Paul McCartney Announces ‘The Lyrics: 1956 To The Present’

Coming on November 2nd is the new book, The Lyrics: 1956 To The Present by Paul McCartney. The collection, which was edited and introduced by Paul Muldoon, features "a treasure trove of material from McCartney’s personal archive — drafts, letters, photographs — never seen before, which make this also a unique visual record of one of the greatest songwriters of all time."

"Macca" wrote in the two-volume set's press release, "More often than I can count, I’ve been asked if I would write an autobiography, but the time has never been right. The one thing I’ve always managed to do, whether at home or on the road, is to write new songs. I know that some people, when they get to a certain age, like to go to a diary to recall day-to-day events from the past, but I have no such notebooks. What I do have are my songs, hundreds of them, which I’ve learned serve much the same purpose. And these songs span my entire life."

The official announcement sheds light on the book's contents:

In this extraordinary book, with unparalleled candour, Paul recounts his life and art through the prism of 154 songs from all stages of his career — from his earliest boyhood compositions through the legendary decade of The Beatles, to Wings and his solo albums to the present.

Arranged alphabetically to provide a kaleidoscopic rather than chronological account, it establishes definitive texts of the songs’ lyrics for the first time and describes the circumstances in which they were written, the people and places that inspired them, and what he thinks of them now.

Presented with this is a treasure trove of material from McCartney's personal archive — drafts, letters, photographs — never seen before, which make this also a unique visual record of one of the greatest songwriters of all time.

Despite the incredible wealth he's attained over the past 60 years, McCartney maintains that he and John Lennon enjoyed the money their songs earned, but it was hardly the main reason they wrote all the Beatles' classics: ["It's never really been a material ambition, y'know? I mean I remember we did used to sit around when we were just starting and we started to get our glimpse of number ones and we did sit 'round and kind of think, 'Okay, now we'll write a swimming pool, y'know, let's write a swimming pool. Let's write the garage and let's write the car to go in it.' Y'know? But that was never really the big incentive. I don't think that's what made us write the songs. So now, that in part of the incentive isn't particularly there because y'know, I've got the car and the garage. But I don't really think it was every what I was writing for or else I probably wouldn't write now."] SOUNDCUE (:33 OC: . . . wouldn't write now)

Paul McCartney explained that for him, songwriting is an extremely personal and often therapeutic process: ["One thing with me, I don't really want to have anyone hear me writing a song. And I don't like the idea, 'cause I'm going to make mistakes. I'm gonna put words in I hate and then I'm gonna realize I hate them, I'm gonna change it. It's good to go away somewhere that, pretty much, people aren't gonna hear you. It's good if it's got a little bit of an acoustic, so little cupboards and cellars, bathrooms and little areas like that are good. Yeah, I like to just go and hide, hide away."] SOUNDCUE (:25 OC: . . . hide hide away)