Rare Sir Paul McCartney coins go under the hammer
The Royal Mint worked directly with Sir Paul's production company, MPL Communications, and with the legendary signer himself to develop the coins. Rebecca Morgan, director of commemorative coin at The Royal Mint said: "This is an exciting opportunity for collectors and fans of Paul McCartney to own a unique item celebrating one of the most influential music artists and songwriters of all time. "Each coin available at auction is a testament to the exceptional skills of our craftspeople at The Royal Mint".Speaking at the time the decision to mint the coins was announced, Sir Paul said: "It's not anything I would have ever expected to happen when I was a kid."
The gold piece represents the largest gold proof coin produced as part of The Royal Mint's Music Legends series. It took more than 250 hours to make, including three days of polishing, and was signed by Sir Paul during his 2024 Got Back tour in Paris.The winning bidder will receive a short video from Sir Paul.Brian Kendrella, president of Stack's Bowers Galleries, said: "Paul McCartney's timeless music and multigenerational appeal continue to inspire and unite fans across the world, making this a memorable event that all can enjoy."A percentage of the revenue from the auction will be donated to charity, The Royal Mint said.
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Scottish Sun
2 hours ago
- Scottish Sun
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His mother's moods swung between depression and euphoria, and she was 'probably bipolar', according to Joel's older sister, Judy Molinari, but 'no matter how poor we were, she knew Billy had to have his piano lessons'. Their father was a frustrated classical concert pianist, who once knocked Joel unconscious for rocking up Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. 'He was a very dark man,' recalls Joel. 'He told me once as a kid 'life is a cesspool.'' Following his parent's divorce in 1957, Joel didn't see his father for 16 years. One of his greatest songs, Vienna, was inspired by an ultimately frustrating reunion with his father, whom he tracked down in Austria with a second family (he has a half brother, Alexander Joel, who grew up to become a respected orchestral conductor). It was there he learnt the devastating history of the Joel family, formerly wealthy German industrialists who lost everything during the rise of the Nazis and were mostly wiped out in the Holocaust. Joel reveals a love-hate relationship with his own art. He describes songwriting as 'a lonely job', and confesses 'I see the piano as this big black box with 88 teeth trying to bite my hands off.' Each episode is two and a half hours long, and, frankly, five hours in the company of Billy Joel is a lot. It is leavened by humour, thankfully, and not all of it based around the physical appearance of a pop superstar who always manages to look like he hates getting his picture taken. He looks positively ill during his first wedding, to Elizabeth Weber in 1973 ('I had reservations,' he admits). His second wife, supermodel Christie Brinkley, admits that she was almost put off by his 'Long Island bubble hair' and terrible clothes. He is a pop star who never had a good haircut – the pictures of Joel wearing chainmail and sporting shaggy ringlets and a droopy moustache in short-lived early Seventies heavy metal duo Attila have to be seen to be believed. By the end of the documentary, you might conclude that baldness is the kindest thing ever to happen to him. Episode one is the most compelling but also the saddest, with a huge romantic arc, following the love affair that drove his career, and broke both their hearts. Joel met Elizabeth Weber-Small when she was married to his best friend and Attila bandmate, Jon Small. He was so ashamed of their burgeoning love affair he twice attempted suicide (first with pills, then with furniture polish) and wound up in a mental hospital. He wrote the whole of his tender 1971 solo debut album, Cold Spring Harbor, in a state of romantic longing. When they eventually got together, Weber became the driving force in his career, taking on the role of his manager. She is the subject of such deathlessly romantic ballads as Just the Way You Are and Always a Woman, as well as the less flattering Stiletto. Interviewed for the documentary, Weber talks about Joel with tenderness and insight, revealing that she left him because of his heavy drinking and the near-suicidal behaviour that led to a life-threatening motorcycle crash in 1982. 'I would have stayed,' she reveals. 'Like so many women before me, make that accommodation for someone you love. But there was no way I could stand by and watch him kill himself. I didn't have it in me. I felt very strongly that's where it was going.' 'It was sad,' is the most Joel can admit on the subject. The second episode is a lot of fun, packed with delightful home footage shot by his second great love, the eternally bright-spirited Brinkley, who inspired Joel's most upbeat album, An Innocent Man, in 1983. There's a lot of witty patter, goofy backstage carry-on and fantastic music, with domestic bliss breaking out as the couple marry in 1985 and have a daughter, Alexa (also interviewed for the documentary). But it all goes sour when his new manger (his ex-wife's brother, whom she warned him against) defrauds him of multi-millions, Joel starts drinking again, quits songwriting and breaks up with Brinkley. She gets emotional recalling the moment she told him how unhappy she was, and his response was to just snap, 'Yeah, fine, go.' 'It was a very sad time for me,' admits Joel now. 'I was so devastated.' At which point viewers may realise they still have an hour to go of stints in rehab, falling out with Elton John (conspicuously absent from the documentary) over Joel's destructively heavy drinking during co-headlining tours, and another failed marriage, before we leave Joel in his fourth marriage (to Alexis Roderick, an equestrian and lawyer 30 years his junior, in 2015), with two young daughters (Della and Remy), sailing his beloved boat Alexa out to sea, and proclaiming hope for a future that we already know is about to be dashed by illness. I met Joel in a hotel bar after a concert in Detroit in 1990 and spent a long and increasingly drunken night in his company. I really liked him. He was funny, self-deprecating and the life of our spontaneous party, getting on a hotel piano and leading a rowdy sing-along into the small hours. The next day, his tour manager accused me of having led him astray and revealed that Joel had lost his voice and would have to cancel that night's concert. I realise now that was during a period when things were starting to go south again for Joel, who told me Brinkley had gone to stay with her parents in Hawaii. 'You can't have a fight with your wife when her parents own a beautiful beach house in Hawaii,' he joked. 'It's like any excuse to pack your bags and run home to momma.' That humour percolates through And So It Goes, but so does the self-absorption and melancholy that seem to have haunted him all his life. His songwriting seems to have been a vital outlet for his deepest feelings, but he cut off that part of himself in 1993, exhausted by artistic struggle. As Sting admiringly points out, Joel is a master of song structure, and the documentary explores his compositional roots in European classical music, which Joel adores. 'I realised I've never forgiven myself for not being Beethoven,' he confesses. It's clear that Joel's songs sprang from a deep well of often troubled emotions and experiences, reflecting the life of a man for whom music was a vocation, a burden and, perhaps, salvation. 'Everything I've done, everything I've lived through, has somehow found a way into my music,' says Joel. His place as an all-time great singer-songwriter cannot really be in doubt.
