Sir Paul McCartney’s first songwriting attempt “kind of turned into a therapy session.”
Sir Paul McCartney
The Beatles legend penned ‘I Lost My Little Girl’ when he was 14 years old and although at the time he felt he was exercising his creativity, he later came to realise it was also helping him to process his grief over his mother Mary, who passed away in 1956 after suffering an embolism following an operation for breast cancer.
The 79-year-old musician told fans in a video on his official website: “It kind of turned into a therapy session, because 'I thought I was happily writing a little pop song when I was 14, but if you look at the timing of it I had just lost my mother.
“When you think about that, the song seems to have a much deeper meaning that I hadn't noticed before: the possibility of it being subliminally written about her.
“I've always said 'Let It Be' was written after dreaming of my mum, but some of the lyrics from 'Yesterday' might have been to do with my mum as well.
“Then there were surprising memories that would come out, like when I got into talking about John [Lennon] and was reminded of the hitchhiking trips we'd taken as kids, and with George [Harrison].”
Paul - who is married to Nancy Shevell and has five children from previous relationships - has reflected on his lyrics over the years in new book ‘The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present’, and he admitted it was "interesting" going back to the time when he wrote the songs to remember what was happening at the time and it was a "nice process" to reflect back.
He continued: “I think the whole process of analysing the songs took me to stuff that I hadn't thought of recently, not because I didn't want to, but because there was never a clue, never a prompt, never a trigger to think about those things.”
'That was the interesting thing about making this book.
“I had to go back in my memory to see how I'd written that song, why I'd written it and any interesting side stories.”
“It became about more than just the songs: it became the memories that the songs evoked.”
“It was a nice process, actually.”
“Better that being with a psychiatrist!”
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