury auto brand attending the 2005 annual dealers meeting were treated to a short set by the former Beatle at Toronto's Roy Thomson Hall on Tuesday night, according to Greg Thome, a California-based Lexus public relations administrator.

"He popped in to say hello to all of the Lexus dealers and played a few songs, from what I understand," Thome told CBC Arts Online.

Lexus has an annual dealer meeting, held in a different location each year. "They show product, they talk about what's coming up in the year and they usually have some sort of entertainment," Thome said.

The former Beatle has developed a cooperative relationship with the company, which is sponsoring his current U.S. tour. McCartney has allowed Lexus to use the single Fine Line from his new album Chaos and Creation in the Backyard in commercials for its new luxury hybrid car. In turn, the company designed a one-of-a-kind, McCartney-inspired edition of the car to be sold to raise funds for Adopt-A-Minefield, one of the musician's favored charities.

Top 10 North American Concert Grosses

Reported through October 4, 2005

1. $3,814,392. Paul McCartney. TD Banknorth Garden. Boston, Mass. Sept. 26-27.

2. $3,133,975. Luis Miguel. Gibson Amphitheatre at Universal Citywalk. Universal City, Calif. Sept. 20-25.

3. $2,690,500. Celine Dion. The Colosseum at Caesars Palace. Las Vegas, Nev. Sept. 28-Oct. 2.

4. $2,648,935. Elton John. TD Banknorth Garden. Boston, Mass. Sept. 16-17.

5. $1,930,941. Paul McCartney. Philips Arena. Atlanta, Ga. Sept. 20.

6. $1,795,427. Eagles. Harvey's Amphitheater. Lake Tahoe, Nev. Aug. 11, 20.

7. $1,465,586. Eagles. Coors Amphitheatre. Chula Vista, Calif. Aug. 17.

8. $1,335,525. Elton John. Philips Arena. Atlanta, Ga. Oct. 1.

9. $1,333,785. Eagles. Salinas Sports Complex. Salinas, Calif. Aug. 19.

10. $1,053,180. Eagles. Sonoma State University Soccer Field. Rohnert Park, Calif. Aug. 14.

Pop star's wife Heather Mills McCartney is backing a long established golf and tennis school's fight against closure.

The wife of Beatles star Paul McCartney has written to Chris Meadows, the owner of the Regent's Park Golf and Tennis School, in Regent's Park, to pledge her support for the school which could be closed down for good within months.

Two years ago bosses at the Royal Parks announced plans to close the current golf and tennis school - which has been in Regent's Park for 95 years and is the only one of its kind in central London - and build new sporting facilities on a site next door.

At the time workers at the golf and tennis school believed it would also move to the new site.

But now they have been told that a five-a-side football company is the preferred bidder for the site and that if that bid gets the green light, the golf and tennis centre will be forced to close.

Mrs Mills McCartney said: "When I was recovering from my accident some years ago I became a regular user of The Regent's Park Golf and Tennis School, participating in both sports. "Access to sports for girls and women in central London is vital.

"By removing golf and tennis from this location and replacing it with five-a-side football, the Royal Parks are dramatically reducing London's sporting diversity.

"If this unpopular decision were to be instigated men and women of all ages will be denied access to two sports that have existed in this location for over 90 years. It simply should not be allowed to happen!"

Mr Meadows, who has run the school for over 18 years, said: "It's great to see that someone like Mrs Mills McCartney has a strong desire to keep the school open.

"So far we have received over 750 letters of support from an incredible mix of people who all want to help save the school.

"And many are from people who have been visiting the school for much longer than I've been there.

Former model Heather loves her independence, but she admits the super-wealthy former Beatle would prefer it if she succumbed to a more traditional lifestyle.

She says, "I'm completely independent. (But) it would be his dream to look after me."

At 63 years old, he's indisputably still the cute one. Over a few hours at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto Monday night, Paul McCartney waggled his head when he hit the high "aaaahs," tugged his forelock when he thanked the audience, and warbled about the delights of English Tea and, "peradventure," a spot of morning cricket.

It's down to the perversity of today's rock-nostalgia concert business that such modest charm had to be buttressed by a 12-metre-high movie screen showing literal video illustrations of his song lyrics, and at one point retracting to reveal a tightly disciplined shower of indoor fireworks -- possibly the most unwarranted pyrotechnics in rock history, coming during the distinctly sparkless new song Follow Me.

The excesses began with a pre-show soundtrack of crescendoing strings that made it seem Mr. McCartney was about to descend from the heavens in a chariot of fire. Next came a brief set by DJ Freelance Hellraiser, who mashed up bits of Mr. McCartney's discography into dance tracks as he does on their recent collaboration Twin Freaks, to decent effect -- though for many of the greying boomers in the 16,000-strong sold-out crowd, this element must have seemed like a ploy to make them appreciate Mr. McCartney's eventual appearance all the more, as a respite from music they can't bear. Perhaps it was for their kids, who were also out in force mouthing along with every word of the Beatles tunes and looking a little lost during the Wings ones.

But the most egregious part of the prelude was a lengthy home movie in which Mr. McCartney narrated the story of his life. Does one of the world's most adored pop personalities (an expletive-deleted Beatle!) really require such self-aggrandizement?

In the video, Mr. McCartney said he always thought of the Beatles as nothing more or less than "a great little band," which bespeaks at once his unassuming nature and the disappointing blandness of his ambition. This combination was what he brought to the stage. Nothing in the show would lead one to reflect, except on the passing of time, but you couldn't complain about his affable showmanship and the solid performance of his four-piece backing band.

The set list was calculated only to please, and incidentally to introduce the crowd to Mr. McCartney's latest album, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard. True to reviews that are calling it his strongest effort in decades, its songs fit well into the evening's hit parade, which otherwise ranged from opener Magical Mystery Tour all the way back to pre-Beatles tune In Spite of All the Danger, as well as Drive My Car, Jet, Long and Winding Road, I Will, For No One, Fixing a Hole, Eleanor Rigby, and so on.

The songs were bridged by chat and storytelling, including a mini-songwriting workshop showing how he developed Blackbird out of a passage of Bach, and the story of how earlier in the tour he fell into the hole in the stage from which his piano is raised and lowered through the set. (Fans have begun holding up signs reading "Mind the gap.")

A moment of recognition for "departed loved ones -- John, George and Linda" brought an ovation. The Liverpudlian wit was still quick for bits of banter with the audience, though age and wealth have certainly smoothed and rounded the edge.

Audience sing-alongs were always encouraged. "Twenty thousand backing singers," Mr. McCartney commented. "What more can you ask for?"

For him, the answer is nothing: In the end, he knows that fans come sentimentally, to celebrate what his life has brought to theirs. And he precisely shares the feeling.

(NOTE: There will be a full report from the Toronto show posted this weekend on the "US Tour" page.)

While accepting a special award on behalf of her late husband, she gleefully renewed her long-running feud with Sir Paul McCartney. Yoko, 72, suggested that Lennon was a far better singer than his fellow Beatle, and went on to pour scorn on McCartney's lyrics.

There were gasps of astonishment at Monday's Q Magazine Awards in London as she took to the stage and went on the attack.

"I'll tell you a story about John," she told the audience. "He often used to wake up in the middle of the night and ask me, 'Why do people cover Paul's songs so much, but never mine?'

"I used to tell him, 'It's because you are a talented songwriter. You don't just rhyme June with spoon. And you are a very good singer - lots of people would be too afraid to cover one of your songs.'

"Then I would make him a cup of tea, and he would be okay. I just miss that sort of moment that we had."

Stunned at the Q Awards

Her stinging criticism of Lennon's former bandmate and songwriting partner stunned the room filled with stars including Jimmy Page, Ray Davies, Paul Weller, Robin Gibb, Liam and Noel Gallagher and Coldplay.

Although McCartney's lyrics have often been seen as more simplistic than Lennon's, he never actually rhymed June with spoon. But he came pretty close. In the song She Came In Through The Bathroom Window, which featured in a medley on the Abbey Road album, Sir Paul did rhyme 'spoon' with 'lagoon'.

The first verse goes: "She came in through the bathroom window/ Protected by a silver spoon/But now she sucks her thumb and wanders/By the banks of her own lagoon."

Yoko's comments perpetuate a row with McCartney which has been raging since she started dating Lennon in the late 1960s.

In the last few years she has threatened to sue him when he changed the famous Lennon/ McCartney writing credit around and in December banned him from using Yesterday on a solo album of love songs because it was a Beatles number, forcing him to scrap the project.

Some 35 years after the breakup of the Beatles, Paul McCartney is used to being bashed by music critics.

But whenever he's entered the recording studio, his status as a rock 'n' roll legend left producers deferring to his every whim.

Blunt criticism hadn't come his way since he famously sparred with John Lennon.

Then along came Nigel Godrich, the uber-hip producer who has worked with Radiohead and Beck and who minced no words when dealing with Sir Paul on his latest album, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard.

"At first I was a little bit miffed, I just thought, you know, 'How dare you?' " McCartney said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

"(Godrich) didn't just say he liked everything that I presented to him. Whereas I think there is a bit of a danger of that. People can be such big fans going back a long way."

McCartney, speaking on a cellphone as a police escort guided him to a concert this week at the Air Canada Centre, suggested the experience recalled his days with the Fab Four.

"At times, it did remind me a little bit of working with a group member, where you do just kick things around a bit more than you might with a normal producer," he said.

"He was just being very honest."

Godrich's discerning ear has resulted in an album that has been widely praised as McCartney's most meaningful in years.

Chaos and Creation sounds more organic than previous outings, with Beatle-esque gems like English Tea and Jenny Wren as well as the straight-ahead four-four rocker Friends to Go, which McCartney describes as an homage to dearly departed bandmate George Harrison.

And tracks like Too Much Rain and How Kind of You contain a dose of sadness that stands out from the man whose post-Beatles output includes the sunny likes of Silly Love Songs and Say Say Say.

McCartney says he is only now -- at age 63 -- fully realizing that emotional desolation can produce evocative songs.

"It's not that I never had any melancholy in my life, or never had any problems. It's just that I didn't ever tend to write about it," he said.

"I think I'm now more mature where I now think it's a pretty rich area, actually. Certainly you don't go to your psychiatrist and just sing him a bunch of happy songs."

He concedes, though, that longtime fans will be struck by the sombre mood that runs through much of the album.

"It possibly looks more surprising than it would from, I don't know, Neil Young, Springsteen, who have written those kind of songs before," he said.

"John Lennon, for instance, often used a lot of angst in his songs. And I think it's a good thing. I think it's a great thing. I think there is light and shade in life. At this point, I just chose to deal in both."

Still, McCartney cheerily noted he is at a "good stage" in his life, mentioning his two-year-old daughter Beatrice and wife Heather Mills McCartney, who jumped in to help answer a question during the interview.

He said he feels "energized and enthusiastic," attributing the vigour to a vegetarian diet he has adhered to for three decades.

That healthy lifestyle, McCartney speculated, may have something to do with his strong singing voice, which has changed remarkably little over the years.

"I just expect it to work. And on top of that I keep pretty healthy.... I've been very lucky, that's for sure."

These days, his musical inspiration comes from varied sources.

Lately, he's been listening to Luther Vandross's last album as well as a bit of the Kaiser Chiefs and Franz Ferdinand; the other night he took in a Coldplay concert.

"You know, it can be that and then it can be anything, it could be Nat King Cole, Fred Astaire, Beach Boys," he said.

And although he has toured the world, he still is able to muster enthusiasm for his latest go-round, calling recent audiences "some of the best ever."

Many of those who initially idolized McCartney as a mop-top are now grandparents who take their families to his shows.

"I think people know that I like family, that I'm a family man, and that those kind of values are sort of important to me deep down and I think they associate with that," he said.

"I saw a sign just the other night actually that said 'Three Generations' and you'll see the grandma, the mom and the kid.

"It's pretty cool."

Sir Paul McCartney turned down the chance to buy the publishing rights to Bob Dylan's songs because he didn't want the folk superstar calling him up to complain when he sold them.

McCartney, whose own Beatles tunes are the property of Michael Jackson, spent years investing in other people's songs when he first turned his attention to publishing.

He bought up Buddy Holly's back catalogue and a handful of his favourite standards, but he turned his back on the opportunity to make a fortune with Bob Dylan's hits.

He explains, "We considered it, but it seemed like too much responsibility. I didn't want him ringing me up at three in the morning, going, 'Why have you screwed up my songs?'"

Opening Live 8 with Paul McCartney was a thrill, says U2 guitarist The Edge.

The Irish rockers, who launched the second leg of their North American tour last month at the Air Canada Centre, opened the global Live 8 concert on July 2, performing Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band with McCartney in front of hundreds of thousands of fans in London's Hyde Park.

"Obviously performing for the first time with Paul McCartney was a huge thing," The Edge told the Sun in a Canadian exclusive interview during U2's rehearsals at the ACC.

"You grow up, you're in a band, there are few other bands that really have the stature of The Beatles. In fact, there's no other band that has the sature of The Beatles, in my opinion. So it was just a great honour to be there with Paul."

The wife of Sir Paul McCartney, who works closely with People For The Ethical Treatment Of Animals (PETA), is amazed the British style queen backed the charity's 'I'd rather go naked than wear fur' campaign, and yet still wears animal skins on the catwalk.

She says, "It would be a bit like me saying 'no more landmines', and then doing a contract with a landmine company to promote a new landmine.

"That's how superficial, shallow and hypocritical it is, as well as harming millions of animals.

"I haven't met her. She won't meet up with me."

The 30-member police band is most well-known for their performances at international events including annual New York City ceremonies marking the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center twin towers.

Yoko Ono has dismissed media criticism of Sir Paul McCartney's marriage to former model Heather Mills McCartney, because she knows the former Beatle has chosen the right woman for him.

Ono, who was famously vilified by the press during her relationship with late Beatles hero John Lennon, is adamant the couple enjoy a happy marriage.

She says, "It's great that he's got another chance. And all this talk about Heather, that she's a terrible woman! She's not.

"Of course Paul is going to be intelligent about it; he's not going to pick somebody with whom he's going to suffer."

Maybe that helps explain the ambivalence that many people feel about Paul McCartney. He has written many great songs, and created one of the most influential bands of the 20th century. But there's something about him that jars with the go-for-it rock 'n' roll mentality that still dominates popular music. Offer him a choice of extremes, and McCartney will take the middle course every time.

"There is a fine line/ Between recklessness and courage." There it is, in the very first phrase he sings on his new album, Chaos and Creatio n in the Backyard. Be brave when you need to, but don't be reckless. The voice of moderation, personified in McCartney's youth by his father Jim, whom he resembles in more than appearance.

"I think that [lyric] is somebody speaking who sees people taking perhaps the glamorous route, being reckless, and who doesn't wish to go that way himself," he said, on the phone prior to a concert in New York. "In my case, it just never was attractive to me to do that . . . I do like to be careful about what I do. I've been pretty successful with that formula, so why not?"

He could almost have been plugging a retirement fund. Come to think of it, he already has, not with words but with his image, in a series of TV ads for Fidelity Investments. The voiceover summarizes his attainments: "Beatle, poet, father, producer, business mogul . . . " He's worth over a billion, and he's renting out his face for mutual funds. More important, perhaps, he's getting a prime-time video (first shown during the first NFL game of the season) that serves the vital function of reminding us that he's still here. Ditto the children's book he has just published, entitled High in the Clouds (Faber & Faber).

Will we still need him when he's 64? That date will be upon us, and him, next June 18. By then, he will have completed what he hopes will be his biggest and most successful solo tour.

He could be back on top, not just monetarily but in terms of the kind of popular esteem he still craves.

"I think he deserves some respect that in his recent history he hasn't got," said producer Nigel Godrich, in a promotional DVD made by EMI and packaged with the new disc. You can gauge the depth of the problem by the fact that this comment wasn't edited out. Yes, EMI is admitting, our man's prestige has slipped, knighthood or not. Yes, it would be useful for him to have a direct endorsement from the much younger producer of albums by Radiohead, Beck and Travis.

Mind you, McCartney didn't go shopping for a hot young producer to spruce up his sound. He called the now-retired George Martin, producer of every Beatles LP, who pointed him toward Godrich. McCartney already knew of Godrich's work, liked the fact that he didn't enforce a sound on his performers (not like Phil Spector souping up The Long and Winding Road) and appreciated his expertise as a sound engineer. But he wanted a confirming word from Martin, who knows as much as anyone about McCartney's need to be careful.

Chaos and Creation in the Backyard is McCartney's best album in years. It stands comparison with the first solo disc he made after the Beatles split, when it was still possible to think: John Lennon and Paul McCartney are finished as a team, but they can go on making music as good as what they did together.

McCartney had planned to record with his backing band, but Godrich wanted him to go solo, perhaps mindful that every band in his client's proximity suffers unfair comparison to the Fab Four. He got McCartney to play drums, piano, guitars, recorder and even his dad's old flugelhorn. To that extent, the new disc is just like his first solo effort, for which he played everything, partly to prove that he could carry on without the Beatles.

"It was my idea the first time round, so Nigel obviously stole it this time," McCartney said. "I can claim it both times." He was joking - maybe. This is the man, after all, who recently tried to switch around some writing credits from Lennon & McCartney to McCartney & Lennon. But he accepted Godrich as an equal in the studio.

"It was a collaborative thing," he said. "I was working with him, instead of him working for me... it's like if you're in a film. You should listen to the director, though you can argue as much as you want. I don't mind. I respond well to direction.

"We sort of did the songs Nigel liked. There were one or two that I insisted on saying, look, what don't you like about this song?"

One of those contested items was Riding to Vanity Fair, the longest and most adventurous song on the disc. It's a song about a refused personal connection, not necessarily a denial of love but of friendship. The vocal line hops and glides over an uneasy, atmospheric chordal base that recalls the kind of anxiety-ridden music Bernard Herrmann produced for Alfred Hitchcock. It feels unusually disoriented for a McCartney creation, as if he really has been propelled beyond a region of safety.

"I was interested in doing something other than what I normally do," McCartney said. "The whole song was originally angular and staccato, and uptempo. We slowed it down, and then we changed the lyrics, and I ended up changing the melody. So it was like a workshop sort of thing, it really had a lot of work on it. I knew there was something there, but we had to dig deep to find it. " "I always start a song having no idea where I'm going. That's why I love doing it. It's a thrill, like getting on a bus when you don't know where the bus is going."

Or who might get on the bus with you. He wasn't far along in the writing of Friends to Go when he realized that elements of George Harrison's style were creeping in.

"I started with this phrase, "waiting on the other side," so there was already a kind of ambiguity," he said. "Are you physically on the other side of the road, or the river Jordan, on the other side? And the melody and the chords I was doing started sounding a bit like George, going from major to minor and back, and there was this chromatic rundown like he used to do. And by that time it sounded very George-ish. It wasn't like I was channelling him, but I just got a feeling that if this had been a Beatle album, this would have been the George song."

English Tea, another song from the disc, put him in mind of Noel Coward, whose plummy singing voice he can imitate to perfection, even over the phone. Too Much Rain was written with Charlie Chaplin's song Smile in mind. Jenny Wren is McCartney channelling an earlier version of McCartney, from his Blackbird days.

He's always had great success imitating others in ways that produce songs quite unlike theirs. When he was younger, he wrote songs while imagining himself into the skins of Elvis Presley, Little Richard or Ray Charles, or even Richard Rodgers. He wrote When I'm Sixty-Four at his dad's upright piano when he was 16 and imagined it in a musical. Part of the initial appeal of "Lennon & McCartney" was that it sounded like "Rodgers & Hammerstein."

When you step back from everything he's done, it becomes apparent that he's a figure in a longer wave than most of his contemporaries who strapped on electric guitars. Coward, Porter and other songwriters of his father's generation are vivid figures in his imagination. McCartney is an old-time professional songwriter and entertainer who happened to come to maturity when rock 'n' roll was current and a personal kind of writing was coming to be seen as inextricably linked to that sound and milieu. In an earlier era, he would have happily written for Broadway, which you really couldn't say about Lennon, in spite of a recent effort to put him there.

McCartney's new disc is full of backward glances. On the cover is a photograph taken by his brother Mike of the young Paul in the backyard of his dad's house in Liverpool, strumming guitar under a full line of laundry. In a way, he's never left that spot, with its irregular wooden fence, hard by the neighbour's homemade greenhouse.

"Of course I've left Liverpool, but I haven't really," he said. "I've left physically, but I don't want to leave. I like roots. I go back every year, and there's always a recharging of batteries, and also a reminding yourself of who you are. Because at my scale of things you can forget, or some people notoriously forget. I don't think that's a clever idea."

He might never have left, if this dutiful son had followed his dad's advice more closely. When the Beatles returned from their now-famous jaunt to Hamburg (seen from a new angle in Best of the Beatles, a DVD featuring vintage footage and commentary by ex-Beatle Pete Best), McCartney was hard-pressed to see that the adventure had been worth the paltry cash return. He took a job sweeping the yard of a factory, where he was told his grammar-school background marked him as future management material. When Lennon and Harrison came by to tell him the band had a gig booked at Liverpool's Cavern Club, McCartney initially resisted, before going over the factory wall.

It was a reckless thing to do, maybe the most reckless act of his life. Without it, he might have become a front-parlour pianist like his dad, amusing himself and family with songs, and punching a factory clock. We might never have had those great Beatle songs that can't be defeated even by limp string arrangements oozing from department-store sound systems. There's a fine line indeed.

Paul McCartney plays the Air Canada Centre in Toronto on Monday.

The former Beatle is very encouraged by recent remarks made by Pope Benedict, condemning factory farming and other animal cruelties employed by companies like fast-food chain KFC.

Speaking exclusively on People For The Ethical Treatment of Animals official website, he says, "God bless him! I think it's fantastic for someone in his position, who's able to reach so

many people, to take a strong stance on that.

"One of PETA's strongest points, and one of mine, is compassion. That certainly is a basic tenet of the Catholic religion."

Paul McCartney's activist wife is calling on George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom to help her stamp out fur wearing in Hollywood in a new public service announcement.

Heather Mills-McCartney is shocked by the amount of stars who ignore the horrors behind fur coats and scarves because they fear they don't look glamorous without dead animals on their backs.

And, in an effort to send out a powerful message, the Brit wants to record a commercial with the world's leading men.

She says, "I want them to say to camera, 'Only ugly, stupid women wear fur. Be happy in your own skin.'

"These women (who wear fur) are not educated, they're thick and they've got no class... These people just want to totally separate it from their heads."

Mills-McCartney insists this is the only way to get the message across because stars like Jennifer Lopez, who includes fur designs in her Sweetface fashion range, constantly ignore letters sent by animal welfare groups urging her to boycott animal pelts.

The former model even visited Lopez's New York offices last month with People For The Ethical Treatment of Animals activists in a bid to confront the diva.

She says, "We've sent letters to her for three years: 'Please would you watch this video? Please would you watch these animals being skinned alive that are used for your fur line... You're encouraging other people to think fur is fashionable and that means more animals are being skinned alive every day.

"After three years of all the animal rights organizations writing to her, what else can you do except go and hand deliver something to her office."

October 7, 2005 -- Hello Magazine (UK)

Mother of one Heather strolls in the Big Apple

We're used to seeing Sir Paul McCartney's feisty wife Heather in many situations ­ usually campaigning for worthwhile causes, but sometimes in other guises, such as a chat show host on US TV. It's much rarer to glimpse the former model in her role as mother, as we do here.

The 37-year-old charity campaigner was snapped in relaxed mode, strolling the streets of New York pushing a pram with the hood well pulled down. If two-year-old Beatrice was inside, she was certainly well protected against any chilly air.

Her mum, though, wasn't worrying about any chills on her own behalf; wearing open sandals and a sleeveless top, Heather looked as though she's making the most of exercise opportunities in the Big Apple.

Showing off toned, tanned arms and a flowing mane of blonde locks, Heather seemed to be in pensive mood during her walk, contemplating the world through this season's obligatory outsize shades.

Another Day (Macca Encounter Story)

by Donald Capone

The cowbell that hung inside the door of my struggling bookstore rang and I looked up out of habit-Pavlov's dog-and I saw him standing there, backlit by the sun glaring in at that time of day. It made him appear angelic, especially since he held the pose for a moment as if announcing his arrival: hands on hips, squinting, letting his eyes adjust before he stepped inside. The long moment snapped and he strode to the fiction rack with a purposeful gait. Paul McCartney was in my store.

A tall, young, beautiful blonde entered behind him and stood at his side. There were no other customers in my store-Ryan's Paperback Reader-and I was glad to have him to myself. Though nervous, I felt that I, as the shop owner, had the right-no, the duty-to strike up a conversation with him. Maybe he needed help finding a book.

I was in the rear of the store rearranging the current releases to match the order of the New York Times bestseller list. I studied Paul for a moment before making my move. He wore a black vest over a white t-shirt. His jeans were also black, and when I looked down, I half-expected to see Beatle boots adorning his feet. But no, he had casual black shoes on. I realized I was shaking, sweating suddenly, my mouth dry as asbestos insulation.

Paul apparently said something cheeky, and the blonde-his wife Heather-laughed and placed a hand on his arm. Light laughter. Their casualness mocked my state of near-panic attack. A bead of sweat trickled from my armpit and ran down my side under my loose shirt.

This was the first time someone famous had ever set foot in my store. Hell, not many ordinary people came in. I had had grand plans when I plunged headlong into the world of small-business ownership in suburban New York. New books, old books, first editions, book signings, coffee bar, book clubs. Three and a half years later and I was treading water, if that. I had no money to sink into improvements, the chains got all the in-store appearances, and my coffee bar wound up being a pot of java evaporating on the burner, hoping someone would take a cup and leave a quarter. The big chains were killing me. I had reached a point were I had to decide between paying my store rent or my apartment rent. Maybe I'd just live in the back room of the store and eliminate one rent altogether. I couldn't afford to hire help, and I couldn't afford to take a day off. But maybe it was all worth it.

Paul McCartney was in my store.

I resisted the urge to run out to the street and hawk my wares. Come to the store where Paul McCartney shops! In fact, he's here now! Take a gander! I decided instead to move behind the cash register to establish my position of authority, and to be at the ready in case Paul had a literary question. Anyway, I was still too nervous to approach him.

There is a universal debate as to "Who is your favorite Beatle?" Well, right then and there, Paul was my favorite, by far. He had lots of money and I needed some.

What was he going to buy? I was ready to sell him a book, two books, a set of encyclopedias, my entire stock. Clean out the back storeroom, haul out all the dusty volumes of prose and verse no one wanted. I think I even had some light fixtures and shelves lying around that I could have let go cheap.

Paul and Heather moved on to the reference section. He went down on one knee, presumably to check out the bottom shelf, and disappeared from my view. It calmed me, not being able to see him. It gave me false confidence. Go up to him and say something. Make a sale! Heather left him and moved toward the back of the store, perusing the non-fiction. Do it do it do it!

I tried to steel my resolve. I took a deep breath and decided to go right on over and say...say...what would I say? Should it stay professional? "May I help you?" Or should I acknowledge the obvious fact of his celebrity? "Big fan of yours, Sir Paul."

He popped back up and I got a good look at his face. This wasn't the mop top McCartney; he was older, though he still had that boyish gleam in his eye and a quick smile. Crow's feet marked the years on his face like rings inside a tree's trunk. He still had a full head of hair, though it must have recently seen a generous application of Grecian Formula.

Paul held a book in his hand-I couldn't see the title or cover-and he joined Heather in the back of the store. She pointed to a couple of books, he nodded, then they continued on and paused in front of the coffee maker. He reached a hand out, hesitated, and bent down to get a better look at the sludge. He picked up the pot, swirled the muck around, sniffed it, then placed it back. He saw the sign that said 25¢ and the empty coffee can underneath it. He fished around in his pocket and dropped a sympathy coin in the can.

I was still getting my emotions under control. I mean being in the presence of a Beatle was different than, say, a Stone or a Kink or a Smith. Not that I had any point of comparison really, having never seen a Stone or a Kink or a Smith. The closest I had ever come to fame was when a local television weather reporter stole my parking spot at the mall.

Patience was the way to go. I decided to wait until he paid for his purchase. Let him come to me. During this little intermission, I tried to formulate a plan on how to get his money out of his wallet and into my hands. I knew he was big on charities. Breast cancer, land mine victims, 9/11 families. What about the death of the small businessman? Or is that too abstract? Did I need a physical ailment, something life-threatening?

Heather was looking at the gardening books, Paul apparently making wisecracks in her ear. She laughed. He was always on, always the jokester. She held a big book open in her hands, flipping through the color pages. I couldn't really envision her working in the garden. On her hands and knees digging around. She might get those little fingers dirty, soil and manure pushed up under her manicured fingernails. She was no Linda.

They were standing not too far from the music section, and the thought came to me that I should ask Paul to sign any Beatles related books I had in stock. At least I could make a few extra bucks that way. I'd barter with him-he can have the one he held for free if he'd just sign a stack of books.

Heather re-shelved the gardening book and they headed my way. My nerves started up again, the asbestos insulation returned to my mouth, sweat fled from my armpits. They passed the music section, the film and tv books, the art books. Right about at the mystery section the bell above the front door jingled. Paul, Heather, and I looked to see who had entered the store.

Two young boys carrying skateboards stood in the doorway. I quickly looked back at Paul, who had a wary look on his face, probably left over from the Beatlemania days. I felt annoyed that I now had to share the McCartneys. The boys didn't care about him though; they probably didn't even know who he was. I felt a brief pang of pity for Paul. Then I remembered he was filthy rich and I didn't feel so bad.

One of the kids came up to me at the register and said, "When's the new Harry Potter coming out?" I gave him the date and he said, "Cool." The boys left, skateboards clacking onto the sidewalk the moment they left the store.

I turned back to the McCartneys who resumed their trek to the register.

"Hello," Paul chirped. He placed the book down on the counter.

My tongue was tied; I didn't respond. I lifted the book and scanned the bar code. "Classical Music For Dummies." I managed to say, "That'll be sixteen dollars please."

Paul removed a slim leather (????) wallet from the inside pocket of his coat and flipped it open. He dug around, then turned to Heather. "Any cash, luv?" She shook her head no. He turned back to me and said, "Sorry, I've only a tenner. Do you think you can put the rest on my tab, then?"

I was an unresponsive statue-motionless, shocked, not comprehending, aghast, disappointed. My mouth hung open, but I didn't say anything.

Paul said, "Don't worry, I'm good for it." He slid his last ten over to me and I accepted it, sealing the deal. "In fact," he said, "I'll send you another ten, instead of the six I owe you, for your trouble."

I nodded my head in a quasi affirmative motion.

"Good day then." Paul took his book, which I had slipped into a paper bag, and he headed for the door. Heather followed. She nodded a goodbye to me. And just like that they were gone.

I was alone again. I went and poured myself a cup of well-done coffee to calm my nerves.

Three months later

I'm on my way to a job interview at Borders. They need a night manager, and I need an income. My store went bust, but I still have my apartment-I'm not homeless yet.

I stop to check my mailbox and find that Sir Paul was true to his word. It took three months, but there's a card with a ten dollar bill stuffed inside. The card was addressed to the store, and forwarded to my home address. Inside the card he scrawled a simple message: "Thanks, Paul." I tuck the card into my back pocket. I'll save it, maybe even stick it in a cheap frame with a picture of him, hang it on my living room wall.

I look at the ten bucks, turn it over, fold it into quarters and slip it inside my pocket with my keys. I can't afford to be sentimental. I'd rather eat.

Paul was briefly on "Good Morning America" this morning. The interview was taped the day of the book signing in New York. More of the interview will be shown this Sunday on "Good Morning America" (7- 8am on ABC - check local listings for airtime).

Sir Paul McCartney re-tuned the old Epiphone guitar he played on the Beatles' "Taxman" and "Paperback Writer" for a new track on his latest album.

Producer Nigel Godrich insisted McCartney dig out some of his old instruments for his latest album, "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard," and the rocker dusted-off one of his old favourites, even though he knew it was tough to keep the instrument in tune.

He says, "(I remembered) George (Harrison) let me have a go (on it) for the solo (on "Taxman") because I had an idea - it was the early Jim Hendrix days and I was trying to persuade George to do something... feedback-y and crazy.

"I like to play on it because it's oldish and a bit infirm. It won't stay in tune easily, like Jimi Hendrix's guitar didn't."

McCartney bought the guitar after watching Hendrix perform one night - and called out to pal Eric Clapton to help him tune his axe.

He recalls, "I went to the shop and said, 'What have you got that feeds back great?' That was normally a disadvantage in the old days."

October 6, 2005 -- Rolling Stone

Sir Paul Rides Again

New album, new tour, new life -- and nothing left to prove

Paul McCartney has just taken a seat at his piano, center-stage at a sports arena in downtown Miami. Before he touches the keys, he glances idly at his audience, which, this afternoon, comprises approximately a dozen people, mostly security guards and members of his crew. Directly opposite McCartney, on the arena floor, one of the crew members sits at a long table making notes on a sheet of paper. McCartney furrows his brow and says into the mike, "With that guy sitting over there, I feel like I'm on Pop Idol." He's referring to the British version of American Idol. The small crowd chuckles, as McCartney, imitating Simon Cowell, barks, "You're no good!" Then, in the voice of a cringing novice, he says, "W-w-well, we been t-t-told we were all right." Once the laughter dies down, McCartney turns back to the piano and plays "Hey Jude."

The last time McCartney toured North America, in 2002, the shows grossed $126 million, which made him the top touring artist of the year. McCartney has just worked out the set list this morning for his current tour, which will begin in less than a week. "I like to keep things a little loose," he says with a shrug. "You don't want it to become like a Broadway show."

Fans, of course, will come to see the hits, which McCartney happily delivers. During this afternoon's rehearsal, he and his touring band run through "Penny Lane," "Good Day Sunshine," "Back in the USSR," "Band on the Run" and "Live and Let Die." They also play "Too Many People," a rare angry-McCartney track from his 1971 solo masterpiece, Ram. (Beatles fans interpreted lyrics like "You took your lucky break and broke it in two/Now what can be done for you?" as references to John Lennon; they also read something into the back-cover photograph of what appears to be one beetle sodomizing another.)

But however bottomless the love for McCartney's past glories, the most exciting thing about his latest tour may be the fact that -- as with his peers in the Rolling Stones -- it's in support of a new album people actually like. Chaos and Creation in the Backyard has been hailed by critics as McCartney's strongest effort since Flowers in the Dirt, the 1989 album on which he co-wrote a number of songs with Elvis Costello. For Chaos and Creation, McCartney chose another younger collaborator, producer Nigel Godrich, best known for his work on the past four Radiohead albums and Beck's Sea Change. McCartney played nearly every instrument on the album -- not only guitar, bass, drums and piano but fluegelhorn, guiro, harpsichord, triangle, maracas, gong, toy glockenspiel, Moog organ and tubular bells -- with a result that's always sonically captivating and often thrillingly weird. Because this is a Paul McCartney album, there are love songs, but most have a haunted, slightly mournful air, a seeming reflection -- though McCartney insists none of his songs are directly autobiographical -- of the death of his wife of twenty-nine years, Linda McCartney, from breast cancer in 1998, and of his subsequent marriage, in 2002, to former model Heather Mills.

"How Kind of You," for example, is decidedly downbeat, with lyrics from the point of view of a grateful older man surprised to find romance in the twilight of his life. "I thought my faith had gone," McCartney sings, as a sinister melody twists in ways that keep the listener as off-balance as the song's weary protagonist. There's a similar vibe on "At the Mercy," which plays upon one of McCartney's most famous lyrics -- "The love you take is equal to the love you make," from "The End" -- in the far more ambivalent overtures of a man reluctant to choose between "the love I've got and the love I'd lose."

Chaos and Creation also finds McCartney far more comfortable with his own musical past. The standout track "Jenny Wren" is a lovely acoustic ballad in the vein of "Blackbird" that could be an outtake from the White Album. And "Anyway" spins a simple "People Get Ready" vamp into a soaring arrangement that recalls the final suite of Abbey Road.

"Early on, say, with Wings, it was a necessity to not sound like the Beatles," says McCartney, who, for rehearsal, is casually dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt that reads east hampton town dump. "I didn't want to write another 'Eleanor Rigby.'" He hums the melody, as if I may not be familiar with the tune. "And it's only more recently that I've realized I did establish my own identity and said, 'Well, OK, what's the battle about, then? There's no need to keep fighting. You're a part of the Beatles, you're a part of Wings and you're a part of your new stuff now, and it's all your style.' And so, yeah, on 'Blackbird,' I had done a kind of slightly folksy guitar part which had a top melody and an accompanying bass line, and the two going together gave it this certain character. And I've never done anything since along those lines. And so now, on this new album, I thought, 'Why not? What am I frightened of?' There could be two songs in the world like that. And I wrote the first one! So it's not like I'm nicking anyone's thing."

I interviewed McCartney in two sessions during rehearsals -- as he snacked on broccoli, green beans and a heavily buttered slice of bread -- and later after a photo shoot at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The day of the shoot, McCartney drove in from the Hamptons, where he spent part of his summer with his wife and their two-year-old daughter, Beatrice. At sixty-three, he's trim (a thirty-three-inch waist) and a bit gray at the temples (British tabloids delighted in accusing Mills of pushing hair dye on Sir Paul, who retorted with a post on Mills' Web site insisting he'd been dyeing his hair for years). We began by talking about Godrich, who was recommended to McCartney by Beatles producer George Martin.

Do you and George Martin still talk regularly?

Yeah, we meet up quite a bit, actually. Particularly because we used his studio for the London end of the recording. George always pops in, especially if he knows I'm there. He's one of the most important men in my life, and that's including my father, my brother, the Beatles -- George Martin is right up there in the top five. Really, I would like to work with him forever. That would be my dream.

Does he still produce?

No. He's got a hearing problem, like a lot of us from the Sixties. 'Cause we did listen to it too loud. He just got to the stage where he thinks, very nobly, that he shouldn't produce. I say to him, "George, the engineers need the ears. You're the ideas man." But I think it's very cool of him to know when not to do it. So I just rang him up and said, "If I can't have you, who's the man?" He chatted it around, thought about it, talked to his son, and a couple of days later he came back and said Nigel.

Had you been aware of Nigel's work?

Yeah, but without knowing he was the man behind it. I liked the last couple of Radiohead albums, particularly the sound. And Travis, The Invisible Band. And Beck. So we just met up, chatted and liked each other -- I think. I liked him. And then I sent him a couple of records that I thought might either turn him on or off, or might just be a direction to go.

Demos you'd made?

No, other people's records. I liked the idea of toying with a kind of Asian thing, a one-chord thing. There's an artist called Nitin Sawhney who I like -- he's a British-Asian guy. It was just a vibe I was into at the time, that sort of droniness. I didn't know what I'd do with it. It was just a mood thing. And Nigel said, "Mmm, no. I know what album I want to make if I'm going to work with you. I want to make an album that's you." And I thought, "That's the kind of producer I need now."

So we agreed to meet up for a test period -- two weeks in London. The first week was with my touring band, and we were quite excited to record together. But Nigel had this itching feeling, like he could do something else. He wanted to move in a bit more daring direction. He said, "I want to take you out of your safety zone, man." Kept saying that -- "It's just too easy."

Godrich eventually talked McCartney into saving his band for the tour and playing nearly every instrument himself, just as he'd done on his first solo effort, McCartney. The album was recorded in 1970 and released ten days after McCartney's official statement that the Beatles had broken up. McCartney's relationship with the group's manager, Allen Klein, had particularly soured. "I used to have dreams in which Allen Klein was an evil dentist," McCartney recalls. "That was a bad sign. I just wanted to be as far away from Apple [the Beatles' label and business office] as possible."

To that end, McCartney set up a Studer four-track recorder in his living room and, as he says, went from "everything to zero. It was liberating." McCartney made the entire album alone (save for some harmonies with his wife), using a single microphone, which he moved closer to the drum kit if he wanted a louder cymbal sound. Some tracks, like "The Lovely Linda," are mere fragments of a song, and background noises (giggling, doors opening, the clack of the tape) are audible throughout. McCartney called the album "kind of throwaway" in a 1974 Rolling Stone interview, but today its loose, offhand feel is charming, a precursor to the low-fi home taping of indie-rock bands.

In coaxing McCartney to play multiple instruments on Chaos and Creation, Godrich began with percussion. "I love kicking around on the drums," McCartney admits. "I'll do it at the drop of a hat. So I started kicking, and he said, 'Yeah! This is it, man. It just turns the track around. It's you!' Then he said, 'Look, I'd like to hear you on guitar. What have you got?' I brought my old Epiphone electric guitar out, which was like a cheap Gibson in the early days. It's the guitar that I played the opening riff of 'Paperback Writer' on, so it's a lovely guitar. It can be quite varied -- sort of horny and hard, like the 'Taxman' solo; that was the other thing I used it on. George let me have a go for the solo because I had an idea -- it was the early Jimi Hendrix days and I was trying to persuade George to do something like that, feedback-y and crazy. And I was showing him what I wanted, and he said, 'Well, you do it.' Even though it was his song, he was happy for me to do it. And this became Nigel's big favorite guitar."

Do you have a lot of old guitars you end up pulling out?

I've got a few guitars that I like. The trouble with fame and riches is that you have more than one guitar. When you're a kid, you've only got one guitar, and you love it, and you string it and you cherish it, and you put it to bed at night and all that sh*t. You relate to it. When you've got more than one, you've got two [laughs]. And then you don't know which one to choose. It's an embarrassment of riches. Then you've suddenly got three and four, and then at my stage in the game, people give you guitars. So you've suddenly got a cellarful.

But my Epiphone, that's my electric guitar, that is the one. I like to play on it because it's oldish and a bit infirm. It won't stay in tune easily, like Jimi Hendrix's guitar didn't. Jimi was always, like, calling out to the audience, "Will you come tune this?" One night -- it's an old story of mine and I love it -- we released Sgt. Pepper's on a Friday, and on Sunday Jimi opened his show with it in London. He did this long solo like only Jimi could. And at the end of it, he had hopelessly gone out of tune. So he shambled over to the mike and said, "Is Eric [Clapton] in the house?" Eric shrunk down in his seat. Some girls said, "Yeah, he's here!" Jimi said, "Will you come and tune this for me?" Of course, Eric shrunk even lower and Jimi had to tune it himself.

Anyway, I was into that kind of thing, and that's why I bought my Epiphone. I went to the shop and said, "What have you got that feeds back great?" That was normally a disadvantage in the old days -- in the older old days. I use the Les Paul onstage, because it doesn't go out of tune as much, and it has a nice sound. But Nigel would wrinkle his nose and say, "It's a bit heavy rock."

I'd imagine it's hard to find people, especially in the studio, who aren't intimidated by you, and who won't just be yes-men.

I suppose it is. With Nigel, I pretty much knew the minute I met him he was gearing himself up to tell me no. From the word go. When I first brought him some songs, he just passed a few by and went to the next one, like he was shopping. I brought them back later and said, "Well, you didn't look at this one." He said, "I like the other one better."

Did you wrestle with that kind of bluntness initially?

Yeah, I was well pissed. "You don't like my songs. How dare you? Who are you? Punk." But I realized he was looking for a vibe. So if one of my songs was a bit perky, maybe he didn't think we should do it this time around. I might have thought, "Well, I've heard a lot of good perky songs on the radio. And I'm in a perky mood!" But he was just like, "Nah."

And it was good for me, because it was like working with a band member. It was like working with . . . I mean, it's too heavy a comparison to say it was like working with John. Because if I say that in Rolling Stone, it's a huge statement. But it was like working with a great band member. It was similar to me and John, back to when we were just kids, before we'd been discovered.

There was one key moment when it all rose to the surface. I was in the studio, raring to go. Got my Hofner [bass guitar] out, tuned her up, knew what I was going to play. I was in a good mood. I was just about to listen to the track and find my way through a bass part when Nigel said, "You know that song you played the other day? I really didn't like it. I think it was crap." I said, "Oh, yeah?" And I thought, "What will I do now? F*king . . . punch him? Or just spit at him? Tell him to f*k off? Or what?"

(Excerpted from RS 985, October 20, 2005)

Sir Paul McCartney will never buy back the rights to The Beatles songs from Michael Jackson, but he admits he hates paying to play songs he wrote.

Jackson snapped up the songs in 1985 behind McCartney's back, but is rumoured to be selling them to help clear debts.

But McCartney is reluctant to pay out for the songs, which will revert back to him soon anyway.

He says, "Bono rang me and said, 'Did you hear? He's selling the songs. You should buy them!' Everyone else thinks I should too. But the thing is, I do get some cash from the publishing already. And in a few years more of the rights will be automatically be reverting to me.

"The only annoying thing is, when I tour America I have to pay to play some of my own songs. But I don't think about that. Because if I did, it would be just too annoying."

Sir Paul McCartney is giving animal activists at People For The Ethical Treatment of Animals a boost on his US tour - by taking on their number one foe in his official tour program.

McCartney has donated a full-page ad in the program, blasting fast food chicken chain KFC over its live-scalding of chicks.

McCartney's ad is an open letter to KFC boss David Novak, in which he scolds, "If KFC suppliers treated dogs or cats the way they treat chickens, they could be charged with the crime of cruelty to animals."

He continues, "I am a vegetarian because I realize that even little chickens suffer pain and fear, experience a range of feelings and emotions, and are as intelligent as mammals, including dogs, cats, and even some primates."

The model and activist, who is married to former pot smoker Sir Paul McCartney, insists she has never understood why anyone uses recreational drugs - and always berates those who think it's OK to puff in front of her.

She says, "I used to say, 'Only losers do drugs, you've got to go for some therapy, what's the matter with you?.' Now I have a bit more understanding, I'm older and wiser but if I saw someone take a puff from a joint, I would freak out completely.

"I would run round with my air freshener saying, 'This stinks, get it out of my house.'

"We know people in mental institutions through marijuana; some people can smoke it and it does nothing, but if you've got a light chemical imbalance you can literally create so much damage to yourself and bring on paranoia and depression.

"I'm horrified that it's been declassified in England. It's horrific... All drugs are disgusting."

Troubled supermodel Kate Moss has found another high-profile supporter as she fights her drug demons - best friend Stella McCartney's stepmother.

Heather Mills McCartney insists she has never seen Moss taking drugs and had no idea the British beauty had a problem until it was exposed by the media last month when photos of Moss cutting up cocaine appeared in the tabloids.

Mills McCartney says, "She is a very sweet, lovely girl who obviously is going through troubles."

But the model and activist is angry with the fashion houses who have recently dumped Moss from their campaigns over the scandal, claiming top designers only turned their backs on her when he problem was exposed.

Mills McCartney adds, "I think it's terrible that these companies want to be hypocritical... They knew, in the first place, that these girls do drugs.

"Choose people who are proper role models. There are loads of great role models out there that can represent the company. There are loads of models that don't do drugs, so just think about who you're making into an icon for young kids.

SIR Paul McCartney blew into TriBeCa eatery 66 Monday afternoon to launch a 2006 calendar of photos by his late wife Linda from the teNeues Publishing Group. McCartney - who also launched his eco-conscious kid's book, "High in the Clouds," that day and plays the sold-out Garden tonight.

Told PAGE SIX's Tom Sykes, "It's always fantastic to be back in New York. But New York is always bittersweet to me, particularly because of John [Lennon]. But I choose to remember the great times, so it's always more sweet than bitter."

McCartney also talked up the stories behind the portraits of Ray Charles, B.B. King, Mick Jagger, Frank Zappa, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Neil Young and Aretha Franklin. "Linda had a great story about this Aretha one. She said there was a stream of all her relatives coming in and she was handing them money out of a brown paper bag." Asked if he was sad so many of the legends featured were gone, McCartney said, "John's [death] was particularly sad, Jim's was sad. Janis' was sad. That's rock and roll, unfortunately. It's a game of excess. I am sad that Linda's passed away. That's my main sadness."
October 4, 2005 -- Record Collector

Brian Wilson sees himself "as Paul McCartney"

Q: Are you planning an album with Paul McCartney?

Brian: No

Q: Would you like to?

Brian: No

Q: How do you see yourself among the great pop composers?

Brian: I see myself as Paul McCartney. But Paul makes me nervous. He's a real energetic person and he talks a lot.

He said to me backstage at one of his concerts, "I'm gonna kick your butt." I said, "What do you mean?" He said,"I'm gonna kick your butt tonight." Then I saw the show and saw what he meant.

October 4, 2005 -- The Times

Getting high with Paul McCartney

Take an ex-Beatle, an illustrator, a children's writer and what do you have? A book about a squirrel, of course. Philip Ardagh tells the tale.

I first met Paul McCartney at Abbey Road in March 2004, where he was recording his latest album. I arrived with Suzy Jenvey, my Faber editor, and we drifted down to the canteen to find Geoff Dunbar, the illustrator-animator, casually sketching a squirrel. Suzy introduced us. There had been plenty happening on this project, in its various guises, before I came on to the scene.

Rewind. It is the late 1990s and Paul has written a jaunty little number called Tropic Island Hum. Fast forward a little, and he and wife Linda have written and produced a short animated film based on it, with the same name. Directed by Geoff, it concerns Wirral the Squirrel ("I'm William the squirrel, but my friends call me Wirral.") and an island animal sanctuary.

Time passes and, sadly, so does Linda. Now we are in 2004, Paul has married Heather, Beatrice has been born and Paul and Geoff have been planning to turn Tropic Island Hum into something bigger. Faber published Paul's book of poems and lyrics, Blackbird Singing, so he turns to them for advice. Now Suzy Jenvey is on board as an advisor/editor. Where to go from here?

Suzy suggests that I get involved, and Paul agrees, asking her to show me what they have done so far. I come up with suggestions for a new character, fleshing out some of the old ones, and playing around with the plot. Suzy passes these on.

Then we meet. It's relaxed and informal. Paul and I hit if off. We all get excited at the prospect of working together. Ideas fly. Geoff is scribbling away. We agree there and then on equal billing - no ghostwriting, or names tucked away in tiny type - and on joint copyright. I'm on board.

We amble down to the studio, passing a framed photo of the cover of Rubber Soul. Paul explains how the distorted image came about. He introduces us to the musicians and engineer, and plays back a track. We arrange our next meeting.

On one level this is all quite surreal. This is Paul McCartney. I've grown up listening to the Beatles and watching their films.

On another level, this makes perfect sense. Because I feel I've known him all my life, working together seems the next logical step.

One of my books, Awful End, is in pre-production with Warner Bros as a "major motion picture", so why not team up with a rock legend while I'm at it? (When I go on book tours to the US, Paul wishes me luck. I imagine that our American tours differ somewhat in scale.)

We soon fall into a regular pattern: weekly get-togethers, when possible, at Paul's London office, with its musical-note patterned carpets. Geoff arrives with his sketches - though, having lived with these characters almost as long as Paul, he more than simply illustrates the book - all three of us are tossing ideas around. So, how did it work? Well, someone had to hold the pen, and that was me.

This being his baby, however, Paul always had the final say. After all, High in the Clouds, will be remembered as his book.

We enjoyed ourselves. The only thing we took time to agree on was the name of Wirral's white-furred mother. She has a pivotal role, and it was important to get it right. (In a note, Paul wrote: "We can work it out," leading Suzy to wonder whether the whole matter could be discussed using Beatles' lyrics.) We finally settled on Sugartail. That weekend, I was walking in the woods with my wife and son when an albino squirrel darted in front of us. I managed to take a photo and gave it to Paul, with a big arrow pointing to the real Sugartail. We took it to be a good omen.

Then, a little over a year after we first got together, it was done and now Paul is on tour in the US promoting his new album. We hope to get together again for a few High in the Clouds events - dare I say gigs? - in December, commitments permitting. It's a collaboration I'll remember fondly, marred only when, in March, Suzy had a brain haemorrhage. But, like the book, this has a happy ending. She's well on the road to recovery.

---

October 4, 2005 -- New York Daily News

by Ella Hester ( 8 years old)

Beatle Paul's my pal

I always wanted to hold Paul McCartney's hand, and yesterday I did - but he wouldn't let go!

When I shook his hand yesterday at Barnes & Noble, where he was signing his new children's book, "High in the Clouds," Paul held on tight - and blamed me.

"Let go! Let go!" he teased.

I laughed - Paul is my favorite Beatle, and yesterday I learned he is funny and nice. It was a dream come true.

I didn't expect to ever meet him. My mommy and daddy took me to the store because they learned Paul would be signing books - but only for the first 125 people on line. People started lining up Friday!

But my mommy said, "Let's go just to buy the book, and maybe we'd get a look at Paul."

I sat in the store and read the book. There were a lot of people - but I was the only kid.

Two people came up to my parents and asked if I wanted to meet Paul. They were Paul's assistants, Stuart and Michelle.

"Paul loves children," said Michelle.

They took me to the front of the line!

Then Paul came in and there were camera lights flashing. He asked me my name and I was so nervous I could hardly speak!

Then I told him that I knew why he named a character Wirral the Squirrel. Wirral is a part of Liverpool. (I went there when I visited Liverpool this summer!)

He said in a funny voice, "Oh, Wirral the Squirrel!"

He complimented my Paul McCartney T-shirt and said goodbye. I said, "Thank you."

The book is great and has really cool drawings! I would recommended it for kids who are 8 like I am - or even younger or older. Everyone will like it.

It's about a brave squirrel forced from his beautiful home in the Woodland, which is destroyed by tractors. He goes to the city, learns animals there are forced to work in factories and decides to help them.

There are some sad parts, but it has a happy ending.

I liked the book very much.

But the story of how I met Paul McCartney is now my favorite story of all. PHOTOS

Fans had come from all over the world to meet Paul McCartney at his Barnes & Noble book signing. Some had camped out since Friday. The store announced that only 125 fans would actually meet Paul and get their "High in the Clouds" book signed.

At 8 am outside the store, fans were given wristbands. At 1pm those with wristbands had to leave their bags at claim check and wait outside at a side entrance.

Paul arrived at 2:04 pm in one of three black Lexus SUV's with California license plates. The car came pulled up on the 5th Avenue side and Paul waved to the crowd. It was like Beatlemania all over again as hundreds screamed. He signed about 10 autographs on the way in.

There were fans inside the store standing on a balcony and one had on a blue Sgt. Pepper outfit. When Paul walked in they started signing "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" which got Paul's attention. The woman in the Pepper outfit yelled "PAUL! It's my birthday!" Paul stopped and said, "Is it?" And she said, "YES!" He sang "Happy Birthday" to her and did a little dance. (Congrats to Carla Saad)

Paul proceded to the signing area at the back of the store where there was a press conference and photo op that lasted about 15 minutes before the signing began.

Store personel gathered children in the store and one was brought over to Paul's table to get his autograph.

Macca signed for 125 people. Fans were pushed along and the average time spent with Paul was 15 seconds. When Paul finished signing, he had some time left so more people were let in. After he finished he went over to the elevator to leave and signed a few more autographs and left through the underground garage.

Congrats to Brenda Spencer on the autograph!

Paul McCartney poses for pictures during a book signing at Barnes & Noble, Rockefeller Center in New York City on Monday. McCartney was signing copies of his first children's book, "High in the Clouds" based on the short film "Tropic Island Hum".

The 36-year-old photographer, who recently ended her six-year marriage to British television producer Alistair Donald, will visit New Orleans to research survivor stories, and is planning to donate proceeds from the show to the relief effort.

She says, "I'm at the stage now where I really should be thinking about my next exhibition.

"One of my friends suggested going to New Orleans and documenting how the region's jazz singers and musicians are getting over the tragedy.

"I like that idea and I'd love to help the survivors in any way that I can."

To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of Paul McCartney buying Careen and Robert Friedland's Pasadena house have been greatly exaggerated.

"We own the property," Careen Friedland said, "and we're not going anywhere." Period.

Still, tongues keep wagging. The buzz from http://www.contactmusic.com : "Sir Paul McCartney has reportedly bought a $7.6-million, eight-bedroom pad in Pasadena." Picking up the idea was http://www.seeing-stars.com : "The Wayne Manor mansion seen in the 'Batman' TV series located in Pasadena was purchased by Paul McCartney."

Friedland would like to put the issue to rest. She and her husband have owned the 16,000-square-foot house, on about 5 acres, since 1999. The couple has never even placed the home on the market.

The homeowner doesn't know who started the rumor or why but first heard it three months ago. "My kids were told by their friends that we were moving," she said.

So, the question remains: What prompted the tale?

We may never know for sure, but one thing is certain: McCartney still has many fans.

"One person said they saw him getting a haircut in San Marino, another said he was drinking Starbucks in Pasadena," Friedland said.

Dear Friends,

Thank you all for your support; many of you are as appalled as I am at the reality of dogs and cats being skinned alive for their pelts. It's so shocking to think we live in a world where people murder for fashion. Many of you have asked how you can help, so here goes:

First, sign our on-line petition if you haven't already done so; then write to every designer who uses fur saying you will not buy from them until they stop using it in their designs. Also write to models, socialites, fashion editors (they are very influential) buy UK Cosmopolitan magazine, as they are taking a very brave stance of being anti-fur. There are also lots of day-to-day choices you can make to save many other animals that are used for fur, not just dogs and cats - after all, those animals also feel pain and have very real emotions. Go up to anyone wearing any type of fur, whether it's a coat, trim, bobbles and so on, and tell them gently but informatively just what kind of trade they are contributing to. You'd be surprised how many people have absolutely no idea of their part in that chain.

It's been a really stressful year for us, watching hours of tapes of innocent animals being skinned alive for the fashion industry. The biggest shock was to see Alsatian puppies being skinned from the paws up; the cowards who do this can't even find an ounce of warmth or compassion in their hearts to kill the terrified babies first. Please, please avoid fur and boycott any celebrities who use fur and the products they endorse. Cindy Crawford famously supported PETA's 'I'd rather go naked than wear fur' campaign, but has now sold her soul to the fur trade, as have Linda Evangelista and Naomi Campbell. Write to companies like Omega watches and ask how they can have a hypocrite endorse their product to create sales? These are models who were fully informed of the cruelty involved when they joined in the campaign against fur to support PETA, but who then decided to take the money and rejoin the industry that murders animals. Do they really need that cash? Are they broke? Do they live in a shed? J Lo is one of the biggest celebrity buyers of fur for her own clothing line Sweetface: boycott her films, perfume and clothes as well as her music until she decides to give it up. If we all do this together as a team effort, we can wipe out the use of fur in fashion. There will, of course, always be the odd person who you cannot influence or inject any warmth into; these people will have to live with their consciences and will reap their rewards for their actions in this and future lives.
Good luck and go make a difference!

Love Heather Mills McCartney x

It's been a long road, that's for sure!

I've been waiting to release my CD, Mondo Magneto, to get the tour with Paul going strong, hoping you would be there to listen when I was ready. Well, I'm ready!! Are you ready? How about releasing it a week early for you? Oct. 25th it is, then!!  It will be available to order from CD Baby and Amazon, and also on iTunes on Nov the 8th.

I am also offering it on my website as a special pre-release from Oct. 11th, as a thank you to you all for your support. The first 50 people to order it from my website will receive a copy signed by me!

How about another song in the meantime? This is called "Good for Nothing" and it leads off my new CD. My friend Oliver Leiber co-produced this track with me.

Please.... enjoy!

Love,
Brian

The first of Paul McCartney's four shows at Madison Square Garden turned out to be an unexpected hit, and one of the best solo shows of his career.

It was unexpected because, thanks to McCartney's publicist, it was a hard show to get into. Special VIP forms offered a chance to buy $300 tickets. Hello! Concentrated foraging on eBay finally produced excellent seats at less than half that price. And there seem to be many more for each show.

Ticket dilemma aside, another McCartney show reeked of ambivalence. Even though his new album is excellent, would McCartney live be anything more than a way to top previous fireworks displays in "Live and Let Die"? You see what I mean.

So what a surprise when McCartney's show quickly became an interesting mix of intimate actual solo performances by the forever-Beatle and robust rock and roll turns of some of his best known work. He also introduced several songs he'd never performed before in concert. (If he has, my apologies to the die-hard fans.) But it was a pleasure to hear "Too Many People" from Ram, "I'll Get You" from The Beatles' Second Album, "Til There Was You" from With the Beatles and "I've Got a Feeling" from Let it Be." He even smartly rescued the group's earliest recording, "In Spite of All the Danger." Still no sign of "Another Day," his mini-soap opera masterpiece, but the others made up for it.

After playing an unnecessary promotional film (it seemed like something you'd find at a corporate dinner), McCartney, unbelievably 63 years old, took the stage with his band and rocked through "Flaming Pie," "Jet," "Drive My Car," and a couple more standards with aplomb. Right away though it was easy to see this would be different than the Rolling Stones' show earlier this month. McCartney's show was stage directed, organized, really, and though through. It wasn't just, please help us pay for help in Mustique. There was something else at work here.

For a good chunk of this show, McCartney either sits at the piano by himself or strums a guitar. The result was that over-played anthems that in the past have felt forced or turged-"Maybe I'm Amazed," "Let it Be," "Eleanor Rigby"-got a new life last night.

Melodic gems from the Lennon-McCartney songbook, like "For No One," "Fixing a Hole," and the magnificent, underrated "I Will," were showcased to their greatest value.

Played by McCartney just on acoustic guitar with a loping stride, the latter shone especially in the lines "And when at last I find you/ Your song will fill the air."

Every performer has good nights and bad, and McCartney's had all of them. Even last night his voice cracked occasionally, and he missed a few notes on the guitar. Toward the end of a very soulful reading of "Let it Be," he seemed to forget the lyrics and dropped a couple of words. It didn't matter. Overall, it was one of those nights when even the mistakes were okay because the achievements were so brilliant.

He talked a lot, too (and so did the band-a little too much.) That led to the intimacy, especially when he reminisced about his father and the punch line pretty much had meaning just for him. For McCartney, the richest performer in the world, it was one of many pleasant, disarming moments. There was also a nice moment dedicated to the memories of John Lennon and
George Harrison. And McCartney revealed something you never hear from rock stars: that those signs fans hold up can be distracting because he reads them and forgets what he's doing. Who knew?

Still, the real pleasure of the night was McCartney the musician. He does not move like the unreal Mick Jagger, and, no matter what, cannot rock like The Who.

But listening to him play boogie woogie piano riffs-as he did quite a lot-and all those rolling solo's was absolutely gigantic. Little Richard and Fats Domino can take a lot of pride in their "student" by absentia. McCartney's contribution to the Beatles is often derogated in light of Lennon's caustic wit or Harrison's guitar technique. But McCartney was the engine that drove those songs, and he's not about to give up now.

One quibble, though: hire a horn section, Paul. Even the Fab Faux, the famous Beatle tribute band, has one. "Penny Lane" and "For No One" need woodwinds. "Eleanor Rigby" requires violins. The artificial sweetening is bad for your health.

Macca has been working periodically on an outtakes project called Cold Cuts since 1974. He's nearly issued the collection four times - in 1974, 1978, 1981 and 1987. Plans for a Wings-era box set were scrapped just prior to the release of the career-spanning Wingspan CD and DVD.

Among the many gems gathering dust in McCartney's vaults are an entire album's worth of acoustic Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly covers he recorded in July 1974 in the backyard of Abbey Road Studios.

An unreleased 1978 soundtrack album to a full-length Rupert The Bear animated feature that never materialized.

Also unreleased is a fully mixed multi-track tape of Wings' last official concert in Glasgow, Scotland from December 17th, 1979.

Macca's tour carries on through the end of November.

'It'll go as long as I enjoy it, I suppose, which seems to be now and the foreseeable future,' says the former Beatle, who's on tour in North America promoting his latest album, 'Chaos and Creation in the Backyard.' 'It's crazy, really. It's very paradoxical. You would think that the natural thing is I'd be completely bored. But I'm working harder than ever in some ways.

'It's all a bit too fun, really. That`s the main thing. As long as everyone's enjoying themselves, and the audience are, so that`s good enough for me.'

He publishes a children's book, 'High in the Clouds: An Urban Furry Tail,' Oct. 3.

Jane Asher was born into a privileged background with Royal connections and will be remembered as the girl who nearly married a Beatle. But this was no pop groupie. Today she is still a household name but for very different reasons. On the eve of her latest book launch she talks to Sandra Chapman.

Jane Asher's interest in food was well established by the time she met Paul McCartney in the early sixties.

In fact on their first date at a friend's flat and to the surprise of all around them the young couple spent the evening talking about their favourite food. She had learned how to cook from her mother whom Paul was to later describe as a 'very nice mumsy-type woman and a great cook'.

Today Jane, approaching her sixtieth birthday, has turned cake decorating into an art form but there's nothing 'mumsy' about her. She's still as slender as she was on that first date with Paul and asked how she manages to stay that way considering how much food she has to sample she puts it down to 'thin people are usually in a state of permanent fidgeting.' She adds: "I've always been skinny and I suppose people like me are never really relaxed. My sister is the one who always has to watch her weight.

"I don't eat loads of sweet stuff though but I'll never turn down a nice roast beef dinner. I think the only time I put on weight was when I was in America once and they had all those lovely breakfasts. In truth I can be quite lazy and can slob out in front of the TV like anyone else."

Today Jane is known as much for her cake decorating skills as she is for her acting skills.

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