Paul McCartney on playing guitar with Paul Mescal: 'He knew it better than I did!'

"Hey, I know you!" Paul McCartney greets me with a firm handshake as we enter his central London office, instantly melting away my pre-interview jitters. While I am aware that he likely doesn’t harbor specific nostalgic thoughts about our past interactions, I am struck by his talent for neutralizing the awkwardness that often accompanies meeting a Beatle.

We meet in Soho for lunch. Rather than ordering from a menu, McCartney has prepared a simple bagel in the kitchenette beside his assistant’s desk. The topping? A shocking combination of Marmite and hummus. As he eats, he reviews a printed list of classic comedias, searching for material for his family movie night. "It’s difficult to find something I haven’t already seen," he sighs.

After lunch, we move to a corner of the room featuring a Wurlitzer jukebox. McCartney sets his phone face down on the table, displaying a case adorned with a vibrant vacation snapshot. "Is that your family?" I inquire. "Yes, those are my grandchildren," he replies with a smile. "Four from Stella and four from Mary." He beams as he points to each child, proudly reciting their academic credentials: "Yale, Brown, Brown, NYU, Yale again." When asked if he is a doting grandfather, he emphatically agrees, "Yepp! They are wonderful. I love them."

McCartney has long been recognized as the most sentimental of the Beatles. A devoted family man, he once penned a song defending the genre itself, insisting, "It isn't silly, love isn't silly." Consequently, it is fitting that his latest release, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, places family and friends at its core. Spanning 14 tracks and nearly as many genres, the album serves as a collection of "memory songs" that revisit his Liverpool childhood, birdwatching along the Mersey, and his early days with John Lennon, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison. "I enjoy revisiting memories because it transports me back to that era," McCartney explains. "It brings me back to the people."

Born in 1942, McCartney’s youth coincided with a period of significant change. Although Liverpool—one of the UK’s most heavily bombed cities outside of London—still bore the scars of World War II, a robust regeneration effort and a thriving dock industry created a sense of possibility. "Life was actually quite good," McCartney reflects. "My parents, uncles, and aunts were so relieved that Hitler had stopped sending bombers, so we focused on piano, music, and humor. Financial status didn't matter; they made life work."

McCartney’s father, Jim, filled the home with music, playing self-taught melodies on an old piano. Jim was also a lover of wordplay, a trait that influenced his son’s lyrical style. "He enjoyed crosswords and wanted me to learn specific vocabulary that most people wouldn't know," McCartney recalls. "As a result, I was the only student in my class who knew how to spell 'phlegm'."

The new album honors his parents in the tender ballad Salesman Saint, which evokes the dancehall jazz they listened to while surviving on "tea and cigarettes." In stark contrast, the album opener, As You Lie There, features an 83-year-old McCartney unleashing intense vocal power to describe the fervor of a teenage infatuation. Written in 2020 during a tea session with producer Andrew Watt—known for his work with Lady Gaga, Katseye, Ozzy Osbourne, and The Rolling Stones—the track was the first composed for the project. "It was green tea," the singer notes. "Since I was in LA, I figured they wouldn’t know how to brew a proper cup of builder’s tea." As they chatted, McCartney began strumming. "I have a habit of searching for unusual chords that catch my interest," he says, plucking the opening notes of As You Lie There on an acoustic guitar. "I played that, and got lucky, because I don'

Source: BBC News Generated at: 2026-05-27 23:13:45 UTC