The first Polar Music Prize

The very first Polar Music Prize Ceremony was held at Berwaldhallen in Stockholm in the month of May 1992.

HM King Carl XVI Gustaf presented the Prize to the first Polar Music Prize Laureates Sir Paul McCartney and the Baltic States.

Paul McCartney did not attend the Polar Music Prize Ceremony in May 1992. Being in the middle of recording and producing a new album, he made a special video that was showed for the Swedish King XVI Carl Gustaf and all the other guests, where he expressed his feelings (the interview can be seen in the announcement video above). The British ambassador to Sweden Robert Cormack received the Prize in his place. It was a special atmosphere in Berwaldhallen, being the very first Polar Music Prize Ceremony.

Among the musicians performing were Eva Dahlgren, Tomas Ledin, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and four of Sweden's greatest jazz musicians; pianist Bengt Hallberg, saxophone player Arne Domnérus, guitarist Rune Gustafsson and bass player Georg Riedel.

The Prize Citation for the Laureate of the very first Polar Music Prize would have – had it been formulated today – probably been exactly the same. With the only difference that it would state: "... over the last 50 years" instead of "over the last 30". That's how remarkable Paul McCartney’s life and musical career has been and developed. Since the Polar Music Prize was awarded in 1992, he has made seven studio albums, four live albums, five classical albums and a couple of world tours.

He has made three electronica albums under the name of The Fireman, he’s been involved in the remastering and reissues of a number of Beatles and Wings recordings from the 1960s and ‘70s, and he spent a few years on Apple’s ambitious project The Beatles Anthology. He has done radio shows of his own, TV specials and collaborated and participated on a number of other artist’s and musicians’ recordings – the most unusual being Liverpool Sound Collage in 2000 with Super Furry Animal and Youth, using the sound collage and musique concrète techniques that fascinated him in the mid-sixties. It is an extraordinary musical life.

Starting The Beatles

At the age of fifteen, Paul met John Lennon and his band, The Quarrymen, at the St Peter’s Church Hall fête in Woolton on 6 July 1957. The Quarrymen played a mix of rock & roll and skiffle, a type of popular music with jazz, blues and folk influences.

The band invited Paul to join as a rhythm guitarist, and he formed a close relationship with John Lennon. George Harrison, a school-mate of McCartney’s joined in 1958 as lead guitarist, followed by John’s art school friend Stuart Sutcliffe on bass in 1960. By May 1960 they had tried several names, including Johnny and the Moondogs and the Silver Beetles.

They adopted the name The Beatles in August 1960 and recruited drummer Pete Best shortly before a residency on the infamous Reeperbahn in Hamburg, Germany.

Making music history

During the ten years that The Beatles existed, 1960-1970, they went through a tremendous musical development – as did the popular music scene around them. But The Beatles were leading the course. They synthesized all that was good about early rock & roll, and changed it into something original and even more exciting.

They became the prototype for the self-contained rock group that performed its own material. As composers, Lennon and McCartney’s craft and melodic inventiveness were second to none. As singers, they were among the best and most expressive and the group’s harmonies were intricate and exhilarating. As performers they were exciting and photogenique, when they retreated into the studio they were instrumental in pioneering advanced techniques and multi-layered arrangements. Paul and John shared most of the song-writing, although most of the songs started as an idea from either one of them.

Eighties

Wings lasted for ten years, 1971-1981. They recorded ten albums and made ten tours, with many different line-ups. But the core of the band was Paul, Linda and guitarist Denny Laine. Seven of the albums made platinum, of which 1973’s Band On The Run was the most successful. Also their world tour of 1975-’76 was a great success, not least the American leg which resulted in the live album Wings over America (1976). After Wings, Paul went solo again, releasing McCartney II (1980), "Tug Of War" (1982), Pipes of Peace (1982) and "Give My Regards to Broad Street (1984), a musical and feature film McCartney starred in.

On these records other artists contributed to Paul getting hit songs; Stevie Wonder on “Ebony and Ivory”, Michael Jackson on “Say Say Say” and Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour on “No More Lonely Nights”. The most musically interesting in the eighties was the album Flowers in the Dirt (1989) on which McCartney collaborated with Elvis Costello. The critically acclaimed album was followed by a world tour, Paul’s first in ten years and on which he played a number of Beatles songs, many of them live for the first time – since The Beatles stopped playing live in 1966.

Recent years

When Paul McCartney was awarded the Polar Music Prize in 1992 he was 50. More than a decade into the new millennium, he has passed 70 and is as active as ever – composing, touring, recording and getting into projects and collaborations he feels for. Since 2000 Paul has released four studio albums in his own name. The last one, Kisses On The Bottom (2012), is a celebration of jazz and old popular music. It is music from his own childhood, music his father liked – and he himself as a young boy.

Most of the songs are covers from the great American songbook, two of them are McCartney compositions in the same spirit. The albums Driving Rain (2001) and Chaos and Creation in the Backyard (2005) are two great examples of McCartney’s pop music skills, his melodic talent and the never resting efforts to find new sounds for classic pop melodies.