At 83, Paul McCartney doesn’t seem ready to slow down.
The former member of The Beatles, who actually turns 84 on June 18, is still making music, having just released the new album The Boys of Dungeon Lane, and continues to tour, with his last trek wrapping in November. And in a new interview with NME, McCartney reveals whether he’ll ever considering hanging it all up.
“I don’t know. I never know, y’know?” he says,. “I remember when I was 50 years old, my manager at the time said, ‘Well, are you thinking of retiring?’ I went, ‘Uh, I don’t think so.’”
“But he obviously thought, 50 … which, I get it, because we thought 30 was really old [when] we were 20,” he continues. “So 30 was like that’d be unseemly, but it came, and it went, and people were still playing, and audiences like the music.”
McCartney notes that he still gets “creative satisfaction” from songwriting. “There’s something magical about it.”
“It’s still a great achievement to sit down with, let’s say, my guitar and there’s nothing there, and I’m just noodling around, and suddenly, maybe after three or four hours, I’ve got a song. I know how it goes, and I’ve written the lyrics down, and it’s a real achievement,” he says. “That still is a magic feeling for me. I think that’s the creative buzz still, and hopefully always will be.”
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