Paul McCartney has confirmed his 27th studio album, and the title recalls days of old. “The Boys of Dungeon Lane” references a winding road several miles from his childhood home that delivered the young bird-watching McCartney to the banks of the Mersey River.
The new Andrew Watt-produced LP is due on May 29; preordering is already underway. McCartney’s resonant advance single “Days We Left Behind” a website was already up and running at theboysofdungeonlane.com. Teaser posters with “The Boys of Dungeon Lane” and “L24” had also popped up. (L24 is the postcode for Speke, the London suburb where McCartney lived as a youngster that’s also home to the title roadway.)
“This is very much a memory song for me,” he said in an official statement. “The album title, “The Boys of Dungeon Lane”, comes from a lyric in this track. I was thinking just that, about the days I left behind and I do often wonder if I’m just writing about the past but then I think how can you write about anything else?”
The “Boys of Dungeon Lane” were first mentioned during a verse from “In Liverpool,” one of some 25 demos under consideration for 1993’s Off the Ground. Producer Julian Mendelsohn passed on “In Liverpool,” which included the line: “Walking with the boys of Dungeon Lane, aimlessly towards a muddy shore.”
McCartney returned to the song – and Dungeon Lane – during 2008’s Liverpool Sound concert at Anfield Stadium. “This is where my love of the country came from,” he said in Barry Miles’ biography Many Years From Now. “I was always able to take my bike and in five minutes I’d be in quite deep countryside.”
‘The Boys of Dungeon Lane’ coming May 29th
The Fat Angel Sings 