Paul McCartney on if he’s ever likely to retire

“Creative satisfaction is just writing a song – it’s still the same old satisfaction that it was"

Paul McCartney has revealed to NME that he is unsure if he will ever retire from recording and touring.

• READ MORE: Paul McCartney – ‘The Boys Of Dungeon Lane’ review: a guided tour of the long and winding road

The Beatles legend released his latest solo album ‘The Boys Of Dungeon Lane’ last week (May 29), a poignantly nostalgic record that sees McCartney reflect on his years growing up in Liverpool. It includes a duet with Ringo Starr on ‘Home To Us’, as well as the tearjerker lead single ’Days We Left Behind’.

Ahead of the album’s release, McCartney sat down with NME to look forwards and back on his extraordinary career, and we asked him whether he can imagine ever walking away from being an active musician.

“I don’t know. I never know, y’know?” he replied. “I remember when I was 50 years old, my manager at the time said, ‘Well, are you thinking of retiring?’ I went, ‘Uh, I don’t think so.’ But he obviously thought, 50… which, I get it, because we thought 30 was really old [when] we were 20. So 30 was like that’d be unseemly, but it came, and it went, and people were still playing, and audiences like the music.”

He went on to explain that he is conscious of the fact that there are increasingly few opportunities for fans to hear the music from his era in person. “If the music is from that period, they don’t get to hear it live any other way, so you’ve got to hear Neil Young live to get the whole feel of Neil – the Neil feel. Same with a lot of bands – the Stones, The Eagles. There’s nothing like it.”

McCartney also said that he continues to be inspired by the process of songwriting itself.

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“Creative satisfaction is just writing a song – it’s still the same old satisfaction that it was,” he explained. “There’s something magical about it, and I often think, ‘I never set out to be a singer-songwriter person.’ When I was at school, I thought the only thing left for me would be a teacher, because I didn’t have massive qualifications and unfortunately, that mean[t] you have to be a teacher.”

“But I got in the band, and it just led me to this. So, the satisfaction is just being able to write a song and, if you pull it off, that’s the same satisfaction that it always was. Some of them you pull off better than others, but it’s still a great thing.”

He concluded: “It’s still a great achievement to sit down with, let’s say, my guitar and there’s nothing there, and I’m just noodling around, and suddenly, maybe after three or four hours, I’ve got a song. I know how it goes, and I’ve written the lyrics down, and it’s a real achievement. That still is a magic feeling for me. I think that’s the creative buzz still, and hopefully always will be.”

Elsewhere in the interview, McCartney spoke about his “excitement” at contributing to the new album from The Rolling Stones, saying he was thankful that he was not “blasé” about it.

NME gave ‘The Boys Of Dungeon Lane’ a glowing four-star review, with Jordan Bassett describing it as “a guided tour of the long and winding road”.

“Elsewhere, against all odds, given that this album arrives some 63 years after the Beatles’ debut ‘Please Please Me’, Macca actually makes history on ‘The Boys Of Dungeon Lane’,” the review reads. “Remarkably, the jaunty ‘Home To Us’ is his first-ever duet with Ringo Starr, who assists him in celebrating their rough-and-tumble hometown. ‘Days We Left Behind’, though, is the album’s real tear-jerker, as Paul nods to the “secret code” he shared with John Lennon but will never reveal.

“Still, despite the absence of any real bombshells, it’s a pleasure to accompany McCartney as he gets back to where he once belonged.”