Paul McCartney took 50 Beatles fans back into one of the rooms that defined his life on Tuesday afternoon, hosting a playback of his next album in Studio Two at Abbey Road studios. He entered from the control room to cheers, then told the crowd, “Hello, and welcome to Abbey Road studios,” before adding, “I’m going to play the album for you and try to think of stuff to say about it.”
The session lasted more than 90 minutes and offered a glimpse of The Boys of Dungeon Lane, his first new solo album in more than five years and one he said began with a cup of tea five years ago and a meeting with producer Andrew Watt. McCartney talked about Liverpool, his friendship with John Lennon and George Harrison, and the way a chord he played became a three-chord sequence that opened the record with As You Lie There.
Studio Two made the moment carry extra weight. Between 1962 and 1970, it was where most of the Beatles’ recordings were made, and it was also the room where songs including A Hard Day’s Night, Help, Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane took shape. Much of Abbey Road, including Come Together, was assembled there as well, so the playback landed in a place that already sits in the band’s history.
McCartney said the new album was billed as his most personal to date, and the songs turn inward to postwar Liverpool, his parents’ resilience and the early adventures that led to the Beatles. He said the title came from the track Days We Left Behind, which references Dungeon Lane near the River Mersey and a promise made to Lennon at his childhood home on Forthlin Road. “This was a lot of memories of Liverpool for me,” he said, “but also any days we’ve left behind. Everyone’s got them – school, old mates.”
One of the night’s most vivid moments came when McCartney recalled the song that grew from a passing glimpse out of a window. “Up in one of the windows, there was a girl I fancied called Jasmine,” he said. “The joke was, she did show up later that year and knocked on the door. I was indisposed – I was on the toilet – so I missed Jasmine!” The story fit the mood of the album, which appears built from the kind of remembered detail that can turn private history into a song.
The release date now gives the project its next marker: The Boys of Dungeon Lane is due on 29 May. For McCartney, the playback was not just a preview but a return to the room where the Beatles’ sound was built, and a reminder that the most durable part of his work still comes from the same place — memory, melody and the urge to make them fit together. Fans who heard it first left with the sense that the album is less a look back than a summing up.
The setting also echoed the long arc of McCartney’s recent public life, which has kept him in and around major music moments without changing the fact that each new record remains an event. He is also set to appear with Will Ferrell on the next Saturday Night Live finale, while a separate report has noted that Ringo Starr gets a rare assist on Paul McCartney's new album.