Paul McCartney has shared the story behind ‘Home To Us’, a new track from his upcoming album The Boys Of Dungeon Lane, revealing how an unfinished Ringo Starr drum session evolved into a completed collaboration. During an intimate Los Angeles listening event in April 2026, McCartney also reflected on memories from before The Beatles, including a hitchhiking trip with George Harrison that became part of the album’s personal narrative.
by Paul Cashmere
Paul McCartney used a private first listen session in Los Angeles in April 2026 to reveal the unexpected origins of one of the key songs on his forthcoming album The Boys Of Dungeon Lane, with the former Beatle explaining how a casual studio appearance by Ringo Starr eventually became a full recording on the new track ‘Home To Us’.
The event brought together a small audience of invited fans, with McCartney and producer Andrew Watt walking listeners through the stories and memories connected to the new material. Rather than presenting the songs simply as previews, McCartney used the session to explain how several tracks emerged from fragments of personal history.
For followers of McCartney’s post Beatles work, the session also highlighted a recurring theme that has increasingly shaped his later catalogue, the revisiting of memory as a songwriting device. While nostalgia has long appeared in McCartney’s writing, the material discussed at the Los Angeles gathering suggested a more direct autobiographical thread running through the new album.
McCartney explained that the origins of ‘Home To Us’ actually stretch back to his first work with Watt.
“When I first worked with Andrew… we had to work in sort of spurts,” McCartney told the audience, explaining that recording was repeatedly interrupted by other commitments, including touring obligations.
During those sessions, McCartney said he had encouraged Starr to visit Watt’s studio after speaking positively about the producer.
“I’d worked with him and I saw Ringo and I said, ‘Oh yeah, I worked with this guy Andrew. He’s great’,” McCartney recalled.
According to McCartney, Starr initially arrived expecting something relatively informal. “Ringo came over to Andrew’s studio then and played a bit of drums.”
McCartney joked that Starr may have believed the producer would simply transform the performance into a completed track.
“I think Ringo thought that was all he had to do… play a little bit of drums and Andrew would make a track out of it and make some sort of marvellous thing out of it.”
The session was left untouched for a period before McCartney later asked Watt to revisit the recordings.
“You remember that stuff that Ringo came over, that drum thing he did? Can I hear it?”
When McCartney listened back, he said the unused material immediately stood out.
“I thought, ‘Wow, that’s really good.'”
The solution, according to McCartney, was obvious.
“What we should do, we should make the track that Ringo hoped you would make and we should do it and then get it over to him and complete the circle.”
The result became ‘Home To Us’, a song that lyrically reflects on place, childhood and memory. During playback at the event, the track unfolded through images of domestic life and neighbourhood scenes, drawing on themes of family routines and working class surroundings.
McCartney later shifted attention from the new music itself to one of the experiences that informed other material on the record, recalling a pre Beatles trip with George Harrison.
Before worldwide fame, McCartney said travel often came down to improvisation and necessity.
“We didn’t have much money,” he explained.
McCartney suggested to Harrison that they try hitchhiking, with the pair relying on truck drivers travelling south from Liverpool.
“The thing to do was get a lift off lorries that were going down south from Liverpool. If
you got a lift, you had a holiday for nothing.”
McCartney said the experience created a closeness between the pair because they had little choice but to spend uninterrupted time together.
“It really bonds you because you’re just stuck with each other.”
He recalled one journey to Harlech in Wales involving what he described as one of the earliest electric vehicles he had encountered, a milk delivery van.
The trip produced a story that has stayed with him decades later.
McCartney said Harrison ended up sitting on the vehicle’s battery during the cramped ride, unaware that the metal zip on the back of his jeans had connected with it.
“Suddenly George jumps up. I said, ‘What’s up?'”
The result, McCartney said, became clear later that evening.
“When we got to the bed and breakfast later he showed me, he had a big zip mark on his…”
The audience responded with laughter before McCartney concluded, “Brings you together.”
The stories suggest The Boys Of Dungeon Lane may sit among McCartney’s more reflective projects, drawing directly from personal experiences rather than broader conceptual themes. With McCartney continuing to explore material from across different stages of his life, the album appears positioned to add another chapter to a catalogue that has increasingly looked backwards while continuing to produce new work.
Watch Paul McCartney at the listening party:
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