Paul McCartney has announced a special in-conversation evening at the Roundhouse in Camden Town, London, on June 10 — and tickets went on sale today.
It’s not a concert. It’s something rarer. McCartney will sit in front of an audience and walk through the making of The Boys of Dungeon Lane from start to finish — how it began, what shaped it, and what it cost him to make it. Tickets went on sale this morning (Wednesday, June 3) at 10AM BST.
For a man who rarely does this kind of thing, it’s worth paying attention to.
What the Evening Will Cover
According to the announcement, McCartney plans to trace the album’s journey from the beginning — starting with his first meeting with producer Andrew Watt in 2021, through to the recording sessions, the songwriting process, and right up to the album’s release last Friday.
He’ll also talk about the artwork, which was designed by his nephew Josh (son of his brother Mike McCartney), and apparently drew from Liverpool’s iconic street sign style, featuring the Speke postcode L24 — the suburb where Paul grew up.
The duet with Ringo Starr is expected to come up too. “Home to Us” is their first proper duet in 63 years of knowing each other. That’s not nothing. McCartney is likely to have something to say about how that song came together, and why it took this long.
What the Album Is Actually About
The Boys of Dungeon Lane dropped on May 29 — McCartney’s first solo album since McCartney III in 2020. It’s 14 tracks, produced by Andrew Watt (the same man who produced the Rolling Stones’ comeback record Hackney Diamonds in 2023 and Ozzy Osbourne’s Patient Number 9).
The record is deeply rooted in Liverpool. Not the mythology of it — the actual place. Post-war Speke. Working-class streets. Cheap guitars and smoky bars. McCartney plays most of the instruments himself, as he tends to do, and the album was recorded across five years in sessions between his touring legs, split between his Hogg Hill Mill studio in East Sussex and studios in Los Angeles.
“Days We Left Behind,” the lead single, sets the tone immediately — wistful, direct, not trying to be more than it is. “Down South” takes him back to a road trip with a teenage George Harrison, before any of it meant anything. And “Home to Us,” the Ringo duet, is the two surviving Beatles celebrating growing up broke in the same bombed-out city, and making it sound genuinely joyful.
One interesting behind-the-scenes detail that’s come out: Watt insisted on recording “We Two” on the original Studer four-track machine the Beatles used when they recorded “A Day in the Life.” Whether or not you can hear that in the finished song, the fact that Watt thought to do it says something about how seriously both of them took this project.
NME gave the album four stars, calling it “a guided tour of the long and winding road.” The Irish Times described it as a highlight reel of McCartney’s Liverpool years. It’s not a reinvention. It doesn’t need to be.
Why This Evening Matters
McCartney doesn’t do these events often. The Roundhouse holds a crowd, but it’s not a stadium — this is an intimate setting by his standards, and the format is designed around conversation rather than performance. You’re not going to see him play a three-hour set. You’re going to hear him talk, which is arguably more interesting.
He’s 83. He’s been making music since the early 1960s. The stories he carries about John Lennon, George Harrison, the early Beatles years in Liverpool, and what it felt like to be nobody before everything — those don’t exist anywhere else. This album is built around those years, and next Wednesday he’s going to discuss all of it live in front of an audience.
If you’re in London or can get there, tickets are available now via Dice. Check Paul McCartney’s official site at paulmccartney.com for links and details.
The Boys of Dungeon Lane is out now on Capitol Records. The in-conversation event takes place Wednesday, June 10, at the Roundhouse, Camden Town, London.
