At 83, Paul McCartney is looking back for his 18th solo LP, exploring formative flirtations, family singalongs, and even his own birth. The album, titled The Boys of Dungeon Lane, has been billed as a collection of rare and revealing glimpses into memories never before shared. It is rich with sonic detail: skylarks, train whistles, and the sound of a bus braking. But the record is no syrupy exercise in nostalgia; instead it offers an adventurous and youthfully energetic take on guitar music.
McCartney casts his mind back to the earliest sounds he can remember. 'OK, well, now we get into dubious territory, because I have a feeling I can remember being born,' he says. 'Highly dubious, highly dubious, but I feel the white tiles and chrome instruments and the sounds … It’s probably total bullshit. In fact, it almost certainly is. An imagined memory! And I was a forceps delivery.' He pauses, his face full of warmth and mischief. 'I don’t quite understand what that is. I think they had to pull me out with some pliers.'
He recalls other memories: at infant school, running indoors with classmates; at 10 years old, living on Western Avenue in Speke, 'hanging out on the grass verge of the dual carriageway, with girls, and listening to them chatting, and one of them said, “You’ve got great eyelashes!”' There were family singalongs of songs like Carolina Moon and Red, Red Robin, and a joke told by an uncle, for which he can only remember the punchline: 'Repartee.' He can remember the first time he heard the word 'ubiquitous'. 'Lots of memories,' he says. 'Really deep. They’d be absolutely meaningless to anyone else, really.'
McCartney says that when he writes songs, 'I don’t particularly know what’s going to come out.' He didn’t think there was 'anything conscious' behind the decision to revisit his past – it was just an opportunity for storytelling. The Dungeon Lane of the album title was a birdwatching destination close to the house on Ardwick Road where the McCartney family moved in 1950. 'Rows and rows and rows of council houses,' he says. 'But they were great council houses.' The marked upgrade was the indoor toilet.
