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Paul McCartney welcomed around 50 fortunate fans into Abbey Road Studios on Tuesday, May 5, for an intimate preview of his upcoming album, ‘The Boys Of Dungeon Lane’. During the special listening session, he opened up about the inspiration and memories behind many of the songs featured on the project.
After attendees handed over their phones, they were guided into the iconic Studio Two, the same room where The Beatles famously recorded much of their catalogue. Before the event officially began, McCartney’s voice could already be heard from the control room as fans looked around hoping to spot the music legend. He later walked downstairs into the studio, where a cosy set designed like a personal living room had been arranged with vinyl records, framed pictures, and decorative pieces, including a street sign displaying the album’s title.
“Hello, welcome to Abbey Road,” McCartney greeted the audience as he settled into his chair. “I’m going to play the new album for you and try and think of stuff to say about it.” Over the next hour and a half, he reflected on moments from his childhood in Liverpool and the earliest years of his bond with his Beatles bandmates.
He explained that the album includes “quite a few” tracks that revisit earlier parts of his life and shared why he often finds himself writing about the past. “It occurred to me that that’s where your big bank of information is,” he said. “If you’re Charles Dickens, you’re gonna write about how your dad was in prison or something. [The past] is a very rich field of information.”
One of those reflective tracks is ‘Down South’, an acoustic driven song that recalls McCartney hitchhiking with George Harrison when the pair first became close. “It would be me who’d suggest to John [Lennon] and George, ‘Let’s go hitchhiking’,” he remembered. “I can’t see John doing that, or George. It was my thing.” He then jokingly exaggerated his Liverpool accent while recreating the moment, before sharing a story about getting a ride on a milk float with Harrison, who ended up sitting on the battery and burning himself when the zip on his jeans touched it.
“Memories are a weird thing,” he said while wrapping up the story. “I was talking to Olivia [Harrison, George’s widow] and she said, ‘Oh yeah, George told me about that and how you got the zip burn!’ I swear it was George!”
‘Days We Left Behind’, the first single from ‘The Boys Of Dungeon Lane’, includes references to Lennon, who McCartney admitted he still gets “emotional talking about” to this day. Another track, ‘Home To Us’, reflects on life growing up in Liverpool and the working class neighbourhoods McCartney, Harrison and Ringo Starr came from. “The three of us were raised in quite poor conditions,” he told fans, laughing that when he describes the housing estates to Americans, “it sounds like Downton Abbey”. “No matter how rough it was, it was home to us.”
The song also features Starr on drums and vocals, with the two musicians trading lines throughout the track. McCartney explained that Starr originally recorded the drum parts at producer Andrew Watt’s Los Angeles studio, though the drummer became frustrated after not hearing the recording appear anywhere. McCartney later asked Watt to replay the session and described the performance as “really good – very Ringo”, which motivated him to complete the song and send it back to Starr, telling him, “‘Here you are, this is what you wanted’”.
Paul McCartney credit: Sonny McCartney / MPL Communications
When McCartney later invited Starr to contribute vocals, the drummer only returned chorus parts, leaving McCartney unsure how he felt about the song. “I thought, ‘He must hate it!’” he admitted. After speaking directly with Starr, the pair eventually understood each other properly and completed what McCartney described as the first “Paul-Ringo duet”.
Elsewhere on the album, McCartney revealed that ‘The Boys Of Dungeon Lane’ includes the first song he has ever written about his parents, ‘Salesman Saint’, which centres on perseverance through difficult periods “because they had to”. Other songs include ‘Mountaintop’, inspired by the “hippy mood” surrounding Glastonbury, and ‘Ripples In A Pond’, written as a love song dedicated to his wife Nancy.
Throughout the listening session, McCartney enthusiastically mouthed the lyrics, pretended to play drums and guitar along with the music, and occasionally grabbed an acoustic guitar to demonstrate certain melodies for the crowd. While discussing ‘Life Can Be Hard’, he played the main guitar riff live. After accidentally hitting the wrong note, he laughed and admitted, “I haven’t been practising. You’d think if you knew you were doing this, then you’d have practised.” Smiling afterward, he added: “But I don’t care!”
‘The Boys Of Dungeon Lane’ arrives on May 29 and was produced by Watt across sessions in Los Angeles and East Sussex.
Just hours after the playback event ended, it was also revealed that McCartney will appear as a guest on The Rolling Stones’ forthcoming album, ‘Foreign Tongues’. The collaboration follows his contribution to the band’s previous release, ‘Hackney Diamonds’.
NEWS
Oliver Tree’s team has provided a new update following the singer’s death in a helicopter crash on June 14, confirming that a new artist grant will soon be established in his memory to help creatives secure funding, a plan he had detailed in his will before his passing.
Accompanying a collection of photos highlighting Tree’s performances, travels and creative work through the years, a post shared Sunday (June 21) on his Instagram account revealed that the musician’s remains have been brought back to California, the state he called home and where he will be laid to rest. “His legacy will live on through his foundation/endowment named ‘Dr. Oliver Tree’s Extremely Epic Grant For Baby Geniuses’ coming soon,” the caption reads. “This is something that Oliver had put together before his passing.”
“We will make sure his wish comes to fruition so that more joy, love and art can be spread into the world, that was his final wish,” the statement continued, adding that “the constant love, support and positivity” shown by fans throughout the past week has helped his “family, friends and collaborators make it through these extremely difficult times.”
Tree was among six people who lost their lives in a helicopter collision in Rio de Janeiro. The musician was in Brazil for his The World’s First Tour run and had performed what would ultimately be his final concert on June 6 in São Paulo. The other victims of the crash were identified as passengers Lucas Vignale, Gaspar Prim and Lucas Brito Chaves, along with pilots Alexandre Souza and Charles Marsillac.
Just months before his death, Tree discussed his plans to direct his fortune and future earnings from his music toward a grant program for artists during an appearance on the Zach Sang Show. “I take no credit for anything I’ve ever done,” he said during the April interview. “Furthermore, I don’t believe that any of the wealth or things that get made from it is mine. So when I die … my will is set up so that when I pass, my family, nobody is going to get a penny.”
“If I have a wife or kids or anything, they’re not getting a penny,” he added at the time, explaining that the initiative would focus on helping artists create work rather than funding education. “I’ll get my kids through college, that’s the agreement, but there’s not gonna be a silver spoon. All the money is going to go back to artists.”
