---

ALL CONTENT ON THIS PAGE IS COPYRIGHT!!

---

Macca Report current Paul News!!!
Macca Report Archived News Index

---

!!!Some links could be outdated!!!

---

---

November 2008

---

---

November 29, 2008 -- BBC News

McCartney finds spark as Fireman

Sir Paul McCartney has found a new lease of creative life on his third album as The Fireman, a collaboration with producer Youth.

Raw, experimental and partly improvised, each song was written and recorded in a day, with Sir Paul building lyrics around words from poetry books, adopting alter-egos to sing, and mining old blues records for vocal inspiration.

The results on Electric Arguments are rough, rich and refreshing for one of the world's most established stars.

On Monday, he launched the album by telling reporters how the pair made the album, and giving his thoughts on the future.

ON CREATIVE FREEDOM

We had the freedom to make this album any way we wanted. It could have been very carefully considered, very precise, but that wouldn't be The Fireman. That's the whole point about the Fireman, that it's very free.

ON WORKING WITH YOUTH

I originally met him because he was doing a mix for me. We got along well and started to talk about similar things - art and poetry and stuff. So it grew. We did the first two Fireman albums for fun and by the time it got to this one, he became more like a creative partner and what I had to do was trust him.

Once I did trust him, it made it much easier for me to be creative. I could do anything because I knew he would only take the best stuff.

ON COLLABORATIONS

I like working with someone. I like giving up control. I don't need to have full control all the time. I like a bit, but I like to throw it open to someone. It's more fun than sitting in a room on your own all day.

ON IMPROVISING VOCALS

We made two Fireman albums and they were instrumental. Youth suggested to me, 'how about a bit of vocal?' And I said, 'well I haven't got any songs, I've got no idea'.

And because it's The Fireman and anything goes, I said, 'yeah sure', so I got on the mic and said to the engineer, 'this could be the worst moment of my life'. Most people are intimidated even if they know what to sing, and I've got no idea. So I said, 'no laughing, I'm going to try this'. I just goofed around, ad libbed it. And eventually a song came out of it.

ON WRITING LYRICS

How we do it on The Fireman is we just sit down and I can be talking to Youth about this that and the other. He sometimes will carry around a few of these poetry books. I might say, 'Let me have that book', and I'll look through it and choose a couple of words at random.

Like 'use this approach'. And we start working on the word 'approach'. So I'd nick two words off [Allen] Ginsberg, two words of [William] Burroughs, and it was like Burroughs' technique, the cut-up. So it was a very random process but it is very liberating.

ON ADOPTING ALTER-EGOS

It's an approach I've been interested in. With Sergeant Pepper, the whole idea was to create a band and we could pretend we were that band, not The Beatles. So we made that record with that in mind.

Normally when John would walk up to the microphone, some part of his brain would be conscious that he was doing a John Lennon vocal. And that's sometimes a little bit of a pressure.

So we crated this idea in Sergeant Pepper where you're not John Lennon, you're Dirk. So you go up to a mic and you just sing how you want to sing rather than how you expect people think you're going to sing. And it's quite liberating to do that.

ON NEW MATERIAL

I'm enjoying this so I'll see how this goes. I am starting to write songs at home but I don't have any plans. There's no deadlines as to when I have to record them.

One of the reasons I do The Fireman and not just stick to my day job is that they complement each other. You do The Fireman, and when you come back to write what you might call a proper song, it's informed by The Fireman experience. So it freshens it up a little bit.

ON TOURING AS THE FIREMAN

At the moment we haven't got any plans. But we're kind of anticipating it. Me and Youth have said we'll see how it goes. If suddenly there's a big demand for it, I'd like to try it. It would be quite challenging.

ON TOURING AS SIR PAUL McCARTNEY

I'm looking at doing some little gigs here and there - I've been doing some one-offs this year, which have been interesting to do instead of a big major tour. I'm also writing some other stuff in the background, but there's no big plans. No world tour.

On the third floor of his Soho offices, James Paul McCartney is shrugging off his often gratifying but occasionally burdensome legendariness. It's a big task. Perhaps he ought to have a word with his housekeeper. After all, keepsakes and curios from the career of the greatest songwriter alive press in from the walls on every floor: three lovely pictures of the Fab Four and one of Paul hugging a sheepdog in reception, gold and silver discs everywhere. Upstairs in his office the references broaden: a huge de Kooning painting hangs behind his desk; a Wurlitzer jukebox awaits a dime; a two-foot black plastic Mutant Ninja Turtle sits close by.

Styled today like a particularly "with it" oldster on a cruise ship (navy jacket with epaulettes, T-shirt, cords, trainer/deck shoe hybrids), McCartney is promoting the latest offering from his avant garde alter ego The Fireman. Electric Arguments is the third Fireman album with longtime collaborator-producer Youth.

But it isn't McCartney's Kid A. Unlike the previous two Fireman albums there are vocals. And songs. In fact, it sounds like a good Paul McCartney solo album. Except when he growls as on Travelling Light. Or when he sounds like he's lost his thumbs-up cool, massively exceeded his Viagra dosage and screams in a frightening libidinous rage, "The last thing to do was to try and betray me!" and then barks like a dog which all happens on Nothing Too Much Just Out Of Sight.

Reaffirming his counter-cultural mojo has long been a concern for Macca. Lennon was always seen as the edgy Beatle, the one who sent his MBE back and merited a deportment order from Nixon and a 300-page FBI file.

But Macca too has a worthy CV of cultural dissidence. Two weeks ago he announced that the McCartney-inspired "lost" Beatles track Carnival Of Light could finally see the light of day. Recorded in 1967 during a break from the Penny Lane sessions the 14-minute "song" features Lennon and McCartney pretending to be American Indians, coughing and chatting while the other two follow Macca's totally far-out orders to "wander round all the stuff, bang it, shout, play it".

It was McCartney who was deported from Hamburg after setting fire to a condom in a cinema in 1960. It was he who recorded under the aliases Apollo C Vermouth and Percy Thrillington. "We were the mop-tops," he says as the Guide takes a tour of nine key tenets of Macca weirdness, a round 10 being too straight, man, "but we were always aware of the undercurrents around us. We always tried to explore our far-out side."

Macca on ... setting up an avant-garde label

The Apple label was for the Beatles' music. But there was an undercurrent where John met Yoko [then an experimental artist] and I hung out with Allen Ginsberg. Andy Warhol came to my house and showed his film Empire there because I was the only one with a 16mm projector.

A key figure was Robert Fraser who was the ringleader of this underground scene through his art gallery. With Zapple [an experimental subsidiary of Apple] we wanted to do some spoken-word stuff and I had a little studio in Montague Square where I kept a ReVox [reel-to-reel] stereo machine which William Burroughs used. It was all cool then. His friend would call and say, "Can William use your machine?" and I'd think little of it. He'd go there and do tape cut-ups. In hindsight our far-out side was all very connected to other far-out happenings in the 60s.

Messing with tape recorders

John's Revolution 9 is very far out. It came out of a lot of experimentation I'd been doing with two Brenell tape recorders at home. My greatest regret is that I've lost them all now. I'd take them round to friends' houses. John Dunbar [artist ex-husband of Marianne Faithfull] used to plug this little Philips tape recorder into his system and we'd play my avant garde experiments. Someone might have my loop symphonies in a box of tapes somewhere. Can I have them back please?

Borrowing hipster slang

Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da wasn't me trying to be far out. It was just that I knew this guy Jimmy Scott, an African guy from the London club scene, and he had this great turn of phrase. He'd say, "Ob-la-di ob-la-da, life goes on, bruv!" and I took that and created a story around two characters. That choppy, reggae sound was appealing and quite a new thing [Lennon reportedly derided the track as "Paul's granny shit"]. The title of new Fireman track Nothing Too Much Just Out Of Sight derives from another Scott phrase.

Drawing on your instincts

Youth and I approached The Fireman in the same way that John and I did Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. We were tired of being the Beatles and I was tired of walking up to a mic and thinking, "Oh my God. This is important. This is a Paul McCartney song. I've got to live up to what I've done." With Sgt Pepper's we took on alter egos. We became members of the Lonely Hearts Club Band and that gave us a freedom to write as "Dirk" or whoever you wanted to be. The rule is: never think about it too hard. Mike Leigh films spring to mind. The idea of going in a room and saying, "OK, you be Derek. Now go away and think about who Derek is. Make it all up. Draw on your instincts." Well, that's what we did for Sgt Pepper's and that's what we did for Electric Arguments, only with Youth as Mike Leigh.

Developing alter egos such as Percy Thrillington

I got it into my head that I wanted to hear a big band version of the songs I'd written for Ram [his second solo album]. A friend who had done the arrangements on the Mary Hopkin record Those Were The Days went into a studio secretly with me and a big band. And then to balance the mega-hype of Ram I decided to create an alter ego. We took personal ads in Private Eye and the Evening Standard saying, "Percy Thrillington seeks the love of his life." People eventually began to ask, "Who is this Percy Thrillington who keeps taking out small ads?" And then on holiday in Ireland with Linda we decided to find an actual Percy. We found a lad working in a farmer's field. We went up to him and asked, "Would you mind doing a photo shoot?" And so for a modelling fee we persuaded him to put on a dinner jacket and Linda took some pictures. And this Irish farmhand became Percy Thrillington.

Creating an electro anthem

A DJ in Brighton broke it and went mad on it. I hadn't heard the track [Temporary Secretary from McCartney II, 1980] for years. The common perception of me is that I did some good work in the Beatles, I may be doing some good work now, but there was a very bad patch full of rubbish in the middle. When I look back I think maybe I didn't work quite hard enough on that track as I could have. There is a period which maybe isn't as good as the other stuff. But what I like is the hidden gems like that. Because the critics said the whole patch was lousy I'd forgotten it. And then when Temporary Secretary got picked up in the clubs it reassured me. That's why I did it; I wanted to be different. I got a sequencer and I wanted to get into electro music.

Keeping Lisa Simpson veggie

The Simpsons people asked me and Linda to go on an episode where Lisa goes veggie. We said, "Yeah." We thought it was very funny the way they wanted to send up the whole cult thing of secret messages on Beatles records. A secret lentil soup recipe seemed a nice parody of that. But we also thought they might stitch us up. We thought the following week Homer would persuade Lisa to eat meat - "You don't want to eat that rubbish; have a steak!" - that sort of thing. We asked if Lisa could stay vegetarian and in the subsequent episodes she did.

Becoming a lumberjack

I became The Fireman partly because my dad was a fireman in Liverpool in the second world war. But also because I used to make trails in the woods for Linda to ride her horses. I'd go out there with an axe or a chainsaw and cut a path for her. And I became very good at making fires with the wood. It's as simple as that.

Wearing dead men's specs

Linda bought me these for my birthday once [he produces the paint-spattered spectacles of surrealist painter René Magritte which he keeps in a Perspex box on his desk]. Georgette, his wife, was selling the contents of his studio and Linda bought me the easel and his spectacles and some small linen canvases which I didn't dare paint on. I'm such a huge fan that was just mega. I was intimidated for weeks about painting on the canvases but in the end I just went, "Agghhhh!" and I did. Then I tried on the glasses which are a very powerful prescription; they'll give you a headache! What I love about Magritte is he turned the world upside down and inside out in terms of meaning and significance. Science and philosophy and religion are starting to converge on this idea that, whatever hat you put on, you are still you. Dickens writes Little Dorrit but he still comes through in her character. Burroughs and Ginsberg show through in their writing. Magritte's specs are a reminder: the world is a jungle of crazy interpretations.

Ex-Beatle claims eating less meat is 'single most effective way' to cut emissions

Sir Paul McCartney has teamed up with a Nobel Prize-winning scientist to urge people to become vegetarian to save the planet from the greenhouse gases created by rearing livestock.

In a letter to The Independent, the musician joins Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to blame worsening global warming on a rise in the number of people who eat meat.

The musician and Mr Pachauri, who are both vegetarians, also believe that global food shortages are exacerbated by the planting of cereal crops for animal fodder. A mass switch to a more vegetarian diet will, they say, help the poorest people in the world.

Becoming vegetarian, or at the very least eating less red meat, is "the single most effective act" anyone can take to lessen greenhouse gas emissions. As well as producing the greenhouse gas methane, the livestock business uses up increasingly scarce sources of fresh water and increases other forms of pollution through its need for agricultural chemicals, they argue.

"Unfortunately, with higher incomes, societies, even in developing countries, are turning to greater ... consumption of animal protein, which reduces the availability of food grains for direct consumption by impoverished human beings," they say. "Already 60 per cent of food crop production in North America and western Europe is being diverted for production of meat." Sir Paul and Mr Pachauri also suggest that people switch off lights, turn down their central heating, buy compact fluorescent lamps and use bicycles.

Dr Pachauri, who accepted a half-share in this year's Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the IPCC, has long advocated vegetarianism as a way of fighting climate change. He has been a vegetarian for eight years, while Sir Paul stopped eating meat about 30 years ago largely because of his concerns about the welfare of farm animals.

"With growing awareness of ... the need to mitigate emissions of greenhouse gases, citizens across the world often ask what it is that they can do to mitigate emissions," they say in their letter. "There are several reasons for a shift to a much lower input of meat in human diets if not complete vegetarianism ... We are writing this letter not because vegetarianism is a fad or an emotional issue but because it is a very attractive option for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases and stabilising the Earth's climate and ensuring global food security."

They cite a 2006 report by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation which stated that livestock are one of the most significant contributors to climate change because 70 per cent of former forests in the Amazon have been turned over to grazing and livestock now use 30 per cent of the world's land surface.

Vegetarian frozen food producer Linda McCartney has increased sales by more than 57 per cent in a 12-week period up to October.

The Fakenham-based brand has seen sales soar since a product relaunch last year by its new owner, the US-based Hain Celestial Group.

The relaunch, backed by the McCartney family, included promoting products to a wider target audience, new product lines and improvements to the firm's distribution network.

It saw Linda McCartney product sales rise to £10 million ($18.2 million) in the year to November 1 - up 32 per cent on the last financial year.

In the same period, the firm's output increased 27 per cent to 7.1million units of meat-free frozen meals made at the Fakenham factory in the same period.

The rise in popularity was more pronounced in the 12 weeks up to October 4, with sales rising 57 per cent, to £2.4 million ($4.3 million).

A spokesman for the firm said the rise in sales came after a year of little happening with the brand but that now, following the relaunch, it was back in the game.

"The Linda McCartney brand is very much back after its relaunch last year," a spokesman said.

"We have tastier products to appeal to a broader target audience as well as brand devotees. The launch was supported by Taste the Change sampling tour, PR activity and the McCartney family.

"Distribution has been built up over the period across the trade with new lines being added to the range recently."

The brand now has 6 per cent market share of the frozen meat-free category.

It has also recently launched a Falafel product, a first for the brand in the snack market, a Vegetarian Roast and a Chicken-Style Burger.

Its core products have been vegetarian sausages and Cornish pasties and country pies, all made at the Holt Road plant which employs about 180 staff.

Linda McCartney frozen foods was set up in 1991 by the late wife of Sir Paul McCartney.

Hain Celestial bought Linda McCartney from Heinz in 2006 for a reported £10 million ($18.2 million). The deal was part of a wider sell-off by Heinz of its frozen foods business.

Sir Paul McCartney has defended his former Beatles bandmate Ringo Starr's decision not to sign autographs.

Starr was widely criticised in October after he told fans to stop sending him memorabilia because he was too busy.

In a video message on his website, Starr said anything sent after October 20th would be "tossed."

McCartney told reporters in London that the drummer had taken the decision because it was "his life."

"Ringo's always been like that, God bless him. We love Ringo because he just says what he thinks. If he doesn't want to sign anything anymore then he doesn't have to," McCartney said.

"And yeah, he gets in trouble occasionally, but as anyone who has known Ringo as long as I have knows that's what he's like. I think it's a good quality; it's called honesty actually."

Sir Paul McCartney is on a diet to please his girlfriend. The former Beatles star is trying to abstain from his favorite sweet treats in order to stay trim for American lover Nancy Shevell.

Vegetarian Paul, who was accompanied by Nancy to a party at his fashion designer daughter Stella's boutique, said: "I'm trying to lay off the chocolates. I've got to stay in shape for the other half."

The 66-year-old musician also admitted he worries about Stella's happiness even though she is 37 and has her own family.

He explained: "For some stupid reason I feel I have to keep checking where they are all the time to make sure everything's going OK."

The party was held to turn on Stella's annual Christmas lights display. The festive decorations were lit up by Paul and British comic Peter Kay, who was dressed as his comedy pop star alter-ego Geraldine.

Other guests to attend included Stella's supermodel pal Kate Moss and her boyfriend Jamie Hince and 60s singer Lulu.

Paul left the bash early, telling guests at 9pm: "This is the witching hour for me these days. It's way past my bedtime."

I'm talking, naturally, about our feathered friends - a constant source of inspiration to Britain's greatest living songwriter from his Beatles days right up to his latest project.

His third collaborative album with producer and Killing Joke bassist Youth (aka Martin Glover), bears a handsome ditty called Two Magpies, the latest McCartney bird song.

"I've always liked birds. It's a theme of mine," Paul explains when we meet to discuss Electric Arguments by The Fireman, an album that's getting him some of the best reviews for many a year. "I think they're symbolic of freedom, of flying away.

"As a kid, I was a keen ornithologist and had a little pocket book, the Observer's Book Of Birds. I lived on the outskirts of Liverpool and could walk just a mile to be in quite deep countryside."

With the trauma of recent personal events receding, Paul, a lean and healthy 66, is in good spirits, focusing on the thing he's best known for - his music.

"Somebody pointed out that I've written a lot of bird songs so, recently, I've become more conscious of it. There's Blackbird (on The Beatles' The White Album), Bluebird (on Wings album Band On The Run) and Jenny Wren (on solo album Chaos And Creation In The Backyard.)"

Two Magpies reveals Paul's familiarity with the expression "one for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy."

Salute

Does that mean he's superstitious? "No, probably the only thing I'm superstitious about is magpies. Living in the country (at Peasmarsh, East Sussex), I see a lot of them. You see one and you spit or salute. I happen to spit.

"I love it when you see two for joy. I don't shoot or catch them like a lot of people. They're not supposed to be good for other songbirds and a lot of keen gardeners don't like them, but I do. I've got lots. To me, it's double joy or triple joy. I'm very inspired on a spring morning if I see a crowd of eight."

Paul says that it didn't take much for him to turn his magpie superstition into a song. The resulting effort, with its simple acoustic backing, is a very close cousin to Blackbird.

In fact, the whole project, eclectic, experimental, atmospheric and reliably dazzling, bears some of the spirit of The White Album, from which Blackbird hails.

Electric Arguments is the first Fireman album with fully-formed, lyric-based songs, the previous two being ambient, electronic instrumental works.

It begins with Nothing Too Much Just Out Of Sight, one of the heaviest songs Paul's ever put his name to. His rocking delivery would not be out of place on a Led Zeppelin album.

I can't resist telling him that Zep are auditioning for a new singer because Robert Plant has decided not to join their revival. "Perhaps you should consider the role?" I venture.

"What's happened to Planty?" replies Paul, dodging the answer somewhat. "He was great at their gig. It's such a pity."

I suggest that Plant's Raising Sand partnership with Alison Krauss was more his bag these days. "Yeah, he's enjoying it and that's good too. Hey, it's up to him."

Returning to Nothing Too Much, Paul says: "I got stopped in the street by a German guy. (The Beatle icon adopts a hilarious German accent - Basil Fawlty eat your heart out). 'Paul! Ze Fireman is great, zis sounds like Helter Skelter (on The White Album).' So I said, 'Ah, I know which song you're talking about.'

"In the Sixties, I used to hang out with a black singer called Jimmy Scott, the guy who said 'ob-la-di, ob-la-da, life goes on.' He also used to say 'Nothing too much just outta sight.' Youth said it was a good start for a song so I got in that persona."

With The White Album references continuing, Paul agrees that the new album is "very varied like The White Album" but suggests that it is also, in a sense, "completely different."

"The Fireman is the only thing I've ever done that is completely improvised - simply drawing on instincts." He found the experience "very liberating. That's why I do it. Every so often I'd just ring Youth and say 'Fireman, come on!' It's a very free arrangement."

This leads us on to the most jaw-dropping moment of the interview - the moment the man who created Sgt Pepper's with John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr started composing a song before my very eyes. To demonstrate the ad-lib nature of the recording process, Paul describes how he'd pull a book down from the shelf, find an interesting phrase and write a song.

"It was mostly beat poets like Lawrence Ferlinghetti or Jack Kerouac. I would just look through the pages and see if something attracted me, not the meaning but the actual look or sound of the words."

At this point, he looks up to a bookshelf in the corner of his office in Soho Square, London, grabs a travel guide and starts thumbing through.

A few pages in, he happens on a phrase he finds interesting - "majestic mountains, all right!"

Then, while strumming the handy acoustic guitar he picks up from another corner of the office, he begins to sing in that inimitable voice: "I climb majestic mountains, I'm travelling to your heart."

I pinch myself as Paul puts down the guitar and explains: "We would just build off something like that. I likened it to theatre workshop, very like director Mike Leigh. It was very exciting. Youth's terrific. I think the attraction is that we actually like each other. He writes poetry, he's always sketching, he paints, he's a producer, he's a bass player, so we've got a lot in common."

Another noticeable feature of Electric Arguments is its authentic contemporary sheen. I wonder if the songwriter who had influenced so many had actually been influenced himself by today's artists. "Yeah, I think so," says Paul. "You see someone like The Killers and think 'Oh that's cool, that riff, that guitar sound, or that's Zeppelinesque or whatever.' I analyse it because that's my profession, but the sound of the record would have to be attributed more to Youth. He's the ringmaster and I'm the acrobat."

Acrobatic is a good word to describe the way Paul jumps through musical hoops on this album. "I always play drums, bass, acoustic guitar on all my albums but, on this, there's also harpsicord, mandolin, mouth organ, ukulele, piano and flute. It's nice because Youth would say, 'Did you play those flutes on Fool On The Hill (from Magical Mystery Tour)? And I'd say, 'Yeah.' Then I'd start goofing around. It was like playtime for me."

One of the key moments is Lifelong Passion, a song of liquid beauty filled with eastern rhythms and an ethereal vocal from Paul. I suggest that his lifelong passion for music shows no sign of dimming.

"I love it so much," he enthuses. "People say to me, 'Why do you do it?' They think that, once you're past 65, you're thinking of retiring. It's just not like that for me. It's a pleasure. I always say that if the record company wasn't interested, I'd do it for a hobby."

Schizo

He's happy to have severed ties with major label EMI, for so long his home, first releasing last year's Memory Almost Full through Starbucks' label Hear Music and he is now putting The Fireman album out in a tie-up with indie label One Little Indian.

"At EMI, your record is one of about 300. When you're working with independents, it's nicer. They've got more time and it helps me think differently about campaigns. I'm talking to young kids which is more interesting for me."

Paul also believes that Electric Arguments will inform his next record. "With The Beatles, I always listened to the album we'd just done before doing the next. On the morning of going into the studio, I'd put on Rubber Soul before we did Revolver or whatever. I would think that's where we're up to, now we need to step above that and not emulate it.

"I haven't been writing like I normally write for a while because The Fireman album was so instinctive. But the other day, I got a little voice in my head saying, 'Are you sure you can do it?' And I had an argument with him, 'Yes I can!' 'Are you sure?' 'I'll show you, schizo!' So I just had a little moment and I was very pleased. There are six or seven new songs I've written over the last couple of weeks - there's hope for the future."

With that our interview came to a close. Paul headed out into the street before his waiting car sped off through rainy Soho. The legend had left the building, his music career still on track 48 years after he and his Liverpool mates formed the biggest band in history.

Sir Paul McCartney has denied writing a song about ex-wife Heather Mills.

Nothing Too Much, Just Out Of Sight on his new album Electric Arguments with side project The Fireman, was widely believed to be about the former model - who Paul divorced earlier this year.

Lyrics in the track include: "I remember you well/ Oh woman betrayed you/ I couldn't resist you/ When I made you."

However, Paul insists people are reading too much into the song, which is actually a sister track to his former band The Beatles' popular song Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.

He explained: "I didn't have anyone in mind. There was an African guy called Jimmy Scott who I used to meet in nightclubs in London during the 60s.

"He was the guy who said to me, 'Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, life goes on' and the other thing he used to say was, 'Nothing too much man, just out of sight.'

"I always thought that it was a great thing to say, so it was really Jimmy.

I just flew off that line and shouted out things around it."

Paul also claims his new album proves he is just as experimental as his late songwriting partner John Lennon.

The 66-year-old musician added to Britain's Daily Star newspaper: "John and I grew up together and I think we were both as experimental as each other but perception-wise he was the more experimental one.

"I'd been doing it as a hobby but with John it was the 'main event'. That was John's courage.

"The whole point of The Fireman is that's it's a very free approach."

A reality television star managed to do the unthinkable - steal the limelight from one of the most famous musicians in the world.

Comic Peter Kay's reality television star character Geraldine was the star of the show as Macca's daughter, Stella McCartney switched on the Christmas lights at her Mayfair store.

Beatles legend Sir Paul, 66, and Peter, 35 got together to switch on the shop's Christmas lights.

Dressed in full drag regalia, the comic cracked jokes onstage before being joined by the famous Beatle onstage albeit a little late.

The singalong went on for half an hour as Sir Paul had arrived late, and guests were freezing after being kept waiting while Sir Paul was stuck in traffic.

But trouper Kay kept the crowd amused, even jumping into the assembled paps at one point.

The pair burst into song, singing Macca's 1979 hit 'Wonderful Christmastime' at Macca's daughter Stella's store in Mayfair, central London.

The pair were reunited after McCartney, who recently spoke out against reality television shows, was a guest on the comedian's spoof show Britain's Got Pop, infront of an audience which included Marie Helvin, Lulu and Kate Moss.

Sir Paul gave advice to Geraldine, who, viewers were told, had once been a male piano player on a ferry.

McCartney arrived with a glamorous looking Nancy Shevell, who wore a silky minidress and knee high boots.

Recently the Beatle broke his silence about his relationship with the American businesswoman.

'I just like being in love,' he told the Sunday Times.

And Mrs Shevell ­ an American businesswoman who's amicably separated from her husband ­ says she isn't stressed by his mega-fame.

'I'm a cancer survivor, I run a trucking company and I've got a 16-year-old to raise. That's stress.'

Meanwhile Sir Paul made his stance on reality television clear, as he likened it to a car crash, but admitted he watched it.

The ex-Beatle claimed shows like the X Factor did not encourage musical creativity.

Sir Paul, 66, said: 'I think there is too much of it. You can't turn on the telly without somebody being judged by four people, whether they are on ice, or on the stage or in the jungle.

'I'm not very keen on it.

'I watch it like everybody. It's compulsive viewing but so is a traffic accident. It doesn't encourage creativity.'

The musician also expressed his happiness that Barack Obama won the US presidential election.

'I was so pleased that he won that it occurred to me that if I ever got asked I could sing Michelle to his wife,' he said.

Meanwhile in New York, Sir Paul's former wife, Heather Mills, who once took part in a US TV dancing competition, was seen leaving the Soho House hotel, sporting a new, shorter hairstyle with a fringe.

Nancy showed her leggy side as she arrived by car

Paul At Fireman Launch

Click photo to enlarge

Paul launched his new Fireman album earlier in the week with a press event at the Fire Station restaurant in Waterloo, London.

Question 1: The title of the album is Electric Arguments. Does this suggest that the creative dynamic between you and Youth is one of a challenging nature? Or is there another story to the title?

Paul McCartney: The truth behind the title is that it's a phrase I pulled out from an Allen Ginsberg poem. It's as simple as that. It seemed to fit the spirit of the album.

2: Was there a conscious decision this time to include vocals?

PM: Yeah, it was a conscious decision. We wanted to go somewhere else to keep it exciting and it was quite interesting because I hadn't written any songs for the album, so we had to improvise them each day and even though it was slightly scary it was really exciting learning to walk that tightrope.

3: Electric Arguments has been described as a cross between Arcade Fire and Led Zeppelin, would you consider that a fair call?

PM: I think it's a compliment I'm happy to accept. Both are cool sources of music so that's ok by me.

4: It's a very eclectic album - is that something you had in mind when you started the album or did it take a life of its own?

PM:
Yeah, it took on a life of its own. We made one or two decisions like that we would include vocals, which led us towards the song aspect of the album. Each day we would look at what the day had brought and incorporate those feelings into the track. Sometimes we wanted to get heavy and sometimes we were more in sea shanty mode.

5: Much has been made of the one-day limit per song during the recording process, just how did the time limit actually affect the end result?

PM: It wasn't a strict rule, it was just that we were working so fast that things only seemed to need a day to get done. It did mean that it was exciting coming in the next day and looking at what we had done the previous day. Then we just spun off that.

6: Will The Fireman ever play live?

PM: There is a good chance he might. I'll ask him.

7: In 1998 you described the sound of The Fireman as, "Ambient dreams in rainbow arches". In 2008 how would you sum up The Fireman?

PM: The Fireman takes your hand and leads you through the blaze to places you didn't know you wanted to go.

8: As tends to happen with Paul McCartney songs, there has already been much speculation about what these songs might be about, but you made the lyrics up as you went along - how did that process work?

PM: People have always read into my lyrics and found in them more than I ever intended. This time around I dipped into poetry books, mainly those of the beat poets of the 60s, and looked for inspiration and words that I could take and make my own. Eventually this process would lead to a full song.

9: How is this different to a PM solo record?

PM: The original idea of The Fireman was to feel completely free in a studio atmosphere and this is something I've been interested in since Sgt Pepper, where we gave ourselves alter egos to achieve the same effect. It gives you the feeling that anything is possible and stops you being too serious.

10: The first two Fireman albums were released on EMI. This time The Fireman are going the indie route. Is that exciting for you?

PM: I'm interested in anything that keeps the process fresh, so to work with new people means that I'll be exposed to new ideas and this keeps the excitement alive for me.

Sir Paul McCartney and 3am at Electric Arguments album launch

Sir Paul and 3am girls

Sir Paul McCartney poured water over our Fireman joke at the launch of his new album Electric Arguments

We arrived in our best Fireman Sam outfits, but Macca quipped: "Have you come as Bob The Builder?"

Gutted...

We met over a veggie butty to talk about his new Fireman project before he ran off to turn on the Christmas lights at daughter Stella's store.

He lashed out at EMI for stopping The Beatles material appearing on Apple iTunes. He told us: "Record firms don't get what's going on with the download culture."

Pete Kay dressed up as his talent show alter-ego Geraldine and serenaded Sir Paul McCartney last night, at a party to turn on the Christmas lights at Stella McCartney's London shop.

Click to enlarge photo

They were joined by Kate Moss, boyfriend Jamie Hince and her daughter Lila Grace, as well as Lulu, Stella's sister Mary and Macca's girlfriend Nancy Shevell.

Paul McCartney has said that he "doesn't mind" illegal downloading - although he admits he finds the concept "weird".

The former Beatle said that although he did not download illegally himself, he admitted he had been tempted to buy Radiohead's 2007 name-your-own-price download of 'In Rainbows' for just one pence ­ then tell friends he'd paid more.

"It's weird for me [the concept of downloading]," he said. "I'm not from that. I'm from going into a shop and buying a 45. We've come through vinyl, tapes and CDs ­ it's all the same, except people don't pay for it [now]. I don't mind. It works out."

Macca praised former EMI labelmates Radiohead for their revolutionary 'In Rainbows' download release.

"I like it, it's a new idea," he said. "I like its anarchic-ness. I thought about buying it for one pence and telling my friends I'd paid £10!"

McCartney also said that a deal between The Beatles' estates and EMI to make their back catalogue available on iTunes had "stalled".

The legend was speaking as he launched his side project with producer Youth. The pair record under the name The Fireman and launched new album 'Electric Arguments' at the Fire Station pub in Waterloo, south London, yesterday (November 24).

Despite his stature, McCartney talks about being treated as just one of many artists signed to EMI, saying: "They've got so many people on their books that like it or not, you're just one of them, and it's not that great a situation." McCartney left EMI in 2006 and has released The Fireman album on longstanding indie label One Little Indian.

As for those much vaunted digitized Beatles songs, McCartney says: "It's stalled ­ there are a couple of sticking points between EMI and the Beatles. No change there then." Part of the problem seems to be EMI's neanderthal approach to the internet, which probably isn't going to change any time soon. "I get that feeling that with the download culture they're floundering a bit because they've had it their own way for so long," he said.

by Paul McCartney

Last week John Aizlewood asked why by appealing for the release of the Beatles' lost jam Carnival of Light, Paul McCartney still felt the need to prove his creative worth. Here, speaking yesterday, McCartney replies, explaining that a desire for experimentation has always been part of his music.

When it comes to music, enthusiasm is what drives me. And because I'm enjoying myself, I never see anything that I do as a risk, I just see it as a bit of fun. In the Beatles we didn't even think Sgt Peppers was a risk at the time. The newspapers did. One said: "The Beatles have dried up, they've not come out with anything for six months, they're finished!" And we were there, sniggering, thinking "Ha!"

But I like pushing the boundaries a little bit because it keeps things fresh.

The key is that I don't ever think what I'm doing is ever that important. Other people have, and the more you accumulate success, the more doing anything different is a bit of a risk. But I don't view it like that - I view it as having fun, I've got to enjoy myself on stage or in a studio. And I still feel it's a privilege to get in the studio with a guitar and an amp. Some people have got past that and they're a bit jaded - but I still look at the amp in the studio and go "wow".

I do it for myself. It's a little bit indulgent, but I do it for myself.

Being far out is not something I'm known for too much, but I do enjoy that side of things. If you look at things I've done, from Why Don't We Do It in the Road, which is kind of out-there, to Carnival of Light, which is so out there it hasn't even been released, you can see I like experimenting. I don't like this phrase "more than John", though. We grew up as a couple of kids in Liverpool and I think we were both as earnest and experimental as each other.

In the 60s, I happened to have more opportunity to do some of that stuff because I was living on my own in London, whereas John was in the countryside in Weybridge and married so he was a little bit more pipe and slippers! I was out in the clubs and Wigmore Hall, catching people like Cornelius Cardew. I was into Stockhausen and stuff. So I had more of an opportunity but I don't think that made me more experimental than John. I just possibly did a bit more during that period. And John ended up with Revolution No 9 so, perception wise, he was the most experimental Beatle. But that was something I'd been doing off-piste, as we say in the skiing business. I'd been doing it for a hobby and he was smart enough to bring it into the main event. That was John's courage. But I think we were both equally experimental.

With the Fireman, again, it was just playing around and having fun. It was just me and [Fireman partner] Youth goofing off to a groove. But because we've got into the territory of songs, rather than just hypnotic one-chord music, it was different. We fancied a change and Youth suggested I sang. I said I had no songs, so he said let's try it. I had no idea what would happen - I had to say to the engineer "don't laugh". So I just went up to the mic and goofed around and ad-libbed it. I ended up finding words - I'd been reading poetry books ­ kept singing all these things at the track and eventually a song came out of it. That's how the Fireman found his voice - through experimentation.

In fact, the whole project was quite like improvisational theatre, which I've never been involved in. But I can now see the excitement of someone like Mike Leigh telling you that you are now a shop assistant called Dennis! So when you get into that Mike Leigh situation, you've got to draw on your resources. I was drawing on my songwriting experience. I'd pull things out at random. We'd sit down and have a chat. And Youth will pass round some poetry books. I'll choose a couple of words at random. So like "Use this approach", you'll take "this approach" and start working on the word approach. But I sourced it from people like Burroughs and Ginsberg, and it was like cut-up technique, Burroughs' technique of the cut-ups, very random but also very liberating.

The thing about experimenting is that it's good fun. It's interesting to do something you don't do normally. It takes you into places you didn't plan to go to. That's quite an interesting aspect. Linda always liked to go for a drive and try and get lost. Most drivers don't want to get lost - but she'd like it. And that idea of losing your bearings, as long as it's not in deepest Africa, is something I like. I've always liked it. Because when you don't always know what's going on, that's when you can really surprise yourself.

Paul McCartney was speaking after the release of the new album by The Fireman "Electric Arguments"

Paul attends the switching on of Christmas lights at Stella's London store

British comedian, Peter Kay (in drag) and Paul McCartney attend the switching on of Christmas lights at the Stella McCartney store on Monday. In attendance: Nancy Shevell, Lee Starkey, Mary McCartney and Simon Aboud, Alasdhair Willis, Lulu and Kate Moss.

Speaking at a media launch in London for the new album by his alias the Fireman, McCartney said Apple Corps and the band's label EMI couldn't agree on terms to release the Beatles' catalog to iTunes and other download services.

"That is constantly being talked of. We'd like to do it," said McCartney. "What happens is, when something's as big as The Beatles, it's heavy negotiations."

He added: "We are very for it, we've been pushing it. But there are a couple of sticking points, I understand. So the last word I got back was that it had stalled, the whole process. They [EMI] want something we're not prepared to give them. Hey, sounds like the music business. It's between EMI and the Beatles. What else is new."

"We have been working very hard to secure an agreement with Apple Corps to make The Beatles' legendary recording catalog available to fans in digital form," said a spokesperson for EMI. "Unfortunately the various parties involved have so far been unable to reach agreement, but we really hope that everyone can make progress soon."

The Fireman's "Electric Arguments" is the third album released by McCartney under that alias with collaborator Youth, although it is the first with vocals. It's out via One Little Indian in the U.K. today (Nov. 24) and ATO/RED in the U.S tomorrow.

McCartney, who broke with EMI to release his solo album "Memory Almost Full" via Starbucks' Hear Music label in June 2007, said he was glad he left the major. "I think the majors at the moment -- I'm not dissing them 00 but I don't think they really know what's going on," he said, speaking at the Fire Station pub in London's Waterloo. "With the download culture, they are floundering a little bit."

He added: "I think I was right at that time, because right after that EMI got sold, so I would have been in the middle of a sale situation. The other thing is, they've got so many people on their books. Like it or not, you're just one of them. It's not a great situation. You like to feel like you're among friends so that was why I ended up going independent. And this time it's kind of even more indie."

Asked by Billboard about going up against Guns N' Roses' "Chinese Democracy" at retail this week, McCartney commented: "I never look at who we're in competition with. I don't really feel in competition with anyone, particularly with the Fireman. It's one of those projects. It's not like you're releasing as Coldplay or Guns N' Roses for that matter. I wish them good luck with it, because it's been a long time coming."

McCartney lured by 'car crash TV'

Sir Paul McCartney has admitted being hooked on reality TV shows, saying they are "compulsive viewing - but so is a traffic accident".

"I think there is too much of it, really," the former Beatle said.

"You can't turn on the telly without somebody being judged by four people, whether they are on ice or on the stage or in the jungle.

"I just think it's a bit weird myself. So I'm not very keen on it. But I watch it like everybody."

Sir Paul has just launched his latest album, Electric Arguments, a collaboration with producer Youth.

Going under the name The Fireman, the album has seen the former Beatle take an experimental twist and has garnered glowing reviews.

Sir Paul McCartney likened reality television to a car crash, but admitted he watched it.

The ex-Beatle claimed shows like the X Factor did not encourage musical creativity.

Sir Paul, 66, said: "I think there is too much of it. You can't turn on the telly without somebody being judged by four people, whether they are on ice, or on the stage or in the jungle. I'm not very keen on it.

"I watch it like everybody. It's compulsive viewing but so is a traffic accident. It doesn't encourage creativity. I don't think you are going to get a Bob Dylan emerging from those shows, but then not everyone goes on those shows. I think it's just a phase we are going through."

The legendary songwriter's latest album is the result of experimentation and improvisation.

Electric Arguments is his third release as The Fireman - a collaboration with producer Youth (aka Martin Glover).

For Electric Arguments, Sir Paul said he "goofed around," ad-libbing and having fun in the studio while they recorded one song per day.

Selecting words from poems for lyrics and trying out different vocal styles for the 13 tracks, Sir Paul said: "It's a very random process but it's very liberating ... It's a little bit indulgent. I'm very lucky to be allowed that. I'm not in a straightjacket yet."

Meeting reporters at The Fire Station pub in Waterloo, London, Sir Paul revealed he preferred working with an independent record label for the album because: "I just like it because there is a certain freedom. Also they seem to be more interested in the records. You get a little bit more one-on-one."

The musician also expressed his happiness that Barack Obama won the US presidential election. "I was so pleased that he won that it occurred to me that if I ever got asked I could sing Michelle to his wife," he said.

REVIEW: "Electric Arguments" by the Fireman

How does Paul McCartney, 66, follow up "Memory Almost Full," his grand autumnal (but still chipper) statement on life and mortality? By hiding his name and conjuring one kind of heaven: the 1960s as reconstituted with 21st-century multitracking. For "Electric Arguments" he regrouped his not-so-anonymous duo the Fireman (Mr. McCartney produced by the bassist Youth), walked into the studio on 13 nonconsecutive days with no material, and finished a track at each session, playing all the instruments. (There's also a fragment hidden at the end of the last song.) Some songs have verses and choruses, while others are just fleshed-out sketches, seeking and often finding what "Sing the Changes" calls for: "a sense of childlike wonder."

The two Fireman albums Mr. McCartney released in 1993 and 1998 were repetition-powered instrumental outings: the first close to dance music, the second more meditative. But "Electric Arguments" is a song collection, from skewed blues-rock ("Nothing Too Much Just Out of Sight," complete with hooting harmonica and a Howlin' Wolf impression) to gospelly skiffle ("Light From Your Lighthouse") to East-West blends ("Lifelong Passion") to blissed-out one-man studio jams ("Is This Love?"). The link to the '90s Fireman is "Universal Here, Everlasting Now," which has a synthesizer pulse amid its sliding, echoing guitars.

So now, young freak-folk indie-rockers have serious competition from actual '60s titans like Mr. McCartney. On this album he sets loose his inner hippie - playful, tuneful, enigmatic, benevolent - in songs like "Traveling Light," a Celtic-mode waltz in which he plinks a thumb piano, sings a lot of high oohs and whispers, "I glide on the green leaf/not asking for more."

Although the songs took shape quickly, they're not sparse. The arrangements metamorphose as Mr. McCartney fills them with picking, tinkling and a dizzying array of backup vocals. "Sun Is Shining" stacks up vocal harmonies like a lightheaded version of the Beach Boys. Simple mathematics would imply there are a lot of first takes, which is all the better; it's Mr. McCartney working by instinct and impulse, concerned with nothing more than sound. "Electric Arguments" suggests that he'd happily spend his afterlife in a recording studio, knocking out a song a day for eternity.

McCartney said while he and Lennon were at odds beginning in the late 1960s regarding who would handle the Beatles' finances, the two band leaders made peace with one another before Lennon's death in 1980, The Sunday Times of London magazine reported.

"Before John died I got back a good relationship with him. That was very special," McCartney told the magazine. "The arguments we had didn't matter."

McCartney remained unapologetic for his attempts to have his in-laws manage The Beatles following the death of manager Brian Epstein, saying it was the best thing for the band.

"I was placed in the most awkward position I've ever been placed in," he said. "I had to fight three mates to save their legacy, their money, as well as mine, and I did so knowing it would put me in a very dodgy position."

At the end of "Don't Stop Running" from "Electric Arguments" you hear 2 minutes of silence with a vocal that is recorded backwards. Upon reversing the vocal, you hear Macca whisper, "Warmer than the sun, cooler than the air."

Using the Internet anagram maker, you can come up with a series of words and phrases that seem to suggest the 'secret' message is for Heather Mills.

Hear the backwards 'secret message' at the very end of the song CLICK

Hear the reversed message CLICK

Special thanks to Peter H, Macca Reporter

November 22, 2008 -- Times Online

Free track download from the new album by McCartney and The Fireman

Paul McCartney's side project, The Fireman, produces music that sounds like nothing else he has ever produced. After a wait of ten years, they are releasing a new album, Electric Arguments, containing 13 tracks, each of which was written and recorded in a day.

To give you an insight into a little-known facet of Paul McCartney's career, Times Online is giving you one of the tracks from Electric Arguments, absolutely free.

Click here and download "Nothing Too Much Just Out of Sight" now.

Sir Paul McCartney adopted a bizarre new persona to record his latest album Electric Arguments - renaming himself Gladys Jenkins to avoid the pressure of living up to his icon status.

The former Beatle confesses he has an odd way of conquering his nerves and overcoming his inhibitions when making a new LP - but insists it's a tried and tested method that has produced masterpieces in the past.

He says, "We decided to go undercover, to do whatever we wanted.

"That way, when you go to the microphone, I don't think of it as going as Paul McCartney and it frees you up. I'd say, 'Right, you're going to become Gladys Jenkins.'

"It was quite thrilling, that's how we approached (classic 1967 Beatles record) Sgt. Pepper's. It's like you're playing instead of working."

When I was in my early twenties, and on the dole, I had a friend who worked on the barely-remembered Mike Smith TV quiz 'That's Showbusiness'. I sometimes used to go down to recordings at the BBC on Oxford Road in Manchester to avail myself of the sparkling white wine and crudites in the green room.

Mike McGear, formerly of the band The Scaffold ('Lily the Pink') was at one of these recordings. I was beside myself with excitement: Mike is the brother of Paul McCartney. I felt that this was going to be my own tenuous-connection-to-a-Beatle story; that I stood in the same room as Paul's brother.

Since being at One Golden Square, I've been lucky enough to meet Paul about ten times. There's always a tornado of chaos around him, with him being cool, calm and charming in the eye of the storm. This week was no exception - the flurry of emails about the state of the lavatory speaks for itself.

I was asked for a 'blog post about Paul McCartney week, but you're probably sick to death of hearing about it on the speakers in the office. As far as tidbits go, all I can tell you is that he's a lovely man who really likes a biscuit.

If The Beatles' music is special to you, then you already know why it's such a big deal for Macca to come in. If The Beatles do little or nothing for you, then you either have no soul, or you haven't reached your road to Damascus moment yet.

To help you with your conversion, I've dug out a piece I was asked to write a while ago about my love affair with The Beatles. It's very long and self-indulgent, so I don't expect anybody to persevere past the first couple of paragraphs. Also, like anyone telling you about a love affair, it's probably a bit sickly. Here is my testimony:

I can't remember the first time I heard the Beatles' music. I was born three years after the band had split up, and my memories start at around the time Punk came along to smash everything which went before it, yet the Beatles' songs seem to have always been part of my consciousness.

My parents didn't have a cool record collection; I don't think there was even one Beatles LP or single. The wire racks next to the music centre in our house contained a mawkish selection; Bobby Goldsboro's 'Honey', a widow's lament/horticultural ballad, Peter Sarstedt's rags to riches 'Where Do You Go To, My Lovely?' (notable for its use of manic 'ha-ha-ha' laughter to complete one particular line, in lieu of actual lyrics which scan.) It's odd that given the prevalence of songs-which-tell-a-story, there was no room in my parents' collection for the kitchen sink melancholy of 'Eleanor Rigby' or the vivid Victoriana of 'Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite'.

The Beatles songs that are hardwired into my memory are 'Yellow Submarine' and 'I Want to Hold Your Hand'. The former has long since joined the ranks of nursery rhyme, so it's easy to work out how that one got itself in there.

The latter was recorded over a decade before my brain became cognisant, but is such a template for perfect pop that it still blared out of the transistor radio, towering over the hits of the day. People often love the songs they fell in love to: 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' is the soundtrack to the world falling in love with The Beatles.

The first time I remember being aware of The Beatles as an entity was in primary school. We didn't have any teachers with musical fingers, so a wild-haired, elbow-patched old local man called Mr. Cutbush came in to play piano for us once a week. One of the songs we sang or blew our descant recorders along to was 'When I'm Sixty Four'.

I remember seeing 'Words and Music by John Lennon and Paul McCartney' at the top of the sheet music, and thinking about two friends crafting a song, one sitting at a piano, and the other scribbling away. I remember singing about the Isle of Wight, and a drunken man coming home late to an angry wife, and scrimping and saving; and feeling that for the first time the words in the song were things from real life, instead of hallelujahs and sea shanties. Even the words 'Published by Northern Songs' felt warm to me, growing up in the north of England. That song felt like something I could touch.

Sometime later, there was an episode of the TV show 'Fame' in which Little Jimmy Osmond guest-starred as a mentally challenged student. He pitched the role somewhere between Benny from 'Crossroads' and The Elephant Man. During the show, he gave performance of 'Penny Lane' that displayed a similar kind of sensitivity to that in his dramatic work. Fortunately I was too young to notice I was witnessing a massacre, and again I was thrilled to hear such everyday things as kids on street corners and barbers and fish fingers being mentioned in a song. I've been predisposed to melancholy since childhood (blame 'Peanuts' cartoons and Moomin books), and I sensed an attractive strangeness in the pretty nurse who feels as if she's in a play, but is anyway.

Once I started to buy records, The Beatles were off my radar. Cool adolescents bought singles they'd read about in their older brothers' NME, or old Velvet Underground LPs from second-hand shops. The rest bought songs they'd heard on the radio chart show or Saturday morning TV from the Top 40 display in Woolworths. Lou Reed was conspicuous by his absence from my little hotch-potch collection of records I'd heard on Piccadilly Radio.

Our music teacher at secondary school was a glamorous, slight, greying cat-like lady called Mrs. Frenz. She was from Stockport, but spoke in a similar mid-Atlantic drawl to Lulu. If we, as a class, needed to distract her from the business of teaching us about baroque string quartets or the Pentatonic scale, we'd get her talking about the Swinging Sixties.

'Wow!' she'd say, tossing her head to one side and giving a French-style open shrug, 'The Sixties were really something else!'

And then she'd be off for a good half hour.

Her reminiscing invariably led to The Beatles. She would sit with her head propped on her folded arms on top of the modern upright piano, and try to convey to us how the whole of rock and roll took a quantum leap forwards when The Beatles came along, sometimes illustrated with impromptu reproductions of riffs on the keyboard.

At the time, I didn't get it: I could hear that The Beatlemania-era songs were fantastic, exuberant pop, but I couldn't put that much space between them and the other catchy oldies records I'd hear on the radio.

I gradually became more familiar with the odd Beatles song here and there: I started up my own mobile disco and saw that 'Twist and Shout' would fill a dancefloor. I learned 'Let It Be' on the piano, knowing that it's always good to have a singalong up your sleeve for a party piece. My first girlfriend and I would listen to her mum's old copy of 'Rubber Soul', and in particular 'Nowhere Man' which in my mind came to represent her suburban, Daily Mail-reading, Sunday car-washing dad.

It was a nasty and unfair judgement, probably born out of resentment at him for not letting us hormonal teenagers share a bed when I stayed over, but nonetheless that song gave me a mast to nail my colours to. I heard it as striking a blow against conformers and mediocrity, and when George Harrison's lead guitar burst in after the first verse, it sounded to me like all of the world's promise and possibility distilled into fourteen seconds.

It still does.

When I was eighteen, I began to work at a local radio station. Thrown in at the deep end on a radio station which broadcast a huge range of music from the previous three decades, I had to quickly familiarise myself with the rock and pop music canon. The Beatles' songs, both individually and as part of a catalogue, seemed brighter, or 3D, or Technicolor compared to even the greatest records.

One day my boss, Neil, was opening his post. He held up a CD and asked if I'd ever heard it. It was a reissue of John Lennon's first solo album, 'Plastic Ono Band'. I said that I hadn't, and Neil insisted that I found myself somewhere quiet and listened to it straight away. I found a small, barely used editing booth, put the disc into a player and turned up the speakers.

I don't know how long I stayed in there for, I'm guessing it was between two and three hours. I had to listen to it over and over. The album is from a tough time in Lennon's life; The Beatles had just split up and their affairs were poisoned with acrimony, his relationship with Yoko Ono was intense and they shared a siege mentality, together they were fighting heroin addiction and had just undergone a programme of Arthur Janov's new Primal (Scream) Therapy.

John Lennon's catharsis on 'Plastic Ono Band' didn't match very much in my experiences of the world, but I'd never heard such honesty in a record. For the first time, music clicked with me as an expression of the human condition; my soul recognised another's, baring itself through time from 1970. Hearing and responding to the rawness of that album changed the way in which I heard music forever. It changed from something enjoyable, but superficial, to my deepest and truest love.

From then onwards, I immersed myself in The Beatles. I got hold of the then deleted red and blue 'Best Of' compilations. My friend Chris had a lesser-known brown one, made up of love songs. I was living in a bedsit with very little money, but each week bought a new Beatles album on CD. I would listen to that album non-stop all week, learning its songs and its subtleties, flitting between losing myself in the music, and listening hard, contextualising it.

'Revolver' was the first one that I bought. I'd read in a magazine that the critics had hailed it the best. I obsessed over the end-of-a-relationship lament, 'For No One', wishing that I could meet a girl and have our love die out so that I could feel that kind of melancholy. The driving rhythms of 'Tomorrow Never Knows', 'Taxman' and 'She Said, She Said' hypnotised me as I learned to find my way around cheap red wine. I learned the hard way that Beatles LPs don't function well as seduction soundtracks, especially here with Ringo singing 'Yellow Submarine' (whatever its merits as a psychadelic singalong.)

After I'd bought all of the albums, I began to read voraciously about The Beatles, wanting to consume every bit of information available on what inspired the songs, and how these amazing records came to be. I pored over Mark Lewinsohn's 'Complete Beatles Recording Sessions' as devotedly as a pilgrim studying scripture. Every time I found out how a certain sound or effect had been made, I felt like an amateur magician suddenly privy to the lofty secrets of the Magic Circle.

The story of The Beatles became romantic to me; the chance meetings and trailblazing and loves and friendships and great leaps forwards and the slow deterioration. I'd travel across the city to record fairs and boot sales, where I'd search for bootleg outtake recordings and VHS copies of out-of-circulation films and performances. When 'The Beatles Anthology' documentary aired on TV in the mid-nineties, it was to me like 'The World at War' had been to my father.

Beatles songs became the score to life's moments. If 'Day Tripper' or 'Come Together' was played in an indie disco, I would flail around freely (albeit unrhythmically), without fear of making a spectacle of myself in front of girls I was unsuccessfully trying to attract.

One time, after a long night out in Manchester city centre, my friend Chris and I were on the top deck of the notorious 192 night bus. We'd been in a club called The Brickhouse, and the DJ had ended on 'Hey Jude'. A little drunken and emotional, we sat at the front of the bus, singing this to ourselves. The guy behind joined in. Then the guy across the aisle. Then a couple of Goth girls a way back. Then another drunken gang up the back. By the time we got to our stop just after the McVities biscuit factory, the whole bus was singing the Na-Na-Nas. That was special.

The Beatles have provided me with so many moments like those. Falling in love to 'Here, There and Everywhere'. Feeling like George Harrison's demo recording of 'All Things Must Pass' saved my life on a dark night of the soul. Sometimes the beauty of the sound of a song I've heard hundreds of times can unexpectedly move me to tears; the cello counterpoint to the third verse of 'Strawberry Fields Forever', the nervous young boys on the brink of something which would change their lives and 20th century pop culture on 'Love Me Do', the beauty of the-greatest-band-that-ever-was ending the last album they recorded with a song (called 'The End' What else?) which encompasses the message of their career and that of the Sixties.

I sometimes worry that I'll grow out of The Beatles. I'll be in a phase where I'm listening to a lot of, say, Tom Waits or Nina Simone, and I'll wonder if The Beatles will sound immature or insubstantial by comparison.

Then I put on Revolver, or Abbey Road, and they never do.

I think back to my music teacher, Mrs Frenz, explaining to us just how The Beatles blew everything apart, and now, having listened and studied, I understand - at least intellectually. But I would give anything to be thirteen years old in 1962, and to follow The Beatles' story from the off, as it unfolded, hearing all that incredible music, in context, with fresh ears.

To have been listening to balladeers, like Franke Ifield singing 'I Remember' on Radio Luxembourg, and then to hear it followed by a new single, 'Love Me Do' by The Beatles. To have been enthralled by these voices and beats which sounded so unlike what surrounded them, to have followed 'Please Please Me' up the hit parade, and then been itching to go out and buy the LP of the same name the day it was released ­ to take that LP home, remove it from its cardboard sleeve and dust jacket and place it onto the turntable, eagerly taking the arm of the record player, carefully placing the needle onto the run-in groove, a couple of seconds popping and hiss before the first track, ('I Saw Her Standing There' according to the sleeve, which I'd be intently studying), and to have heard that song, for the very first time, storm in with McCartney's confident '1-2-3-4!'

Sir Paul McCartney is sitting outside his dressing room, a tent actually, which he shares with his new American girlfriend, Nancy Shevell. It has been erected backstage with its own intimate tea lights, and one hour from now, on this September night, he will perform live before 50,000 fans in Tel Aviv. He's relaxed, biding his time, an already busy day behind him spent meeting Palestinian and Israeli peace activists. He downplays his contribution to harmony in the Middle East.

"It was just some geezer showing up, who happens to be a musician. I am trying to do my own little bit and find out more." Some geezer?

"Yes, I am allowed to say that. In my mind I am just an ordinary guy."

The most famous "ordinary guy" in the world enjoys a £400 million ($721 million) fortune, travels in a private jet, owns a dozen or so homes around the globe and has an entourage to attend to his every whim. For this night's work the "ordinary guy" will earn $4 million ($7.2 million). He has been voted, questionably, the greatest composer ever, ahead of Mozart or Beethoven, and Messrs Putin, Blair, Bush and Clinton have courted him. The meeting with Barack Obama hasn't happened yet, but McCartney says he will find room in his diary when the moment arises.

For decades McCartney has been written about, talked about, parodied and analysed, most recently during his divorce from Heather Mills, a split that revealed more about his private life than he has ever allowed. There's nothing ordinary about this "geezer" and hasn't been since 1962, and yet it is a theme he will return to time and time again, enough to beg the question, why? What's bugging him that he needs us all to reappraise him?

In a scruffy, dusty street in Bethlehem, a small music school has been set up by the conductor Daniel Barenboim. The school is intended to bridge the cavernous divide between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Here there are no autograph hunters, no paparazzi. It is just McCartney, Nancy, a handful of staff and a bodyguard. Inside, McCartney plays the boogie-woogie intro to Lady Madonna on a Steinway. The children he has come to visit are politely baffled. For once, McCartney really is an ordinary geezer. Nobody has heard of him in this dirt-poor district.

During an unscheduled stop at the Church of the Nativity, he and Nancy light candles for peace. He pauses for autographs and a group of students interrupt the reverence with a rendering of Yellow Submarine in Spanish. He apologises to those who have come to pray. Someone shouts: "You're fantastic, Paul!" "No, you're more important than me," he replies, warmly. His manner with ordinary people is intuitive and yet polished. At the church he teases a group of women: "Make sure you behave yourselves, ladies". They purr gratefully. I can safely predict them dining out on what a nice guy he is for the rest of their lives.

At 66, McCartney is still the man your mum would want to meet. But when he is not parading before his public, he is on guard, and he politely ignores questions he deems uncomfortable. We have to remember that he is an old hand at this - he has been famous for nearly 50 years. He is still recording, but not, he says, making much money out of the new releases. Increasingly he has been building up his music-publishing interests. He still paints, and his classical works have sold well, although critics have been sniffy. More than anything, he loves performing. "I never want to get jaded. It's still exciting for me to see people lining the route and waving out of the car. And yes, it is ego."

But he keeps pushing the message of the ordinary guy from an ordinary house in Liverpool who's still modestly perplexed by it all. That ordinary house, paradoxically, is now owned by the National Trust. McCartney has not been back since. "It gets dangerous when you start believing your own legacy. That's why I've not gone back."

Legacy is a tricky issue for him. He doesn't want to be seen to be bothered by it, yet clearly it bugs him. Wherever he makes an appearance, he is followed by his own video crew; every minute of every public moment is recorded. Two stills photographers are part of the team, and he retouches and vets every image they release to the media. He even did this in the hubbub of Tel Aviv. Why? To preserve his legend for prosperity? The question draws a defensive response.

"I just don't like to see terrible photos of myself?it's straightforward vanity. You tell me someone who wants to see terrible photos of themselves."

I hesitate to say I know a lot of women who'd agree, but not many men who are that bothered.

The Beatles were together for just eight years, until the split in 1970. McCartney has spent the greatest part of his life and career as a solo performer, with painfully less success than he enjoyed with Lennon. He concedes that he will probably never again write songs with the luminescence of Here, There and Everywhere or Eleanor Rigby.

It becomes clear during our sporadic conversations over five months that McCartney feels real, tangible, lingering pain about the Beatles, and particularly the fact that he has carried the blame for their break-up. It might be guilt, it might be hindsight and it might just be a desire to clear his name. It might be the reason he is so intent on presenting himself as the "nice ordinary geezer" who teases old ladies - as if to rehabilitate himself. It's possible that the McCartney who was cast as the villain in the break-up wants redemption, and with only two Beatles left, he's keen that posterity records his side of the story.

Those who really know McCartney say there are those who are overawed by him, those who are intimidated by him, and those who just want a piece of him. When he visited Washington a few years ago, George Bush and Colin Powell were squabbling over a book McCartney had autographed for Powell. Staff were dispatched to obtain a second copy for the president. When Tony Blair heard that McCartney was to attend a Children of Courage lunch in 1999, he kept the cabinet waiting while he posed for a picture with the former Beatle. When McCartney played Red Square, Putin invited him to hang out with him. McCartney allowed one tea and a tour of the Kremlin; he was busy. His musical legacy is guaranteed, but that of "the man who broke up the Beatles" because he couldn't be the boss, haunts him, as does his relationship with John Lennon - the blame for the break-up still has traction 38 years later. Whatever the catastrophic nature of his marriage to Heather Mills, a line has been drawn, but with Lennon it is still untidy, unfinished business, and it's the one personal issue McCartney doesn't duck. Indeed, he seems driven to seek an acquittal - a pardon won't do.

The roots of the Beatles' break-up go back to 1967, with the death of Brian Epstein. The group's finances soon became chaotic and McCartney pushed for the Eastmans, his in-laws, to take over their management. Lennon opposed McCartney's desire to control the band's destiny and legacy, and proposed a new manager, Allen Klein, with whom he, George and Ringo had already signed.

Stalemate ensued. McCartney wouldn't budge, nor would Lennon. By then all four were ready to go their separate ways. McCartney sued to legally wind up the band, ensuring it couldn't reform without him and leaving none of their legacy under Klein's control. The split was messy and brutal. McCartney probably said "I told you so" when Lennon subsequently fell out with Klein, but by then his intimate relationship with Lennon was beyond repair.

In 1971, Lennon released a song called How Do You Sleep? It was aimed at McCartney - a bilious, vituperative attack, mocking him, accusing him of possessing a petit bourgeois, suburban mentality and being under his wife Linda's thumb - "You live with straights who tell you you was king? Jump when your mama tell you anything?"

The fact that George and Ringo also played on the track made it more painful. To his credit, McCartney tried to build bridges, contacting Lennon whenever he was in New York, but sources say he was systematically and rudely rebuffed. In 1972 they did meet briefly - and frostily. Lennon's biographer Philip Norman refers to a guarded truce that soon evaporated, though McCartney still wanted to reach out. He would call Lennon regularly, often to be greeted with "What the f***, do you want, man?" For some reason Lennon was particularly annoyed by McCartney's tendency to talk about his young children. John said that the man he once dismissively described as the best PR in the business had become "all pizza and fairy tales". It's hard to escape the conclusion that Lennon could be a boorish snob. They played together just once after the break-up, at Lennon's house in Santa Monica. McCartney and Linda arrived and they joined an all-star jam session.

The one-time friends met for the last time over an awkward dinner in New York about two years before Lennon's death: one person who was there said they had nothing left to say to each other.

McCartney seems painfully conscious of the shadow John still casts over his life three decades later. He would live to regret the insanely glib remark he made on TV when asked about John's death: "Drag, isn't it?" A clip of it has ended up on YouTube; McCartney appears callous, but those close to him defend him vigorously. McCartney was in shock at the loss of his closest-ever friend, they say, and for once his composure deserted him. Two years later when the BBC filmed McCartney recording a special edition of Desert Island Discs, he wept as he talked about Lennon.

Throughout our conversations McCartney is keen to return to the subject of Lennon. There is the overwhelming sense that their prodigious, at times toxic, relationship is never far from his mind. I ask if he would ever consider performing Lennon's How Do You Sleep? He doesn't take the bait. "Maybe I wouldn't do that one. I doubt it," he answers with a wry smile. But it sparks an attempt to set the record straight, to varnish the epitaph and insist that the Lennon/McCartney friendship survived and endured. "The answer to John was well - I was sleeping very well at the time.

"Before John died I got back a good relationship with him. That was very special. The arguments we had didn't matter. We were able to just take the piss about all those songs; they weren't that harsh. In fact, I have been thanked by Yoko and everyone else for saving the Beatles from Allen Klein. Everything comes round in the end." I ask him why it still matters so much. "I was placed in the most awkward position I've ever been placed in. I had to fight three mates to save their legacy, their money, as well as mine, and I did so knowing it would put me in a very dodgy position." He goes on, eager to impress his defence upon unforgiving or undecided Beatles fans. He only sued his mates to stop Klein destroying them. "Anyone who didn't thoroughly review the whole thing would be forgiven for thinking 'What a tosser'. So yes, that matters to me, it is still a haunting episode? It was pretty scary having to say to Johnny, Georgie, Ringo, I'm suing you!"

When he started touring with Wings in the 1970s, McCartney refused to sing any Beatles songs. Now the set he has brought to Israel, one of a series of special gigs this year, consists mainly of the songs he wrote and recorded with Lennon. "I love John's songs. In the Beatles, if you said it was one of your songs, it basically meant it was your idea. So Eleanor Rigby was my song, but John helped me finish it. A Day in the Life was his, but I helped him finish it. He came up with 'I read the news today' and I came up with 'he blew his mind out in a car'. At the end of the song in Tel Aviv, McCartney segues into Lennon's Give Peace a Chance, which in recent years he has quietly appropriated.

McCartney's decision to play in Tel Aviv has prompted huge controversy, pushing him onto the front pages for the first time since the divorce settlement that cost him £24.3 million ($48 million). Omar Bakri Mohammed, a radical sheikh based in Syria, makes death threats. "I don't get worried - if I did, I'd get worried about walking across the street and getting run over in London." The Israeli ambassador to the UK has already publicly apologised to McCartney and Ringo for banning the Beatles in the 1960s - their music was deemed too decadent - and the government is milking this visit. McCartney, meanwhile, has decreed that he wants to meet some Palestinians.

We wait for hours in the hotel lobby for McCartney to emerge from his suite. He has had a long lie-in. His famous love of punctuality doesn't always apply to himself. If you arrange to call at his office, a member of his staff will send a nervous text five minutes before asking: "Where are you?" As he finally enters, he cannot resist a tinkle on the piano. He strides purposefully; he has learnt to walk faster than most over the years, which may be why he wears trainers with suits.

For a 66-year-old, he looks relaxed and fit, with not a grey hair on his head. He and Nancy get into a bomb-proof Land Rover, the rest of us in a Mercedes minibus. We drive into the West Bank.

The trip gives us a snapshot of vintage McCartney: it shows how he operates and how he has survived for so long. He is not a great political thinker, but in politics, as in so many things, his approach is instinctive and pragmatic. He is disarmingly honest. "I'm not very politically aware of the situation, I suppose like the average British person. We do know there's a conflict, but we didn't know all the ins and outs. You don't have to visit a refugee camp to know there are a lot of Palestinians who have become dispossessed."

On tour, as at home, with staff, officials, crew and the public, he is polite and warm. When faced with the dull prospect of a "meet and greet" with local bigwigs before the concert, he still manages to pretend he is enjoying himself. The mayor of Tel Aviv is here, anxious to be seen - and photographed - shaking McCartney's hand. "It's okay. I understand why it has to be done. I know it's not going to go on for long. It's not entirely boring."

There is a part of McCartney that relishes being famous, even now. He enjoys ringing people up out of the blue. "Most people think it's Frank from the office having a laugh. But then I say, 'No, it's Paul, you know, She Loves You?'" I'm not convinced he could cope with being the ordinary guy he claims to be. "This morning," he says, "I was walking into a cafe. A girl shouts, 'Hi Paul, you are fantastic. I really love you.' I take it with a pinch of salt, but I am honoured. I am pleased she didn't say, 'You're a total arsehole and I hate you.' I am pleased I have got a compliment, and I can still walk around Soho as I've always done."

People who know him say there is the real McCartney and there is Beatle Paul. "I've learnt to compartmentalise," he says. "There's me and there's famous Him. I don't want to sound schizophrenic, but probably I'm two people. I'm the guy who does shows in Israel, but I'm also the guy who goes home to the kids. There I am just Dad.

Apart from the "ordinary guy", McCartney is also the "family guy". He is close to all his children. "They've not been cloistered - Linda and I were very conscious of that. They're likable people." But they are different from others, financially at least. "If you're as well off as I am, inevitably they will benefit. They've never understood hunger, like I did. I'm still hungry because I had that hunger, I've never lost it. It's good to have."

One of his gripes with Heather was not the money but his wish that their daughter Beatrice did not grow up in "a gilded cage" with 24-hour security, which his other children never had. There's that ordinary guy again. I wonder why he needs it so much.

Throughout his public life McCartney has appeared calm and in control. Even when his ex-wife was portraying him as a cannabis-smoking, wife-beating Scrooge, he kept his cool. But there are times when he loses it and the ordinary guy can be ruthless. In 2003 he let rip in public, getting annoyed with a photographer. At the time he was out at Tower Bridge in London watching the illusionist David Blaine, and referred to him as a "c***". For McCartney, it was unprecedented: a moment of uncontrolled rudeness exposed to the world. His relationship with Heather was unravelling at the time. "We'd been out with a bunch of mates eating and drinking and going at it out late. We had our publicity guy there. He went out to tell the press 'there he is'. I was more angry with him than anyone else. But I lost it that night. Yes."

McCartney fired Geoff Baker, his press officer, that night, but reinstated him the following day. A year later he sacked him properly after 15 years' service. McCartney himself put out an uncharacteristically mean press release: "Over the past few months, his behaviour has not reached the professional standards I had come to expect."

Baker now says working as McCartney's press officer in the Heather phase of his life had driven him to drugs and drink. "The pressure was massive? there's the world there, Paul and Heather here, and I was in between. Nobody can blame my addictive failings on Paul or Heather or anything like that. But the pressure was unreal."

The Blaine episode was trivial in itself, but revealing, in that it was McCartney's first and, to date, last public explosion, although there have been gaffes, not least his response to 9/11. "Are you gonna do a bombing campaign? How dare you! If you want to take my kids out - well, screw you. Come and talk about it, right in my face, baby," was his public challenge to Osama Bin Laden. Unsurprisingly, Bin Laden never got back to him.

In 1984, four years after the drugs bust in Japan that sent McCartney to jail and finished off Wings, he spoke about drugs: "Cannabis is a lot less harmful than rum punch, whisky, nicotine and glue, all of which are perfectly legal." Now, he told me, "Things have changed. A lot of people started on heroin because John did.

We didn't know the dangers of overindulgence. The problems of cannabis have escalated and it really is more dangerous. "I've lost too many friends through drugs. I still believe basically the same things, but I don't want to be a spokesman for legalisation." When pressed, for the first time in our conversations, he is irritated. "I think I've made my views perfectly clear."

His prickliness over the drugs issue is an example of his refusal to deviate from his own agenda. I mention that I have recently interviewed the widow of Mal Evans, the Beatles' long-standing roadie who felt let down by the group when they broke up - the comment is simply ignored as though he didn't hear it. In McCartney's world, he has to have the last word, and there is no doubt he is always right - probably because there is nobody ever there to say he is wrong.

We talk about the perceived wisdom that he only employs yes men. At his office, the atmosphere is relaxed and informal, but he is unquestionably the boss. His entourage call him, without irony, the Big Man, a contradictory term for someone surprisingly slight and skinny. "In any situation with a high-ranking official, any boss, it's not always a good idea to tell him he's crap. But I try to encourage people. We all have meetings - the best ideas carry the day. If someone goofs up I tell them off. There have been one or two moments when somebody has been out of order."

Before a concert he is a stickler for detail: the music, the visuals, how he looks. But he can't keep on top of everything. One crew member who joined him on stage told me: "Nancy should have done something about his nose hair." Those who work for him tend to remain loyal, not least, as Baker says, because they enjoy being part of the inner sanctum. "He's not the king of England; he's not going to have you executed. But too many people don't want to offend him, because they don't want to be dropped."

Probably the closest person to him other than family is his "executive personal assistant", John Hammel, who began working for him as a roadie in the 1970s. On stage he still hands him his instruments and adjusts his strap, but he is now also his driver, confidante and maybe even his best friend. "It's funny, but no one has ever asked me to reveal all. And I never would. I'd never give an interview, I'd never write a book. I'm too loyal to Paul." It's hard to tell who is close to McCartney. Since the death of Lennon, nobody has filled the void who doesn't work for him. It is remarkable how so few of his intimates have kissed and told. Jane Asher has never spoken of their relationship, and Neil Aspinall, the Beatles roadie who went on to run Apple, also remained loyal. When Aspinall retired McCartney gave him a gold watch, but, more tellingly, he also paid for Aspinall's cancer treatment. McCartney flew to New York to say goodbye to him just before he died.

One thing does emerge from talking to his friends and associates: McCartney can be controlling, difficult and demanding, but he is fundamentally decent.

In the 1960s, the Beatles biographer Hunter Davies asked the group if he could keep some handwritten song lyrics they'd left lying around in Abbey Road, which would otherwise have been thrown out by the cleaners. They all agreed, but McCartney forgot about it until he took his daughter Mary to the British Museum and spotted a lyric in his handwriting in a case. (Davies had given them to the nation.) He wrote to Davies asking for the lyric back; they eventually agreed between them that McCartney would leave it in the museum. Someone who has known him well for years says: "Rich and famous people like him are always bugged about something. The relationship with John was hard. He was in awe of him. He doesn't care when people mock his art or his music. But more than anything he has the Beatles legend looming over him."

There are subjects that McCartney flags up firmly as no-go areas. On Heather, he will not say a word. He doesn't have to. During and after their separation, he maintained a dignified silence. Mr Justice Bennett described him as "consistent, accurate and honest". Perhaps the only lingering question anyone wants answered is why someone as worldly as McCartney would fall for a serial stalker of publicity, wealth and fame. The answer could be that nobody had the nerve to tell him about the real Heather Mills. His children are thought to have tried, but it would have been easy for him to dismiss their objections as loyalty to their mother. One source says McCartney's explanation after the divorce was simple and nearer the truth: he was thinking with the wrong head. In his judgment, Mr Justice Bennett was kinder; he said McCartney was "still very emotionally tied" to Linda when he met Heather.

One day in October, when I call to see him at his London office, an assistant is mailing out the pink invitations to Beatrice's birthday party; McCartney speaks of his daughter fondly. He is more circumspect about his new relationship with Nancy Shevell, a rich American businesswoman who is separated amicably from her husband. She is notoriously publicity shy. I asked her if she finds McCartney's fame stressful. "I don't find it stressful. I'm a cancer survivor, I run a trucking company and I've got a 16-year-old to raise. That's stress."

Nancy clearly idolises him. As McCartney performed in Tel Aviv, she looked on adoringly. It didn't bother her that his set includes the song My Love, which he dedicates to Linda - Heather used to stomp out when he played it so he took it out. Nancy is confident, sophisticated and McCartney clearly feels safe and comfortable with her. "I just like being in love," is all he'll say on the subject.

It has been an insightful few months. The ordinary guy, the geezer from Liverpool, the rock'n'roll legend, the goodwill ambassador, they've all been on show, and what emerges is a man comfortable with his fame, even with his notoriety. It's curious he doesn't feel embarrassment over the questions his Heather episode pose about his judgment.

He has almost breezily drawn a line under the messiest divorce in decades, and yet his role in the split from the Beatles still cuts deep. McCartney is clearly in touch with his mortality, and he doesn't want his immortality tarnished.

Electric Arguments, the latest album by the Fireman (Paul McCartney), is out Monday on MPL/One Little Indian Records/ATO Records).

He may have had his biggest hits on vinyl, but Sir Paul McCartney has come right up to date by launching his latest album online.

Users of the social network site MySpace can listen free of charge to 'Electric Arguments' by McCartney's group The Fireman before it goes on sale in stores and on the Internet.

They will not be able to download songs until the album is released next week, but they can place advance orders.

Paul's followers can check out 'Electric Arguments', the latest album by his electronic group The Fireman, before it is released on the high street and online stores on Sunday.

It is the third album for Fireman, which pairs Paul McCartney with Youth, the Killing Joke bassist and dance music producer.

Giving fans an early crack at the albums could be a big win for MySpace Music, as the world financial crisis hammers corporate budgets.

The networking site launched a joint music venture with Vivendi's Music Group, Sony Music and Warner Music Group, earlier this year to challenge Apple Inc's iTunes online music store.

Beatrice McCartney features in new track by dad Sir Paul McCartney

She's only five, but could Sir Paul McCartney's daughter be making an early bid for fame?

Beatrice McCartney, the only child of Macca and his ex Heather Mills, features on a track on her dad's new album The Fireman.

Our mole said: "Beatrice was in the studio with him and during the recording of "Two Magpies" she grabbed some earphones and said, 'I want to play the piano,' which was picked up on the microphone.

"When Paul played it back he thought it sounded really cute and insisted it be left in the final version.

"Pals say if he releases it as a single it should be listed as Sir Paul McCartney featuring baby Bea."

Too right. She'll be owed royalties too...

Speaking to our friends at the Stool Pigeon newspaper this week, Paul McCartney revealed that he is a fan of the Sex Pistols and that even he worried about the credit crunch.

Former Beatle Paul McCartney revealed that he is a fan of punk music ­ in particular The Sex Pistols and their snarling 1976 yob anthem, 'Pretty Vacant'. The multi-millionaire also confessed that he was briefly worried about the credit crunch ­ even though he is one of the world's richest musicians.

When asked what he thought of punk when if first emerged in 1977 he replied: "At first it was shocking, because until then you'd known the status quo. It hoped to be shocking and in some ways it was. But the thing was thtat the music was great and suddenly realised, after a day or two of horror ­ [ADOPTS POSH VOICE] 'My God! What's going on! What's happening to our England?!' ­ that these guys were just shaking it up and it needed shaking up."

He added that his eldest daughter Heather was a big fan of the music saying: "My daughter was really into punk at the time. She went to Clash concerts and Damned concerts, Billy Idol and shit . . . she went to the whole thing. You couldn't deny that it sounded fresh, but I was coached by my eldest daughter. I understood that it needed to happen and it was a great thing and something like 'Pretty Vacant' as a record, is really good. It was produced by Chris Thomas, who we knew ­ he was George Martin's assistant and had worked on some Beatles stuff.

"The sound of 'Pretty Vacant' is really good and, of course, the energy of the band is sensational. It's not to be denied."

Fab Macca also added that he had worried ­ albeit briefly ­ about the credit crunch, saying: "For my own thing, I actually did phone my guy up and say, 'How exposed are we?' He said, 'You're as exposed as everyone. If the banks all go broke . . .' But, generally speaking as far as the way we do business, there's not a huge speculative exposure."

He added that he wasn't worried now though and said he was "unhappy" for other people, blaming the situation on the "irresponsibility" of yuppie debt culture.

McCartney was speaking on the eve of the release of his new album under the guise of Fireman. It is perhaps one of the more unlikely pairings in dance music. The former Beatle and Wings frontman has teamed up with Killing Joke and Verve and Gn'R producer Youth to make their third album together Electric Arguments.

Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising however, both made their names as bass players and both are perhaps not as renowned for their experimental work as they should be. Macca, often seen as the 'cute' one from The Beatles, was actually responsible for some of their wildest tracks, such as the proto-heavy metal 'Helter Skelter' and the proto-electroclash 'Temporary Secretary'. Youth may be a production go to guy for stadium rock/pop bands, but he is also an electronic/house musician of no little talent, most notably with The Orb, Client and Blue Pearl.

Speaking about the making of the album he said the pair had adopted a Beat poet, 'first thought, best thought' aesthetic: "The whole album was very 'first thought, best thought', and that's a little risky, but it's just the way we work.

"That's the great thing about it and you've got to remember, it's Fireman. Anything goes and it sort of doesn't matter. I mean, obviously when we think we've made a really cool record then it starts to matter, which is a bit of a problem."

For the full interview with Paul McCartney pick up a free copy of Stool Pigeon. The current issue also features interviews with the likes of Slayer, Grace Jones, Tony Christie, Dead Kids, Of Montreal, RTX, Q-Tip, Brightblack Morning Light, along with the best opinion, reviews and commentary on inky printed paper. To find a list of stockists, visit the Stool Pigeon website.

Paul McCartney joins fellow U.K. rockers Radiohead on the label founded by Dave Matthews and manager Coran Capshaw in Charlottesville.

Just when you thought Dave Matthews and Coran Capshaw couldn't get any bigger than they are in the music industry, they went and signed the man whose face and voice might be the most recognizable among all living rock musicians. Next Tuesday, November 25, Matthews and Capshaw's Charlottesville-based ATO Records will release Electric Arguments, the latest album from none other than Sir Paul McCartney.

But don't go searching for this album from the former Beatle under "M" in your local record store. McCartney is releasing the album under the pseudonym "The Fireman," a name he's used twice before in the '90s for two LPs McCartney deemed too experimental for release under his own name: 1993's Strawberries Oceans Ships Forests and and 1998's Rushes. But while those two albums were instrumental forays into electronica and sound collage, Electric Arguments features 13 new songs written and performed by McCartney. The album was completed in 13 days, with McCartney starting a new song from scratch each day in the studio.

Already, the album is receiving rave reviews. Rolling Stone gave it four stars, calling it "good ol' psychedelic rock for the ex-Beatle's headiest music in years."

This is the second coup for ATO in a little more than a year. Last October, Capshaw and company signed U.K. rockers Radiohead and earned the rights to sell their 2007 album In Rainbows in stores after the band had made the album available online for whatever fans wished to pay for it (including $0). The album would go on to sell 3 million copies in stores.

No word yet on whether this means McCartney will be releasing any albums under his real name via ATO, but the last McCartney album, 2007's Memory Almost Full, came out on Starbucks' Hear Music label, which folded this year.

The ex-Beatle has collaborated with dance producer Youth - under the alias of The Fireman - for the third time.

"I just totally trust him, throw everything in the book at him," said McCartney about Youth, who prompted him to sing on their new record.

The album, which is released on Monday 24 November, has already received rave reviews from Rolling Stone and Uncut.

Of Electric Arguments, Sir Paul previously said: "The Fireman takes your hand and takes you through the blaze to places you didn't know you wanted to go."

However, he admitted to 6 Music's Sean Keaveny that the comments had not been entirely serious.

"When I get asked, I tend to say stupid stuff like that," Sir Paul said.

"You know, in some ways it is true - because if you haven't heard The Fireman, you won't know, then you might like it, and I think it sort of grows on you.

"In some ways it's true but I was just asked to make something up. It was ever so quick."

Speaking about his working relationship with Youth, who also plays bass for Killing Joke, Sir Paul said: "I first met him because he was doing a mix of a track of mine and we just got to like each other.

"He's an unusual kind of guy, only in as much as he's very artistic. He likes painting, drawing, poetry, we like a lot of the same things, music obviously."

And in terms of their music making process, he went on: "We'll just chat about anything and then something will come out of it, maybe a memory of his or memory of mine and then out of that it will be like, 'What shall we do then?'

"I say, 'I dunno, let me just do a bit of electric guitar or something,' so we'll put down a little of that. Then I'll play some stuff and he starts to piece it together."

Their last album together, 1998's Rushes, was purely electronic and instrumental and Sir Paul explained how they got the lyrics together for this one: "What I do is a normal base and then I'll throw in all sorts of wonky stuff.

"On this album it was different, he started to say, 'well, what about a bit of vocals?'

"So I said, 'well I haven't got any words or melody or anything.'

"He keeps quiet and he knows I'll go, 'But I'll give it a try'."

The Beatles star said that writing with Youth reminded him of spontaneous theatre sessions: "It always reminded me of theatre workshops where you see them on the telly improvising, like Mike Leigh, where they've got no idea what they're gonna do but they're just making it up.

"So, we just made it up and my working relationship with him basically is, I do a load of stuff and he arranges it."

Thinking of Lennon

When listening back to his creations, Sir Paul admitted to wondering how the material would sound if he were still with The Beatles.

He said: "You reference most things you do, saying, 'would that work with The Beatles, or would this be a good Wings song? Would John like this? What would George play on this?'

"You do that, you also go, 'how would Elvis have sung it?'

"You do all those little thoughts because it's cheap."

Paul McCartney and producer Youth collaborated on 13 songs in as many days to make Electric Arguments, their first collaboration in over a decade, and the first to feature vocals.

McCartney and Youth ping-ponged ideas back and forth over the period of about a year through writing, arrangement and production cycles while making this album. Some of this is a continuation of the technique McCartney used on the "mystery" track -- a Beatles picking up an instrument and seeing what happens. But this was a real collaboration, and both creative forces are evident throughout. Many have used this recording/writing technique, but the results don't end up sounding like The Fireman.

McCartney's melodic, harmonic and improvisational skills combine with Youth's inventive, intelligent production for a stunning array of sounds. The variety of terrain on this album is astounding, and these two know their way around it all.

You can stream the whole thing on NPR; here's our song-by-song analysis of Electric Arguments (November 25, ATO Records; vinyl on December 16):

"Nothing Too Much Just Out of Sight" - A real scorcher, as we noticed when the song showed up online after being played on British radio. To quote our earlier review, "the tune finds Macca running full bore, like he just stepped out of the Maharishi's headquarters after a full session of devotional chanting and directly into an ultra-heavy jam with members of Cream. If you still sound this vital at his age, count yourself lucky -- or on fire."

"Two Magpies" - Like laid-back, jazzy cousins of The Beatles' "Blackbird."

"Sing the Changes" - An radio, stadium-friendly anthem that might sound better if you don't watch the inspirational video at the same time. Bonus points for what sounds like a Space Echo reverb/delay.

"Traveling Light" - An underwater sea shanty with some fantastic touches. 3:36, I'm talking especially to you.

"Highway" - A bluesy, gospel-flavored jam with boot-stomping harmonica that will find its way onto at least a few road trip mixes. But "The Return of Bruno" this is not.

"Light from Your Lighthouse" - Another gospel-infused number, this time with a more Tom Waits-ish element doubled by falsetto an octave up and some bluegrass guitar.

"Sun Is Shining" - Heartbreaking bass breaks in nearly a minute in over acoustic strumming and picking. This is what Spiritualized might sound like if Jason Pierce had never discovered heroin, with lyrics about waking up and looking forward. Nice optimistic chorus, verses and resolution. Paul can still write them and he can still play, but then again we already knew that from the the previous material.

"Dance 'Till We're High" - Church bell, sleighbells and the specter of Phil Spectre. Snow. Direct lyrics about love. String. Out of all of them, this is the one Celine Dion might be tempted to cover, which she hopefully won't.

"Lifelong Passion" - Harmonica gives way to warm, orchestral synthesizers. Mellow tribal drums form a novel combination with a Moog or something like it. Great, dense production as usual.

"Lovers in a Dream" - This one finds The Fireman in trippy, spaced out territory. Then comes the four-on-the-flour club beat, and we could be making our way through one of those borderline swanky Berlin squatters' dance clubs. Remixers, start your engines -- there's plenty to work with here.

"Universal Here, Everlasting Now" - What we thought was going to be a mournful piano tune for upscale massage spas gets interesting quick with sinister swells and more birds. This is the most experimental track on the album. Suddenly, a major guitar chord and a motorik-ish beat with a vaguely Eastern reverb guitar solo turn this into a real builder. I had to turn it up around 3:15.

"Don't Stop Running" - Another classic Paul bassline, this time over a shuffling beat with harpsichord and other twangy sounds. Is it a false ending or a silent hit in the style of Pootie Tang? Or does the music come back? I'm not going to give that away, but this is a suitable ending for the album. And no matter what speakers you have, you'll wish they were better.

The Fireman didn't reveal who they were until after the second their second album. Discography: Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest ('94, McCartney Productions Limited, distributed by Capitol in the US); Rushes ('98, Capitol); Electric Arguments ('08, ATO Records).

The former Beatle said it is the one country he dreams of performing in.

He recently performed his first concert in Israel, 43 years after the Beatles were banned over fears they would corrupt the nation's youth.

Asked during a radio interview where he would like to play next, Sir Paul replied: "I've never played in China, I'm kind of interested to see what that's like. There's lots of places I've never played, but I think China would be the answer."

In 2005, the singer announced he would never perform there after watching undercover footage of dogs and cats being killed for their fur.

Sir Paul, a staunch vegetarian, said at the time that the practice was "like something out of the dark ages". After viewing the BBC film with his then wife, anti-fur campaigner Heather Mills, he said: "I wouldn't even dream of going over there to play, in the same way I wouldn't go to a country that supported apartheid. This is just disgusting. It's just against the very rule of humanity. I couldn't go there. If they want to consider themselves a civilised nation, they're going to have to stop this."

In the interview with Absolute Radio's Geoff Lloyd to promote his new album, Electric Arguments, Sir Paul said he would love to collaborate on a record with Bob Dylan. (Paul will be on everyday this week at 5pm UK time LISTEN LIVE)

He also relived the moment he received his knighthood from the Queen in 1997, joking: "Slight trepidation at the idea of going to Buck Palace and being honoured by her Maj... I hadn't washed for about two weeks so I thought, 'I can't go there smelling.' so I did wash that morning."

Sir Paul also appears to have relaxed his healthy eating plan, which Mills liked to enforce. She endured public ridicule last year by appearing to suggest that people should drink milk from rats rather than cows. Asked how he takes his tea, the singer replied: "Milk and sugar. Sugar these days, yes. I know not many people dare to take sugar these days, but I'm just reckless."

Sir Paul McCartney has revealed that he had to take a shower before collecting his Knighthood from the Queen in 1997.

The former Beatle told Absolute Radio that he hadn't washed for two weeks before going to Buckingham Palace to receive the honour.

"Slight trepidation at the idea of going to Buck Palace and being honoured by her Maj," he said.

"I hadn't washed for about two weeks so I thought, 'I can't go there smelling.' so I did wash that morning."

As previously reported on Gigwise, in the same interview Sir Paul also spoke about his desire to perform in China.

The singer, who three years ago said he would boycott the country because of its human rights record, said he was intrigued by the nation.

Sir Paul McCartney's poem to Spike Milligan to go under hammer

A poem handwritten by Sir Paul McCartney for his friend Spike Milligan is to be sold at auction next week.

Sir Paul McCartney's cartoon was captioned 'The Nutters of Starvecrow Lane'

On one side of the paper the former Beatle wrote a ditty called 'The Poet of Dumbswoman Lane' while on the reverse he drew a rough cartoon titled 'The Nutters of Starvecrow Lane'.

The poem, which is to be auctioned by Bonhams on Tuesday, November 25 as part of a large sale of Milligan memorabilia, appears to mirror the comedian's nonsense style.

Written in blue pen, and addressed to SPIKE, MAN, it reads: "The voice of the poet of Dumbwoman's Lane/Can be heard across vallies [sic] of sugar-burned cane/And nostrils that sleep through the wildest of nights /Will be twitching to gain aromatic insights/The wife of the farmer of Poppinghole Lane/Can be seen from the cab of the Robertsbridge train/And passengers comments will frequently turn/To the wages the wife of a farmer can earn/The poet of Dumbwoman's lane sallies forth/He is hoping for no-one to see."

Sir Paul signed it endearingly "With love Paul (YESTERDAY'S MAN.)"

The cartoon features a man and woman wearing large smiles and scruffy haircuts, both giving a thumbs-up sign.

Bonhams has estimated that the sheet of paper will fetch £1,500 ($2704) to £2,000 ($3,606).

According to Milligan's widow Shelagh, who is selling the collection, Sir Paul often used to drop into their house in Rye, East Sussex, for a cup of tea when he was visiting a recording studio in the town.

McCartney Wants To Release 40-year old Beatles Song

Paul McCartney says he wants the currently unreleased Beatles song `Carnival Of Light` to be heard by all.

The 14-minute jam was recorded in one take around the time The Beatles were working on 'Penny Lane'. In fact, specifically, it was recorded on January 5, 1967.

Speaking with John Wilson on the BBC, McCartney said that he feels the time is right to release the avant-guard track. 'I like it because it's The Beatles free, going off piste,' he said. 'We were set up in the studio and would just go in every day and record,' McCartney tells Wilson. 'I said to the guys, this is a bit indulgent but would you mind giving me 10 minutes? I've been asked to do this thing. All I want you to do is just wander round all of the stuff and bang it, shout, play it. It doesn't need to make any sense. Hit a drum, wander to the piano, hit a few notes ... and then we put a bit of echo on it. It's very free".

McCartney said in the interview that the track was almost released in 1996 on Anthology. We were listening to everything we'd every recorded,' McCartney says. 'I said it would be great to put this on because it would show we were working with really avant-garde stuff ... But it was vetoed. The guys didn't like the idea, like "this is rubbish".'

McCartney was at the BBC to talk about his new album as The Fireman with Wilson for his Front Row radio show in Radio 4. The interview will be heard this Thursday on BBC 4.

LONELY HEART McCARTNEY

Sir Paul McCartney says his latest album is influenced by The Beatles landmark record, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Just as he and John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, created alter egos so they could be even more creative during recording of the 1967 album, so Sir Paul has returned to this formula for this new project, Electrical Arguments.

He will release the CD, his third project with dance producer Youth, as "The Fireman".

Sir Paul, 66, said an alter ego "gives you the feeling anything is possible and stops you being too serious".

The Beatles grew moustaches and dressed up as members of the Lonely Hearts Club band. The album was also said to be influenced by their experiences with drugs, specifically lyrics from A Day in The Life and the title of Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (LSD).

Sir Paul said: "Pepper was probably the one Beatle album I can say was my idea. I said to the guys, 'Hey, how about disguising ourselves and getting an alter ego, because we're The Beatles and we're fed up'."

His new title comes from an Allen Ginsberg poem. The album ­ described as a cross between Led Zeppelin and Arcade Fire ­ is released on November 24.

Sir Paul McCartney wore an Alice Cooper mask when he met The Killers.

The Las Vegas rockers' frontman Brandon Flowers was stunned into silence by the bizarre encounter with the former Beatles star following his group's show at London's Royal Albert Hall last week.

Brandon said: "We were waylaid in the corridor by someone on the way back to the dressing room - it was Paul McCartney and he was wearing an Alice Cooper mask. He was dancing around and then he took it off and introduced himself.

"At first, we all just stared at him. What do you say to Paul McCartney? Eventually, we got chatting and he told us that it had been a great show.

"Meeting a Beatle was daunting. People in Britain know what an important band they were. But when you come from the States that feeling is magnified. They were untouchable."

The 'Human' singer also admitted he and his bandmates - guitarist Dave Keuning, bassist Mark Stoermer and drummer Ronnie Vannucci Jr. - don't tend to socialise with other musicians because they are afraid no one will like them.

He added to Britain's Daily Mail newspaper: "I usually assume that people don't like us. I've tried putting myself out there but we still tend to stay in our own little corner. It's all a bit goofy."

Sir Paul McCartney says 'Yesterday' is his favourite Beatles song.

The former Beatles legend says he enjoys the song - which is in the Guiness Book of Records for having the most cover versions - more than any other from his time with the band because it came to him in a dream.

Click here to see all the photos from the MTV Europe Music Awards.

He told XFM radio: "One of mine? If I had to answer one song it would have to be 'Yesterday' because it came to me in a dream and because 3000 people are supposed to have recorded it.

"That was entirely magical - I have no idea how I wrote that. I just woke up one morning and it was in my head. I didn't believe it for about two weeks."

Of the songs written by his bandmates, Paul said it was a much easier task to choose his favourites.

He added: "I can isolate my favourite John Lennon tracks. There's too many, but I'd go with 'A Day In The Life', 'Strawberry Fields' and 'Julia'. I could keep going..."

Sir Peter, 74, has written Liber Pulsationis Fabulatoris, a 20-minute choral work which will be performed at Liverpool's Metropolitan Cathedral next month. The title means "The Book of Pulsations of the Creator of Legends" and Sir Peter explained that the first three letters spell "lib pul fab", an echo of the band at the height of the 1960s fame, albeit in Latin.

The work is a setting of Hildegard of Bingen, a 12th-century German poet and has been commissioned as part of the celebrations for Liverpool 2008 European Capital of Culture.

In June, Sir Peter attended his first pop concert in Liverpool after a personal invitation from Sir Paul, 66, who told him to bring earplugs to his performance at Anfield Stadium. In return Sir Paul, who is said to be "thrilled to bits" by Sir Peter's new composition, has been invited to its premiere.

"Paul is as great as Schubert and still has not received the full recognition that his talent deserves. This country has produced one of the greatest musical talents ever and we should appreciate and celebrate that loudly," said Sir Peter, who selected Yesterday by the Beatles among his eight records when he appeared on the radio show, Desert Island Discs in 2005. Sir Peter's extravagant praise carries echoes of William Mann, the Times classical music critic, who stunned the music world when he named the Beatles "the outstanding English composers of 1963" and later compared the Sgt. Pepper album to the work of Monteverdi, Schumann and Britten. Almost all of the Beatles songs were written by Sir Paul and the late John Lennon.

Since his 1960s heyday, Sir Paul's work has struggled to win such levels of acclaim, with rock critics ridiculing releases such as The Frog Chorus, Mull of Kintyre and Mary Had a Little Lamb. Coincidentally, some classical music critics believe that Sir Peter's own work has lost its edge since the days when it was praised for its "ungrammatical attitude to tonality" by Mann - a quality it shared, he said, with the work of the Beatles.

In recent years, Sir Paul himself has turned to classical composition, but the four albums he has released have not always fared well with critics. His first classical piece, Paul McCartney's Liverpool Oratorio, was composed for the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society's 150th anniversary in 1991, and received a grand premiere in the city's Anglican cathedral - where Sir Paul was rejected as chorister as a boy.

The work was much derided by critics, who lamented his abandonment of any rock elements. Sir Paul's most recent oratorio Ecco Cor Meum (Behold my heart) won him a Brit Award but was reviewed in The Times as "banal" and "depressingly feeble".

It is a long way from Mann's praise for the pop output, which "have brought a distinctive and exhilarating flavour into a genre of music that was in danger of ceasing to be music at all".

Today (November 11) we were graced by the presence of the one and only Sir Paul McCartney. The Liverpudlian legend came into Xfm to speak to Dave Berry about his recent activities, Ultimate Legend Awards and his favourite Beatles songs. Wow!

How excited are we today? Lots is the answer because PAUL McCARTNEY (yes, we're shouting) came into Xfm's Drivetime Show with Dave Berry.

McCartney spoke to Dave about The Fireman's (his collaborative project with producer extraordinaire Youth) new album 'Electric Arguments' which Paul explained was recorded in just one day!

As well as Dave trying to give advice on recording the album (honestly, we love the man to pieces but Dave giving advice on music is like Peaches Geldof giving advice on marriage), he also quizzed Paul on his MTV Ulitmate Legend Award and his favourite Beatles tunes. Best Interview Ever.

Abbey Road has been the sight of countless happy memories for Paul McCartney. But as he strolled down the famous London street with Nancy Shevell on his arm, he looked at his most contented.

The ex-Beatle, 65, looked full of joy as he and Miss Shevell slowly walked down the street to pay a quick house call to his son James in nearby St John's Wood.

Sir Paul and the elegantly wrapped-up New York heiress contentedly laughed and chatted, giving photographers every opportunity to take their snaps.

After a few minutes in the house, they were happy to wave and smile before heading back to Sir Paul's home, which is just around the corner from the iconic recording studios.

It is now a year since he started dating Miss Shevell, 47. The couple were first pictured in a passionate embrace in the front of his car last November.

Initially, the couple kept a low-profile in the wake of his divorce from Heather Mills, but were snapped frolicking in the sea and enjoying romantic walks on a trip to Antigua in April.

In the summer they went on a month-long road trip across the US prompting speculation that the love affair was becoming increasingly serious.

In August, the pair went public with their relationship for the first time, taking an impromptu stroll arm in arm outside his London home.

Miss Shevell has also spent time at Sir Paul's secluded East Sussex home, which he bought as a wedding gift for first wife Linda in 1969 (???).

Miss Shevell, who is vice president of her family's £250 million( $450 million) transport firm, is still finalising her divorce from politician husband Bruce Blakeman.

In recent months speculation has mounted that the pair will get engaged next year.

He also recently penned a romantic ballad to her under the pseudonym The Fireman called "Lifelong Passion".

However, Sir Paul's adult children Stella, Mary and James are said to be completely against the idea of their father marrying so soon after his messy divorce from Miss Mills, 40.

She and estranged husband Bruce Blakeman first became friends with Sir Paul and first wife Linda during the early 1990s.

A breast cancer survivor, Miss Shevell has raised hundred of thousands of pounds for charity. Her family background, elegance and demeanour have already led to comparisons with Linda.

Sir Paul's marriage to former model Heather Mills, with whom he has a four year old daughter Beatrice, ended in May. She was awarded £24.3 million ($44 million) in the divorce settlement.

Paul McCartney on Wednesday shot down suggestions that his Beatles song "Eleanor Rigby" was inspired by a hospital scullery maid after a woman claimed the star had sent her a pay slip signed with that name.

"Eleanor Rigby is a totally fictious character that I made up," McCartney said in a statement released to AFP by his publicists.

"If someone wants to spend money buying a document to prove a fictitious character exists, that's fine with me," he said, referring to a forthcoming auction of the document.

His spokeswoman added they had not been able to establish whether McCartney sent the pay slip to Annie Mawson, who is auctioning it off to raise up to £500,000 ($900,644) for a music therapy centre.

The pay slip dates from 1911 and originally came from City Hospital in Liverpool, McCartney's home city.

Mawson, chief executive of the Sunbeams Music Trust charity, said the ex- Beatles' office sent her the document after she wrote to him asking for a donation to help children with special needs.

Explaining how she received the document in 1990, Mawson said: "One day in the post came a brown envelope with a Paul McCartney world tour stamp, nine months after I had written the letter.

"I opened it and inside was this beautiful, ancient document. It was spine-shivering really, partly because he responded in such a personal way."

"Eleanor Rigby" -- McCartney's song about a lonely woman who "died in the church and was buried along with her name/Nobody came" -- appeared on the 1966 Beatles album "Revolver" and was the B-side to the single "Yellow Submarine".

McCartney has previously said the name Eleanor was inspired by actress Eleanor Bron, who starred in the Beatles film "Help!" in 1965 and that Rigby came from the name of a wine merchant.

In the 1980s, a grave was discovered at Saint Peter's Church in Woolton, Liverpool, where McCartney and bandmate John Lennon used to sunbathe as teenagers, bearing the name Eleanor Rigby.

There was also a gravestone bearing the name "McKenzie" -- the song also features a character called Father McKenzie -- in the graveyard, which has now become a popular attraction for Beatles fans visiting Liverpool.

The document is due to be auctioned in London on November 27.

The Beatle legend is voicing a character for Shrek 4 and as the animated ogre film series is Bea's favourite he is writing a song for her to sing in the movie, according to The Daily Express.

A source said: "Paul is really pleased to be part of the next Shrek film because it's Bea's favourite movie.

"He said she can't stop talking about it. He wants to go one step further though and make sure she's a part of the film.

"Paul's writing a song for the film and wants Bea to sing some of the harmonies. She's quite a musical kid. She's very bright. It will be a dream come true for Bea."

Bea is the 66-year-old musician's youngest daughter, his only child with ex wife Heather Mills.

Sir Paul also has three grown-up children, Mary, Stella and James with late wife Linda and is stepfather to Linda's daughter Heather.

He sang with a childen's choir on the track for We All Stand Together which he wrote for animated film Rupert And The Frog Song, starring Rupert Bear in the early Eighties.

Cameron Diaz, Antonio Banderas and Mike Myers will also voice characters in the fourth Shrek film.

The former Beatle has donated an accounts log from the Corporation of Liverpool to a charity auction which stats that E. Rigby worked at the City Hospital in Parkhill.

Sir Paul has previously claimed that he knew little about the identity of the woman.

However, a grave of an Eleanor Rigby was discovered in Liverpool in the 1980s in the churchyard of St. Peter's Parish in Woolton ­ a place both Sir Paul and band mate John Lennon were known to visit.

Sir Paul sent the accounts log to The Sunbeam Trust after the charity's Annie Mawson wrote to him requesting a small financial donation in 1990.

It is due to go under the hammer along with other rare memorabilia at the Idea Generation Gallery in London on November 27th.

You can see a selection of rare Beatles shots from CBS' exhibition, which is on display at the Beatles Story until November.

The former Beatle says he would like to sing to Michelle Obama the famous song from the '60's appropriately titled "Michelle," People reports. "I hope to get the opportunity to sing ... to [Barack Obama's] wife. I have a little song ready for him," McCartney said.

McCartney talks about his excitement to learn that Obama would be the President-elect. "I was so 'fingers crossed' he would win it," said McCartney. "I'm so chuffed."

"I think sincerely [Obama] is the man for the job. I think it is a legendary occasion and I wish him the very best," McCartney told Britain's Sky News at the MTV Europe Music Awards.

McCartney, 66, who had been crowned MTV Europe Awards Ultimate Legend in Liverpool this week, had released his dance album Electric Arguments under his alter ego The Fireman, and it is to hit shelves on November 24/25.

Trendy Radio 1 DJ Zane Lowe has described his single Nothing Too Much Just Out Of Sight as the hottest record in the world right now.

Paul has been rather taken aback by the initial very positive response and now regrets the albums getting a rather low-key release under his Fireman pseudonym, the Daily Express quoted a source as saying.

With the benefit of hindsight, he would have put it out as an official Paul McCartney album, the source added.

November 11, 2008 -- The Guardian (UK)

Pop review: The Fireman, Electric Arguments

Paul McCartney likes to remind the world that he hasn't just been cute, he's also been cutting edge, the Beatle who dabbled with Stockhausen. His third stint as the Fireman, his partnership with producer Youth, finds the pair on inspired form, ready to take risks while knocking out a track a day.

Whereas the Fireman's two previous outings were ambient electronica and drum'n'bass noodling, this time round, says Macca, 'is slightly different ... it's almost like my new album'. Almost. Because although McCartney sings throughout, it's hard to imagine the sonic oddities of Electric Arguments being offered to a mainstream that expects middle eights. Instead, the album opens in a bluesy maelstrom, with Macca shrieking hurt and threat at a lover (who might that be, then?).

From there, it's a rapid tour through his many guises - acoustic balladeer ('Two Magpies'), Wings frontman ('Sing the Changes') and Beatles tributeer ('Sun is Shining') - though at every point Youth transmutes what's thrown at him into something stranger, overlaying growling strings and electronic tics.

The closing 20 minutes are an update of psychedelia, the Floyd-esque 'Lifelong Passion' seguing into the trance beats of 'Lovers in a Dream'. Needless to say, there's a false ending and backward tapes.

There's a nice jab at EMI on the cover, too. That Sir Paul, at his age ...

The Beatles great has signed up for a voiceover role in Shrek 4.

His old Frog Chorus co-star Rupert The Bear will be jealous when he finds out.

Macca joins the list of huge stars involved in the ogre franchise - including Cameron Diaz and Antonio Banderas.

A source said: "The Shrek films have a proud tradition of getting great names and Macca is the best yet."

And it won't be hard to get his personality across in the character - just add a lot of eyebrow movement and plenty of thumbs in the air.

It's a good move for Macca, showing he is back on top form since his divorce from Heather Mills.

I got hold of an exclusive snap from his dressing room at the MTV Europe Music Awards on Thursday, where he picked up the Ultimate Legend gong on home turf in Liverpool.

He was pictured with U2's Bono, rap lord Kanye West and Welsh diamond Kelly Jones from Stereophonics.

I wonder who bought the drinks? They've got a fair few quid between them.

It's the second time in a week that Kelly, whose band release their greatest hits on Monday, has bumped into Bono.

At Monday's Music Industry Trust Awards the Irish hero spent the night sat on Kelly's knee - but Bono can trump that tale.

Macca told his chauffeur to take Thursday afternoon off then went to Liverpool's John Lennon airport to pick Bono up in person.

He then took his pal for a Magical Mystery Tour of the sights that inspired the most famous songs of all-time. Wow.

Strawberry Fields children's home, Penny Lane and their most famous haunt, The Cavern Club, were included - with the most authentic Scouse tour guide on the planet.

I once shelled out £50 ($100) to a Merseyside cabbie for the same trip. For the same route with Macca at the wheel, I'd expect a seven-figure meter reading.

Linda McCartney's Meat Loaf Recipe

Years before she became Mrs. Paul McCartney and obviously before she became a vegetarian, Linda McCartney, aka Mrs. J. Melville See Jr., was featured in an Arizona Daily Star column called "Everybody Cooks." Mrs. See presented her favorite menu for entertaining friends: Meat Loaf, Cucumber Mousse and Orange Bavarian Creme.

Linda and Heather preparing a meal in 1965.

The article published on Jan. 11, 1965, said Mrs. See, whose first name was never included in the article, was an accomplished cook. She especially liked these three recipes because the ingredients were available all year round.

In addition to cooking, Mrs. See was a student at the UA (University of Arizona) majoring in art history and the mother of a little girl, Heather, who was then almost two years old.

Here is the Meat Loaf recipe:

Linda McCartney's Meat Loaf recipe

3 pounds meat loaf mix (veal, beef, pork)
3/4 pint sour cream
2 large onions, cubed
3 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons monosodium glutamate
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/3 cup worcestershire sauce
2 to 3 tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon thyme
1/2 teaspoon marjoram
1/2 cup katsup
Saute onions in butter until golden brown. Mix the above ingredients, including onions, in a large bowl. Mold into a meatloaf shape in a large ungreased pan.
Combine 1 (1-pound 12 ounce) can of Italian tomatoes, 1 pint tomato juice and 1 (6-ounce) can tomato paste. Pour over meatloaf.
Cook about 2 hours in a 375-400 degree oven. Until sauce is thick.

The McCartneys fled from a photographer during their Tucson stay in 1978.

Within a few years, Mrs. See was divorced. She married Paul McCartney in 1969. Although they seemed to have been chased away from Tucson in 1978, the McCartneys did return and purchased property here in 1979.

Linda McCartney died here in 1998. She had breast cancer.

MORE

Tucson Time Capsule : McCartney visited local resort

Former Beatle Paul McCartney and his family staged a hasty retreat on Nov. 8, 1978. They had been staying at an East Side guest ranch for more than a week, apparently under the radar of the local press. But, despite denials from the ranch, their presence in Tucson soon became known. They did not appear to want any publicity when a Star photographer located them at the ranch. McCartney's wife, Linda, had lived in Tucson for several years in the 1960s.

Sir Paul McCartney was the pride of Britain last night when he was the only homegrown act to receive a gong at the MTV Europe Music Awards.

The former Beatle, 66, was presented with the Ultimate Legend Award from fellow rocker Bono at the star-studded ceremony in Sir Paul's hometown of Liverpool.

The U2 frontman, 48, risked the ire of religious followers by heralding Sir Paul as 'a saint' and comparing him to the Pope.

Despite being called the MTV Europe Music Awards, the ceremony was dominated by American acts and Sir Paul was the only British winner.

Although UK stars such as Leona Lewis, Estelle, Duffy and Tings Ting were up in several categories, they all went home empty-handed.

So it was up to Sir Paul to represent the British contingent as he accepted his gold MTV logo and globe trophy.

Introducing Sir Paul, Bono said: 'In the universe of rock and roll, the Beatles were the Big Bang...

'...His songs will continue to be sung, heard and played as long as humans care about beauty and longing. There is one person here tonight whose work is immortal. There is only one Paul McCartney.

'You call him Sir, I call him Lord, Saint Paul McCartney!'

Accepting his award, Sir Paul paid tribute to recently elected U.S. President Barack Obama - as did many stars that night.

'Thanks to all my family, to all you for coming along, to everyone in Great Britain, to everyone in America for voting in Mr Obama.'

Paul poses backstage with Kid Rock

The Irish rocker later revealed he had been given a tour of Liverpool by Sir Paul, who had pointed out on his childhood hangouts.

Bono said: 'It was like being in the Popemobile with the Pope driving.'

Notably absent was his American girlfriend Nancy Shevell or his three children Stella, Mary or James.

Sir Paul McCartney was presented with an Ultimate Legend award by Bono at the MTV Europe Music Awards (EMAs) in the city tonight.

The superstar shouted 'Liverpool' as he walked on stage at the ECHO arena to receive his award following a moving tribute from the U2 star.

Bono said he was there to bestow the 'first, last and only MTV Ultimate Award'.

He said: "For someone like me who makes his living in rock and roll to be asked to say a few words about Paul McCartney is like asking a Catholic priest if he wouldn't mind stopping off in Rome to give an award to St Peter.

"This is the man who invented my job.

"On the way here Paul McCartney, who was driving the car, was pointing out every place in Liverpool he cycled, where he wrote songs, where he bunked school.

"It was like being in the Popemobile with the Pope driving.

Bono at the MTV Europe Music Awards

"In the universe of rock and roll, the Beatles were the Big Bang.

"Tonight is about how much Liverpool means to Paul McCartney and how much Paul McCartney means to Liverpool.

"From the Cavern Club, to the Liverpool Institute, to Penny Lane, this is the city where he was born and bred, this is the city that gave him his attitude and this is the city that gave him his inspiration.

"He paid that debt by putting images of Liverpool in the dream life of the world.

"So many talented and gifted people have featured in these MTV awards tonight.

"On behalf of all the artists in this room, I will tell you something, I think we all suspect, someday, when all of us are gone and this great hall is no longer here.

"In two or three hundred years from now we sense, we fear our names will be forgotten.

"There is one person here, in this hall tonight whose songs we know will be heard now and forever.

"His songs will continue to be sung, heard and played as long as humans care about beauty and longing.

"There is one person here tonight whose work is immortal. There is only one Paul McCartney."

The award recognised Sir Paul as one of the most formative influences on the global music scene and as a founding father helping Liverpool earn the recent accolade as Most Musical City in the UK.

Sir Paul said: "I don't know what to do after an introduction like that.

"What can I say?

"I want to thank my mum and dad, Jim and Mary. I also want to thank my brother Mike who is here tonight.

"I want to thank my mates, Ringo, George and John. Many years ago there were four little boys, born here in Liverpool, and we went on to do quite well.

"Thanks to all my family, to all you for coming along, to everyone in Great Britain, to everyone in America for voting in Mr Obama."

Around 10,000 music fans watched the awards ceremony and an estimated 30 million viewers are thought to have tuned in to watch on MTV's channels across the world including, for the first time, in the Middle East on MTV Arabia.

Pop star Katy Perry kicked off the night in all-American style riding atop a giant lipstick.

Dressed in an American footballer's kit, she performed her hit I Kissed A Girl.

The first guest performance came from R&B superstar Beyonce, with If I were a Boy, but it was the newly elected US president who drew the biggest cheers.

Jared Leto, from 30 Seconds to Mars, had the crowd standing in honour of the US President-elect Barack Obama.

Amid rapturous cheers, he said: "Liverpool, lets hear it for Barack Obama."

MORE

BBC NEWS (Video)

Paul McCartney steals show at MTV Europe awards

Former Beatle Paul McCartney stole the show at the MTV Europe Music Awards on Thursday, accepting a one-off prize from the pop channel in his home city of Liverpool to deafening applause.

The 66-year-old was named Ultimate Legend at the 15th edition of the annual awards ceremony, one of pop music's biggest nights outside the United States.

"This is the man who invented my job," said U2 lead singer Bono, introducing McCartney.

"On the way here Paul McCartney, who was driving the car, was pointing out every place in Liverpool. It was like being in the Pope-mobile with the Pope driving. In the universe of rock and roll bands, the Beatles were the big bang.

"I saw tonight how much Liverpool means to Paul McCartney and you can feel how much Paul McCartney means to Liverpool."

McCartney was one of several stars on the night to pay tribute to Barack Obama following his victory in the U.S. presidential election this week.

"Many years ago four little boys were born here in Liverpool and we went on to do quite well," McCartney said of his former band the Beatles, the most successful pop act of all time.

"So thanks to all my family, to all of you for coming along to all of you in Liverpool, to everyone in Britain, to everyone in America for voting for Mr. Obama."

The other big winner on the night was Britney Spears, who won the Act of 2008 and Album of the Year categories on a night dominated by U.S. acts.

The prizes marked another step along the comeback trail for the troubled 26-year-old, whose "Blackout" album was well received and will be followed by her new record "Circus" due for release on December 2.

Spears also plans to set the record straight about her highly public meltdown in a 90-minute documentary due to be aired on MTV on November 30.

PACKED VENUE

The singer was not at the packed Echo Arena in northern England, where around 10,000 fans screamed and swayed their way through an action-packed show.

The other multiple winners on the night were U.S. rock band "30 Seconds To Mars," led by actor-turned-musician Jared Leto, who picked up the Rock Out and Best Video awards.

Among the performers were U.S. chart-toppers Beyonce and Kanye West, who won the Ultimate Urban award.

Several acts paid tribute to Obama, whose picture was beamed on a giant screen on stage at the end of a performance of "American Boy" by West and Britain's Estelle.

Arguably the most bizarre award of the night went to British 1980s crooner Rick Astley, whose 1987 single "Never Gonna Give You Up" topped the charts in 16 countries.

He shot back to prominence this year when millions of people were "rickrolled" into playing the song over the Internet when they thought they were clicking on apparently unrelated links.

"2008 Europe Music Awards, you've been rickrolled!" shouted Hollywood gossip columnist Perez Hilton.

Astley beat the likes of U2 and Spears in the Best Act Ever category.

Other winners included Tokio Hotel, named best headliner of the year, Pink, who won most addictive track for "So What" and Emre Aydin of Turkey who was named Europe's favorite act.

MTV invites fans to decide all but one of the categories -- Video Star -- and in 2007

A one-off gong is given to the forefather of Liverpool music

Sir Paul McCartney has collected his Ultimate Legend Award from fellow legend Bono at the MTV Europe Music Awards 2008.

The Beatles star- who practically invented pop music well over 40 years ago- was at the Liverpool Echo Arena for our show.

Presenting the prize U2-man Bono introduced Macca saying "You call him Sir, I call him Lord, Saint Paul McCartney!"

The Beatles were the founders of the Liverpool music scene which still thrives to this day, while the group is undoubtedly the most influential band in history.

Sir Paul himself is co-founder of the hugely successful Liverpool Institute Of Performing Arts (LIPA).

MTV HONOURS PAUL McCARTNEY AT 2008 MTV EUROPE MUSIC AWARDS

MTV Networks International today announced that it is honouring one of the legends of the music industry, Paul McCartney, with a special Ultimate Legend Award on the night of the 2008 MTV Europe Music Awards. The Awards will be broadcast live from the Liverpool Echo Arena, Liverpool ­ European Capital of Culture - on Thursday, November 6th and are sponsored by edc by Esprit, Sony Ericsson and Dell.

"Paul McCartney is one of the true greats. Not only has he has been one of the most formative influences on the music scene on a global scale but he is one of the founding fathers that has earned Liverpool the recent accolade as Most Musical City in the UK," commented Bill Roedy, Chairman and CEO, MTV Networks International. "We are honoured that Paul has agreed to accept this award which is a fitting tribute to a man who has touched millions of lives with his music."

McCartney's career started in the 1950s and today is listed in the Guinness World Records as the most successful musician and composer in popular music history.

As well as an incredibly successful and continuing music career, Paul is also a lead patron and co-founder ­ with Mark Featherstone-Witty ­ of the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA). Opened in June 1996 it is now one of the foremost centres of artistic excellence in the UK.

"Paul's dedication to sharing his experience and nurturing the next generation of talented artists is remarkable," added Richard Godfrey, Senior Vice President, Music and Production & Executive Producer, MTV Europe Music Awards. "It is fitting that on the fifteenth anniversary of the most prestigious live music event that MTV salutes him in his home town."

Sir Paul McCartney will get back to his home town of Liverpool to pick up the Ultimate Legend gong in the 2008 MTV Europe Music Awards.

We can work it out: Organisers will hope to persuade Sir Paul to perform

Macca, 66, has been revealed as the final guest of honour for the awards, and will appear at the Echo arena alongside other stars including Beyonce and Take That.

Bill Roedy, chairman and CEO of MTV Networks International, said: "Sir Paul McCartney is one of the true greats.

"Not only has he been one of the most formative influences on the music scene on a global scale but he is one of the founding fathers that have earned Liverpool the recent accolade of Most Musical City in the UK.

Disappointingly for Beatles, Wings and McCartney fans, it is not thought Sir Paul will perform at the awards.

Sky News' entertainment editor Jon Bennett, said: "I think MTV organisers will be genuinely thrilled to have got Sir Paul on board for the ceremony.

"Since the awards are being held in Liverpool, in the year that it's European City of Culture, they will have wanted an act that was identifiable with the city and ultimately Liverpool.

"The Beatles are inextricably linked - so I'd bet they will have been keen to have him there ever since they announced which city was hosting the EMAs a year ago.

"No matter what you think of Sir Paul he is genuinely rock royalty and there is always something special about having one of the two surving Beatles in the room for both the audience and the acts performing.

"There are a lot of A-list stars there but one of the Fab Four is something different and I'll bet he'll have stars queuing up backstage outside his dressing room hoping to meet him."

And, Bennett says, he is surprised organisers haven't lined up Macca to play - given what he saw of Sir Paul earlier this year.

He said: "I wonder if that will change on the night? He's not normally one who can resist a quick turn so I wouldn't be surprised to see him do a number.

"I was in the audience at the Brits earlier this year when he was only supposed to do a few numbers, but he ended up playing on long after the cameras had stopped rolling."

Paul Meets the Killers

Paul went to see The Killers perform at the Albert Hall last night. He met the band after their performance. The Killers were speechless and couldn't believe it was actually Paul.

MORE

November 4, 2008 -- NME

The Killers meet Paul McCartney

The Killers not only previewed new album 'Day And Age' in London last night (November 3), they also met a hero at the gig.

Having "danced his way throughout The Killers' set" according to eyewitnesses, Paul McCartney caught up with the band backstage after the show.

After posing for this snap, Flowers ­ who has previously admitted he's desperate to work with the former Beatle ­ his bandmates and McCartney chatted after the show, although the band admitted to being "speechless" when they heard McCartney had attended their gig.

The Beatle also gave the group a copy of the new album by The Fireman, McCartney's electronic collaboration with producer Youth.

The Beatles in Scotland: Paul McCartney's story

Paul McCartney stared out over the stunning landscape of the Mull of Kintyre and took a decision that would change the course of pop history - he was going to break up The Beatles.

To see our image gallery of The Beatles in Scotland, click here.

The musician walked across the rugged heather with his lawyer brother-in-law John Eastman and decided to take John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr to court to break up their partnership.

There was no easy way to do it but McCartney was adamant - the Fab Four were no more.

"John Eastman saw the position we were in and sympathised. We'd have these meetings on top of the hills in Scotland and I remember when we actually decided we had to go and file the suit," recalled Paul.

"We were standing overlooking a loch - it was a nice day, quite chilly - and we'd been searching our souls. Was there any other way?

"Eventually we said 'Oh, we've got to do it'. The only alternative was seven years with the partnership...going through all those same channels."

Decision made, McCartney then set in motion the litigation that broke up The Beatles, forever branding him as the guy who was the first Beatle to quit.

He remained in Argyll, insulated from the media frenzy the news produced, putting the finishing touches to his first solo album, McCartney.

Years later, as an ex-Beatle Paul would immortalise his beautiful Scottish bolthole with Mull Of Kintyre, which became one of Britain's biggest selling singles.

Truth was he'd discovered the natural geographic beauty of the spot on the Argyll coast almost by accident.

In 1966, McCartney was at the heart of the Swinging Sixties and his plush house in London's Cavendish Square was a stone's throw from The Beatles' regular workplace - the world famous Abbey Road Studios.

As the only bachelor Beatle - with actress girlfriend Jane Asher in tow - he was a regular at showbiz haunts such as the Ad Lib and Scotch of St. James club.

This was also the year he officially became a millionaire and Harold Wilson's Labour government was squeezing the nouveau riche with a top tax rate of 90p in the pound.

To protect some of his hard-earned cash McCartney's advisers suggested he invest in property.

Among the estate agent's schedules sent to him was one that pricked his interest - but at first glance the images of High Park Farm on the Mull of Kintyre were less than impressive.

Years of neglect had taken their toll on the three bedroom farmhouse with an asking price of £35,000. The seller - a local farmer named Mr Brown - was incredulous when the new owner was revealed.

It was girlfriend Jane who finally convinced McCartney - not known for his lavish spending habits - to become a Scottish landowner.

The deal was signed on June 17, 1966, the day McCartney was finishing Here There And Everywhere for the album Revolver.

In December 1967, Paul and Jane visited the farmhouse accompanied by Alistair Taylor, The Beatles' Scottish "Mr Fix-it". He couldn't believe what he was seeing when he first clapped eyes on it. It was little more than broken down shack.

Taylor was dispatched to nearby Campbeltown to track down some essentials with two provisos from his employer ringing in his ears - keep it simple and cheap.

"Paul's orders were to make sure everything was second hand except the beds. I got him a horrible little formica table and four formica chairs," said Alistair.

"We built our own sofa out of potato boxes and a dirty old mattress we found in a barn.

"It was so far removed from his normal way of living but that's what Paul wanted. He wanted to live a simple life and at High Park he took that idea to the ultimate level."

On December 20, after returning to London, the Beatle announced his engagement to the flame-haired actress.

But Jane only visited Kintyre another couple of times before their tempestuous relationship fizzled out.

Paul's first wife Linda Eastman realised the true potential of High Park.

After their marriage in 1969, Paul took Linda and her daughter Heather on a voyage of discovery to his Scottish sanctuary. She was instantly smitten.

"Linda just said we could do this place up. I'd never thought of that," recalled Paul.

"I thought it just stayed the way it was when you bought it. I wasn't enterprising enough to actually think we could clean this place up.

"Linda really turned me on to it. I quite liked it before - its isolation and privacy and the end-of-the-world remoteness compared to a city.

"We turned it into a great place and suddenly I began to love being there.

"The children loved it too. We could walk seemingly forever and they could run free."

Although it might not have been as private as the couple hoped because in 1973 Paul was nabbed for growing cannabis at High Park.

He was later fined £100 after an appearance at Campbeltown Sheriff Court. On another occasion, with Linda now having given birth to their first child Mary, the couple decided on a whim to visit the Shetland Isles.

At Scrabster they chartered a boat called The Enterprise for £30 from local fisherman John Dunnet to take them to Orkney.

Paul said at the time: "We try never to organise our lives very much. We do things on the spur of the moment.

"So we piled into the LandRover with the two kids, our English sheepdog Martha and a whole pile of stuff in the back with Mary's potty on top.

"We tried to get the big car ferry but were two cars too late and missed it.

"So we decided ... let's try to get a ride in one of the little fishing boats.

But how much should we offer?

The romantic idea was they'd rather have a salmon or Scotch than money. I went to one of the boats and at first the skipper said no. Then I said there was thirty quid in it for him so he said he'd take us.

"The skipper gave us some beer and Linda, trying to be one of the boys, took a swig and passed it to me.

"Well, you shouldn't drink before a rough crossing to the Orkneys. Mary threw up all over the wife, as usual. I was hanging on to the mast. We were all sick." The McCartneys headed to their Scottish bolthole whenever they needed to get away from it all.

Then in 1993, Linda discovered a lump in her breast. A provisional all-clear turned into a false dawn and she died on April 17, 1998.

The people of Campbeltown felt the passing not of a pop star's wife but of a community anchor, someone who had been a global champion of their little corner of the planet.

Paul delighted the community by commissioning his cousin Kate Robbins to create a bronze statue of Linda as the centrepiece of a local memorial garden unveiled in November 2002.

Paul was in America so daughters Mary and Stella conveyed thanks, saying: "Scotland was one of mum's favourite places and it's wonderful to have a permanent reminder of the great times we spent with her there. We'd like to say thanks to the people of Campbeltown for honouring her this way."

---

---

Macca Report news continues with October 2008

---

---

Macca Report Archived News Index

---

RECOMMENDED NEW PAUL BOOKS CD'S AND DVDS (Support this page by buying from these links)

---

Go to Beatles News!!!

---

---

Home Page | Wings Tour (photos) | 1989-90 Tour (photos) | 1993 Tour (photos) | Back in the US 2002 (reviews) | 2002 USA Tour (photos) | Driving USA 2002 (reviews) | 2003 Tour (reviews) | 2004 Tour (reviews) | 2005 US Tour (reviews) | Meet Paul (photos) | Standing Stone (photos) | Macca Report (Paul News) | Archived News Index | Paul Photo Book| Back in the World CD/DVD Detailed info | McCartney Animation DVD | Fab Buys Shop | Beatles News | Ringo News | John News | George News | Bill Bernstein (interview) | Rusty Anderson (interview) | Brian Ray (interview) | Geoff Dunbar (interview)| Macca-Chat (Internet chat room) | Fan Close Encounter Page | Paul Shop | Message Board | Links | Macca Blog

---

---

Jorie Gracen