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Paul McCartney returned to “Saturday Night Live” 15 months after he closed the show’s 50th anniversary special with an unforgettable “Abbey Road” medley. This time he brought the lead single from his upcoming album as well as a Wings classic. And when the show seemed almost over, McCartney added an encore.
McCartney opened with the tranquil “Days We Left Behind” from The Boys of Dungeon Lane – a song that draws on his childhood memories in and around Liverpool.
“I thought about that carefully – about the days I’ve left behind. I often wonder if I’m just writing about the past, but then I think: What else is there to write about?” McCartney, 83, said in a statement earlier this year. “There are just a lot of memories of Liverpool. There’s also a passage about John [Lennon] and Forthlin Road, the street I used to live on. Dungeon Lane is close by. I grew up in a place called Speke, a pretty working class area. We barely had anything, but it didn’t matter because the people were all great and you didn’t realize you had so little.”
McCartney’s first album since 2020
The Boys of Dungeon Lane is McCartney’s 18th solo album and his first since 2020’s McCartney III. The former Beatle worked on it with producer Andrew Watt between tour stops on his acclaimed Got Back Tour. Other tracks include “Salesman Saint” and “Home to Us,” his first duet with Ringo Starr.
McCartney’s second appearance was “Band on the Run,” the Grammy-winning title track from Wings’ 1973 album. As with “Days We Left Behind,” Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers was on drums.
McCartney, whose Wings documentary is dedicated to “Man on the Run,” made his SNL debut in 1980, a year before the band broke up. On the show’s 40th Anniversary special in 2015, he performed “Maybe I’m Amazed” from his first solo album and sang an abridged version of the Beatles song “I’ve Just Seen a Face” with Paul Simon.
Surprising addition to the season finale
On Saturday, as the credits rolled over the credits of SNL Season 51, McCartney quickly rejoined the band and performed “Coming Up” from 1980’s “McCartney II.”
