Paul McCartney stopped by the The Rest Is History podcast and sat down with host Tom Holland for a sprawling conversation that covered everything from how he wrote his first song at 14 soon after his mother’s death to how wartime resilience shaped the Beatles.
McCartney also previewed his upcoming song “Salesman Saint” from his latest album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, set to release May 29. The track begins around the 8:17 mark in the episode below and features Macca taking a walk down memory lane as he sings, “My father was a salesman/ My mother was a saint/ Working every God given minute to make enough to pay the rent/The war was nearly over/The peace would soon begin.”
After sharing a snippet of the track with Holland, McCartney discusses witnessing his mother’s courage and profession as a midwife. “I have one big memory of her,” he recalled, detailing that it was during the winter after a heavy snowfall. “She got called to go to a birth — call the midwife — and so she got on her bike, because they didn’t have cars. She got on her bike in this deep snow, with her uniform on, with a little suitcase on the back and a little basket on the front. And I have this memory, in the street lights, of her cycling out through the snow and thinking, wow, that’s pretty brave.”
He also shared how he wrote his first song when he was 14, shortly after his mother died. “I remember the things that appealed to me about that song. The song was called ‘I Lost My Little Girl,’ and someone pointed out to me, my mum had died not too long before that. So probably, at the back of my mind, a therapist would say that’s what this was about. But the guitar was your therapist.”
Elsewhere in the interview, McCartney delved into how growing up in Liverpool shaped both his childhood and the spirt of the Beatles. “I do think the character of Liverpool is a very strong one. I think with the Irish influence and then coming through the war, and having to be happy when bombs were falling, there was a lot of music when I was a kid. My dad played the piano at home. There were a lot of jokes. And so they kept their heads above water by laughing at the whole thing. And I think that was something that found its way into the Beatles,” he said. “I think it gave us a good sense of humor — that no matter what we were going to do, like arrive in America and have the New York press ready to make fun of us, we gave as good as we got. And that was because of our Liverpool upbringing.”
The Boys of Dungeon Lane, which was produced by Andrew Watt, includes many songs looking back on the singer’s early days, including one about his friendship with John Lennon titled, “Home to Us.” (The single is also McCartney’s first duet with Ringo Starr.) In March, he released “Days We Left Behind,” and like much of the album, the track is steeped in McCartney’s childhood memories, with his upcoming LP even drawing its title from one of the song’s lyrics.
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