Search Results for: paul mccartney

Amy Winehouse and Paul McCartney set their recent troubles aside to steal the show Wednesday at the Brit Awards, the British music industry’s most prestigious prizes. Rockers Foo Fighters and British bands Take That and Arctic Monkeys were all double winners at Britain’s equivalent of the Grammys. Although she wasn’t up for any awards, troubled retro-soul diva Winehouse received a rapturous reception when she appeared to perform “Valerie” with Mark Ronson. She followed that up with the sultry ballad “Love is a Losing Game” from her breakthrough album “Back to Black.” Winehouse, who appeared composed and confident, urged the crowd… Read more »

John Lennon and Paul McCartney returned to the U.S. country music charts for the first time in 12 years Thursday thanks to a cover of “Revolution” by Nashville trio Rascal Flatts. The tune debuted at No. 60 on the Hot Country Songs tally, almost 39 years after it was originally released as the flip side of the Beatles’ “Hey Jude” in August 1968. As songwriters, Lennon and McCartney were most recently on the chart in June 1995, when Steve Wariner took “Get Back” to No. 72. “Revolution” is the highest-charting Lennon-McCartney song since Rosanne Cash turned the “Beatles For Sale”… Read more »

New York – Nobody, but nobody was worried when Paul McCartney stripped off his jacket midway through his halftime performance at the Super Bowl. All he revealed was a long-sleeved red shirt. Nothing malfunctioned. And if he wore any nipple jewelry, he mercifully kept it to himself. NFL officials wanted a safe halftime show after last year’s Janet Jackson fiasco, and McCartney delivered. It was sweet nostalgia for the people stunned by Jackson’s MTV-produced spectacle, if a bit off-putting for the kids: Each of his four songs was more than 30 years old. Surely you recall last year’s climax to… Read more »

A reclusive record executive dubbed “the Howard Hughes of the music business” has toppled Paul McCartney to become Britain’s wealthiest music millionaire in the latest list of the rich and famous. Clive Calder, the mastermind behind such stars as Britney Spears and ‘NSync, rocketed to number one in the Sunday Times music industry list after selling his independent Zomba label to German media giant Bertelsmann AG. “He is the Howard Hughes of the music industry,” said the list’s author Philip Beresford who put Calder top with an estimated worth of 1.23 billion pounds ($2.28 billion). “We have scoured the world… Read more »

Paul McCartney was involved in a scuffle Friday when a photographer tried to take his picture near the site of illusionist David Blaine’s latest stunt. McCartney spokesman Geoff Baker said the former Beatle fired him when he learned that Baker had informed the photographer that McCartney would be visiting the site on the River Thames. Blaine is trying to live there without food for 44 days while suspended from a crane in a plastic box. Baker later said he’d been reinstated, and described reports of a “fracas” as exaggerated. London’s Metropolitan Police, however, said they were investigating two counter-allegations of… Read more »

Celebrities including Madonna, Chrissie Hynde and Sharleen Spiteri remained tightlipped about the apparent wedding of designer Stella McCartney and publisher Alasdhair Willis as they left this remote Scottish island Sunday. Pretenders singer Hynde would only say that the 31-year-old daughter of former Beatle Paul McCartney looked “beautiful” when asked about the ceremony. “It was good. It has been a lovely week,” said Spiteri of the rock band Texas, as she boarded a coach to leave the island. Hordes of reporters, who have spent days trying to glean information about the closely guarded wedding, were left disappointed when both singers declined… Read more »

Paul McCartney’s dream to perform in Red Square came true Saturday with the former Beatle capping off a sold-out concert with a rousing rendition of “Back in the U.S.S.R.” It was a dream come true for fans, too, who turned out nearly 20,000 strong for the concert near Lenin’s mausoleum and Stalin’s grave. “I’ve waited my whole life for this,” said Vladimir Snopov, 52, of Samara, about 550 miles south of Moscow, who remembered when the only place to hear McCartney sing was on banned and often-fuzzy broadcasts over Voice of America and the British Broadcasting Corporation. Back in the… Read more »

Paul McCartney is calling for a ban on cluster bombs because of the harm they cause to civilians. “It would be great to outlaw these cowardly weapons,” the former Beatle told British Broadcasting Corp. radio on Monday. “What happens after the war finishes is that it’s the civilians – mainly women and children – who get blown up.” Cluster munitions dropped by U.S. and British aircraft in Iraq contain hundreds of small “bomblets” which sometimes fail to explode until years later. Anti-landmine campaigners – including McCartney’s wife, Heather Mills – say children are particularly at risk because they can mistake… Read more »

Wendy Whitworth, executive producer of CNN’s “Larry King Live” and a huge Paul McCartney fan, received an unforgettable 50th birthday present: a private concert from the former Beatle. Whitworth’s husband, financier Ralph Whitworth, came up with the unusual gift idea and offered McCartney $1 million to do the San Diego gig. McCartney agreed, saying he would donate the money to the anti-landmines charity Adopt-A-Minefield. Wendy Whitworth, broke into tears when her husband announced McCartney was taking the stage Saturday before 150 guests, including Katie Couric of NBC’s “Today” and King. Near the end of the 90-minute set, which included the… Read more »

‘NSYNC and Britney Spears took a distant back seat to dinosaur rockers Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones and Cher this year when it came to concert ticket sales. As alarming as that might seem to Timberlake groupies, it probably has a lot more to do with the limited number of shows the young stars played than with any sort of pop backlash or classic rock revolution. Touring for the first time in almost a decade, McCartney netted $126.1 million, according to data from Billboard Boxscores. The former Beatle landed $98.8 million from U.S. shows and an additional $27.5 million from… Read more »