Two Beatles. One song. Several misunderstandings. And a friendship that goes back further than most people can imagine.
At a private listening party for his upcoming album The Boys of Dungeon Lane in Los Angeles, Paul McCartney sat down with a small audience and told the story of how "Home to Us" - his first-ever vocal duet with Ringo Starr - almost never came together the way it did.
It started simply enough. McCartney was working with producer Andrew Watt and invited Starr to stop by the studio to lay down some drums. Starr did exactly that - and then, by his own assumption, his job was done. McCartney later asked Watt to pull up what Ringo had recorded, listened back, and thought it was genuinely great. The solution: build an entire song around it, send it to Ringo, and complete the circle.
There was only one problem. When McCartney sent the demo over, Starr sent back a version where he had only sung on the chorus. McCartney assumed that meant Ringo didn't like the song. He rang him. Turns out Starr simply thought that was all McCartney wanted. One phone call later, Starr came back, recorded the whole track line by line, and the two men had something neither of them had ever made before in over sixty years of friendship.
"We decided to give one line to me, the next line to Ringo," McCartney said at the event. "It was really nice, because we've never done that. Ringo's never just taken a duet with one of the Beatles."
The song is rooted in memory - both men growing up in working-class Liverpool before the world knew who they were. McCartney from Allerton, Starr from the Dingle, a tougher part of the city. At the same listening party, McCartney also shared a story about hitchhiking through Wales with a young George Harrison before the Beatles existed - the two of them cramming into a milk van, Harrison sitting on the battery, with a zip mark to prove it afterward. The kind of story that only survives when two people have known each other long enough to keep telling it.
At 83 and 85 respectively, McCartney and Starr are the last two standing from the group that changed popular music forever. "Home to Us" is the sound of what remains - not nostalgia, but something more honest than that. The gratitude of two men who made it home.
The Boys of Dungeon Lane drops May 29 via MPL/Capitol Records. "Home to Us" is streaming now on all platforms.
Watch full Interview Here: Paul McCartney - The Boys of Dungeon Lane LA Listening Party (Home to Us)
Related Articles:
