Paul McCartney and actor Paul Mescal sat down together over the weekend for an 11-minute conversation at a restaurant, debuting Monday on Amazon Live and the Amazon Music app. The interview, titled The Boys of Dungeon Lane: In Conversation with Paul McCartney & Paul Mescal, centered on McCartney's upcoming solo album of the same name, set for release on May 29.
According to Billboard, Mescal is slated to portray McCartney in director Sam Mendes' The Beatles: A Four-Film Cinematic Event, due out in April 2028. The conversation opened with a seemingly nervous Mescal asking McCartney how he felt about being interviewed. McCartney replied: "It depends if I like the person. Which is where we're running into a problem already … No, I find if I like who I'm being interviewed by it comes easy."
Mescal pressed McCartney on how he transforms personal memories into new music while keeping them feeling like they belong to the present tense. McCartney said he does not have a clear answer. "I don't know how I do it," he said. "I haven't got a formula. 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."
McCartney said he enjoys writing about Lennon and the late George Harrison because doing so feels like revisiting them. One of the new tracks, "Down South," reaches back to his and Lennon's pre-fame childhood. The album also features a collaboration with former bandmate Ringo Starr on the single "Home To Us," and a track called "Days We Left Behind," which Mescal described as looking back at McCartney's relationship with his songwriting partner.
On the subject of Lennon, McCartney reflected at length. "Looking back on your life, I ran into this guy called John Lennon, and he was fighting life — he had a lot 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."
The two also discussed a track called "Salesman Saint," written in honor of McCartney's parents. His father was a cotton salesman and his mother a nurse and midwife. "I often remember that my mom and dad had me in World War II. I've always known that growing up, but at certain point you go 'Wow,'" McCartney said of the song, in which his mother becomes, in his telling, a kind of saint.
The Boys of Dungeon Lane releases May 29.
