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Paul McCartney sat down with Paul Mescal – the actor who portrays him in the upcoming Beatles films – to talk about his new album.
The two Pauls came together for an exclusive short film conversation, which Amazon published under the title “In Conversation”. In the 10-minute chat, filmed at the same restaurant as the album trailer, the rock star and actor discussed the nostalgic “The Boys of Dungeon Lane.”
“How do you feel about being interviewed?” asked Mescal McCartney.
McCartney on interviews
“It depends on whether I like the person. Which is already a problem for us here,” McCartney joked. “No, I notice that if I like whoever is interviewing me, it works itself out.”
Mescal asked McCartney about his songwriting process on “The Boys of Dungeon Lane” – an album whose lyrics are composed of memories but are still “in the present tense.”
“I don’t have a formula,” McCartney said. “People have me and John [Lennon] I always used to ask: ‘How do you do that? Who writes the music, who writes the lyrics?’ I don’t know it. For me, every story, every song you want to write has to contain memory. With the Beatles we were always trying to do something different.”
Songwriting and parents
Mescal then asked McCartney about new album songs like “Lost Horizon” and “Salesman Saint” – a track McCartney dedicated to his parents.
“I often think about the fact that my mother and father brought me into the world in the middle of World War II. I always knew that, but there comes a moment when you think, ‘Wow,'” McCartney said. “I realized it would be good to just record something about what they got through – whatever they had to endure.”
Mescal then asked McCartney about his “favorite song” on the album, the first single “Days We Left Behind,” which references McCartney’s time with Lennon.
The relationship with John Lennon
“This collaboration with all of them and the relationship with John – it’s such a rich, brilliant, complicated thing. How do you see it today?” Mescal asked.
“Looking back on my life, I met this guy named John Lennon and he was struggling with life – he had been through a lot of trouble, his father had left the family, his mother had been run over, he was carrying a lot – so he put up a wall, was very funny, very biting,” McCartney said. “As I was writing, that kind of relationship remained. On this album, I might even be referring to him in my mind, as if we were still writing together.”
“The Boys of Dungeon Lane” will be released on May 29th. The Beatles films with Mescal as McCartney are scheduled to hit theaters in April 2028.
