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Paul McCartney has been making music with Ringo Starr since 1962, when the classic Beatles line-up was established. However, the two had never recorded a duet – until McCartney was working on his upcoming album The Boys Of Dungeon Lane and new song Home To Us felt like an ideal fit for Starr’s vocals alongside his own.
“When I wrote the song, I was talking about where we come from,” McCartney told members of the press who gathered at Abbey Road on May 5 for a preview listen of the new album. “Like many people, you come from nothing and fight your way up. Ringo came from Dingle and it was really hard. He said he used to get robbed on the way home because he was working. Even though it was crazy – it was our home.”
“I built the song around that idea and sent it to Ringo,” he continued. “He sent me back a version in which he had only added a few lines in the chorus, so I thought maybe he didn’t like it. I called him and he said he thought I only wanted him to sing a line or two. I told him I’d love to hear him sing the whole song. So we took my first line, Ringo’s second line – and we had a duet. We’d never done that before. Then we wanted background vocals, and the idea came to me “It would be nice to hear women’s voices. Chrissie Hynde said yes, and Sharleen Spiteri – they’re friends with us. So they did it.”
Nostalgia and Liverpool
Like many songs on The Boys Of Dungeon Lane, produced by Andrew Watt, Home To Us looks back on McCartney’s life with a healthy dose of nostalgia. The album title comes from a line from “Days We Left Behind,” which references an area near Liverpool’s River Mersey where McCartney played as a child. The song also recalls the “secret code” he shared with John Lennon in his childhood home. “I stand by what I said,” he sings. “The promise I made will never be broken.”
“For me it was a wealth of memories of Liverpool,” McCartney told the press, “but also of all the days we left behind. Everyone has them – school days, old friends. The song has memories of John in the middle and it’s wonderful to go back there.” When asked what the “secret code” was about with Lennon, McCartney laughed. “I won’t tell,” he said. “You invent a lot when you’re writing songs.”
McCartney travels even further into the past with “Salesman Saint,” in which he sings about his parents. “I was born in 1942, in the middle of the war,” he said. “I was too young to understand it, but my parents weren’t. My father was a firefighter and put out the fires after the bombings. My mother was a nurse and midwife. But they carried on because they had to. Like people today in Ukraine, Gaza and elsewhere.”
Early Beatles days
“Down South” is a reflection on the early days of the Beatles, while “As You Lie There” explores an unrequited childhood crush on a neighbor girl named Jasmine. “I didn’t know how to approach her. I never spoke to her,” McCartney said. “The joke was that she actually showed up later that year and knocked on the door. I was away – in the loo – so I missed Jasmine!”
A strange coincidence: On the same day that McCartney spoke to the press in London about his new album, produced by Andrew Watt, the Rolling Stones met with the press in New York City to present their new album “Foreign Tongues”, also produced by Andrew Watt. McCartney can be heard on a track recorded at the Hackney Diamonds sessions in 2023.
Neither the Rolling Stones nor Paul McCartney have currently announced concert dates, and it is unclear whether the Stones will even go on tour again. Meanwhile, Ringo Starr – who recently collaborated with producer T-Bone Burnett on his new solo album Long Long Road – kicks off the next leg of his All Starr Band tour on May 28 in Temecula, California.
