Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney will reportedly play a “surprise” concert at a Los Angeles record store on Wednesday, a spokesman said. The former Beatle, whose new album enjoyed a strong start on the pop charts earlier this month, will perform at Amoeba Records in Hollywood about 7:30 p.m. PDT.

In lieu of launching a full-scale concert tour to promote “Memory Almost Full,” McCartney is playing a few hastily arranged free shows in small venues. The Amoeba gig will come two weeks to the day after he dusted off Beatles tunes and a handful of new songs for about 700 fans at the Highline Ballroom in New York’s Chelsea district. . .

“Memory Almost Full,” McCartney’s first release under a new deal with a label co-founded by coffee retailer Starbucks Corp., has spent two weeks at No. 3 on the U.S. pop charts, giving him his best showing in years.

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McCartney is listed in The Guinness Book Of Records as the most successful musician and composer in popular music history, with sales of 100 million singles and 60 gold discs.

He has achieved twenty-nine number-one singles in the U.S., twenty of them with The Beatles, the rest with Wings and as a solo artist. McCartney has been involved in more number-one singles in the United Kingdom than any other artist under a variety of credits, although Elvis Presley has achieved more as a solo artist. McCartney has achieved 24 number-ones in the U.K.: solo (1), Wings (1), with Stevie Wonder (1), Ferry Aid (1), Band Aid (1), Band Aid 20 (1) and The Beatles (17). McCartney is the only artist to reach the U.K. number one as a soloist (“Pipes of Peace”), duo (“Ebony and Ivory” with Stevie Wonder), trio (“Mull of Kintyre”, Wings), quartet (“She Loves You”, The Beatles), quintet (“Get Back”, The Beatles with Billy Preston) and sextet (“Let It Be” with Ferry Aid).


McCartney’s song “Yesterday” is the most covered song in history with more than 2,000 recorded versions and has been played more than 7,000,000 times on American TV and radio, for which McCartney was given an award. After its 1977 release the Wings single “Mull of Kintyre” became the highest-selling record in British chart history, and remained so until 1984.

On 2 July 2005, he was involved with the fastest-released single in history. His performance of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” with U2 at Live 8 was released only 45 minutes after it was performed, before the end of the concert. The single reached number six on the Billboard charts, just hours after the single’s release, and hit number one on numerous online download charts across the world.

McCartney played for the largest stadium audience in history when 184,000 people paid to see him perform at Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro on 21 April, 1990, and he played his 3,000th concert in front of 60,000 fans in St Petersburg, Russia, on 20 June 2004. Over his career, McCartney has played 2,523 gigs with The Beatles, 140 with Wings, and 325 as a solo artist.

Thanks to www.Reuters.com and www.wikipedia.org