Paul McCartney tells us about working on The Rolling Stones’ new album: “I was glad I wasn’t blasé about it. It’s really exciting”

"I went home that day, and I’m saying to everyone, ‘I just played with The Stones!"

Paul McCartney has looked back on the “excitement” he felt while working with The Rolling Stones in NME’s latest In Conversation video series – check out what he had to say below.

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

The Beatles legend sat down with us on the eve of sharing his 19th solo album, ‘The Boys Of Dungeon Lane’, and spoke to us about his memories of the Fab Four, as well as touching on potential tours in the future.

On the latter, he said his manager had asked him about retirement when he hit 50, which he understood because “we thought 30 was really old [when] we were 20”.

“But it came, and it went,” he said. “People were still playing, and audiences like the music. 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.” Upon mentioning The Stones, we pointed out that it had just been announced that they’re releasing a new album soon, with him on it.

Marking his second appearance on a Stones record in the last few years after featuring on ‘Hackney Diamonds‘, McCartney told us it was “really exciting”, because he didn’t normally play “as a session guy”.

“It was really nice to just show up at a studio with your bass and just say, ‘Right, where do you want me?” he said. “You start playing, and they show you the song, and I start thinking, ‘I’m playing with the Stones!’

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“And I’m well chuffed! You could be a bit blasé and go, ‘Yeah, OK, so what?’ But for me, it wasn’t – it went the other way,” he said, going on to recall how he felt in the studio.

“It was like, ‘Wow, there’s Mick [Jagger]! Ooh, there’s Keith [Richards]! Woah, there’s Ronnie [Wood]!’ It was exciting. It was really good. A great thing is all I had to do was play bass and not make mistakes, so it was good.”

He said another highlight was being able to watch Richards work out the structure of the song, which on the new album, is called ‘Covered In You’. “I could hear Keith as we did various takes, working his lick out that ended up on the album, and Ronnie working his solo out, Mick working the vocal out,” he recalled.

“So yeah, I went home that day, and I’m saying to everyone, ‘I just played with The Stones!’ I was glad I wasn’t blasé about it. It’s really exciting. Not everyone plays with The Stones!”

As for Macca’s new album, 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”.

The record is the first since 2020’s ‘McCartney III’ and explores his childhood in Liverpool, the resilience of his parents, and early adventures shared with George Harrison and John Lennon before they found fame.

“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.”