Things You Might Not Know About Paul McCartney

The artist who showed him the option to play guitar left-handed was � Slim Whitman.: McCartney's father bought him a trumpet for his birthday when McCartney turned 14, but the young lad had his Dad exchange it for a cheap acoustic. The future Beatle struggled mightily with the instrument until he happened upon a photograph of Slim Whitman, the country yodeler who played guitar lefty-style. McCartney flipped his guitar, modified the string setup, and soon wrote his first song, a ditty titled "I Lost My Little Girl."

Before they became Wings, McCartney's post-Beatles band nearly became � a paint thinner. In August 1971, when he was trying to get his post-Beatles band off the ground, McCartney was having a terrible time coming up with a name for the nascent group. Among the top name-candidates floated were The Dazzlers and, for reasons unknown, Turpentine. Alas, while praying for his wife, Linda, as she was giving birth to their daughter, the image of "wings" kept springing to mind.