Ruth McCartney (née Williams) (born 15 February 1960) originally a British musician, stepsister and adoptive half-sister of Paul McCartney. She is now an internet, digital and new media entrepreneur holding the titles of CEO of McCartneyMultimedia.com, Co-Founder of fan management software company iFanz.com and President of ConnectCode.mobi.
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McCartney was born as Ruth Williams in Walton Hospital, Liverpool and raised in Liverpool in the pop culturally named "swinging 60's." She began to study guitar, singing and dance at age of 4 and then continued with her musical education, adding piano lessons from the age of 7, and guitar from the age of 12 at West Kirby Grammar School for Girls on the Wirral Peninsula, Merseyside.
Jim McCartney married widow Angela Williams — Ruth's mother — after only three meetings, on 24 November 1964. Jim was 62 and Angie was 34 when they married.[1] They were introduced by Jim's niece, Bette Robbins. Ruth was legally adopted by Jim, becoming Paul and Michael McCartney's legal half-sister. Ruth remembered that Jim was funny and musical with her, but also strict when she was young, and was insistent that she learned good table manners and etiquette when speaking to people.[2]
Ruth studied stagecraft, writing, television production and dance at the North West Stage School, where Nigel Lythgoe of 19 Entertainment and American Idol fame would sometimes guest as a modern and tap teacher. Ruth was greatly influenced during her teens by such legends as Liza Minnelli and Shirley MacLaine.
She has always been a fan of "the spectacle" and continued the tradition in her own live shows, most of which were in Moscow, St Petersburg, Noyabirsk, Salehkard, Yerevan (Armenia), Turkmenistan and 8 different cities in Siberia, Russia. Ruth became a household name there during appearances on Russian TV and in Armenia in 1989. It was then that Ruth bonded with the people of these countries. During that time the ruble was not an exchangeable currency and consequently she donated all the proceeds of her first 3 tours to various Soviet charities including the children of Spitak, Armenia who were devastated by the earthquake of 1988. She experienced a similar trauma in California 6 years later.
The relationship with the Russian and former Soviet audiences still lives on and was witnessed nightly at the sell-out shows organized in areas such as Siberia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Lithuania. Ruth has also enjoyed a fruitful career as a songwriter since her beginnings in Sydney, Australia in 1982.
There she met up with Dave Skinner (of John Farnham fame) and they penned a song for Tina Cross entitled "New Blood" which was released on Festival Records and reached #11 on the Australian charts. In 1983, Ruth relocated to Los Angeles and formed what was to become a long term writing partnership with Barry Coffing, BMI award winner for co-writing "How do you talk to an Angel?", theme tune from Aaron Spelling's series "The Heights". Together, Ruth and Barry wrote "Cigarette in the Rain" for Randy Crawford's Warner Bros. Records LP "Rich and Poor".
Randy chose this song as the 3rd single from the album and it rose to #32 on Billboard's R&B chart, selling more than 600,000 copies worldwide and earning gold status in South Africa, Scandinavia and Italy. Ruth and Barry have also collaborated on other titles which are included in several feature films such as:
During the 1980s in Hollywood, Ruth worked behind the scenes in productions of commercials, motion pictures, music videos and PSAs. On one of these shoots in Baker, CA she met German Gaffer Dieter Bockmeier, they married, moved to Munich and 1990/91 saw Ruth based in Germany writing songs for her debut album on Ralph Siegel's Munich based Jupiter/ BMG Records, with Producer / writing partner Andi Slavik (Joni Madden, La Toya Jackson, Shari Belafonte, Fire, Ice & Dynamite.)
Together they travelled to London, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Hollywood to complete tracks on Ruth's LP "I Will Always Remember You". The album was released in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, S. Korea, S. Vietnam, Turkey, Russia and The Philippines.
During her time in Germany, Ruth was introduced to both Grammy Award winner Harold Faltermayer (Beverly Hills Cop, Top Gun etc.,) and Producer / Publisher Joerg Evers. With Harold she wrote the theme tune for the 1992 Summer Olympics, commissioned by German TV network ZDF, entitled "Forever Human". The song was released Europe-wide by BMG and featured on 14 different compilations as well as receiving daily airplay during the network's coverage of the games. With Joerg, she and Martin Nethercutt penned "Diva in Disguise" for Germany's legendary Margot Werner for her 1996 season. Ruth and Dieter divorced but remain close friends.
Harold then invited Ruth to co-write some titles for Chaya, Sony's "Wunderkinder" in Europe. The first single, "I Feel My Heart is Burning", has received, according to Billboard magazine, "massive airplay" and entered the Musikmarkt chart at #67. The second single "Hot Shot Lover", co-written with new husband Martin Nethercutt, has recently been released.
The final tour of Russia in 1997 was Ruth's 8th since 1989 and during this trip she was the subject and co-producer of a documentary for Russian National Television which has some 300 million viewers. It is the only network which reaches all 11 time zones of the country plus parts of the former "East Bloc", Cuba and China. The documentary, entitled "Picture of Ruth" aired nationwide in January 1998.
Whilst in Moscow, Ruth also dabbled with her acting talents, starring as herself in 2 episodes of Russia's most popular soap opera. She also began recording a Russian Language project for EMI / Gala Records. She has taken turn of the century silver age Russian Poetry and set it to a contemporary dance groove with the help of famed Russian pop composer Vladimir Musikant. Her first single, "Lyubiminya Prosta" ... "Love Me Simply", was written over a hundred years ago by legendary Russian poet Fyodor Salagup.
The rest of the trip consisted of staging concerts in the remote towns and cities of middle Siberia. She travelled daily by helicopter (the only possibility), to reach such outlying places as: Nizhnivartovsk, Yurai, Sovietski, Noyabirsk, Yugorski, Beriozova, Khanti Mansi (home of the last of Siberia's native Eskimos), and last but not least, Salehard on the Arctic Circle where the temperature reached an unbelievable 56 celsius degrees below zero, and where the electricity turbines are so underpowered there is absolutely no facility for heating water. In fact, during Ruth's 4 day stay, there was no running water at all in the entire city. That's showbiz!
Ruth again returned to Moscow to co-produce and shoot a music video for a self-penned title "Russian Nights" which was nominated for Russian MTV's "Video of the Year".
In 1995 Ruth, after moving to Tennessee following the devastating 1994 Northridge earthquake, husband Martin Nethercutt and mother Angie McCartney founded McCartney Multimedia Inc in Nashville TN. As the CEO, Ruth has produced the online presence, including streaming video, websites, software of many clients including Monty Python's John Cleese, Clint Black, LeAnn Rimes, Roseanne Barr, Steve Tyrell, High School Musical's Corbin Bleu, Bon Jovi's Richie Sambora, Kenny G, Macy Gray, Edgar Winter, Oleta Adams, and REO Speedwagon. The company's technology iFanz.com babysits the databases of stars from Paula Abdul to Fleetwood Mac and Iron Chef Cat Cora. The John Cleese project involved production of dozens video rants, archiving old commercials, Python clips by arrangement with the BBC and coordination of many different fan databases from times past into one cohesive database in the iFanz system she co-developed.iFanz is an eCRM / fan management platform and as a predecessor to Constant Contact, was the first of its kind on the web back in 1998.
Since 2004, Ruth has been producing and co-creating TV and Webisodic content in conjunction with partners in both Hollywood, Germany and the UK. She has acted as a consultant for Ice Blue Media and River Media in the UK, and is currently under contract with www.TalentTV.com in London. The company's reel can be viewed at www.youtube.com/mccartneystudios. Ruth is an associate member of BAFTA LA. She is also busy writing titles with husband Martin Nethercutt for his up-coming release with Marino DeSilva entitled "Geist" on their own iFanz Records label.
She lives with her husband Martin Nethercutt, her mother Angie and their 4 cats Thelma, Louise, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in Playa del Rey, Southern California.
Ruth was a judge for the Arizona leg of American Idol for Fox TV; she has appeared as a speaker at various Beatles fan conventions in Chicago, New York, Kansas City, MO, Toronto and Los Angeles; ASU engaged Ruth to speak in Tempe, AZ on e-marketing and demographics; Intel engaged Ruth to speak to an elite group in San Jose regarding "Know Thy Customer"; she is speaking at MusExpo.net's West Hollywood convention in April 2010, she has recently emceed (for the second year in a row) the Fund Raiser for the Rialto Unified School District's annual "Puttin' On The Ritz" Gala; R Entertainment hired Ruth and her mother Angie to present a live cooking demonstration in Scottsdale, Arizona for the 3,000 strong New Year's Eve street party where she made Shepherd's Pie for a cast of thousands. More recently Ruth emceed the opening night of the Levitt Pavilions Free Summer Concert Series at in MacArthur Park in Los Angeles, and recently returned from Liverpool and London where she narrated and co-produced a retrospective Beatles documentary entitled "Here, There and Everywhere" with Atlanta based cameraman / director Ken Barker. The footage features rare interviews with Cynthia Lennon, Neil Innes of Rutles fame, the late Bob Wooler - the original Cavern DeeJay, the Fourmost's Billy Hatton, George Harrison's sister Louise Harrison and more.
Over the years, Ruth has supported the Armenian Earthquake Fund, Wheels for Humanity, The Duchess of York's Chances for Children, The Clinton Foundation, KidsCharities.org and as co-founder and member of Mrs McCartney's Organic Teas LLC, a percentage of their profits is donated to the Linda McCartney Centre for Breast Cancer research.