Paul McCartney is set to appear in conversation at London’s Southbank Center on November 5 to discuss his new book, The Lyrics.
The Beatles legend’s book, The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, will recount the musician’s life through his earliest boyhood compositions, songs by The Beatles and Wings, and from his lengthy solo career. The book is set to be published on November 2.
As well as the in-person event, the conversation will also be livestreamed globally. Tickets for the Southbank event and livestream both go on sale at 10am BST on Friday (September 17).
Last month, McCartney revealed the list of the 154 songs featured in the book. That list is now available to view.
This career-spanning selection also includes a set of lyrics to an unrecorded Beatles song: “Tell Me Who He Is.” During the writing of The Lyrics, the hand-written lyrics were discovered in one of Paul’s notebooks, believed to date back to the early 1960s.
Showcasing many further treasures from Paul’s archive, The Lyrics includes hand written lyric sheets, unseen personal photographs, drafts, and drawings. Each song is accompanied by a commentary by Paul McCartney giving a unique insight into his creative process.
To accompany the new book, the British Library has announced it will host a free display entitled Paul McCartney: The Lyrics (November 5 2021 – March 13 2022), which will celebrate the songwriter and performer and feature previously unseen lyrics from his personal archive. Handwritten lyrics and photographs spanning McCartney’s career will reveal the process and people behind some of the most famous songs of all time, from his earliest compositions through legendary decades of The Beatles and Wings to the present.
“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.” – Paul McCartney, Foreward to The Lyrics.
