Much of the advance press for Paul McCartney's twentieth solo album, The Boys Of Dungeon Lane, focussed on the fact that the 14-song collection features the first-ever duet between McCartney and Ringo Starr, the two surviving members of The Beatles. Initially Starr had only planned to sing a line or two on the nostalgic Home To Us, the track in question, but McCartney talked him into in a full duet.
“In writing the song I’m talking about where we came from," McCartney stated earlier this month. "Ringo was from the Dingle, and that was well hard. He said he used to get mugged coming home, because he worked. Even though it was crazy, it was home to us."
Another song on the album, Down South, reflects upon the days when McCartney, and his teenage friends George Harrison and John Lennon would go hitchhiking together. Inevitably, discussing the song in promotional interviews for the record has stirred up emotional memories for McCartney, and led him to reflect on the pair's passing.
In a new interview with The Guardian, McCartney recalls Beatles producer George Martin once telling him that one terrible aspect of getting older is that "all your mates start popping off."
"Now I’m probably at that age," McCartney says, "and I’m very conscious of that, having lost John and George– two big touchstones for anything we’re talking about.
"You do miss them," he adds. "I start to get very sad, and I have to think, Wow, wait a minute, everyone misses them, it’s not just me. So that makes me feel a bit better. I think: Well, sod it, it’s life, and it’s what we’ve got."
Another second on the record, Days We Left Behind, references 20 Forthlin Road in Liverpool, the house in which McCartney and Lennon first started writing songs together.
"We nearly always sat together on two acoustic guitars and just threw ideas at each other and bounced off each other,” McCartney reflects in an interview with the New York Times. "Looking back on it, I couldn’t have looked for a better partner."
The Boys of Dungeon Lane is out today.
