Billionaire Paul McCartney grew up ‘poor’ and was raised by a cotton salesman in Liverpool—now, he’s the third richest musician in the world

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Despite being worth $1.4 billion, legendary Beatles musician Paul McCartney says his working-class roots keep him humble: “You can’t get above yourself.”

Beatles frontman Paul McCartney just made the billionaire club, according to Forbes, and is now the third richest musician in the world behind Taylor Swift and Jay Z. He’s amassed a $1.4 billion fortune from six decades of churning out radio hits, selling records, and touring the world—but has always navigated success with his working-class roots in mind.

“I’m some poor working-class kid from Liverpool. I’ve done music all my life,” McCartney told the New York Times in 2020. “I’ve had huge success, and people often try to do what I want, so you get a false feeling of omnipotence. All that together makes a complex person. We’re all complex. Well, maybe I’m more complex than other people because of coming from poverty.”

Today, McCartney may lord over several multimillion-dollar estates across the U.K. and U.S., but his start was much more modest. His father, Jim, worked as a cotton salesman and was an amateur jazz musician, while his mother, Mary, was a midwife—and McCartney has said that having little money growing up inspired him to earn it.

“When I was in Liverpool as a kid, I used to listen to people’s conversations. I remember a couple of women going on about money: ‘Ah, me and my husband, we’re always arguing about money.’ And I remember thinking very consciously, ‘OK, I’ll solve that; I will try to get money,’” McCartney continued. “That set me off on the ‘Let’s not have too many problems with money’ trail. What happened also was, not having much money, when anything came into the house, it was important.”

And it wouldn’t take long for money-making opportunities to roll in as McCartney and his bandmates went from playing small clubs in Liverpool to becoming global superstars.

McCartney was just 20 years old when The Beatles released their first single “Love Me Do” in 1962, and only 21 when the band appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show and “Beatlemania” swept the U.S.

The group earned a total of $10,000 from their three performances on the American variety show, which…

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