{"id":473690,"date":"2026-06-03T06:58:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T06:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/473690\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T06:58:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T06:58:11","slug":"paul-mccartney-on-if-hes-ever-likely-to-retire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/473690\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul McCartney on if he’s ever likely to retire"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul McCartney<\/a> has revealed to NME that he is unsure if he will ever retire from recording and touring.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Beatles<\/a>\u00a0legend released his latest solo album \u2018The Boys Of Dungeon Lane<\/a>\u2019 last week (May 29), a poignantly nostalgic\u00a0record\u00a0that sees McCartney reflect on his years growing up in Liverpool. It includes a duet with\u00a0Ringo Starr<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0\u2018Home To Us<\/a>\u2019, as well as the tearjerker lead single \u2019Days We Left Behind<\/a>\u2019.<\/p>\n

Ahead of the\u00a0album\u2019s\u00a0release,\u00a0McCartney sat down with\u00a0NME\u00a0to look forwards and back on his extraordinary career<\/a>, and we asked him whether he can imagine ever walking away from being an active musician.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0know. I never know,\u00a0y\u2019know?\u201d\u00a0he\u00a0replied. \u201cI remember when I was 50 years old, my manager at the time said, \u2018Well, are you thinking of retiring?\u2019 I went, \u2018Uh, I don\u2019t think so.\u2019 But he\u00a0obviously thought,\u00a050\u2026 which, I get it, because we thought 30 was\u00a0really old\u00a0[when] we were 20.\u00a0So\u00a030 was like\u00a0that\u2019d\u00a0be unseemly, but it came, and it went, and people were still playing, and audiences like the music.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u00a0era\u00a0in person. \u201cIf the music is from that period, they\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0get to hear it live any other way, so\u00a0you\u2019ve\u00a0got to hear\u00a0Neil Young<\/a>\u00a0live to get the whole feel of Neil \u2013 the Neil feel. Same with a lot of bands \u2013\u00a0the Stones<\/a>,\u00a0The Eagles<\/a>.\u00a0There\u2019s\u00a0nothing like it.\u201d<\/p>\n

McCartney also said that he continues to be inspired by the process of songwriting itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cCreative satisfaction is just writing a song \u2013 it\u2019s still the same old satisfaction that it was,\u201d he explained. \u201cThere\u2019s something magical about it, and I often think, \u2018I never set out to be a singer-songwriter person.\u2019 When I was at school, I thought the only thing left for me would be a teacher, because I didn\u2019t have massive qualifications and unfortunately, that mean[t] you have to be a teacher.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I got\u00a0in\u00a0the band, and it just led me to this. So,\u00a0the satisfaction\u00a0is just being able to write a song and, if you pull it off,\u00a0that\u2019s\u00a0the same satisfaction that it always was. Some of them you pull off better than others, but\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0still\u00a0a great thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

He concluded: \u201cIt\u2019s still a great achievement to sit down with, let\u2019s say, my guitar and there\u2019s nothing there, and I\u2019m just noodling around, and suddenly, maybe after three or four hours, I\u2019ve got a song. I know how it goes, and I\u2019ve written the lyrics down, and it\u2019s a real achievement. That still is a magic feeling for me. I think that\u2019s the creative buzz still, and hopefully always will be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elsewhere in the interview,\u00a0McCartney spoke about his \u201cexcitement\u201d at contributing to the new album from The Rolling Stones<\/a>, saying he was thankful that he was not \u201cblas\u00e9\u201d\u00a0about it.<\/p>\n

NME\u00a0gave \u2018The Boys Of Dungeon Lane\u2019 a glowing four-star review<\/a>, with Jordan Bassett describing it as \u201ca guided tour of the long and winding road\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cElsewhere, against all odds, given that this album arrives some 63 years after the Beatles\u2019 debut \u2018Please Please Me\u2019, Macca actually makes history on \u2018The Boys Of Dungeon Lane\u2019,\u201d the review reads. \u201cRemarkably, the jaunty \u2018Home To Us\u2019 is his first-ever duet with Ringo Starr, who assists him in celebrating their rough-and-tumble hometown. \u2018Days We Left Behind\u2019, though, is the album\u2019s real tear-jerker, as Paul nods to the \u201csecret code\u201d he shared with John Lennon but will never reveal.<\/p>\n

\u201cStill, despite the absence of any real bombshells, it\u2019s a pleasure to accompany McCartney as he gets back to where he once belonged.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paul McCartney has revealed to NME that he is unsure if he will ever retire from recording and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":473691,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[146,85,46,409,1548],"class_list":["post-473690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-music","tag-rock"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}