Sir Paul McCartney: The rich one - Live at Crossed Wires

**Simon Jack** (0:06)
It's February 1964, a 21-year-old lad from Liverpool is in New York City. He's crossed the Atlantic for a job.

**Zing Tsjeng** (0:14)
So here he is, he's at work on Broadway in a theater that's been converted into a TV studio, and he is sweating under bright lights, and he's caked in more makeup than he's ever seen before.

**Simon Jack** (0:24)
Here's with three colleagues, shall we call them. They're all wearing identical buttoned-up suits, ties, starched white shirt collars, same haircuts, of course. Two of them playing guitar, one on drums. He's on bass and lead vocal. He's bobbing his head around in his own inevitable style, singing a song he wrote himself the previous year.

**Zing Tsjeng** (0:42)
The balcony is filled with screaming teenage girls, and out across America, 73 million people are watching him.

**Simon Jack** (0:50)
He and his mates have just become probably the most famous people on the planet. Possibly, as one of them will say one day, more popular than Jesus, and one day, he'll be richer than Croesus.

**Zing Tsjeng** (1:02)
Welcome to Good Bad Billionaire, live from the Crossed Wires Festival in Sheffield.

**Simon Jack** (1:07)
Yay! And on our podcast, we pick a billionaire, we find out how they made all that money.

**Zing Tsjeng** (1:18)
We take them from zero to a million, then from a million onto a billion.

**Simon Jack** (1:22)
I'm Simon Jack, I'm the BBC's business editor.

**Zing Tsjeng** (1:24)
And I'm Zing Tsjeng, I'm a journalist, author and podcaster.

**Simon Jack** (1:27)
And for anyone new to this podcast, this is the place to find out about billionaires. Now, some people think the very idea of billionaires is horrific, it's inequality on steroids. Other people think they are aspirational. Our mission today is to find out how they got so rich. And then we'll ask you, our audience here in Sheffield, if you think today's billionaire is good, bad or just another billionaire. And that opening scene was Paul McCartney on the Ed Sullivan Show back in 1964 That was the moment the Beatles broke America.
And a couple of years before John Lennon controversially claimed they were more famous than Jesus. Do you remember a time before you had ever heard of Paul McCartney?

**Zing Tsjeng** (2:06)
No, I grew up with his music, like everyone else in the audience here, probably.

**Simon Jack** (2:10)
My parents are both Scousers, so there was never a time. In fact, my mom was about two years younger than he was. And basically, it was folklore that she knew lots of people who've been out with all the Beatles.

**Zing Tsjeng** (2:21)
I feel like every girl in Liverpool at that time has been like, yeah, I went on a date with Paul McCartney. Didn't work out, though.

**Simon Jack** (2:27)
Any favorite songs? My favorite is In My Life, Yesterday. That was one of his most famous ones.
Blackbird, I can actually play it on the guitar. He boasted. Norwegian Wood, another good one.

**Zing Tsjeng** (2:39)
A de-cut.

**Simon Jack** (2:40)
Frog Chorus.
Ah, the Frog Chorus, yeah, one of his all-time bests. Saw her standing there. Okay, good. Saw her standing there. You almost sang that, and I just have to warn you that we are in big trouble if anyone actually sings the song. Copyright, they are very possessive of that. You could bankrupt us right here, right now. Songwriting Royalties are a super valuable piece of IP, that's intellectual property, it comes up a lot in the podcast that we do. They are a big part of how Paul McCartney made his money, and maybe not how you thought. It was not straightforward, that tale.

**Zing Tsjeng** (3:15)
So Paul McCartney is credited with writing over 500 songs. He's also performed over 2,500 gigs, biggest band in history. But, you know, we are not just here to tell the story of Paul McCartney the musician, we are here to focus on the story of Paul McCartney the businessman.

**Simon Jack** (3:32)
So how exactly did he take the long and winding road from Beatle to billionaire? Let's go back and take Paul McCartney from zero to his first million.

**Zing Tsjeng** (3:53)
Paul McCartney was born during the Second World War in June 1942 in Liverpool. He was Christianed James Paul McCartney after his dad, James. But to avoid any confusion, he was named as Paul.

**Simon Jack** (4:04)
Yeah, James's dad, who was actually known as Jim, did various jobs during the war. When it ended, he returned to Liverpool as a career, as a cotton salesman.

**Zing Tsjeng** (4:12)
And his mum, Mary, was a trained nurse who became a midwife, and that job meant that the family, who lived in rented rooms throughout Paul's infancy, got to move into a rent-free council house when he was about four years old.