McCartney is the one of the wealthiest rock stars and musicians ever, with an estimated worth of well over $1 billion. According to the Sunday Times Rich List, his fortune surpassed the $1 billion mark sometime around 2012.
He originally played guitar for The Beatles, but switched to bass when Stu Sutcliffe left the band in 1961. John Lennon and George Harrison both refused to switch from guitar.
His nickname is Macca.
As a youngster, he loved old songs and show tunes.
On June 11, 2002, he married his second wife, Heather Mills, a former swimwear model and disabled-rights activist. Her leg was amputated below the knee in 1993 after she was hit by a police motorcycle. McCartney had a daughter with Mills, Beatrice, who was born on October 28, 2003. The couple divorced in 2006 - until then McCartney was the only Beatle never to get divorced.
His mother, Mary, and first wife, Linda, both died of breast cancer.
When The Beatles' manager Brian Epstein died of a sleeping pill overdose in 1967, McCartney took a more active role in overseeing the group's business dealings and encouraging his bandmates to remain productive creatively.
McCartney was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II on March 11, 1997. His official title is "Sir" Paul McCartney.
In January 1980, he spent 9-10 days in a Tokyo jail after he was caught at customs with about a half pound of marijuana in his luggage. McCartney said of the incident, "I knew I wouldn't be able to get anything to smoke over there. This stuff was too good to flush down the toilet, so I thought I'd take it with me."
Paul's arrest and detention led to the immediate cancellation of his band Wings' scheduled tour of Japan. Wings wound up never playing another concert, and broke up in 1981.
He enjoys painting, and has finished over 500 paintings.
McCartney's daughter Stella is a talented and very successful fashion designer.
Paul and Linda McCartney appeared on a 1995 episode of The Simpsons where they help Lisa Simpson become a vegetarian. They agreed to appear on the show on the condition that Lisa remain a vegetarian throughout the run of the series.
McCartney thought he'd
figured out the meaning of life after smoking marijuana with Bob Dylan at a party in 1964. While Paul was high, he hallucinated and a revelation came to him that he wrote down on a piece of paper and gave to The Beatles' roadie, Mal Evans, for safekeeping. The next morning, he asked Evans to show him what he'd written, and it was this enigmatic phrase: "There are seven levels."
At the time, Paul figured his idea was nonsense, but he later considered that it could've had some spiritual significance. For example, some branches of Hinduism believe that there are seven centers of spiritual energy in the body called chakras. Could McCartney have been seeing the body's energies?
When terrorists crashed hijacked airplanes into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, McCartney was on a plane in New York about to take off. He stayed in New York that week and helped organize a benefit concert for victims of the tragedy the next month.
McCartney is so strict about his vegetarianism that he insists his road crew not eat meat either, at least while on tour with him. True to his vegan lifestyle, McCartney has traditionally forbidden meat and meat products to be served in the backstage area, while also insisting that no furniture be made of any animal skin or bear an animal-print design, even if it's artificial.
In 1976, McCartney bought the publishing rights to all of Buddy Holly's music. He also owns the rights to songs by Carl Perkins, Fats Waller, Bessie Smith and others.
In 1997, McCartney's birth certificate was sold at an auction for about $84,000 to a private collector.
Paul is left-handed.
When The Beatles were breaking up in late 1969, Paul thought he may have been through as a recording artist. He went through a period of depression and heavy drinking, and was unsure about how he would move forward with his music career. It was his wife, Linda, who encouraged him to continue with making music. Paul has said that she used "tough love" to tell him to stop feeling sorry for himself and to make more music.
In the late '60s, rumors abounded that McCartney had died in a car crash and was replaced by a look-alike. Some Beatles fans found numerous clues in song lyrics and album covers to support the theory.
In 2007, McCartney released his album
Memory Almost Full on the Hear Music label, a joint venture of Starbucks and the Concord Music Group. David Kahne, who produced Kelly Clarkson's hit single "
Never Again," worked on the album. Kahne also produced McCartney's 2001 studio album,
Driving Rain.
Since The Beatles' breakup, McCartney has collaborated with a wide and eclectic range of artists. Some of the many famous musicians he's worked with include Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Carl Perkins, Elvis Costello, Stanley Clarke, Kanye West and Rihanna.
On March 17, 2008, McCartney's second wife, Heather Mills, was awarded 23.7 million pounds (about $47 million) in their divorce. Mills asked for much more, but wound up with more than the $32 million Paul had proposed. Mills was vilified in the British press for being opportunistic.
On September 25, 2008, McCartney played a show in Tel Aviv, his first concert in Israel. In 1965, The Beatles had been invited to perform in Israel, but the concert was blocked by an Israeli governmental committee that decided if international artists could perform in the country. According to the Beatles Bible website, a resolution denying the band entry into Israel worried that the Fab Four were "liable to have a negative influence on the youth," adding, "There is no musical or artistic experience here, but a sensual display that arouses feelings of aggression replete with sexual stimuli."
When McCartney first toured with his band Wings, he refused to play any Beatles songs. He began regularly adding songs by his old band into his set in 1975. In recent decades, usually more than half the songs Paul plays at his concerts are Beatles tunes. He even has occasionally performed John Lennon's "
Give Peace A Chance" at his shows.
Paul was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice: in 1988 as a member of The Beatles and in 1999 as a solo artist.
McCartney's concert on April 21, 1990, at the Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro set a new world record for paid attendance at a concert by a single artist when it drew 184,000 people. Several artists have played to larger ticketed crowds since then.
McCartney wrote his first song, "
I Lost My Little Girl," when he was 14 in 1956. In his 2021 book,
The Lyrics: 1956 To The Present, he explained that the song was "a very direct response to the death of my mother." His mom, Mary, had passed away in October of that year from cancer.
The song wasn't officially released until 1991, when
it appeared on
Unplugged (The Official Bootleg), a live album of Paul's
MTV Unplugged performance from earlier that year.
McCartney played every instrument on his solo albums McCartney (1970) and McCartney II (1980). He also played all the instruments on 10 of the 11 tracks on his 2020 album McCartney III.
In 1969, McCartney lost his share of the rights to most of the Beatles songs he co-wrote when British music publisher sold the Northern Songs Ltd. company to ATV. In 1985, he had the chance to regain his publishing when ATV Music was put up for sale, but the company was purchased by Michael Jackson for $47.5 million, more than Paul was willing to spend. This ended McCartney's friendship with Jackson, by whom he felt betrayed. Paul has explained that Michael decided to buy ATV after McCartney told him about the financial benefits of owning music publishing.
Starting in 2018, McCartney began reclaiming the US publishing rights to the Beatles songs he co-wrote, thanks to the US Copyright Act of 1976. The legislation states that writers who have signed away the rights to songs they wrote before 1978 can reclaim them after 56 years.
Paul McCartney's 2026 solo album, The Boys Of Dungeon Lane, features a duet with former Beatles drummer Ringo Starr on a song called "Home To Us." Starr also played drums on the track.
