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?
Speaker 3: It's happened.
Speaker 1: I'm going on to I'm actually a performer, I'm I
Speaker 1: actually am a songwriter. My god, well that.
Speaker 2: That crypt hoy, That is Sir Paul McCartney. Together we
Speaker 2: worked on the Lyrics nineteen fifty six to the Present,
Speaker 2: which looked at more than one hundred and fifty tracks
Speaker 2: from McCartney's songbook.
Speaker 1: Letter. You can't really talk about music because it's music.
Speaker 1: It's purposely not talking. It's playing it sounds, you know,
Speaker 1: So it's quite nice, it's quite liberating. Things slip out
Speaker 1: like they would in a session with 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 mon 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 1: The lyrics behind the shelter and the middle of around
Speaker 1: in the selling poppies from Funnily enough, a lot of
Speaker 1: Americans thought she was selling puppies. I say, puppies. There's
Speaker 1: another interesting image, a tray full of puppies, and now
Speaker 1: she's sell poppies. I now she feels as interesting to
Speaker 1: play she is. Anyway, that's very sort of sixties did
Speaker 1: gees anyw.
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 in my come Truely.
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'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?
Speaker 2: I have the people sprung from Liverpool, going all the
Speaker 2: way back to his childhood in Liverpool.
Speaker 3: Is so sorry, uncal.
Speaker 1: Clouds work with my dad in Cotton firm, and they
Speaker 1: would get pissed. A lot of the uncles were referred
Speaker 1: to as piss artists. They drink a bit. Yeah oh,
Speaker 1: Cloud would stand on the table and recite the Bible
Speaker 1: summaris shit, you know, keep everyone straight in the way
Speaker 1: 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: McCarry 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.
Speaker 3: Yourself in a bone.
Speaker 1: On a river. Boy, were you lucky to grow up
Speaker 1: in that, with that transition from black and white to color?
Speaker 2: Yes, but you were inactive 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.
Speaker 1: His life, I'm a coat and grab my hat because
Speaker 1: it's an experiment, an ongoing experiment. As you follow the
Speaker 1: trail of redcruns, you're surprised, often to find yourself in
Speaker 1: 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.