Paul McCartney has been interviewed by his Beatles biopic counterpart, Paul Mescal. Watch below.
The chat comes ahead of Macca’s new album ‘The Boys Of Dungeon Lane’, which arrives on May 29 (pre-order here), and has so far been previewed by ‘Days We Left Behind’ and ‘Home To Us’ – his first duet with Ringo Starr.
Mescal, who plays McCartney in Sam Mendes’ upcoming four-film series about the Fab Four, sat down with the music icon for In Conversation – an exclusive short film shared by Amazon.
Opening the 10-minute chat, Mescal asks McCartney: “How do you feel about being interviewed?”
“It depends if I like the person. Which is where we’re running into a problem already,” McCartney joked. “No, I find if I like who I’m being interviewed by, it comes easy.”
Mescal goes on to ask McCartney about his songwriting process on ‘The Boys of Dungeon Lane’, noting that the lyrics feature memories but still exist “in the present tense.”
“I haven’t got a formula,” McCartney said. “They used to ask me and John [Lennon], ‘How’d you do it? Who writes the music, who writes the words?’ I don’t know. To me, I think any story or song you’re gonna do, it’s gotta involve memory. With the Beatles, we always tried to write something different.”
Mescal then asked McCartney about ‘Salesman Saint’, a new song on the album written about McCartney’s parents.
“I often remember that my mom and dad had me in World War 2. I’ve always known that growing up, but at a certain point you go ‘Wow,” McCartney said. “It occurred to me that it’d be good to just put down some stuff about them carrying on through whatever they had to put up with.”
Mescal then asked McCartney about the actor’s “favourite” song on the album, the first single ‘Days We Left Behind’, which alludes to his time with Lennon.
“The collaboration you had with them all and the relationship you had with John, it’s such a full, brilliant, complicated thing, and where’s your heart with all of that now? Mescal asked.
“Looking back on your life, I ran into this guy called John Lennon, and he was fighting life — he had a lot of trouble, his dad had left home, his mom had got run over, he had a lot of trouble in there — so he was putting up a shield, so he was very witty, very biting,” McCartney said. “When it came to writing, that kind of relationship stayed there, so on this record, I might even refer to him in my mind, as if we’re still writing together.”
You can watch the full interview here.
