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WILL ‘MCCARTNEY III’ BE PAUL MCCARTNEY’S LAST ALBUM?

MARTIN KIELTY
Published: October 22, 2020

 

 Kevin Winter, Getty Images

Paul McCartney said he didn’t know he’d been working on his upcoming McCartney III album until he finished it. Named to emphasize the fact that it’s entirely a one-man creation like 1970’s McCartney and 1980’s McCartney II, the third instalment will be released on Dec. 11. The album's full details have not been announced yet.

Asked in a new interview with Loud and Quiet when he realized the nature of his new project, McCartney replied: “Right at the end of it. … I’d just been stockpiling tracks, and I thought, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do with all of this – I guess I’ll hang onto it.’ And then I thought, ‘Wait a minute, this is a McCartney record,’ because I’d played everything and done it in the same manner as McCartney I and II. That was a little light bulb going off, and I thought, ‘Well, at least that makes a point of explaining what I’ve been doing, unbeknownst to me.’”

McCartney had already noted that the record had come about as a result of having time on his hands during lockdown, and the lack of interruptions was the “common denominator” among all three McCartney LPs.

“After the Beatles broke up, I suddenly had a lot of time and no particular plan in mind,” he said. “And then when Wings broke up it was a similar thing. And with me, when I’ve got a lot of time, my go-to situation is, ‘Well, write and record then – that’s something to do when you’ve got some spare time.’ So, this was similar, but it was the pandemic that stopped things. We were due to go on a European tour this year, but very early on, Italy got the virus, and gradually all of the other gigs, including Glastonbury, which was going to be the culmination of it, got knocked out. So then it was, ‘Okay, well, what am I going to do?’ And that’s my fallback situation: to write and record.”

McCartney also addressed the rumor the new album will be his last. “Everything I do is always supposed to be my last," he said. "When I was 50 – ‘That’s his last tour.’ And it was like, ‘Oh, is it? I don’t think so.’ It’s the rumor mill, but that’s okay. When we did Abbey Road, I was dead, so everything else is a bonus.”