paul mccartney
Maroon 5 vocalist Adam Levine has reflected on Paul McCartney’s reaction to his band covering The Beatles on television more than a decade ago.
Levine’s comments were made during his recent appearance on The Howard Stern Show, where he and guitarist James Valentine were discussing a special televised event from February 2014. Broadcast by CBS, The Night That Changed America: A Grammy Salute to the Beatles was a star-studded performance held to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Fab Four’s debut on The Ed Sullivan Show.
Alongside performances from McCartney and Ringo Starr, the event featured the likes of Ed Sheeran, Katy Perry, Stevie Wonder, and John Legend and Alicia Keys all covering original Beatles songs. The night opened with Maroon 5, who shared their own renditions of “All My Loving” and “Ticket to Ride.”
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
“ I was scared s–tless,” Valentine told Stern of the performance, with Levine adding, “I told you I’ve been scared a handful of f–king times in my life, that was definitely one of them. “I was like, ‘Holy s–t.’ I’m sorry man, but it’s just like, you can be too cool, but not always. It’s Ringo Star and Paul McCartney. F–k off if you’re gonna try and be cool about that.
Trending on Billboard
“Afterwards, I see Paul and Paul kind of took me in close and he goes, ‘You know, we did it better,’” Levine remembered while laughing. “I thought it was so funny. And I cracked up and I’m like, ‘Yeah, no s–t, you’re Paul McCartney, you’re The Beatles.’”
Levine then added how the interaction took an even stranger turn when McCartney tried to get his attention at a party some months later, using the opportunity to apologize for any bad blood his initial comments may have caused.
“He’s like, ‘Hey man, I just wanted to let you know, if that bothered you, I’ve been thinking about this, I didn’t want to insult you or anything,’” Levine recalled. “It was something like that. Like, ‘If I insulted you, I apologize.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh my God. Like, you’re good. Dude, you’re Paul F–king McCartney.
“But it kind of shattered in a great way this whole thing about your heroes being who they are,” Levine concluded. “It’s like, he’s a human being with a beating heart and a really beautiful soul who actually was thoughtful enough to even take into account that maybe for some reason my feelings might have been hurt, but of course they were not.”
Levine’s appearance on The Howard Stern Show wasn’t his only big media appearance this week, with Monday night’s (April 7) episode of The Tonight Show seeing him confirm that Maroon 5 will be making a musical comeback in 2025
“The rumors are correct. There are details. I cannot divulge all the details,” Levine explained. “But the details are basically, roughly, there’s a single coming at the end of the month-ish. I’m really excited about it. An album is coming over the summer. Non-specifically around the summertime. And then, even more non-specifically, there is a tour coming in the fall-ish.”
Close to 65 years since he rose to fame as the drummer for English rock icons The Beatles, Pete Best has announced his retirement.
83-year-old Best’s retirement was announced on X (formerly Twitter), with his brother Roag confirming that the drummer will no longer be performing as part of the eponymous Pete Best Band going forward.
“Well what an absolutely wonderful ride we’ve had. However, everything comes to pass,” Roag noted. “My brother Pete Best has announced today he is retiring from personal appearances and performing with the group. His daughter has informed me it’s due to personal circumstances.”
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Pete himself acknowledged his retirement, reposting the original announcement and adding, “I had a blast. Thank you.”
Best’s association with The Beatles began in the late ’50s when the Quarrymen – which comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ken Brown – approached his mother Mona to perform at her Liverpool venue, the Casbah Coffee Club. The Quarrymen evolved into The Beatles in 1960, and following brief stints with Tommy Moore and Norman Chapman, the group recruited Best as their drummer ahead of launching a residency in Hamburg, Germany in August of that year.
Trending on Billboard
After two years with The Beatles, Best was ousted by manager Brian Epstein in favor of Ringo Starr. Various stories have circulated as to the reason for Best’s dismissal, though his alleged lack of ability, his chemistry within the band, and his purported attractiveness have since been raised as possible explanations behind his firing.
Following his time with the band, Best performed with other bands including Lee Curtis and the All-Stars and The Pete Best Combo, which notably attempted to capitalize on Best’s prior work by releasing an album titled Best of the Beatles.
Best reflected on his time in the band as part of the 2002 book The Beatles: The True Beginnings. “I’ve never thought that it was a bad thing that I was in the Beatles. I’ve always looked back on that, regardless of what happened, as being two very exciting years. We conquered frontiers. We grew in musicianship. It was a privilege to be part of the band.”
Best later enjoyed a successful career in civil service, raised a family, qualified for early retirement, and made millions from the Beatles’ Anthology One album, which featured 12 tracks on which he drummed.
The Pete Best Band is currently scheduled to perform at the Liverpool Beatles Museum on Aug. 23, though it’s currently unknown if Best’s retirement from the band will impact the planned appearance.
Paul McCartney is taking a trip back to the ‘70s for a new book, with Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run set to look at his post-Beatles band.
Scheduled for release on Nov. 4 via Liveright/W. W. Norton and Allen Lane/Penguin Press, the book is authored by McCartney and edited by historian Ted Widmer, featuring an in-depth personal account of the band, as told by McCartney, key players, and family members.
Wings was formed in 1971 by McCartney following the dissolution of The Beatles the previous year, the release of his self-titled debut album one week later, and the arrival of 1971’s Ram album with wife Linda. Recruiting Moody Blues co-founder Denny Laine and drummer Denny Seiwell, the band would continue until 1981, releasing a total of seven studio albums, including four consecutive records that topped the Billboard 200.
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
“I’m so very happy to be transported back to the time that was Wings and relive some of our madcap adventures through this book,” said McCartney in a statement. “Starting from scratch after The Beatles felt crazy at times. There were some very difficult moments and I often questioned my decision. But as we got better I thought, ‘OK this is really good.’
“We proved Wings could be a really good band. To play to huge audiences in the same way The Beatles had and have an impact in a different way. It was a huge buzz.”
A description of the book notes that it is “organized around nine Wings albums,” implying the narrative begins with 1971’s Ram and also includes 1976’s triple live record Wings over America. The volume also contains 150 black-and-white photographs, of which many are unseen, and focuses on many iconic stories of the band’s history, including how they “survive a robbery on the streets of Nigeria, appear unannounced at various university halls, [and] tour in a sheared-off double-decker bus with their children.”
“Wings was about love, family, friendship and artistic growth, often in the face of tremendous adversity,” adds Widmer. “It was a joy to relive the madcap adventures of a special band, by listening to their stories, and compiling this oral history.”
Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run comes following a number of recent happenings for the group, including a 50th anniversary reissue of 1973’s Band on the Run and the long-awaited arrival of the live record and film One Hand Clapping in 2024. A 50th anniversary reissue of 1975’s Venus and Mars is also scheduled to arrive on March 21.
The new Paul McCartney box set includes more than 50 years of singles – 65 re-creations of previous 7-inch releases and 15 new ones, plus a book – in a wood crate that comes with straps to make it easier to lift. Have silly love songs ever weighed so much? It’s the ultimate way to preserve, and sell, a music format that was originally intended to be disposable.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
All told, The 7” Singles Box makes a solid case for McCartney as the auteur of the three-minute pop song. In The Beatles, McCartney helped remake the album as an ambitious art form – but he remains devoted enough to singles to keep a jukebox in his London office. By some measures, he’s the most successful singles artist of all time: The Beatles are No. 1 on Billboard’s ranking of the top-charting Hot 100 acts of all time and McCartney is No. 13 as a solo artist (including his work with Wings). When it came out, “Mull of Kintyre” was the best-selling single in U.K. history – and it may not even be one of the dozen best songs here.
Appropriately for its focus on singles, this set offers a refreshingly warts-and-all picture of McCartney’s post-Beatles career. (McCartney owns the rights to his solo recordings, so the decision was his, and it’s a good one.) At a time when most of his ’60s and ’70s peers are editing their legacies, McCartney includes everything, from the sublime (“Band on the Run,” “My Brave Face,” a live version of “Maybe I’m Amazed” and much more) to the silly (“Ode to a Koala Bear;” “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reggae,” the bass-heavy B-side of “Wonderful Christmastime”).
Courtesy Photo
The dig against McCartney is that he often didn’t live up to his genius, but maybe he just wasn’t always in the mood. Part of the point of Wings was that making music in the shadow of The Beatles was freighted by the kind of expectations that make it hard to make great pop singles. John Lennon and George Harrison both began their solo careers making music that was arguably more adventurous, but both of them also eventually got back to basics. McCartney certainly wasn’t afraid to be ambitious: One of these singles, previously unreleased as such, features the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Another is “We All Stand Together,” from the movie Rupert and the Frog Song. You get the sense that he got a kick out of both of them. So will many listeners.
More than any other major artist, McCartney proved that pop music could be both artistically ambitious and awfully silly – sometimes even both at once – and succeed on its own terms either way. Not all of these songs were received well when they were released, but many deserve another listen – especially as singles. So does the music McCartney continues to make. As big as this box is, “it doesn’t include my latest single,” McCartney writes in the foreword, “because I haven’t written that one yet.”
-
Pages