Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
SStudio Two on Abbey Road was dressed with an armchair, a guitar and a bookcase Paul McCartney memories. Without the lights and cameras, it would have passed through his living room. Even so, the 50 fans who won the Beatles’ competition gathered to enjoy their prize – a preview listen to McCartney’s new album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane – were not expecting the man to enter.
Then there was silence in the room. One fan said enthusiastically: “He should be here.” And he was.
As he entered from the control room on Tuesday afternoon, the crowd erupted into cheers. “Hello, welcome to Abbey Road studios,” McCartney said. “I’m playing the album and trying to think of something to say about it.”
Over 90 minutes, the world’s most successful songwriter traces his journey back to the beginning, sharing memories of his youth in Liverpool, stories about his friendships with John Lennon and George Harrison, and how he wrote songs.
Studio Two was where many of the Beatles’ hits between 1962 and 1970 were produced, from Love Me Do and Please Please Me to She Loves You, one of which started Beatlemania. It was here, too, that songs such as Hard Day’s Night, Help, Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane began, and where much of Abbey Road – including Come Together – was assembled. Outside, tourists gathered at the zebra crossing immortalized on the album cover, perhaps unaware of the proximity of McCartney himself.
Despite his opposition, it quickly became apparent that McCartney had a lot to say about his new album in more than five years, which is set to be released on May 29.
The album began, he explained, with a cup of tea five years ago and a meeting with producer Andrew Watt. While casually playing the guitar, McCartney stumbled upon a song he didn’t recognize. One note moved, then another, until it was a three-part sequence. Watt said to write.
This recording became the opening track, As You Lie There, which McCartney composed himself, playing many instruments in the spirit of his 1970s solo. The song goes back to his childhood in Liverpool and an unspoken crush on a neighbor, starting as spoken word before turning into a dynamic song.
He said: “There was another window, there was a girl I really liked named Jasmine. “But I didn’t know how to approach her, I never spoke to her.” The joke was, she appeared at the end of that year and knocked on the door. I was weak – I was on the toilet – so I missed Jasmine!
As each song played, McCartney spoke his words and imitated the instruments. The record, which has been identified as his most up to date, turns inward: to post-war Liverpool, his parents’ resilience, and early goings-on with the Beatles. Beyond that, he plays multiple instruments, moving between rock-style rock, Beatles harmonies and his groovy instincts.
The song takes its title from Days We Left Behind, a song that mentions Dungeon Lane, near the River Mersey, where McCartney used to hang out as a boy, and the “secret” and promise he made to Lennon at his childhood home on Forthlin Road: “I stand by what I said, the promise I made will never be broken.”
“That was a lot of Liverpool memories for me,” he said, “and every day we have left. Everyone has them – at school, old friends.” The music, he added, seems to write itself. “It’s reminiscent of John in the middle, which was fun to go back to. Someone said: ‘What’s the secret of the secret?’ I didn’t say,” he laughed, before adding: “You make a lot of things when you write music.”
He called it “a little bit lovely”, referring to “John, and George, and Ringo too,” and then looked around the studio. “It affects me a little bit. This is where we worked, always in this studio. We entered through the merchant’s door.”
Some songs moved in the middle of the imagination. Ripples in a Pond is a beautiful love song written by his wife, Nancy Shevell. Mountaintop captures the emotions of a young woman at the Glastonbury festival, which McCartney headlines in 2022. Home to Us features her first duet with Ringo Starr, while Life Can Be Hard was recorded during the closing session.
At Salesman Saint, he turns to his parents. He said: “I was born in 1942, in the war. “I was too young to appreciate that, but my parents were not like that. My father was a fireman, a bombardier. My mother was a nurse and midwife. But they continued, because they had to.
Meanwhile, Down South, one of the album’s most unusual songs, started a story about riding horses with Lennon and Harrison. “It was a great way to get to know you before we learned Twist & Shout,” the song goes. On one trip, he and Harrison rode in a milk float. “There was a driver’s seat, a battery and a passenger seat. George took the battery. He had jeans with a zipper in the back and it connected to the battery. Later, at the B & B, he showed me the heat of the zipper,” said McCartney, laughing.
The Boys of Dungeon Lane is McCartney’s 18th solo album, which arrived after previous shows, from The Beatles: Return to the Wings record last year and the 2023 single Now and Then, built from Lennon’s show and went to No 1. This song, too, remained in the heart with time.
