Hi, QuestLove fans! Listen to McCartney: A Life in Lyrics hosted by Paul McCartney! A new masterclass podcast that dives into an improvised journey with one of the most beloved figures in popular music. Each episode is centered on one song in McCartney’s catalog – from early Beatles to his solo work. Don't just take our word for it, check out the trailer to decide for yourself!
About McCartney: A Life in Lyrics: McCartney: A Life in Lyrics is a master class, a memoir, and an improvised journey with one of the most beloved figures in popular music: Paul McCartney. Each episode is centered on one song in McCartney’s catalog – from early Beatles to his solo work. Over the course of the podcast, listeners sit in on conversations between McCartney and the poet Paul Muldoon about the people, experiences, and art that inspired McCartney’s songwriting. The stories are richly interwoven with music and sounds contemporary to each song, providing a revelatory, entertaining window into a truly iconic creative genius. The first season is 24 episodes, but there is a treasure trove of tapes of more than 150 of McCartney’s songs.
Listen to McCartney: A Life in Lyrics on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts!
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Episode Transcript
I wanted to become a person who wrote songs, and
I wanted to be someone who's life was in music.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
I'm Paul muldoon and you're listening to McCartney a life
in lyrics. I'm a poet, a lover of the lyric,
poem and the song lyric. And over the past several
years I've been fortunate to spend time with one of
the greatest songwriters of our era.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
And will you look at me? It's happened. I'm going
on to I'm actually a performer? Am I actually a songwriter?
Speaker 3 (00:42):
My god?
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Well have that cryptor hoy?
Speaker 2 (00:45):
That is Sir Paul McCartney. Together we worked on the
Lyrics nineteen fifty six to the Present, which looked at
more than one hundred and fifty tracks from McCartney's songbook.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Letter.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
You can't really talk about music because it's music. It's
purposely not talking. It's playing it sounds, you know, So
it's quite nice, it's quite liberating.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Things slip out like they would in a session with
a psychiatrist.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
It took us a long time to get through the
songs we included in the book, and we recorded many
hours of conversations, drawing our details from McCartney's memory and
hidden meanings from the music.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Well, the book on me, this smart my head was
in the world. It was like going back to an
old snapshot album looking back on work I hadn't thought
much about for quite a few years.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
For most of the conversations, we were sitting across from
each other, looking at print outs of.
Speaker 4 (02:06):
The lyrics behind the shelter in the middle of around
in the selling poppies from.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Funnily enough, a lot of Americans thought she was selling puppies.
I say, puppies. There's another interesting image, a tray full
of puppies, and now she's selling poppies. I now she
feels as interesting to play she is. Anyway, that's very
sort of sixties did.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
GEZW.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
We never thought anyone would hear these tapes, most of
which were captured on small recording devices placed on the
table in front of us, or occasionally we recorded over
video chat. You might hear the clinking of teacups, doorbell chimes,
or us chatting over lunch. We were just logging the stories,
(03:04):
preparing for the book and getting to know one another.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
And at the top of the page, I've written another
Leonard McCartney original.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
Yes, so you already had a sense even though you
were what sixteen, you had a sense of your being
a teen and that you will have a future.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Yeah. I think it was more a sort of wish
than a sense. It's more in this thing, if you
visualize it, it might come true.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
When we listened back to the tips, we realized there
was something very special happening in these conversations. They were,
in a sense, an oral history of popular music.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
And sometimes when I'm singing, I'll be for to get
that little voice.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Oh it was McCartney unfiltered.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
It helps me reach a place that that's just yes.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Many times over the years, Paul McCartney has been asked
to write his autobiography. It's a request he's always denied,
never feeling it to be the right time. But as
we ventured out on this journey, line by line, it
became clear how much of McCartney's biography is indeed embedded
(04:43):
in the lyrics.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Has this Liverpool sprung from its people? I have the
people sprung from.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Liverpool, going all the way back to his childhood in Liverpool.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
He is so sorry unc Cloudbush work with my dad in.
Speaker 5 (05:03):
Cotton firm and they would get pissed.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
A lot of the.
Speaker 5 (05:07):
Uncles were referred to as piss artists. They drink a bit,
yeah oh, Cloud would stand on the table and recite
the Bible shit, you know, keep everyone straight in the.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Way of the light.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Even if the lyrics aren't strictly autobiographical, every song in
McCartney's repertoire is tied to vivid memories, his initial inspiration,
his writing process, his performances.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Hey hey ha ha ha hey.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
And then there were the meanings that snuck their way
into the lyrics, the strange echoes and insights of which
McCary and he wasn't aware when he put pen to paper,
but has since come to recognize in his own work.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Yesterday, all my trouble seems so far. I mean, the
fact that I dreamed the song yesterday leads me to
believe that it's not just quite as cot and dried
as we think it is. And so I say, you know,
you just throw some words in a bowl and then
(06:30):
pull them out. They will achieve some sort of resonance.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Throughout our talks we also realized how much we held
in common. We both lived our childhoods in black and
white and watched the world change into technicolor, yourself in
a bone on a river.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Boy, were you lucky to grow up in that with
that transition from black and white to color.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Yes, you were an active for some that that's one
of the reasons why it did go to the color
was because of you.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
It's true. I mean, obviously I see how it happened
to me, not realizing that in me expressing how it
happened to me, I was making it happen.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
We went song by song, but as you will hear
our conversations often spread from the songs themselves. As McCartney
reflected on the lyrics that tell the story of his life,
I'm a coat and grab.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
My hat because it's an experiment, an ongoing experiment. As
you follow the trail of breadcruns.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
You're surprised, often to find yourself in the next line.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
This is McCartney, a life in lyrics, a masterclass, a memoir,
and an improvised journey with one of the most iconic
figures in popular music.
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