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