Best Guitarists in The World

Special thanks to ThisDayinMusic.com

Paul McCartney, born on June 18, 1942, enjoyed a childhood that, to the casual observer, was cozy, comfortable and middle class. The same could be said for his writing partner John Lennon, who also experienced a far leafier Liverpool than their future drummer Ringo Starr.

Both Lennon and McCartney had emotionally volatile childhoods with Paul and John both losing their mothers very young, a common bond that drew the adolescent boys together. Lennon would never really deal with his loss, perhaps because he lacked a stable father figure to compensate and help re-build a home life. Fortunately for McCartney, his father was both an emotional rock and a major influence on young McCartney’s future career. As McCartney explained to Insight magazine, his father was both musical and theatrical.

“My dad was a bit of a character ’cause he used to work in music hall (Vaudeville), not as a performer, but as the lime-lighter. They actually used to have limes that’d be lit up on the stage. Hence the expression, ‘in the limelight.’ And that was his job, so he rubbed shoulders with entertainers and singers.  So I suppose that’s probably where I got my showbiz thing from.”

James McCartney, an amateur musician himself who played by ear, encouraged his eldest son to take professional music lessons and even set up an audition or him at the Liverpool Cathedral choir. He taught Paul and his brother how to sing harmony and pick out a bass line from songs on the radio, talents that would become significant elements in The Beatles’ Mersey sound in the 1960s.

McCartney told Barry Miles in the book, Many Years From Now, “He’d say, ‘listen to that. You hear that dum duuum dum dum? That’s called the bass.’ He taught me and my brother harmony; not the concept, not written down, but he would say, ‘This tune is the harmony to that tune.’ So I learned very early how to sing harmony, which was one of my big roles in The Beatles. Whenever John sang I automatically sang in harmony with him and that’s due to dad’s teaching.”

McCartney Sr.’s love for music meant that, unlike most parents in late ’50s Britain, he actively encouraged Paul and his musical pals, The Quarrymen, to follow their muse.  He allowed them to rehearse in is house on Forthlin Road and turned a blind eye to their skipping school in the afternoons, while he was at work, to write songs and smoke Typhoo tea from an old pipe.

But most of all, James McCartney wanted his kids to understand that music was fun.  

Clearly a lesson learned well by McCartney who, at 69, is probably busier than he’s ever been and shows no signs of slowing down. Presumably, he still enjoys every minute; a legacy perhaps of growing up in a Liverpool family, where music was an integral part of their everyday lives.

As McCartney told Insight magazine: “We always had these big family sing-songs and some auntie would get up and sing these really obscure songs that nobody knew. I still do that. We all go up to Liverpool and get going on the old piano. But I really like that about those kinds of people.  Music is for fun. They don’t take it seriously, but at the same time it’s an important part of their lives. Too often I think pop stars get pompous about what they do and how important they are.”

So congratulations to Paul McCartney on his birthday today, and to his late father James on Father’s day, with gratitude for his grooming of one of the greatest musical artists of modern times. “Put it There.”