Paul McCartney has compiled a book about lyrics he has penned over the last 65 years.
“More often than I can count, I’ve been asked if I would write an autobiography, but the time has never been right,” McCartney said, in a release. “The one thing I’ve always managed to do, whether at home or on the road, is to write new songs.”
The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present features 154 of McCartney’s compositions, including those for the Beatles and Wings. The two-volume, 900-page collection will go on sale Nov. 2. In Canada, it is priced at $131.
“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,” the 78-year-old music legend said. “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.”
The book includes never-before-seen photos, letters and other memories. Paul Muldoon, who edited The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, said in a release that McCartney’s “insights into his own artistic process confirm a notion at which we had but guessed — that Paul McCartney is a major literary figure who draws upon, and extends, the long tradition of poetry in English.”
McCartney said he hopes the book will give fans better insight into his songs and life. “I’ve tried to say something about how the music happens and what it means to me,” he explained, “and I hope what it may mean to others too.”
In 2001, McCartney published Blackbird Singing: Poems And Lyrics 1965 To 2001. He also wrote the 2005 children's book High in the Clouds with Philip Ardagh and 2019's Hey Grandude! with artist Kathryn Durst.