Paul McCartney talks hitchhiking, Beatles memories and magic mushrooms

Paul McCartney's first new solo album in five years, The Boys of Dungeon Lane is collection of rare and revealing glimpses into memories never-before shared, along with some newly inspired love songs as the legend turns the lens inward.

Here McCartney himself takes listeners back to where it all began with a track-by-track commentary on his music offering plenty of great tales along the way.

As You Lie There - "I like to start a song by just getting like a really crazy little chord that I've never done before. I don't know what it is even, you know...sometimes that can give me inspiration to write a song....That's the sort of weird chord. And I changed one note in it, and then it became a three chord sequence anyway. And we told, that's quite goodso that started the album.

(Its the) first track where we got together, me and (producer) Andrew (Watt), I knew he'd been working with Chad of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, so we got round to drums. We'd done the guitars and stuff.

"And I said, 'okay, are we going to use for drums? He said, why don't you have a go?' I said, 'Oh, no. What about Chad?' He said, 'No, no you should have a go. So I ended up drumming on the whole album, except for one track."

Lost Horizon - "Eddie Klein, who originated in Abbey Road and who came to build my studio for me in Sussex - he's passed away now, beautiful little guy. One day we were doing something, and he was transferring from cassettes to DAT remember that? He said, ' Do you remember a song called Lost Horizon?'

"I said, no'. He said, well I think you should listen to it. it's quite good. So I listened to it and, yeah, I couldn't believe that it was so complete. I think I'd just done it on holiday one afternoon, just it was in the right mood, and just sort of made it. So, I thanked him, and we actually just kind of copied it. Just with a modern sound."

Days We Left Behind - This next song is like very much a memory song for me. I was doing an interview, saying songwriters and writers in general, what else can you draw on besides the past? I mean, it you can do the present, but still a lot of the past in there. So anyway, this is the past.

"It's just a lot of memories of Liverpool for me and that involves a little bit in the middle about John (Lennon). Forthlin road, which is where the street I used to live in. And this is where the title of the album Boys of Dungeon Lane came from, because Dungeon Lane's a place near where I used to live, I used to live in a place called Speke, which is working class, only looking back on it, you think, 'Yeah, we didn't have much at all.

"But as they always say, it didn't matter, because it was like, all the people were so great, you didn't notice that you didn't have much."

Ripples On A Pond - "This next song is called Ripples on a Pond, and it's just basically a love song. There's no big story to it. We did it in the studio. And then with a few of these things that we did in Sussex, and we'd take it to Andrew (Watt) and says on this one, ' you know, the thing is Andrew - you're like supposed to be like a pop producer. You know, and we're making all (pop songs) these, right? It doesn't sound like pop to me.

"I said, 'So this one could pop it up. Come on. So the first thing he started to was swearing at his engineer. I said, 'that's poppable."

Mountain Top - "We go to Glastonbury, (my wife) Nancy is a real live music fan. So if anything's on, you know, she's, 'Oh, can we go and I'm like, Yeah,Im sure it's very good'. Neil Young, great. That's the stuff I love.

Having been to Glastonbury quite a bit, I started fantasising about some young girl tripping at Glastonbury. So, you know, she's magic mushroom'd out. So, things you write songs about right?"

Down South - I talk about reminiscing. I often think about George and John, obviously, and we used to hitchhike, before the Beatles, in the days when you could, you know. Now you I'd warn my kids and grandkids don't do it, you know 'cause there's too many nutters out there now, it didn't seem to be as many then, probably were, but anyway. So it was safer.

"So I suggested to George, should we hitchhike? We're very young. You know, like I said, before the Beatles, I had got a tip, someone said, 'You start off in Chester, 'cause that's where like all the lorries are, and they're all going straight down south'. So that's a good place to get you first lift. And these are just a couple of the memories of me and George heading down south.

"There should be like another 50 verses, but it was great, it was really bonding, that kind of thing where you'd drawn out of money and you had to figure out how you were going to get it and visit my cousin, who was working at Butlins, who had a bit of money. Nice one. So it's just basically me on a guitar, remembering those hitchhiking things with George."

We Two - "A lot of the Beatles records were made on four track Studer machine, which is such a classic, you know, but I tell people, it's four little tracks and we made Day in the Life on this machine with four little tracks. So what you would do is record two tracks, like drum and bass, and then you'd mix that, you get it the correct balance. That's why they were all called balance engineers. They'd send that to one of the other empty tracks, to bounce it to the empty track.

"So now you had three tracks. So then you would do the system over and over and over again. And you could put an orchestra on one. So I was talking to Andrew about all this. He loves all these legends of the past, he said, 'Can we use it now?' And luckily, it's in full working order.

"So we did this next track on that. I think it's worked out nicely. It's just a little love song. But the thing about the Studer and the four track it's the width of the tape... you get a bigger noise. So the thing I'm impressed with and Andrew's impressed with is the snare drum sound. The best snare drum sound in the world, he said modestly."

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