Ex-Beatle Paul McCartney’s song Yesterday is one of the the most covered in history − but as he turned 70 yesterday, the evergreen singer showed no signs of retiring to reflect on his extraordinary past.
People say to me, ‘You work so hard’... We don’t work hard, we play music
Fresh from entertaining the huge crowds at Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee concert and with another headline gig − the London Olympics opening ceremony − booked for next month, retirement looks a long way off for the British legend who once sang of being 64.
“If I’m really enjoying this, why retire?” the most prolific, most commercially-successful former member of the Beatles told the British music magazine Mojo.
“People tell me that I work so hard,”he added. “We don’t work hard, we play music.”
Between his years with the Fab Four, his work with Wings and his solo career, Sir Paul has written or co-written more than 50 top 10 singles.
Macca, as he is affectionately known, released his latest album Kisses on the Bottom in February, and is just finishing a world tour.
And as he bounced onto the stage and belted out a string of hits in the shadow of Buckingham Palace this month, he did not look like a man with eight grandchildren.
It may be the singer’s third marriage, to US heiress Nancy Shevell in October, that has put the spring back in his step after his bitter divorce from model-turned-campaigner Heather Mills in 2008.
Ms Mills walked away from the six-year marriage with a settlement worth €30.8 million, and perhaps it comes as some reassurance to Sir Paul that his new bride has a tidy fortune of her own.
The Sunday Times Rich List estimates that Ms Shevell, 51, brings £150 million (€186 million) to the couple’s coffers, giving them a combined fortune of some £665 million (€825 million).
This makes him Britain’s richest performer − but he insists he has never forgotten his roots. “Deep inside I’m still the boy from Liverpool,” he said.
Sir Paul met John Lennon at the age of 15 and the pair formed the Quarrymen, the skiffle band that eventually metamorphosed into the Beatles.
Sir Paul, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr would become synonymous with mobs of screaming fans, mop-top haircuts and an image of four men strolling over a zebra crossing in London’s Abbey Road.
They were one of the most powerful cultural influences of their era and are also the bestselling band in history, with their record label EMI estimating all-time sales of more than a billion discs and tapes.
Relentlessly imaginative, the band would develop the catchy tunes that sparked Beatlemania in 1964 into an evolving sound incorporating every influence from Merseybeat and psychedelia to country and Western.
Beatle Bits
• The group’s first record was Love Me Do in 1962.
• Ringo replaced Pete Best as the Beatles drummer in the summer of that year.
• John Lennon and Paul McCartney could not read music when they teamed up.
• The Beatles were once called Johnny and the Moondogs.
• They are the best-selling band in history selling more than one billion records.
• The Cavern Club in Liverpool where they made their name is now a car park. Cilla Black was the hat check girl there.
• At the height of Beatlemania in 1964 they were watched by 73 million Americans live on US television. More than 23 million households had tuned in to see what all the fuss was about.
• British rock star Billy Fury turned the Beatles down when they auditioned to be his backing group ... because he thought John Lennon would be trouble.
• A recording executive at Decca Records also turned them down ... because he thought they would never catch on.
• In June 1965 the Queen awarded the four Beatles MBEs after Prime Minister Harold Wilson nominated them for the award. Some military veterans and civic leaders returned their own MBEs to the Palace in protest.
• In 1966 John Lennon set off a huge wave of record burning protests across the world when he suggested in an interview that Christianity was dying and that the Beatles “were more popular than Jesus”.