For Whom The Bell Tells...Issue 11

Back to the White House‚

It's always good to start the new month on a high and September kicked off with some great news for the Macca camp. As the papers have already reported, Paul will be heading back to Washington in December to receive a prestigious Kennedy Honour. The award recognises a lifetime contribution to American culture through the performing arts and will see Paul back at the White House for the second time in just six months. As The LA Times noted, "Paul McCartney may be in the running for his own parking space in the White House lot: He's being honoured yet again in the nation's capital." Everyone at Macca HQ is thrilled for the boss of course, and still buzzing from their last trip to America's most famous address. Roll on December!

From Presidents to pop icons, Macca's also been in line for some heartfelt praise from some of the country's biggest music stars this month. First up, we noticed the Modfather himself, Paul Weller, telling the The Sun newspaper in the UK that working with Paul on the 1995 War Child album was the best day of his life. He told the paper, "The Beatles were a huge influence on me and my career so working with Paul was brilliant. We rehearsed at Abbey Road. It was very surreal. I never ever would have dreamt that would happen." High praise from a man who is himself hailed as a living legend for his work with both The Jam and The Style Council and as an influential solo artist.

Weller wasn't the only one raving about Macca this month either. Manic Street Preacher's frontman James Dean Bradfield has been telling the press what it was like supporting Paul when the 'Up and Coming' tour played in Cardiff, and how impressed he was watching Macca's show afterwards. He said; He played for three hours, I couldn't take my eyes off him. I thought he was absolutely transcendental, I thought he was brilliant. He played 40 songs and he moved around more than any member of Kings of Leon on stage. I've never seen a musician more at one with himself. It's a symbolic relationship between him and music and I can't have more admiration for a musician than I have for him really. Watching him play 'Blackbird' you know, that's the holy grail of what musicians try to do. It's simple but somehow complicated, it's one thing and the other, and I can't figure out how it comes out of somebody. That's why music is brilliant sometimes. If you don't understand, that person can't explain it to you. When he played that song I just thought, yeah, you've got to admit, I could never do that.' It's just amazing. Nicely put James.

Paul has also been getting support for his Meat Free Monday campaign in all the right places. Liberal Democrat MP John Leech has submitted a parliamentary Early Day Motion calling for the Houses of Parliament to go meat free every Monday, calling for Parliament to set an example by supporting the campaign. We're all keeping our fingers crossed for the motion to be passed here and will bring you more news as soon as we hear it.

You might have noticed an announcement from HP about creating a digital cloud for Paul. In the newsroom we've had a few emails from regular readers asking exactly what this means? Well basically it's incredibly exciting. HP are going to work with Paul's office on the digitisation of Paul's entire archives. As you can imagine that is a hell of a lot of music, pictures, poems, videos, lyrics, artwork‚ the list goes on. So the process is going to take a while. When it's all ready it will mean that people will have access to archive material via paulmccartney.com‚ the possibilities are endless with this partnership. We are particularly excited, as it will make research on any area of Paul's career much easier!

Finally some news we can confirm, though, is the long awaited re-release date for the iconic 'Band on the Run' album. Widely regarded as one of the greatest albums of all time, the 1973 Wings album has been entirely remastered and will be available in a variety of formats. We know Paul has personally overseen the entire remastering process and is thrilled at the results, so he's really looking forward to hearing the fans' reactions when the album is re-released on November 1st (2nd in the US). This time round, the album will be available in the original standard edition, vinyl and digital editions, plus a three disc special edition featuring nine bonus audio tracks, video clips and rare footage and a four disc deluxe edition, which also features a 120 page hard bound book and a special audio documentary amongst other things. Phew! It's been a long time coming but it's certainly well worth the wait, trust us. We've had a sneak preview at the hard bound book and it's really special, it looks really elegant, a must have for any collector or music fan.

The coming weeks will see Paul complete a number of interviews about the forthcoming release and we'll keep you informed so you can check them out.

And with both that and Paul's return to Washington in the pipeline in the coming months, Macca shows no signs of slowing down before the end of the year. Which means there should be plenty more news next time. Until then...