Word: liverpool
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...interested in looking back now because I have this misbelief about my life. Did I really get here?" he asks while munching on a cheese-and-pickle sandwich. He stares out at a view of rolling green hills that is a long way from the council housing of his Liverpool youth. "I hear myself telling stories to my kids, and sometimes I ask myself, 'Are you sure about this...
...trumpeter and piano man, his mother a midwife. As a child, McCartney was a Boy Scout and a bird watcher. His first real instrument was a Zenith six-string, which he played left-handed. In 1960 he was just one of four unknown teenagers performing in the squalor of Liverpool's underground Cavern club. By 1965 the Beatles had stormed America, met the Queen and been hailed as pop prophets. By 1971 -- before any of the four hit 30 -- it was all over, ruined by a bitter business fight...
Although he rarely goes to Liverpool today, McCartney is lead patron of a fund-raising effort to turn his old school, Liverpool Institute, into a Fame- type training ground for the musically talented. When the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic asked him to help mark its 150th anniversary, he ventured into classical music and composed a 90-minute choral epic called Paul McCartney's Liverpool Oratorio. It was a brave try for a man who doesn't read or write music. But it turned out to be strangely flat, a criticism that McCartney shrugs off. He was more worried that rock friends...
...oratorio, the someone else was Carl Davis, an American-born film composer and accomplished pastiche artist. After McCartney wrote the text and invented the tunes, Davis arranged them slickly for soprano (Kiri Te Kanawa at the Liverpool premiere and on the recording), mezzo (Sally Burgess), tenor (Jerry Hadley), bass (Willard White), boy soprano, chorus, cathedral choir and full orchestra...
...result is a big, sprawling, high-minded and honorably intended work that never quite comes into focus. The story concerns a Liverpool boy named Shanty (no doubt a nod to the high percentage of Irish Liverpudlians as well as to McCartney's own ethnic background), born during the air raids of 1942 (Part 1, War). The second, third and fourth sections (School, Crypt and Father) detail typical adolescent angst, including the death of Shanty's dad. In the oratorio's second half, the hero meets Mary Dee, marries her (Wedding), impregnates her (Work), fights with her (Crises) and finally, after...