Sir Paul McCartney can still remember writing his first-ever song on a guitar after losing his mother as a teenager.
Remembering Mary
The Beatles legend was 14 or 15 when he wrote I Lost My Little Girl. It didn’t get an official release until his 1991 album Unplugged (The Official Bootleg). He has reflected on the way playing guitar helped him cope with the death of Mary.
Appearing on The Rest Is History podcast, he told host Tom Holland, “I remember the things that appealed to me about that song. The song was called I Lost My Little Girl, and someone pointed out to me, my mum had died not too long before that.”
“So probably, at the back of my mind, a therapist would say that’s what this was about. But the guitar was your therapist.”
Paul’s love for his late mother shines through on his upcoming album The Boys of Dungeon Lane. The album drops on May 29.
On one of the songs, Salesman Saint, the 83-year-old musician pays tribute to Mary again as he reflects on years gone by.
In a snippet shared on the podcast, he sings, “My father was a salesman/ My mother was a saint/ Working every God given minute to make enough to pay the rent/The way was nearly over/The peace would soon begin.”
Memories of His Mother
After listening to the track, Paul shared “one big memory” he still has of his mother. It was in wintertime after a heavy snowfall.
He recalled, “She got called to go to a birth — call the midwife — and so she got on her bike, because they didn’t have cars.”
“She got on her bike in this deep snow, with her uniform on, with a little suitcase on the back and a little basket on the front.”
“And I have this memory, in the street lights, of her cycling out through the snow and thinking, wow, that’s pretty brave.”
New Album
The new album is a trip down memory lane. The track Home To Us was inspired by his and Sir Ringo Starr’s upbringing in Liverpool, England. It led to the bandmates’ first-ever duet.
McCartney appeared at a special preview of the record for fans at Abbey Road studios. He revealed, “Ringo went round to the studio and drummed a bit.”
“I said to [producer Andrew Watt], we should make a track and send it to him. So this song is done totally with Ringo in mind …”
“In writing the song I’m talking about where we came from. In common with a lot of people, you come from nothing and you build yourself up.”
“Ringo was from the Dingle [area of Liverpool], and that was well hard. He said he used to get mugged coming home, because he worked. Even though it was crazy, it was home to us.”