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The Beatles · S1 E5
Mary McCartney
Paul's mother is a midwife and health visitor who dies of breast cancer when Paul is fourteen. Two motherless boys. The grief that bonds Lennon and McCartney before they write a single word together
Northern Hospital, Liverpool, October 31, 1956. Mary McCartney dies of an embolism following surgery for breast cancer, and fourteen-year-old Paul loses the person who held his entire world together.
Paul alone with an acoustic guitar, picking out a melody that sounds like hope refusing to give up. Whatever its other meanings, "Blackbird" carries the quiet resilience of a boy who lost his mother and chose music over silence.
Blackbird (1968)
Paul recorded this alone in Studio Two at Abbey Road, late at night. There is no band: just his voice, his Martin D-28 acoustic, and the sound of his foot tapping on the floor. The finger-picking pattern comes from Bach's Bourree in E minor, a piece Paul and George learned as teenagers from a guitar instruction record.
“After Mum died, our house went very quiet. Paul just played his guitar more and more.”
— Mike McCartney, "Thank U Very Much," 1981
TAP TO REVEAL: What was the first thing Paul said when he learned his mother had died?
How did Paul respond to the grief of losing his mother?
Golden Slumbers (The Beatles)
From Abbey Road (1969). Paul found the words "Golden slumbers kiss your eyes" on a piece of sheet music sitting on Jim's piano at Forthlin Road. He couldn't read the notation, so he wrote his own melody over seventeenth-century lyrics. The result is a lullaby carrying the weight of every goodnight a motherless boy never got to hear.
Mary McCartney: The Facts
Two motherless boys in Liverpool, both turning to music to fill the silence. Next: John discovers Elvis Presley, picks up a guitar, and starts a skiffle band called the Quarrymen.
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