Paul McCartney

In the fall of 2008, Paul McCartney embarked on a two-year world tour, which was announced as his farewell tour. The ex-Beatle will play 100 concerts, for each of which he will earn more than a million pounds sterling. Going forward, the 66-year-old sir wants to devote himself to family and raising his daughter Beatrice from his marriage to Heather Mills.

Over the past almost 50 years, Paul McCartney has traveled the world far and wide. The first touring trip of the musician was in August 1960 in Hamburg with The Beatles, where the Beatles played clubs and gained experience before conquering the world. Paul was barely 18 years old at the time.

Within three years John, Paul, George and Ringo were already actively touring the UK, followed by Europe, the USA and the rest of the world. By the middle of 1966 the musicians, utterly tired of the "Beatlamania", stadiums and hysterical screams of their female fans, announced that they would stop all concert activities and concentrate on their studio work. They broke their promise only once, on January 30, 1969, when they played a famous concert on the roof of their Apple company office in London, playing the songs from "Let It Be", which became the band's last one.

After the breakup of The Beatles, McCartney formed Wings with his wife Linda and guitarist Danny Lane, with whom he once again enjoyed a rock 'n' roll touring life. In February 1972, after releasing the album "Wild Life", the ex-beatle embarked on an adventurous "university" tour, which became a test of strength and professional suitability for the new team. The musicians simply got in the car and started driving around British universities. They made an unannounced concert in front of the students in the evening of the same day, trying out the new program with rock'n'roll standards. They were denied the gig only once, at the very beginning of the tour.

With the same line-up, the band later conducted an official tour of Europe and Great Britain. The peak of Wings' touring activity was the Wings Over the World tour of 1975-1976, during which the group gave 66 concerts on large stages in Europe, North America and Australia. The tour was dedicated to the promotion of the albums Venus and Mars and Wings at the Speed of Sound. This was also the first time when McCartney allowed himself to perform his own compositions from the Beatles' repertoire. The North American leg of the tour resulted in the triple album "Wings Over America", which topped the charts. In 1979, Wings went on another UK tour and broke up for good.

The public had to wait ten years for the next McCartney tour. But all expectations were more than fulfilled: the Get Back World Tour became the biggest and most successful concert tour of the ex-Beatle. Between September 1989 and July 1990, McCartney played 104 concerts on both sides of the Atlantic. Formally, the world tour was timed to coincide with the release of the new album "Flowers in the Dirt", but half of the concert track-list (20 of 40 songs) consisted of The Beatles compositions. The result was the concert film "Get Back" and the live album "Tripping the Live Fantastic".

The success obviously inspired Sir Paul, and he spent the whole of 1993 on the new world tour (79 concerts) in support of his fresh album "Off the Ground". Again, half of the program was devoted to the Beatles' legacy, and once again the tour was captured by the concert album "Paul is Live". The record is remembered more for its cover art than its content. The envelope of the disc parodied The Beatles' famous Abbey Road album cover, showing the Beatles crossing a zebra street in London. In addition, the title of the disc ironically referred to the legendary rumor that McCartney died in a car accident in 1966 and was replaced by a double.

Following Paul is Live, McCartney again took a major break from touring, lasting until 2002. During this time he recorded three records and lost his wife Linda, who passed away from cancer in 1998.

The return to the stage began with a tour of the USA with the album "Driving Rain", continued with a series of performances in Mexico and Japan, and in 2003 culminated with the Back in the World tour, which will forever be remembered by every Russian fan of The Beatles and Sir Paul. After all, one of the 33 shows was held on Red Square in Moscow. May 24th, 2003 McCartney came to Russia for the first time and sang "Back in the USSR" under the Kremlin chimes (twice (the second time it was an encore for Vladimir Putin who came to the show from the Kremlin), which even the Soviet Beatle-dreams could not have imagined.

A year later, during the European summer tour, the musician took the Palace Square in St. Petersburg without a fight, and on June 14, 2008, the same thing happened in Maydan Nezalezhnosti in Kiev.

Rumors about McCartney's new world tour have been around for a long time. According to the British press, Sir Paul had intended to go on the road back in 2007, but he decided to wait until the divorce proceedings with Heather Mills were over so that she could not claim a part of the tour's profits.

Now that all the formalities were behind him, no one appeared prepared for the fact that the upcoming tour would be a farewell tour. According to The Mirror newspaper, McCartney, who turns 66 today, wants to devote more time to raising his four-year-old daughter Beatrice, the daughter of his marriage to Mills, and to concentrate on family in general.

But the musician is about to slam the door. The new tour, set to begin this fall, will run for two years and consist of 100 concerts. Each of the shows will cost at least £1 million, which means that the tour will almost certainly be one of the most successful in the history of the music show business. The tour schedule has yet to be finalized, and probably McCartney's fans around the world are crossing their fingers in hope that one of the shows will take place in their country as well. Moscow and Peter, of course, are also hoping for a second coming.

Despite the obvious sadness, one should hardly think that McCartney is leaving the stage for good. The occasional concerts on one occasion or another will surely take place, and we will hardly be left without Sir Paul's new solo albums.