Paul McCartney has a musical gift that he displayed at a very young age. He learned how to play the piano and the guitar and formed The Beatles before many people even went to college. However, Paul McCartney didn’t achieve the same success as his other musical endeavors when he auditioned to become a choir boy and got rejected.
Paul McCartney performed a live album at the Liverpool cathedral
Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Oratorio is a live album by Paul McCartney and Carl Davis, released in 1991. Davis and McCartney composed the show to commemorate the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra’s 150th anniversary. The album was recorded and performed at the Liverpool cathedral during the show’s dress rehearsal. In an interview with Barnes and Noble’s James Daunt, McCartney shared how this project originated.
“I knew Carl Davis, the composer and conductor, and his wife Jean, and Linda knew Jean. So he turned up one day and he said, ‘The Liverpool Philharmonic is having a big anniversary.’ I think it was 150 years,” McCartney said. “And he said, ‘And they’d like to commission you to write something.’ So I said, ‘Well, great.’ I had no idea what I was doing, but that’s me.
“So, I used to just go to Carl’s place and have some ideas of what I wanted to do, and I knew I wanted it to be in Liverpool, particularly the orchestra’s Liverpool, I’m Liverpool,” McCartney continued. “So, we’re sitting at the piano, Carl and I, I sat beside him. And he strikes a C major chord, very hopeful. And I said, ‘What?’ and he said, ‘Well, Paul McCartney, C major,’ which is like ‘Let it Be’. And I said, ‘No, no, no, I’m thinking of…’ So this became our process, and we made this whole thing up, Liverpool Oratorio, and performed it at the cathedral in Liverpool, which is huge. I think it’s the biggest cathedral in Europe.”
Paul McCartney auditioned to be a choir boy and got rejected
Performing in the Liverpool cathedral brought back painful memories for Paul McCartney because he auditioned to be a choir boy there when he was young. However, he hadn’t yet mastered his musical talents, so he didn’t make the choir. There must be many regrets that the cathedral can’t say they had a Beatle in their choir.
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“I’d auditioned as a choir boy in that big place. So, talk about intimidating, as a like, you know, 11, 12-year-old. And I went in there because the idea was you’d get loads of free books if you pass and you went in the choir. But I failed, it was great because it wasn’t my kind of thing. And the guy, the auditioner, it was just me in a room with this guy, and he would just play a phrase on the piano and say, ‘Now sing that,’ just to see whether I could retain…I know it was wrong. So, I never heard back.”
McCartney doesn’t consider himself to be religious
Despite the Liverpool cathedral being a part of his upbringing, McCartney today doesn’t consider himself religious. In a 2012 interview with The Independent, McCartney revealed that he doesn’t associate himself with any specific religion and takes issue with organized religion as a whole.
“Not really. I have a kind of personal faith in something good, but it doesn’t really go much further than that. It’s certainly not subscribing to any organized religion,” McCartney explained. “I think that [organized religion] is the cause of a lot of trouble – ‘My god is better than yours’. But I do think there is something greater than me… and that’s not easy to imagine. No, stop it, come on.”
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