Paul McCartney on playing guitar with Paul Mescal: 'He knew it better than I did!'

"Hey, I know you!" exclaims Paul McCartney, gripping my hand as we walk into his office in central London.

I'm instantly disarmed. All my nerves evaporate. And while I'm realistic enough to know he doesn't really hold treasured memories of our previous encounters, I'm impressed by his ability to defuse the tension of Meeting A Beatle.

We gather in Soho at lunchtime. Instead of Wild Honey Pie or Savoy Truffle, McCartney has opted for a simple bagel (topping: a terrifying blend of Marmite and hummus), which he prepared in a kitchenette next to his assistant's desk.

As he eats, he scans a printed list of film titles – mainly vintage comedies – looking for something to play at his family movie night.

"It's hard to find something I haven't seen," he laments.

Lunch finished, we settle next to a Wurlitzer jukebox in the corner of the room. McCartney places his phone face down on the table – revealing a case printed with a colourful holiday photo.

"Is that the family?" I ask.

"Yeah, that's my grandkids. Four of Stella's and four of Mary's."

"They're all very bright," he beams, pointing to each one in turn and listing their Ivy League achievements. "Yale, Brown, Brown, NYU, Yale again."

"Are you an indulgent granddad?"

"Yeppp!" he confirms. "They're very lovely. I love them."

McCartney has always been known as the sentimental Beatle. A committed family man who wrote a love song defending the concept of love songs ("It isn't silly, love isn't silly," he protested).

So it's no surprise that family and friends are at the heart of his latest album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane.

Over 14 tracks, and almost as many musical styles, he delivers a suite of "memory songs" that reflect on his childhood in Liverpool, birdwatching on the banks of the Mersey and knocking about with his Beatles bandmates John Lennon, Ringo Starr and George Harrison.

"I like to go over memories, because it brings me back to the time," he says.

"It brings me back to the people."

Born in 1942, McCartney grew up in a time of transition.

The aftermath of World War Two weighed heavily on Liverpool, one of the most heavily bombed cities outside London, but a busy regeneration programme and a booming dock trade fostered an air of opportunity.

"Things were pretty good, actually," says McCartney. "My uncles and aunties and my parents were so relieved that Hitler wasn't sending these bombers any more - so it was piano, it was music, it was jokes.

"It didn't matter that you weren't that well off. They made it okay."

McCartney's father Jim infused the house with music, bashing out self-taught tunes on an old piano.

He was also a storyteller who loved wordplay – something that later informed his son's lyrics.

"He loved to do crosswords, and he would be very keen for me to know certain words that you wouldn't otherwise have known," the musician recalls.

"So I was the only kid in my class who could spell 'phlegm'."

McCartney pays tribute to his parents on the new song Salesman Saint, a tender ballad with bursts of the dancehall jazz they'd have heard on the radio while subsisting on a diet of "tea and cigarettes".

By contrast, the album's opening track, As You Lie There, finds the 83-year-old in full-on scream mode as he recalls the surging intensity of a teenage crush.

It was the first song written for the album, back in 2020, as McCartney shared a cup of tea with Andrew Watt – a producer for Lady Gaga and Katseye, who's become the go-to collaborator for ageing rockers like Ozzy Osbourne and The Rolling Stones.

"It was a green tea," the singer discloses. "I was in LA, so I thought they're not going to be able to make a good cup of builder's."

As they shot the breeze, McCartney started strumming.

"One of my recent tricks is to find any weird chord that may intrigue me," plucking the opening notes of As You Lie There on an acoustic guitar.

"I played this, and I got lucky because I don't know what that chord is.

"Somebody classically trained will be able to tell me it's a 'G demented', or whatever, but that started something."

Another song, Lost Horizon, was rescued from an early 2000s demo that McCartney's late engineer Eddie Klein had cherished.

"It was his job to archive all my old tapes and he said, 'This one's good, you should listen to it.'

"If Eddie liked it, I knew it was good. So we played it, and it was very complete.

"Sometimes, if you were working to a cassette, you'll have half the lyrics, maybe a little suggestion for the chorus - but this [song] was all there. So we copied exactly what was on that cassette, with a little extra guitar."

This raises the question: Are there other undiscovered gems sitting in the archive waiting to be released?

"Hopefully there are no more," he laughs. "But, you know, I do think about it.

"John and I used to say we should just delete the outtakes - but it's a good thing we didn't because, until recently, they were still being released, and they're not bad."

He's referring to The Beatles' Anthology project, which offered a glimpse into the band's creative process via studio outtakes and alternate versions of their biggest songs.

But, for McCartney, the most revelatory archive came from Peter Jackson's eight-hour Get Back documentary, which observed the sessions for their final album, Let It Be.

"I had a strange view of that period," he says. "It was business hell, and I was blamed for a lot of things.

"The headline on the front of the papers was, 'Paul breaks up the Beatles', and I had to shoulder all of that stuff, even though I knew it wasn't true."

He admits that the gossip and speculation, combined with bitter, post-break-up interviews by his bandmates, dented his ego.

"It changed my attitude to me," he says. "I thought 'OK, I am overbearing', and, yeah, I can be like that.

"But when I saw the film I thought, 'Oh, no, I'm not like that at all. I'm trying to make a record. I'm trying to encourage these guys to be as great as they are.'

"So it took a weight off my mind."

Perhaps that's what gave him permission to reminisce about the Fab Four on The Boys of Dungeon Lane.

He duets with Starr on Home To Us, which barrels along rambunctiously as they recall their humble origins.

Later, on the country rock-tinged Down South, he writes about hitchhiking across Europe with his bandmates in the early 1960s.

"We decided that you need a gimmick," he remembers, "and our gimmick was bowler hats.

"You'd see John and me in leather jackets and bowler hats with a guitar each slung over the shoulder. We got quite a few lifts!

"The point about all that, though, is that it bonds you. So when I came to write with John, we had all these stories and all these experiences. We understood each other very well."

The result was (spoiler alert) the most influential songwriting partnership in rock.

The Beatles' prolific output between 1963 and 1970 understandably eclipses their solo material. After the split, McCartney even likened his predicament to astronauts returning from the Moon. "What do you want to do with the rest of your life?"

He found the answer through lo-fi, experimental albums like McCartney and McCartney II, and the jet-stream rock of his 1970s band Wings.

Along the way, he tinkered with classical music on 1991's Liverpool Oratorio and released a series of dance albums as The Fireman.

Even now, his gift for melody is undimmed. Reviews for The Boys of Dungeon Lane have called it "a late-career masterpiece" (Rolling Stone) and "McCartney's best album of the 21st Century" (Variety).

McCartney says the secret is always believing he can better himself.

"I always approach it like that, yeah.

"I always think, 'The last one was OK. I enjoyed it, but I'm going to do better this time'. You have to have that attitude, just to give yourself something to aim for."

If the album has the unmistakable air of a career drawing to a close, there's nothing in McCartney's demeanour to suggest he's considering retirement.

He's fired up about plans to open a Beatles museum in London ("a terrific idea") and intrigued by Sam Mendes' forthcoming Beatles biopics.

There'll be four in all (one for each member), all due for release in 2028, with actor Paul Mescal playing McCartney.

Mescal has already been pictured on set at Liverpool's Cavern Club, with his moptop neatly in place.

Rumour has it he'll be performing all his own vocals. So has McCartney offered any tips on how to make the perfect "wooooo"?

"None! None!"

He did, however, attempt to teach the actor how to play guitar left-handed.

"He came into this office and I thought, 'Well, I'll show him how to do Blackbird'. So I picked up the guitar and started playing... and he played along exactly! I think he knew it better than I did!

"It was amazing how studied and how well-educated he was about me. So, yeah, I thought, OK, I'll leave you to it."

Perhaps, I suggest, Mescal could stand in for McCartney on his next tour.

"Yeah, that's a great idea... Not," he deadpans.

But he has taken an interest in Abba's Voyage concerts – which use hologram-like technology to make it seem like the band are performing live on stage.

"I went to see the Abba show, and I thought it was really good," says the musician.

"We were all applauding and suddenly I realised, 'Wait a minute. They're not here, but I'm applauding them!'

"I think the trick was having a live band. You were kind of persuaded [it was real]. It's a bit spooky."

Could he imagine doing something similar for The Beatles?

"There's loads of possibilities - but there's loads of possibilities anyway with The Beatles.

"There's always something cooking."