SIRIUS XM Radio To Broadcast Howard Stern-Paul McCartney Special This Weekend

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New and provocative conversations between Howard Stern and Paul McCartney to air all weekend on Howard 101

Stern and McCartney go in-depth on the legend's life, The Beatles and his new Fireman album "Electric Arguments"

NEW YORK, Jan. 15 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- SIRIUS XM Radio (Nasdaq: SIRI) announced today that it will broadcast a Howard Stern-Paul McCartney special this weekend on SIRIUS XM's Howard 101 channel.

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This week on his SIRIUS XM show, Howard Stern interviewed Paul McCartney. Stern described the importance of the music of The Beatles in his life, saying "[The Beatles] are more of a religion to me than any organized religion. Their music does more for my spirit and elevates me to a higher plane than any religious ceremony ever did."

Howard and McCartney went in-depth on the music legend's life, family, The Beatles, his new Fireman album Electric Arguments, and much more. McCartney presented Howard with an autographed genuine brand new Hofner bass guitar as a surprise birthday gift, singing as he entered the studio: "A very merry un-birthday to you, to you. . . a very merry un-birthday to Howard." This guitar is also known as the Hofner "Beatle" bass, made popular by McCartney and favored by him because it was symmetrical in shape and could be easily turned around to play left-handed.

This weekend Howard 101 will broadcast a Paul McCartney special featuring this new interview, plus highlights of Stern's first McCartney interview from 2001. The Howard Stern-Paul McCartney special will air January 17 at 8:00 am ET and 8:00 pm ET, and on January 18 at 11:00 pm ET exclusively on Howard 101.

"Paul's interview with Howard Stern is not to be missed--it is Paul like you've never heard him and it is Howard with one of his all-time heroes," said Scott Greenstein, President and Chief Content Officer, SIRIUS XM Radio.

The special will also feature tracks from McCartney's new Fireman album Electric Arguments.

"We decided we would go in the studio and have fun," said McCartney of the making of his new album. "We'd have the track going, have a groove going, and I just stood up at the mic and started throwing things at it. I'd hear a bit of a lyric or we'd look at a poetry book ...we just started to concoct it and put it together and paste it...that's the whole thing about the Fireman - he can do anything."

McCartney also commented on Ringo Starr's recent public statement that he will not sign anything more for fans, asking that people stop contacting him for this:

"The truth is, Ringo was always like that. He was the one, if fans came to his door, he'd just say 'piss off...this is my private life...out there I am a Beatle and. . . that's fine and I'll do things when we go to show but I am at home with babies and a wife and I don't want that. . .' He has the right to do whatever he wants to do in life and he doesn't want to do that and I think it's very brave of Ringo."

McCartney also revealed the story behind the naming of Abbey Road, first working title for the landmark album, saying:

". . . the engineer Geoff Emerick - who is our Beatle engineer, did all the great sounds for us - was smoking cigarettes called Everest . . . they're like a kind of menthol cigarette . . . and we kind of looked at that and said 'Everest' - it's kind of big, it's heroic. That could be good for the album. So that was the working title. But the more we thought of it the more we [said]. . . no, this is not great. And just one day we were in Abbey Road working and I . . . said . . . Abbey Road. Because if we did that we could just run outside, there's a level crossing as we call it . . . we could just stand there, get photographed, come back to work...it would take just two seconds...and I said 'it's not a bad title."

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    Hillary Schupf
    SIRIUS
    212 901 6739
    hschupf@siriusradio.com

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Released January 15, 2009