Paul McCartney

At 74, McCartney is touring as hard as ever, still aiming for the pop charts – and ready to look back at his extraordinary six-decade career.

- David Fricke

PAUL MCCARTNEY STRUMS AN ACOUSTIC GUITAR ON a sofa in his London office, humming to himself as he tries to recall a melody from his adolescence – one of the first, never-recorded songs he wrote with his teenage friend John Lennon, on their way to starting the Beatles in Liverpool. “It was like . . .” McCartney says, then hits a rockabilly rhythm on his guitar and sings in a familiar, robust voice: “They said our love was just fun/The day that our friendship begun/There’s no blue moon that I can see/There’s never been in history/Because our love was just fun.” ¶ “‘Just Fun,’ ” McCartney says, announcing the title proudly. “I had a little school-exercise book where I wrote those lyrics down. And in the top right-hand corner of the page, I put ‘A Lennon- McCartney original.’ It was humble beginnings,” he admits. “We developed from that.” ¶ It’s an extraordinary moment – but McCartney, 74 and currently on his latest tour of American arenas and stadiums, is never far from a performance.

Over two long interviews – first in London, then a week later in Philadelphia, backstage before a concert – McCartney often bursts into song to make a point: hitting chords from another of his teenage tunes on guitar, singing a slice of Ray Charles’ “What’d I Say,” and imitating the young Mick Jagger at an early Rolling Stones gig. On one occasion, McCartney does an impression of Lennon doing a Gene Vincent number during the Beatles’ bar-band days in Hamburg, Germany.